when I was invited to do this talk I
learned a couple of new things that I
didn’t know about San Francisco the
first was that there are a hundred and
seven millionaires per square mile
impressive right there are also a
hundred and sixty people experiencing
homelessness per square mile what do the
communities we live in look like when
they are shaped by such inequality how
do we treat the people at the bottom do
we even see them as human beings and if
we don’t what might happen if they
actually became human through another
person’s eyes since 2011 growth and
gentrification have unfolded in San
Francisco at a furious pace my
neighborhood used to be part of the
Western Addition with all of the ensuing
change it is now NOPA along the way I
watched as three of my neighbors all
gentlemen in their 80s got evicted start
living in their cars only to have those
eventually repossessed and because
shelter wait lists were and still are
thousands deep end up dying before help
is available around the same time I took
a cab ride that changed my life as we
hit the Tenderloin which is a
neighborhood in San Francisco at the
highest concentration of homelessness
the cab driver turned over his shoulder
and he said to me welcome to the land of
broken dreams his words were so jarring
that I stopped doing whatever I was
doing and I looked out the window and
for the first time despite having been
through the Tenderloin hundreds of times
before really saw people and my first
thought was that not a single one of
them when they were little ever dreamed
of growing up to be homeless and yet
there they were
and that thought of them as children
really pierced me because at that time
my own daughter was five years old if
you live or work in San Francisco or
just about any community in California
or sadly even in this country you have
lightly witnessed the seemingly
intractable challenge that is
homelessness yet when most of us pass a
houseless neighbor on the street we look
the other way it’s understandable it’s
hard to reconcile herself to the
suffering of others around us especially
when we feel powerless to help that was
me until that day sitting in the cab
when I connected with a simple but
powerful truth that these were people
with hopes and dreams and fears just
like mine people who because of one or
two turns of bad luck and no safety net
to catch them just kept falling until
they hit bottom and so sitting in the
cab that day I decided I was going to
try to help fast-forward a few months
and I was in the Design District of San
Francisco which is south of market and I
remember so clearly it was an unusually
warm sunny day and as I walked I passed
a young woman who was panhandling she
was distraught disheveled and she kept
saying over and again that she would
never be clean and while I knew that her
words probably meant many things I got
curious about what her chances were
forgetting physically clean because
every house this person I saw was
struggling with hygiene so he went home
that night and I did the research and
what I found shocked me I learned that
there were 16 shower stalls and about as
many toilets for the 7,000 plus men
women and children experiencing
homelessness in San Francisco
I thought that cannot be that happens
somewhere else not in one of the most
affluent and progressive cities in the
world and yet it was true a few weeks
later I happened to pick up a San
Francisco Chronicle something that I
rarely did back then and I read that
Muni was retiring its old diesel buses
and I got this crazy idea as the bells
went off in my head to take those buses
and convert them into mobile showers and
toilets for people to do something good
with something that people love to hate
to me the obvious need was it was simple
but I knew that it was about so much
more than just getting people clean
because at the end of the day a shower
something that we almost all take for
granted connects us with our sense of
self and with our dignity and dignity
it’s a big and powerful concept and one
of its meanings is a sense of pride in
one’s self and self-respect
in the three and a half years since
launching our mobile hygiene service
we’ve served over 10,000 Californians
but I will never forget one of our very
first guests a man named Marty who came
to San Francisco from Detroit for a job
that unfortunately evaporated by the
time he arrived because he had used just
about his last dollar getting here he
decided that he was going to camp out on
the street he was optimistic that he
would find work quickly because San
Francisco was booming and his skills as
a machinist were in demand the problem
was that the longer he stayed on the
street the less desirable he became to
employers and people around him but he
read that lava may was going to be
launching soon and so on the very first
day we started he showed up holding a
crumpled piece of newspaper in his hand
about our launch that he’d held onto to
remind him where to find us
after a few weeks with showering of
showering with us Marty got a job and he
was able to save money and get housed
and while he says that a shower was
critical to his success it was about so
much more than that it was about
reconnecting with his dignity and his
self-worth like Marty all of our guests
have stories stories that break our
hearts make us laugh and remind us that
they’re just like us they also share
with us that they feel invisible
wandering the city unwanted and unseen
and oddly enough this was something that
