Homeless form communities, refuse to come inside

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Brad and Janell live in the bushes near in Golden Gate Park. In the last two years, they have heard the pitch from the Homeless Outreach Team, they've been rousted by the dawn patrol, and they've huddled under a tree during drenching rain and numbing cold.

SAN FRANCISCO - And they won't leave.

Even if it means a roof over their heads or a bed to sleep in every night.

"This is not economics," Janell said. "I have found something out here I didn't have before."

"It's a friendship that is more like family than family," Brad said.

The couple, who declined to give their last names, represent one of the most frustrating aspects of the city's homeless population. Two years ago, Golden Gate Park had roughly 200 homeless campers, and many had lived there for as many as five years. After a series of newspaper stories in 2007 and a subsequent push by the city to get them out of the park and into shelter, the majority of those people are gone. Those who remain are locked in a battle of wills.

"The numbers are down dramatically," said Dariush Kayhan, homeless policy director for the mayor. "But there are about 25 regulars who ... are just very resistant to coming inside."

There are more than that, of course. They camp in other parks, under freeway viaducts, and in alleys around the city. They are savvy, stubborn and independent. They are the type of people whom advocates and social workers have in mind when they think about turning lives around. Yet they are staying as far away from services as possible.

Kate Shuten has been on both sides. Her son attended Rocky Mountain Participation Nursery School, just down the hill from Corona Heights Park. Two years ago, she was among the leaders to clear out encampments on the hillside after hypodermic needles were found in the nursery's playground.

But she's also a public health nurse who has worked with the homeless in the city's shelters.

"A lot of these people definitely have potential," she said. "There's a bunch of reasons why they would rather live outside. One is that their basic fear of living in the (downtown) crack hotels. They tell stories of people climbing through your windows, assaulting them, stealing their stuff, and even raping them.

"And the second is that you have a group of people who hang out together and have formed little communities. They choose a leader, and they take care of each other."

Brad and Janell talk a great game. Janell said that she attended the city's prestigious St. Ignatius High School and that her mother lives in the Sunset District. Brad, who is from Chicago, says he got a degree in business management from John Wood Community College in Quincy, Ill.

He also admits he's been incarcerated in four states. "I'd get drunk and do stupid things," he said. Janell said she earns money recycling, which can often mean raiding neighboring trashcans.

We often hear how the homeless can be helped by giving them a sense of community and personal accountability, of forming bonds and functioning in a society.

Brad and Janell, and others like them, have done that. Unfortunately, it has happened in the woods of a public park.

Reach C.W. Nevius at cwnevius(at)sfchronicle.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com

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