Long haul for homeless to recover goods

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Long-haul-for-homeless-to-recover-goods-3927170.php

Under the Interstate 280 on-ramp near King Street in San Francisco, Jonathan Manley's home consists of what he can carry - a backpack, a worn-out sleeping bag, a frayed bamboo mat and as many blankets as he can handle.

The 30-year-old said that before police and Caltrans employees cleared out an encampment of homeless people under the on-ramp on Aug. 28, he had many more belongings stored in a small trailer. But they were all whisked away when the cleaning crew swept through.

Unbeknownst to Manley and many of the other people who had been living under the on-ramp, the items that crews didn't declare a health hazard weren't taken straight to the dump. Instead, they went to a sprawling Caltrans yard at the southern edge of San Francisco near the Daly City border, where homeless people can retrieve them - if they can get there.

A recent state appellate court ruling directed that public agencies must maintain property seized from homeless people for 90 days, something Caltrans and the San Francisco Department of Public Works say they have been doing for several years.

Caltrans does not publicize the location of its storage yard for fear it might attract thieves, said spokesman Steve Williams. But when camps are cleared out, cleanup crews post notices with a phone number that the homeless can call to find out how to retrieve their possessions.

Like the Caltrans yard, the city's is well off the beaten path, especially the one the homeless tread. That may limit access to some homeless people, said Dariush Kayhan, superintendent of street environmental services at Public Works, but it's the best the agency can manage given space constraints.

But critics of the "bagging and tagging" process say the system more often than not leads to people being permanently separated from their belongings.

City cleanup employees are too willing to discard homeless people's property, seeing it as little more than trash, said John Gallagher, a member of the advocacy group Coalition on Homelessness. 

"The belongings often get handled with gloves and masks, put into a garbage truck and smashed, not sent away and stored," Gallagher said. "It's not a smallpox blanket, just a blanket. Whether you like the look of the blanket or not, it was someone's blanket to keep them warm at night."

Gallagher added that most homeless people are not willing or able to take the steps - making phone calls and traveling to the southern reaches of town - needed to retrieve their belongings.

"It's not easy when we're not sure if someone's things actually made it over here, but we try to be as fair as we can," Snow said. "You have to treat other people how you want to be treated."