At lunch hour Monday, a line formed outside Glide in the Tenderloin. It was just about the only typical thing this afternoon at one of San Francisco’s longest-tenured services for the poor and unsheltered.
The previous meal that Glide had hosted — dinner on Thursday, March 12 — seemed like it took place in a different world, even though it was only 96 hours ago. With the novel coronavirus spreading quickly, the situation on the ground and in everyone’s lives is changing even faster.
Glide’s shelter reservations, meals, and church services were shut down Friday through Sunday for a deep cleaning of all facilities. They reopened Monday. Perhaps the biggest difference: No volunteers. Glide has stopped taking them until April 7th, at the earliest.
Despite missing the roughly 20 volunteers who usually help with each meal at Glide, director of social services Ken Kim was pleasantly surprised. “This has gone smoothly so far,” he told The Frisc as Monday’s lunch wound down, but he had little time to talk.
Kim was ready to help his staff, one of whom had to ask a client not to lean against the Glide building. That was another big difference Monday; people who came for lunch were no longer allowed inside. Instead, they had to line up on the sidewalk for their boxed to-go meals, then sit away from the building. Many walked right back to their tents and other makeshift shelters across from the church or around the corner on Taylor Street.
A similar scene unfolded about a block away on Golden Gate Avenue at St. Anthony’s Dining Hall, where people queued up on the sidewalk for clamshell-boxed lunches. A few feet away, a PIT Stop bathroom and hygiene station was up and running to help people stay clean.
“A lot of moving parts”
Organizations like Glide and St. Anthony’s that form the backbone of the city’s homelessness services have had to put volunteer programs on hiatus to help reduce the spread of the virus and protect the people they serve, their staffers, and the general public.
Kim and others on The Tenderloin Hunger Task Force have met every day the past week and discussed how they might pool resources to survive the lack of volunteers. In a conversation with The Frisc over the weekend, frustration edged into Kim’s voice as he talked about the need to find solutions to the vexing question: How do you accomplish more work, like feeding the city’s most vulnerable residents, with less than half the staff? “We’ve been meeting everyday, and we’re still trying to figure this all out,” Kim said. “There are a lot of moving parts.”
Monday went well, but the city’s school shutdown has just begun. Kim and his peers expect more families to show up, knowing that Glide has youth and family services.
(The SF public schools will also start providing meals Tuesday to all children under 18. More details are here.)
Kim acknowledged the situation could change minute-by-minute. As he and his colleagues were handing out lunches, San Francisco and five other Bay Area counties had just issued a shelter-in-place order, which brings the city closer to a complete lockdown. If that happens, Kim said he was certain that Glide and similar operations would be designated as “essential services” and allowed to stay open.
On the front line
With new restrictions coming practically every day, workers at Glide, St. Anthony’s, and other nonprofits serving San Francisco’s homeless residents must become frontline public health workers. Kim said his staff was briefed about maintaining distance between people and trying to spot and separate people in line who appear sick.
“Our folks talk to people in line, and if a staff member hears of someone coughing or complaining about aches, we ask that they get the person to sit away from the others and tell them we’ll get them a meal,” he said. “We’re operating under the safest means we can.”
It’s not just meal service that has changed. Glide’s walk-in services were also back on offer Monday, but not for “walking in” — clients had to sit out front to wait for hygiene kits, shelter reservations, and more. No longer able to bring people into the building, Glide workers must now turn their “harm reduction clinic” into an aggressive outreach program, especially with the fear that the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to more drug overdoses and HIV and hepatitis C infections.
“We want to make sure there are no spikes in these diseases, so we’re going to get resources out quickly,” Kim said, including clean needles, free HIV and hepatitis C testing, and overdose prevention training.
As with other Glide services, the harm reduction work will fall to staff members, who are adjusting on the fly. Volunteers are out of the picture. “This is highlighting how difficult it is to provide safety and healthcare,” Kim said. “Even before this crisis, the system couldn’t hold capacity. We’ve had large numbers of marginalized people in trouble. Now there will be more to handle.”
Correction: A previous version of this story used an outdated name for Glide. Despite the sign on the front of the building, Glide declared independence from the Methodist Church last year.
Kristi Coale (@unazurda) is a San Francisco-based freelance writer and radio producer for various outlets, including KALW’s Crosscurrents and the National Radio Project’s Making Contact.