San Francisco Chronicle • Jul. 31, 2019

San Francisco spends more than $300 million a year fighting homelessness. Yet it’s not working – at least not enough. Amid a housing shortage, rampant drug addiction and a failing mental health care system, the everyday crisis on our streets has intensified.

On June 18, 36 Chronicle journalists spread across the city to document a typical 24-hour period in this epidemic, witnessing an unrelenting cycle of striving and suffering, of some people finding their footing and others falling through.

The day started just before dawn, along the Embarcadero.

Diana Cisnero holds her daughter, Sandra, as Ellarose, (left), Juston, and husband, Derelle Foster, surround her in their shelter room at Hamilton Families.

8:42AM - DERELLE’S PATH

A job, a shelter, a hope

“Bye, baby, I love you,” Derelle Foster says to his 18-month-old daughter, Ellarose.

“Bye,” the girl mutters back, waving a few tiny fingers.

Foster, 27, recently lost his job at a marijuana grow house. He and his family have been in a shelter for several weeks, after stints at another shelter, in motels and in a van. They lost their studio in Oakland in February. The landlord didn’t like how many people were living in the unit and, without a job, Foster didn’t have the money for a new place.

The room at the shelter operated by Hamilton Families is tight. Foster and his wife sleep in one bed, Ellarose and 8-month-old Sandra are in cribs, and 3-year-old Juston shares a bunk bed with the family’s German shepherd, Clicquot. A communal bathroom is down the hall.

But it’s better than the shelter’s dorm-style quarters that they were in before. And now Foster has a job again. He’s headed to work at the Coalition on Homelessness, the advocacy group in the Tenderloin, which just hired him at $15 per hour for an office job. It’s temporary, but he hopes this is the beginning of the resurrection of his life, a step toward renting a real home again soon.

“I’m tired of my kids asking, ‘When am I going to go back home?’ ”

Faustina Alvarado Garcia (center right) and her daughter, Madelin Souza Alvarado, make their way through downtown to Compass Family Services.

11:41AM - TRACKING FAUSTINA

Unmoored, but tethered to GPS

As Faustina Alvarado Garcia walks downtown with her 11-year-old daughter, Madelin, she limps. Her GPS ankle monitor, issued by U.S. immigration agents, is tight and rubbing her skin red.

Garcia, 42, has just spent an hour sharing her circumstances with a case manager from Hamilton Families tasked with helping her find a home. She and Madelin, she says, fled Honduras in January after her brother was killed in a gang shooting and the killers told her family members they were next.

It took them two months to reach America on foot and by bus, through Mexico and across the border at a remote California crossing. Swiftly picked up by immigration authorities, the pair requested asylum and were released before making their way to San Francisco.

They lived briefly with Garcia’s sister before the landlord, citing occupancy limits, told them to leave. So now they are in an emergency shelter, sharing a bunk bed in a room with other families.

Homeless in a strange land, they are bombarded by contrasting images of wealth and despair — glitzy gowns in a department store window fronted by drug-addled, agitated vagrants on the sidewalk. Madelin stares at a woman carrying a box with a picture of an Apple monitor.

“Is that a television?” the girl asks. “Or is it a computer?”

Her mom doesn’t know. They debate what the item is as they trudge back to their shelter in the Tenderloin and another appointment with another case worker.

“I want one of those,” Madelin says.

“One day, when I can, I will buy you one.”

8%: Share of the homeless population made up of families
98%: Share of chronically homeless families that have temporary shelter

Derelle Foster (top) holds 8-month-old Sandra on his lap as he eats dinner with his family at the Hamilton Families shelter in San Francisco.

5:57PM - DERELLE’S PATH

Hungry, tired, but inside

For Derelle Foster, the plate of jambalaya over rice with green beans is a welcome way to end the day. He sits with his wife and three children in a booth in the dining room of their homeless shelter, their German shepherd waiting for scraps. The small cafeteria begins to fill up — couples and other families with kids.

“It’s like hot dogs,” Foster tells 3-year-old Juston, trying to get his son to eat chunks of sausage in the stew.

Foster is hungry and tired. And there is a lot on his mind. Will his son be diagnosed with autism? Will his family find a more permanent place to stay in three months, when they might have to leave the shelter? Will he make enough money to afford a move? None of that will be solved today.

“Let’s go,” his wife says. “Everyone needs to take a shower tonight.”

$30.3 million

Amount spent specifically on homeless families by the department of homelessness in the 2018-19 fiscal year