Huntley was shown a unit last month by the S.F. Housing Authority, which had announced that it would set aside units for Katrina victims. But a city background check turned up a criminal assault conviction that Huntley says she earned fending off, with a knife, some women who had attacked her daughter; as a result, she was turned down for housing. Her brother, Tyrone, who has no such record, simply hasn't heard back from the agency after contacting it last month.
"They go through the normal process that anybody going into public housing goes through. We're not making exceptions for Katrina people," Roetzer says.
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Jones, the caseworker aiding Huntley, says the Housing Authority employee she spoke to seemed unclear whether Huntley might appeal this decision, or whether Katrina victims could qualify for an exception to public housing screening rules.
"You should have the right to appeal it. I had four Katrina-victim clients who were denied housing because of their background, because of a criminal history in Louisiana," Jones says. "They were sent here with a check card from the Red Cross. There are families with one parent and four kids, and they are in some of the worst possible hotels in the Tenderloin."
Huntley made repeated rounds of various government and nonprofit agencies, only to receive vague promises, recorded answering-machine messages, and lots of disappointment.
"Basically, everybody's been handing out [business] cards and saying, 'Contact me. Contact me.' And then I can't get through to anybody. I've been handed so many cards that I could make a house with them."
With Jones' help Huntley finally connected with Bethel AME Church, which has for three decades operated a subsidized housing program for local poor people.
"To date we have been able to provide housing for five families," the Rev. Boyd says. "Members of the congregation have provided elements for housekeeping -- linen, towels, bathroom implements, and the like. They've provided clothing. They've taken a delight in responding to them, because that's what churches do."
Boyd also says that he's cooperating with KIPP, a charter school chain financed by Gap Inc. founder Don Fisher, to place Katrina evacuee children. By last week, the chain's Bayview school had placed a fifth- and a sixth-grader, says KIPP Foundation spokesman Steve Mancini. Meanwhile, an S.F. Unified School District spokeswoman explains that the SFUSD has enrolled 41 students across 21 different schools, all of them victims of Hurricane Katrina.
I applaud the efforts of Boyd and retired magnate Fisher. But I don't believe it was necessary for families such as the Huntleys to sit for weeks in a flophouse room wondering if they would end up on the street. I think it was wrong for our mayor to falsely suggest that the city had launched a coordinated effort to help Katrina victims. I'm saddened that San Francisco -- the city that opinion polls show most values government's role in protecting citizens from disaster, children from homelessness, and the disadvantaged from despair -- would so totally fail at aiding Katrina victims as to put those values in doubt.
