Each autumn, Jews around the world remember their ancestors’ homelessness in the desert by sleeping and eating in sukkahs. This Sunday, San Francisco Jews will join an interfaith religious coalition trying to ensure that others will avoid the same fate.
“The Talmud tells us to remember our Exodus from Egypt every day. The teachers of old remind us that our roots are in slavery and difficult straits,” said Rabbi Pam Frydman Baugh of Or Shalom Jewish Community in San Francisco.
“It is incumbent upon us to always offer a handout or a hand up, depending on the level of tzedakah available to us.”
To that end, Frydman Baugh and other representatives of the Jewish community will gather at San Francisco Congregation Beth Sholom at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 13 to join the Religious Witness with Homeless People for a prayer service and processional to the Presidio to protest the National Park Service’s planned demolition of the Presidio’s Wherry Housing Complex.
The interfaith coalition also will launch its Adopt-A-Home project, helping individuals and organizations join the campaign to make the now-vacant military housing available to the homeless for shelter, rehabilitation and training.
“This is an issue which affects our entire community,” said Tracy Salkowitz, executive director of the Northern Pacific region of the American Jewish Congress. “There are Jews that are homeless. We don’t like to think about it, but there are. Plus, at the core of Judaism is the notion of tikkun olam [repairing the world].
“There is housing out there. To eliminate it and not utilize it for the city’s vulnerable is a shanda [shame].”
More than 1,000 individuals including state Sen. Milton Marks and S.F. Supervisor Leslie Katz, and 175 organizations including the S.F. Interfaith Council, the AJCongress, Congregation Beth Sholom, Or Shalom Jewish Community and Berkeley’s Kehillah Community Synagogue have endorsed the Religious Witness effort.
Since the National Park Service took over the former military base, 58 residential buildings on the site have been torn down at a cost of nearly $1.4 million. The remaining 466 housing units are slated for demolition.
San Francisco has more than 12,000 homeless residents competing for 1,400 shelter beds in the city each night. For three years the Religious Witness group has advocated on their behalf.
The interfaith efforts have included sleeping out in Golden Gate Park in defiance of former Mayor Frank Jordan’s Matrix program, distributing blankets to homeless individuals during the winter and fasting to spotlight violations of homeless people’s human rights.
In February the coalition began its Wherry Housing campaign. Interfaith leaders met with Mayor Willie Brown and U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-S.F.) to express their concerns. In April, the coalition bombarded both politicians with more than 1,500 postcards and letters, urging them to support the drive to save Presidio housing for homeless people.
Following the April leveling of 58 Wherry Housing Complex Buildings, more than 150 members of Religious Witness demonstrated at the Presidio to delay further destruction.
The recent passage of the Presidio Trust legislation by Congress sets up a public-private partnership for determining future use of the land. Religious Witness will direct its appeals to the trust’s board, to be appointed by President Clinton.
The National Park Service has cited possible lead and asbestos contamination and its desire to create open space as arguments against using the Wherry Housing Complex for shelter.
According to Sister Bernice Galvin, director of Religious Witness with Homeless People, this data “has been disputed.”
“Half the housing in San Francisco has these problems. You don’t tear down a city just because it has problems,” she said.
“These are easily remedied problems. The asbestos they’re talking about is in the kitchen tile. The lead paint is on the outside, not the inside, of the buildings.”
Furthermore, modification of the 466 remaining houses “won’t cost anywhere near the cost of destroying them,” Galvin added.
If successful, the Religious Witness will act as an advocate for the homeless. Nonprofit private housing agencies will work directly with families and individuals to rehabilitate housing units, select residents and follow up with support services.
“We’re not talking about warehousing the homeless. This is job training and rehabilitation, which begins with proper housing,” said Rabbi Alan Lew of Beth Sholom.
“To have the government tear down housing and leave 10,000 people on the street is a level of public unconsciousness which is not tolerable.”