SF

Homeless Game Changer

Art Agnos, former mayor


Hundreds of San Franciscos homeless population is living in
horrible conditions on streets in tents. That is because we
simply do not have enough beds for them. Quite simply, the
system is clogged and there is no room for the thousands of
needy people living in uncivilized conditions on the streets of
our city

Our city desperately needs a humane, progressive game
changer to house them until there is enough permanent
housing.

That game changer is to create a temporary navigation center
operated by nonprofit agency aboard a reconditioned Navy
ship large enough to handle a large number of people.

For 35 years, the USS Peleliu, a small aircraft carrier complete
with sleeping quarters, kitchens, medical clinics, offices, and
recreation facilities, carried 2200 Marines, 2500 sailors, and
262 officers totaling almost 5000 military personnel working
and living aboard the ship for months at sea.

With those kinds of facilities, docked on our Port, the Peleliu
could temporarily house most, if not all, of San Franciscos
homeless currently living in tents on the streets while
permanent housing is built.

Crazy idea? Pie in the sky?

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Not reallythis is exactly what we did in San Francisco to
temporarily house homeless folks after the 1989 Loma Prieta
Earthquake.



While the San Franciscos Marina neighborhood had the most
visible victims of the earthquake, more homeless victims living
in badly damaged South of Market Single Room Occupancy
hotels were temporarily housed in the Moscone Convention
Center.

To restart an important part of the Citys economy, the
convention and hospitality business, Moscone Convention
Center had to be cleared of 300 homeless inhabitants to
prepare for the American Psychiatric Association convention.

Help came from the US Navys Admiral John Bitoff with an
unusual offer of the USS Peleliu, a helicopter carrier, to
temporarily house the homeless from the Convention Center.
Its contingent of 2000 Marines were not onboard and the ship
could be in San Francisco before the convention convened the
next week.

Done!

Challenges? There were many, but we worked them out
quickly and a skeptical crowd of homeless boarded buses from
Moscone to the ship. During the day they kept their usual
routines. At night they came home to the ship. It was popular
because it was a safe, civilized shelter with good food. When
the ship left to resume its military mission two weeks later,
many wanted to join the Navy instead of relocating to the land
facilities.

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The USS Peleliu worked beautifully as a temporary emergency
earthquake homeless shelter, but now we need to test it on a
longterm pilot basis. I am sure some well meaning advocates
will come up with issues. It will take leadership in 2016 to
work through them just as we did in 1989.

While this might be a game changer in San Francisco, our city
would not be the first to try this approach:

Last month a group of businessmen in Auckland, New
Zealand, an expensive international housing market,
began looking into the purchase of an Italian cruise
liner for use as a homeless shelter.

In Europe, Germany has deployed two cruise ships on
the Emscher River in the city of Dortmund to
temporarily house its overflow of refugees. Sweden is
in discussions with cruise ship lines to do the same for
thousands of refugees in that country.

In 2005, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management
Agency) chartered three large cruise ships with a
combined capacity of more than 4,400 beds to house
hurricane Katrina victims in the ports of Galveston,
Texas and Mobile, Alabama. Afterwards, FEMA
reported, the use of cruise ships was an innovative
and successful program.

In 2002 New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg explored
the use of cruise ships for the homeless but the cost of
retrofitting was deemed to be too high at that time.

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Would this game changer have challenges such as
costsavailabilitylogisticsfederal cooperation for a pilot
program here?

Certainly, but the same great champion we had with
Washington in 1989, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, is even
more powerful today as Democratic Minority Leader in the
House of Representatives. Our influential U.S. Senator Dianne
Feinstein certainly understands the homeless problem as a
former mayor. Both leaders are on excellent terms with Mayor
Lee and his outstanding director of the new Department of
Homelessness, Jeff Kositsky.

Winter has come and gone and still we see the same frustration
at the lack of significant progress with these helpless people.
Unless we initiate a game changer there will be no change.
The current goal of one or two 40 50 person Navigation
Centers a year will simply cause us to fall further and further
behind in meeting the crisis. We need bold action to bring
about a game changer solution that can work for people that
have suffered too long on the streets of San Francisco.