Park Ranger Has Unusual Strategy on the Homeless

Amanda Barrows is a park ranger with a unique set of duties: She's charged with removing unhoused people from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The 32-year-old quickly learned that the standard approach—forcibly removing a person and their belongings—usually didn't work in the long run, a story in the San Francisco Standard explains. Inevitably, the person winds up back in the expansive park in a different area. "What we're doing is harming this person who's obviously just stuck," she says. "So let's try something else." For Barrows, that has translated into more of a one-on-one approach, helping individuals (who often have no ID) navigate the red tape necessary to land in public housing or otherwise find a place to stay.

Reporter Susan Freinkel followed Barrows for two years as she interacted with park regulars, sometimes succeeding and sometimes not. (The story details one of her success stories, getting a man who lived in the park for about 20 years into housing, but in a place where he can still visit his old haunts.) "To do more than just clear a person off the sidewalk demands persistence, patience, coordination of services, and intense personal engagement," she writes. "Which raises the difficult question: If this is what it takes to help one person, can the city find the resolve to help the thousands living rough?" The story notes that those living in the city's parks in semi-permanent setups make up a small fraction of the city's homeless population of about 8,000, but the work may hold lessons in dealing with the larger group of people. (Read the full story.)