No Date for LGBT Shelter

With winter approaching and problems continuing for LGBTs in the city's homeless shelters, a space designed to be welcoming to the gay community is still without an opening date.

"There's definitely been a lot of frustration from everyone involved about how long it's taken," said Wendy Phillips, executive director of Dolores Street Community Services, which will operate the proposed 24-bed space at 1050 South Van Ness Avenue. "We are literally doing everything we can. All these processes take time."

Advocates and elected officials have been pushing for the shelter since a March 2010 Board of Supervisors hearing in which several LGBTs told of harassment they had experienced at the city's shelters.

Since then, the project has been mired in city bureaucracy, with many of the hurdles related to obtaining permits from city agencies.

"I can't wait to call you and tell you when the opening celebration is going to be," said Phillips, who's been up-front about the struggles her agency has faced throughout the process.

She said DSCS, which already operates one shelter at 1050 South Van Ness, got the permits it needed from the Department of Building Inspection in July, then updated the cost estimate.

"It was a lot higher than it had been previously," Phillips, a straight ally, said, "primarily" due to modifications required by the Mayor's Office on Disability. She and others have been working to cut the costs. A specific dollar amount was not available.

Dolores Street has approval from the Mayor's Office on Disability to complete the project in phases. Phase one would include the shelter site itself, while work such as including Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant parking spaces can wait, since "our shelter residents don't actually have cars," Phillips said. She added the city office's staff has been "very supportive."

The nonprofit has to have funding identified before it can begin construction. Phillips and others are trying to calculate how much money they need, and they're "not totally sure" when the renovation work may start, she said.

Carla Johnson, who's the director of the Mayor's Office on Disability and a lesbian, expressed support for doing the work in phases.

"I know they are anxious to move forward as quickly as possible to start construction now that they have a permit," Johnson said.

Problems Persist for Homeless LGBTs

While work on establishing the shelter has continued, the problems facing homeless LGBTs have persisted.
Alessandra Co�ate. Photo: Seth Hemmelgarn

Alessandra Co�ate, 35, who identifies as intersex and pansexual, has been homeless for two years and is staying at Next Door, a shelter on the cusp of the city's Tenderloin neighborhood.

Co�ate said during a recent incident at the shelter, another woman called her a "faggot" during an altercation over a request for some hot sauce and said she'd have her husband beat her. Co�ate said she "felt trapped" and poured tea on the woman. (It wasn't hot, she said.)

According to a staff report of the incident, the other client acknowledged she had "directed a homophobic slur" toward Co�ate.

Both women reported the incident to staff. Initially, they were given a "verbal warning" and told to stay away from each other, Co�ate said. But the next day, she was told she would be discharged, and the other woman was allowed to stay. Co�ate was ultimately allowed to stay at the shelter.

Co�ate believes her discharge was related to her identity, based on what she's seen at the organization.

In her two years in the shelter system, she said, most of the problems she's had "have just been verbal confrontations." Staff "are always speaking to me in a condescending way, always speaking to me like I'm subhuman." Most of the problems have been with Next Door, she said.

She recalled an incident at the shelter in April when she used a women's restroom. A staff member called her "sir" and told her she was using the wrong bathroom, said Co�ate, who has breasts and wears feminine clothing.

"I kind of just blew it off and figured it was a mistake on their part, or maybe I would just educate them a little bit," she said. She continues to stay at Next Door because she has a stay away order from another shelter involving her "significant other," and her options are limited.

A message left with a Next Door official wasn't returned Monday.

Last June, the biennial San Francisco Homeless Point-In-Time Count and Survey was released and, for the first time, included statistics on LGBT people. The report found that out of a total of 7,350 homeless people, more than one in four (29 percent) identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or "other" for a total of 2,132.

According to Bevan Dufty, a gay man who serves as director of Housing Opportunity, Partnerships and Engagement for Mayor Ed Lee, the city has 1,150 homeless shelter beds. This time last year, the number was the same. Currently, 97 percent of the beds are full, he said.

Co�ate, who called her situation "very temporary," said the planned Dolores Street shelter would make it easier for people to "feel safe and not feel like they have a continual uphill battle just to get basic needs met."

She's "a little disheartened" at the length of the process leading to the shelter, but Co�ate said she understands there are "a lot of hoops" shelter backers have had to go through.

Campos Involvement

Gay Supervisor David Campos, whose District 9 includes the proposed shelter site and who led the March 2010 hearing that spawned the project, has seemed quiet about the work publicly.

But Phillips said he's "absolutely" been helpful.

"His office has really been helping us a lot with the whole thing," including recent assistance in trying to get lower costs on construction work, she said.

"They're bringing whatever resources and influence they have to bear," Phillips said of Campos and his staff. "They're helping us advocate to expedite any city processes that can be expedited."

Campos said, "We have been trying to push the various agencies and different community-based organizations to move as quickly as they can."

Like Phillips, he pointed to higher construction costs. The hurdle now "is a challenge that is facing every construction project in San Francisco," he said. " ... It is a lot more expensive to build something in San Francisco than it was a couple years ago."

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, who's running against Campos for the 17th District Assembly seat being vacated by termed-out gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, said of the shelter, "I have not heard Supervisor Campos mention this on the campaign trail or in any of the many public forums where we've appeared together. I certainly support any and all efforts to address the plight of homeless LGBT residents," including youth, he said.

Campos, whose campaign website doesn't mention the shelter, said he has talked about the shelter while campaigning. He also bristled when questioned about the issue.

"I would hope there's some fairness in the coverage," he said. "The [Bay Area Reporter ] has not been the kindest to me and my office. ... I hope that there is fairness and objectivity." He wouldn't give any examples of the coverage he found problematic.

The B.A.R. has endorsed Chiu in the Assembly race.

Training

An ongoing concern among LGBT homeless people and their advocates has been ensuring that shelter staff are trained to work with LGBT clients.

Phillips said DSCS staff were going through LGBT cultural competency training even before the agency took on the gay-friendly shelter project, and it's been "ramped up a lot." About 50 percent of the group's shelter staff are LGBT, she said.

Nicholas Kimura is a straight ally who volunteers at the Coalition on Homelessness and helps people having trouble in the shelters. Kimura said many issues go unreported because clients fear retribution, and a lot of the concerns come from transgender women who feel "harassed" by other clients and shelter staff, who "can be outnumbered 50 to 1 at times."

He said, "I don't think the city's doing enough to train" staff and shelter supervisors in working with LGBTs.

Kimura said staff have even made transphobic statements in front of him, such as "These are men, they shouldn't be here."

Dufty said that at a policy forum held earlier this year a number of speakers identified problems related to transphobia and other concerns related to shelters. He said at that forum, shelter providers "said they felt they didn't have the tools they needed to improve things."

Dufty's worked with a local nonprofit to develop LGBT sensitivity training for shelter staff and clients, and he's linked the group with officials who oversee the system.