I could
we connect with myself coming from a
small town in South Texas where you
greet everyone you pass on the street it
had always unnerved me even after
decades of living here to pass another
person on the street and actively ignore
them even when you were the only other
person on the street with them and so
about a year ago I got tired of feeling
that way and I decided I would try an
experiment I was going to acknowledge
everyone I saw with a nod of the head
making eye contact or maybe even a
greeting there was a little concerned
that people might rebuff me or think I
was some weirdo but I was more curious
about what putting myself out there
might do for my relationship with San
Francisco a city that I had always had a
passionate love hate relationship and it
changed it the pep in my step increased
I found myself smiling much more and
generally connected to the people who
were occupying the same space as me and
then one day I stepped out of a Pete’s
and about a hundred feet ahead of me was
a woman sitting on the ground surrounded
by her belongings and a little dog that
she had and I called out good morning
and I startled her and as I approached
she said you see me and I said to myself
she must be struggling with a little bit
of mental health issues
and I said yes you’re sitting right
there in front of me
what happened next took me absolutely my
surprise her eyes welled with tears
still makes me cry and she said you are
the first person to acknowledge my
presence in a week I thought I was a
ghost sorry homelessness destroys your
dignity and your sense of self-worth it
makes you invisible and unwanted being
seen is something that we all need and
long for but it is particularly
important to our house list neighbors we
see it in our work every day as it helps
them persevere through seemingly
unsurmountable challenges or in some
cases return from the brink of suicide
because they’ve been seen and valued and
supported and we call the way that we
work
radical hospitality it’s radical because
this level of care is rarely extended to
people moving through homelessness we
believe that raising the bar on how you
serve people is revolutionary
hospitality because it’s rooted in
generosity and our shared humanity we go
as many miles as it takes to ensure that
our guests leave feeling better than
when they arrived and we recognize that
they are just like us and lastly the act
of taking service to where people are
meeting them in their space is
ultimately an act we believe a profound
care and respect and so we take our
service we take radical hospitality to
the street underpinning it all again is
this concept of dignity but this time
defined as the state or quality of being
worthy of honor of respect because at
the end of the day dignity encompasses
both the way that you feel about
yourself and the way that you are
treated so once you started we’ve
learned sometimes painfully that there
are people who do not believe that we
did the way that we do I’m reminded of
the time that we were scaling in San
Francisco and one of the new sites that
we opened was at the Maine Public
Library on the very next day I received
the most vicious email I’ve ever
received in my life it said by washing
these animals you are part of the reason
that San Francisco is following ancient
Rome into oblivion right my first
feeling was absolute and utter shock
that anybody could feel that way
much less thinking I had that much power
then I got mad really mad I wanted to
hurt this person the opposite of radical
hospitality but as I sat with his words
two things hit me
the first was how easy it is for us to
disconnect from the suffering of others
and to how challenging it is for our
guests our houseless neighbors who
filled this kind of vitriol regularly in
the end though his message turned out to
be a gift because what it did was it
strengthened our resolve to connect with
everyone we touched not just our guests
everyone including people like him who
seemingly have lost their way because
the truth is that radical hospitality
works in both directions choosing to see
affects both the person being seen and
the person choosing to see at a time
when we are inundated daily with a
barrage of bad news when we are often
more connected with our digital devices
than we are to each other
I believe that radical hospitality can
enter offer an antidote to some of what
ails us imagine for example what might
change if we turned toward a houseless
neighbor if we turn toward each other
and offered our own small gesture of
radical hospitality and now imagine if
that happened at scale which is why I
invite you to consider conducting your
own experiment and seeing by embracing
and unleashing a little radical
hospitality in your life commit to just
one day just one of deciding to
acknowledge people as you pass them with
eye contact or nod of the head run if
you dare a greeting I promise it will
shift something in you
and very likely the people you encounter
and should you pass a houseless neighbor
and not feel comfortable or ready to
make a connection then as you pass them
in your mind just silently acknowledge
that they are a human being imbued with
dignity
just like you these are small things but
they can lead to transformation mother
Theresa once said I alone cannot change
the world but I can cast a stone upon
the waters to create many ripples we can
all create ripples and I believe it can
start by choosing to see the invisible
thank you
[Music]
you
