TREES: LATEST CASUALTIES IN WAR AGAINST HOMELESSNESS


TREES: LATEST CASUALTIES IN WAR AGAINST HOMELESSNESS

by Jeremy Elprin on July 28, 2004

     

In the misty rainforests of the Brazilian Amazon, foreign investors’ logging efforts have led to irreparable habitat destruction, leaving creatures of all walks of life without food and shelter. In the murky streets of downtown San Francisco, a similar phenomenon is occurring. But in this case, habitat destruction is the motivation, not the unintended byproduct, of tree-removal.

In a section of the city in which plant growth is virtually invisible amidst mundane high-rise buildings, the city is uprooting trees and removing awnings to deprive homeless San Franciscans of shelter. But this latest attempt to drive the homeless out of downtown has outraged community members, who claim that deforesting the most foliage-deprived part of the concrete jungle creates more problems than it solves.
Over the past few years, the city has seen an intensified effort to shift the homeless out of downtown. One of the most controversial steps the city took was to remove the benches lining U.N. Plaza, where many homeless individuals would spend the night or rest during the day. After intense opposition from housing activists three years ago, the city went through with the plan, spending $24,000 in overtime pay to surreptitiously remove the benches overnight.

Since then, there have been a number of sweep-ups of “homeless encampments” throughout the city, including a mass displacement of individuals at Dolores Park last year. It’s no news that the homeless are consistently kicked out of local parks; but now, in a slightly modified approach, trees are actually being removed to displace those who use them for shade during the day.

In the heart of the city, there were once a dozen trees surrounding the Post Office at 101 Hyde Street. The tall, leafy trees at this corner of Hyde and Golden Gate beautified a block that otherwise appears grungy and grey.

But there was a problem: often, one or two homeless individuals would stand, sit or sleep under the trees during the day, seeking refuge in the two feet of shade and shelter that the plants provided. When city couldn’t get rid of the people beneath the trees, it removed the trees from the street.

What remains are empty patches of dry dirt, interspersed along every two or three squares in the sidewalk surrounding the Post Office. As a result, a corner of the city that was once green and shady is now lifeless and dull.

It’s bad enough that trees would be ever be uprooted from such a fauna-less part of the city. But what makes the tree removal at Hyde and Golden Gate even worse is the cause behind it.

Eliminating trees in order to displace a few homeless individuals can hardly be rationalized as a “neighborhood cleanup.” Instead, it sacrifices much-needed greenery in an arboreally inadequate environment simply to push a few people down to the other end of the block: a true Pyrrhic victory for the NIMBY’s in the Post Office.

No longer guaranteed a home in San Francisco, trees, it seems, have become the latest casualties in the federal war on homelessness.


The remains at the battlefield of Hyde and Golden Gate.

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