In the News: KALW

Article reposted from the KALW website.



Once you’re off MUNI and done with your busy day, you might go home and relax in your garden (if you’re lucky enough to have one). A rainy day is a blessing for any garden, so is sunshine. And last Friday, a brand new community garden in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood got both.

Attendees of the dedication ceremony were unsure whether to hoist umbrellas or sun hats over their heads, but they came out in numbers to show their enthusiastic support, and not just for the newly planted peas. You see, this is no ordinary community garden. It’s the first of its kind in the city to be created by and for people who are both housed and homeless. KALW’s Ali Budner has the story.

Note: The Growing Home Community Garden is dedicated to local activist Eric Bayer who recently died of cancer. His co-worker Russell Berman a piece profiling his homeless support group, POWER.

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JUDITH KLAIN: The name of this project is Growing Home, and home is definitely about finding shelter and that’s what we need to do to end homelessness...

ALI BUDNER: That’s Judith Klain, director of Project Homeless Connect, a bi-monthly event that provides an array of services for homeless residents.

KLAIN: But there is something more about home and home is also a place where you feel safe where you feel like there’s a community that cares about you. And that’s what we’re going to create here.

In an effort to find a steady source of fresh food for the people she works with, Klain took the idea of converting an empty city lot into a vegetable garden, and she ran with it. She was joined by a team of collaborators from the homeless community, the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association, and the city of San Francisco. As the cars pass by on busy Octavia Street, not far from the Highway 101 onramp, the garden, not yet fully planted, already feels like a happy haven -- a point noted by San Francisco Supervisor, Ross Mirkarimi:

ROSS MIRKARIMI: This is exactly the kind of thing that we should be doing with the kind of land that lays fallow, while at the same time addressing the chronic need of our people in San Francisco, so that they themselves can also grow to a place of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, living off of Mother Earth.

Mirkarimi’s words reinforce the pro-garden platform of his sometimes political adversary, Mayor Gavin Newsom. In 2008, Newsom turned over the lawn of San Francisco’s City Hall to build a giant, though temporary, Victory Garden, growing crops to share through San Francisco’s Food Bank. A simultaneous program that year supported city residents in building backyard gardens. Even with this kind of momentum for urban gardening, Judith Klain had to look high and low for a neighborhood that would welcome a garden for the homeless.

KLAIN: There were some neighborhoods that were not friendly to the idea. And then it was like “higher power stuff” that happened in this neighborhood because the neighbors have been amazing.

Two-thirds of the garden participants are from the homeless community and one-third are residents of the neighborhood. Klain says, there’s no clear model for how this kind of collaboration will work. But, so far, the effects have been positive.

ANNA CANNELIUS: The transformation of this neighborhood has been immense!

Anna Cannelius is a member of the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association. She helped build the garden from scratch, as a volunteer.

CANNELIUS: There used to be a double decker freeway right here. So to go from that to neighbors and different people in community to build something really productive. It’s awesome. I’m learning how to use a wheelbarrow!

The people who built the garden come from a range of backgrounds, but they all share a common experience: city living and a desire to reconnect with each other and with the earth.

HENRY BELTON: I’m from Louisiana originally, and I grew up around gardening, but since I’ve been in California this last 40 years walking on concrete, hell, I’ve gotten away from that! But I still remember some of the old ideas. You know, so it’s something I guess you never really get away from.

Henry Belton is the client advocate for Project Homeless Connect. He dug up the asphalt that once covered this lot.

BELTON: It was a lot of hard work. A lot of sweat. So it’s a pleasure just being now seeing this stuff come to where it’s time to plant and grow. I think I’ll start spending a lot of time out here you know? Just hangin out. Especially if the weather is nice like this. Good place to just come out and see people, you know? Relax and have peace of mind. It’s therapeutic, as a matter of fact.

Part of the therapy Belton talks about is in the joy of belonging to a community. Lauren Freitas feels it too. Freitas first found out about the Growing Home Community Garden last year, when she was homeless and staying in a shelter. She is back on her feet now and hoping to spend time out here with other garden members.

LAUREN FREITAS: I feel like I’ve planted a lot of seeds in my own life over the past year. I’m seeing the fruits of that now. Every day something is growing and blossoming in my life. And I feel fed, and I feel part of a community today.
Community isn’t the only thing growing in this garden.

RENATA ROBINSON: We’ve got lots of things, we’ve got brassicas which are leafy greens, we’ve got onions. We’ve got favas and potatoes and peas and we’ve got a whole bed right here, its the salad bowl.

Renata Robinson is a student from the Garden for the Environment, a one-acre urban demonstration garden and educational center. Robinson helped plant the crops here.

ROBINSON: What’s cool is we’re waiting on the trees. The trees will be right here -- fruit trees.

Once the garden blooms, Judith Klain says Project Homeless Connect will offer classes here in cooking, nutrition, and medicinal herbs.

After the event, homeless and housed residents mingle. Urban farmers chat with city politicians. Along the edge of a chain-link fence, freshly watered pea tendrils emerge from the black soil. All are signs that a new direction for this neighborhood is taking root.

In San Francisco, I’m Ali Budner for Crosscurrents.