learned a couple of new things that I
didn’t know about San Francisco the
first was that there are a hundred and
seven millionaires per square mile
impressive right there are also a
hundred and sixty people experiencing
homelessness per square mile what do the
communities we live in look like when
they are shaped by such inequality how
do we treat the people at the bottom do
we even see them as human beings and if
we don’t what might happen if they
actually became human through another
person’s eyes since 2011 growth and
gentrification have unfolded in San
Francisco at a furious pace my
neighborhood used to be part of the
Western Addition with all of the ensuing
change it is now NOPA along the way I
watched as three of my neighbors all
gentlemen in their 80s got evicted start
living in their cars only to have those
eventually repossessed and because
shelter wait lists were and still are
thousands deep end up dying before help
is available around the same time I took
a cab ride that changed my life as we
hit the Tenderloin which is a
neighborhood in San Francisco at the
highest concentration of homelessness
the cab driver turned over his shoulder
and he said to me welcome to the land of
broken dreams his words were so jarring
that I stopped doing whatever I was
doing and I looked out the window and
for the first time despite having been
through the Tenderloin hundreds of times
before really saw people and my first
thought was that not a single one of
them when they were little ever dreamed
of growing up to be homeless and yet
there they were
and that thought of them as children
really pierced me because at that time
my own daughter was five years old if
you live or work in San Francisco or
just about any community in California
or sadly even in this country you have
lightly witnessed the seemingly
intractable challenge that is
homelessness yet when most of us pass a
houseless neighbor on the street we look
the other way it’s understandable it’s
hard to reconcile herself to the
suffering of others around us especially
when we feel powerless to help that was
me until that day sitting in the cab
when I connected with a simple but
powerful truth that these were people
with hopes and dreams and fears just
like mine people who because of one or
two turns of bad luck and no safety net
to catch them just kept falling until
they hit bottom and so sitting in the
cab that day I decided I was going to
try to help fast-forward a few months
and I was in the Design District of San
Francisco which is south of market and I
remember so clearly it was an unusually
warm sunny day and as I walked I passed
a young woman who was panhandling she
was distraught disheveled and she kept
saying over and again that she would
never be clean and while I knew that her
words probably meant many things I got
curious about what her chances were
forgetting physically clean because
every house this person I saw was
struggling with hygiene so he went home
that night and I did the research and
what I found shocked me I learned that
there were 16 shower stalls and about as
many toilets for the 7,000 plus men
women and children experiencing
homelessness in San Francisco
I thought that cannot be that happens
somewhere else not in one of the most
affluent and progressive cities in the
world and yet it was true a few weeks
later I happened to pick up a San
Francisco Chronicle something that I
rarely did back then and I read that
Muni was retiring its old diesel buses
and I got this crazy idea as the bells
went off in my head to take those buses
and convert them into mobile showers and
toilets for people to do something good
with something that people love to hate
to me the obvious need was it was simple
but I knew that it was about so much
more than just getting people clean
because at the end of the day a shower
something that we almost all take for
granted connects us with our sense of
self and with our dignity and dignity
it’s a big and powerful concept and one
of its meanings is a sense of pride in
one’s self and self-respect
in the three and a half years since
launching our mobile hygiene service
we’ve served over 10,000 Californians
but I will never forget one of our very
first guests a man named Marty who came
to San Francisco from Detroit for a job
that unfortunately evaporated by the
time he arrived because he had used just
about his last dollar getting here he
decided that he was going to camp out on
the street he was optimistic that he
would find work quickly because San
Francisco was booming and his skills as
a machinist were in demand the problem
was that the longer he stayed on the
street the less desirable he became to
employers and people around him but he
read that lava may was going to be
launching soon and so on the very first
day we started he showed up holding a
crumpled piece of newspaper in his hand
about our launch that he’d held onto to
remind him where to find us
after a few weeks with showering of
showering with us Marty got a job and he
was able to save money and get housed
and while he says that a shower was
critical to his success it was about so
much more than that it was about
reconnecting with his dignity and his
self-worth like Marty all of our guests
have stories stories that break our
hearts make us laugh and remind us that
they’re just like us they also share
with us that they feel invisible
wandering the city unwanted and unseen
and oddly enough this was something that
I could
we connect with myself coming from a
