It’s likely that every single person who lives in the Bay Area has seen an unhoused person. Different interactions that reportedly happen between unhoused people and members of the public are negative or neutral, at best.
On Nov. 20 I decided to take BART to get to the Beyond the Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness documentary screening. While on the train, I saw a person who may be unhoused. He was walking back and forth on the train car, yelling and seemingly arguing with himself. I am not going to lie, I was pretty anxious from just hearing his loud voice.
But other people reacted like they see it every day. One woman let him through as he walked to the other car. The woman shrugged, almost nonchalant about it. I was surprised to see that reaction, because in the media we see how people treat people who are unhoused.
People treat those experiencing homelessness as if they are disposable. There’s even violence against unhoused people. In 2023 a video of a San Francisco business owner spraying water with a hose at an unhoused woman went viral. Over 13 people were injured after two mass shootings at homeless encampments in Minneapolis in September.
People simply show visible distress from seeing encampments near a business or while entering a highway. Something needs to change. Maybe we all can be that woman who just shrugged as if saying, “There’s not much I can do, the least I can do is let him through.”
I agreed with Beyond the Bridge director Don Sawyer when he said, “Homelessness is happening everywhere. Homelessness is nobody’s fault.” And the least we can do is change our perspective when we see an unhoused person.
