April 21 I had an honor to participate in the Project Homeless Connect, the fourth edition. Initially the project was started by the mayor of San Francisco and state employees, then volunteers joined, and last time we had about 800 volunteers. In the essence, the goal of the project is to "connect" San Francisco population of homeless residents with the services they may need, provided either by the government or by businesses and individuals. Every time PHC happens, the organizers get a better idea of what is needed; and this time, for example, we had wheelchair repair service, and according to the mail all PHC volunteers get, "12 people had their wheelchairs or electric chairs repaired on site". The main services were housing information, shelter placement, medical services, legal consulting, and eligibility for benefits checks.

How it was organized. All volunteers were divided into several teams. The outreach team went to the streets to encourage homeless people to visit the building on Grove 99, where the event took place. There another team greeted them and directed to the Bill Graham auditorium, where the process started. The "triage" team, 40-60 people, was sitting along the huge Bill Graham auditorium armed with pens and forms to fill in. Homeless guys, since now known as "clients", were interviewed about what they need. They were also asked some personal information - name, age, which they were free not to give, though. The triage workers marked in the form which services the client chose, and circled one, he wanted to visit first. Then the "escort" team picked up the client and escorted him/her to even bigger auditorium, where the services were. I was in the escort team. Our task was to get the clients to the first service they chose, sign them up and then go back. Other teams then escorted people to other services. The "discharge" team was paced near the exit, they looked at the client papers and made sure the client visited all the services that were marked. Certainly a good idea, considering the huge mess the service area was.

I said "mess", but this is only one part of the picture, the long shot. Imagine a huge room, with doctors working on the right, lawyers consulting their clients near them, separated for some reason by the "mental health" team, whose clients would remind you "One flew over the Cuckoo's nest" movie; neat government employees with benefits forms on the left, cafeteria tables further then, massage team at work in the middle accompanied by the wheel repair team, and in the very, in the very center of all this, the University orchestra playing something classical, what better educated listeners identified as "Four seasons"... But that's the long shot. From inside, the whole mess was amazingly well organized. I was told that there was big progress since the last event, and that things are much smother and more effective this time. All the clients were escorted to their areas of interest, assigned numbers and left sitting in waiting areas -- unless there were too many people waiting, which happened mostly in the medical service area, one of the most demanded along with "housing" and "food". At certain point, the medical placement team estimated waiting time to be around 1,5 hours. Then we got clients signed up and took them to some other service that they could get while waiting. Often it was food. The "food" team was probably the most efficient, they got more clients than anybody else, and they managed to serve them all in time, there never was a line. Great job. :)

At the end of the day, mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newsom joined us. He gave a speech, after which I expected him to leave for more important business, but he stayed with people and listened for the discussion. When I left, he was still there. :) I was glad that there was minimum of self-congratulating "look-how-cool-we-are-we-help-homeless-…" noise, only some brief orientation before the event, to keep the spirit up, and some statistics after, which made sense. Bureaucrateeze was also kept at minimum, other than "clients" there weren't any vocabulary inventions, and you need to call your um… "clients" somehow. I didn't want to take pictures because many homeless people don't like it, and it just didn't feel right, but I saw some other people did, and if we get a forum, or if I find somebody's blog (no such luck so far), I'll post a link.
P.S. Ok, there are lots of pictures on SanFranciscoSentinel.com.

The PHC event happens every two months. Or, rather, used to happen. I felt that the last one was such a success, that why not to have it more often. Apparently not only me was thinking so, and the next even is scheduled for June 3, in 6 weeks. Unfortunately I will be in Russia this time, but I definitely will participate in the next one, in July or August.