small town in South Texas where you
greet everyone you pass on the street it
had always unnerved me even after
decades of living here to pass another
person on the street and actively ignore
them even when you were the only other
person on the street with them and so
about a year ago I got tired of feeling
that way and I decided I would try an
experiment I was going to acknowledge
everyone I saw with a nod of the head
making eye contact or maybe even a
greeting there was a little concerned
that people might rebuff me or think I
was some weirdo but I was more curious
about what putting myself out there
might do for my relationship with San
Francisco a city that I had always had a
passionate love hate relationship and it
changed it the pep in my step increased
I found myself smiling much more and
generally connected to the people who
were occupying the same space as me and
then one day I stepped out of a Pete’s
and about a hundred feet ahead of me was
a woman sitting on the ground surrounded
by her belongings and a little dog that
she had and I called out good morning
and I startled her and as I approached
she said you see me and I said to myself
she must be struggling with a little bit
of mental health issues
and I said yes you’re sitting right
there in front of me
what happened next took me absolutely my
surprise her eyes welled with tears
still makes me cry and she said you are
the first person to acknowledge my
presence in a week I thought I was a
ghost sorry homelessness destroys your
dignity and your sense of self-worth it
makes you invisible and unwanted being
seen is something that we all need and
long for but it is particularly
important to our house list neighbors we
see it in our work every day as it helps
them persevere through seemingly
unsurmountable challenges or in some
cases return from the brink of suicide
because they’ve been seen and valued and
supported and we call the way that we
work
radical hospitality it’s radical because
this level of care is rarely extended to
people moving through homelessness we
believe that raising the bar on how you
serve people is revolutionary
hospitality because it’s rooted in
generosity and our shared humanity we go
as many miles as it takes to ensure that
our guests leave feeling better than
when they arrived and we recognize that
they are just like us and lastly the act
of taking service to where people are
meeting them in their space is
ultimately an act we believe a profound
care and respect and so we take our
service we take radical hospitality to
the street underpinning it all again is
this concept of dignity but this time
defined as the state or quality of being
worthy of honor of respect because at
the end of the day dignity encompasses
both the way that you feel about
yourself and the way that you are
treated so once you started we’ve
learned sometimes painfully that there
are people who do not believe that we
did the way that we do I’m reminded of
the time that we were scaling in San
Francisco and one of the new sites that
we opened was at the Maine Public
Library on the very next day I received
the most vicious email I’ve ever
received in my life it said by washing
these animals you are part of the reason
that San Francisco is following ancient
Rome into oblivion right my first
feeling was absolute and utter shock
that anybody could feel that way
much less thinking I had that much power
then I got mad really mad I wanted to
hurt this person the opposite of radical
hospitality but as I sat with his words
two things hit me
the first was how easy it is for us to
disconnect from the suffering of others
and to how challenging it is for our
guests our houseless neighbors who
filled this kind of vitriol regularly in
the end though his message turned out to
be a gift because what it did was it
strengthened our resolve to connect with
everyone we touched not just our guests
everyone including people like him who
seemingly have lost their way because
the truth is that radical hospitality
works in both directions choosing to see
affects both the person being seen and
the person choosing to see at a time
when we are inundated daily with a
barrage of bad news when we are often
more connected with our digital devices
than we are to each other
I believe that radical hospitality can
enter offer an antidote to some of what
ails us imagine for example what might
change if we turned toward a houseless
neighbor if we turn toward each other
and offered our own small gesture of
radical hospitality and now imagine if
that happened at scale which is why I
invite you to consider conducting your
own experiment and seeing by embracing
and unleashing a little radical
hospitality in your life commit to just
one day just one of deciding to
acknowledge people as you pass them with
eye contact or nod of the head run if
you dare a greeting I promise it will
shift something in you
and very likely the people you encounter
and should you pass a houseless neighbor
and not feel comfortable or ready to
make a connection then as you pass them
in your mind just silently acknowledge
that they are a human being imbued with
dignity
just like you these are small things but
they can lead to transformation mother
Theresa once said I alone cannot change
the world but I can cast a stone upon
the waters to create many ripples we can
all create ripples and I believe it can
start by choosing to see the invisible
thank you
[Music]
you
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