Can Small Business End Homelessness?

By Jordanna Gabrielle Thigpen

What if the small business community can pull together around employment of marginally employed and unemployed individuals? One category of unemployed in particular that would benefit is homeless individuals.

There are many community service organizations (CSOs) in this City that are working daily to address the many heavy layers of the problem. We know what we need + we need more family shelters; we need a permanent place for the needle exchange in the Upper Haight so it won't be evicted every just so often; we need better policy and services for transitioning youth once they leave foster care + just to name a few items on Santa's (not Krampus'! We promise!) list. The state and federal governments' failed "war on drugs" has to be re-examined. So does the collective societal denial of the role mental health plays in homelessness. We can't change the fabric of our society overnight, but one thing we can do is look for ways to provide jobs to empower individuals.

What if the small business community can pull together around employment of marginally employed and unemployed individuals? One category of unemployed in particular that would benefit is homeless individuals.

In New York the Times Square BID hires homeless individuals. So does the South Street Special Service District in Philadelphia, and the Telegraph Avenue BID in Berkeley. How about the Union Square BID here in San Francisco? As a matter of fact, MJM Management Group, which runs our Union Square BID, has hired some homeless individuals who have gone on to permanent employment with local small businesses. It seems like BIDs would be a natural fit for transition employment for homeless individuals, since BIDs involve an intricate and localized focus on a particular neighborhood. But even if every neighborhood became BID-supported, and two homeless individuals were hired in each neighborhood to oversee, say, street cleanliness, that would only be maybe 60 people. We should run, not walk, to this solution, but frankly we need to think bigger.

There are a lot of CSOs in the City that find employment for homeless and formerly homeless individuals. For example, Ashbury Images, Pedal Revolutions, and Grow Café Training Program are three programs by Golden Gate Community Inc. - a successful SF CSO with a mission of community service. By contrast, what is the mission of business? Pursuant to our current social philosophy, it's to make a financial profit, unless the owners, with employees' participation, have made a decision to be socially responsible and consider other elements in the final lethal equation of "profit."

Should small businesses become more like CSOs and adopt a mission of community service? No + each serves their purpose in the economic ecosystem. And, a lot of small business owners already have, at least in part. They donate product or services for CSO fundraisers, promote internships and summer jobs for youth, provide health insurance, and, as members of merchant associations in the district where the business is based, act as stewards for the community. It can be a truly symbiotic relationship.

Last year there was a failed bond measure to fix the streets. It failed in part because there's a perception among the electorate that the city should work within existing resources (like a business) to achieve the very basic and necessary goal of having decent streets. That includes cleanliness. Clearly, it's not getting done. Of course - only some districts have this problem.

There's two ways to solve it.

The first is that entities such as SoMa Partnership should receive additional funds to expand throughout the city. These funds can come in part from the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services, and maybe we can cast our net for some state or federal money too. Matching funds could be provided for merchant associations and BIDS that wanted to hire the Partnership or an analogous organization. Individuals could transition from this work into permanent employment with small businesses in the districts they work in. As far as how this process could work, perhaps merchant associations could create interative job banks to identify available positions. The bottom line is that employers need to be willing to take a chance, and prospective employees need to be willing to learn the skills and resources necessary to working with the public and/or within a professional setting. A holistic approach is necessary, with a partnership between the public, private, and CSO sectors.

I can't resist saying that the second way is that street and sidewalk cleaning funds at DPW should be allocated, if they are not already, on a per-neighborhood basis. It's certainly apparent to anyone who lives or works in any heavily-trafficked districts that this has not been occurring. The neighborhoods with the most density and use should receive more funds than what one elected famously referred to as "the suburbs." That means that neighborhoods within Districts 3, 5, 6, 9 and 10 should receive the lion's (even, the Ghost's and the Darkness') share of DPW resources. You keep on using us until you use us up, and we're going to bite back by taking our share by hook and by crook. Tomorrow, however, is another day.