Most Saturday mornings, I walk a half-mile from my small apartment in a burgeoning part of San Francisco to the farmers’ market. My usual anticipation (about the carrots planted above, about the value of the berries) was recently interrupted by the sight of three dead bodies.
That is, I thought of them as bodies; It was not clear whether they were alive or dead. All were scattered on the sidewalk, one a few blocks from my house, the other two, separate blocks away, closer to the market, themselves located in a neighborhood where the need is obvious. (Food stamps are often tenders for purchasing produce.) The bodies were those of shabby but fully dressed men – except for one man, who had no shoes. I thought, maybe they were sleeping, or unconscious due to alcohol or drugs. Or maybe they are dead. Anyone passing by – including me – slowed down to pay attention to them beyond a glance.
For decades, faced with such a scene, I would pause, then wait for my legs to flutter, my chest to rise. I rarely do this anymore. In high school, I was amazed to read that poor people in India, who had no homes, slept on the sidewalks, while others simply walked on the sidewalks. I remember thinking how horrible those others were. How could they live with themselves? The contempt set in. We have become used to being homeless – making others homeless.
I guessed that the three people on a recent Saturday had no homes, but by interviewing a former homeless man for several years who is now a civic leader in San Francisco, I learned not to rush to conclusions. Dale Seymour, known locally today as the Mayor of the Tenderloin, taught me that a man lying on the sidewalk with his eyes closed might have a home, but perhaps temptation or a medical condition stood in his way. In the initial shock I also learned from Dale that some homeless people work full-time jobs. I’ve learned a lot about homelessness, mostly from him, but also from my daily Google alerts for the word in the news.
Since those warnings are rarely encouraging, a spark of good news has emerged recently. In Los Angeles County, the number of deaths among the homeless population decreased from 2023 through 2024, according to newly released data. Wow! I thought. Countless programs are in the works! Whether naloxone interventions or tiny homes or new shelters or other efforts (free job training like the one Dell launched in San Francisco?) are worthy of praise, I felt a surge of hope. Then I read more closely.
Homeless deaths in LA County in 2024 did not drop to 100 or so as I had hoped, but to 2,208. Yes, a trend in the right direction. Cause for celebration, no.
Many people know firsthand the emotional and physical pain of homelessness. Virtually all other Californians know this implicitly and have probably asked themselves the same question: What should a (presumably well-intentioned) housed person do in response to the sight of an unhoused person, not to mention multiple unhoused people? I know a nurse in San Francisco who stops her car when she sees someone in physical distress and administers CPR if appropriate. I admire his work, but doubt I can replicate it.
Admittedly, my own core and stubborn response, that spending almost a decade writing a book on this topic in the hope that it would have a helpful effect, is not an available or attractive path to many people. And shorter-term efforts, such as volunteering at local nonprofits, certainly yield more immediate results. A common impulse I participate in, even if inadequately and awkwardly, is to give someone food or money, or call 911 when someone clearly needs help.
Yet any pedestrian, especially any female pedestrian, will attest that the impulse to help someone on the sidewalk becomes more challenging if he is awake, and male. Will the offering involve spitting, screaming, chasing? Should we avoid eye contact? not necessarily.
What I learned from Dell is to offer something that can mean more than a dollar or a sandwich: Say hello.
Identify the person whose face is several feet below yours. This person is part of a family, “somebody’s son, somebody’s aunt,” Dale says, and remains a human being. Remind yourself of this. More importantly, remind them. Dale says: Don’t stop if the person seems “crazy”, he or she has enjoyed entering into politically incorrect phrases. Otherwise, slow down for a few seconds, maybe longer. At some point, over time, and on the same path, you may recognize each other and actually interact. In the meantime, keep it basic, but say something.
I obey. Often, just “Hi.”
There is almost always an incomprehensible generous reward: a smile and a greeting are returned. Humbled, I move on, pledging again that we will not make our unhoused neighbors feel invisible, nor forget that homelessness, among other adjectives, is abnormal.
Alison Owings is the author of “Mayor of the Tenderloin: Dale Seymour’s Journey from Living on the Streets to Fighting Homelessness in San Francisco.”
