The Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption, in San Francisco, aka St Mary’s Cathedral, is a piece of 1960s architecture. It’s interesting geometrically, as the cross section changes from a square to a cross as the roof rises.
Most photos focus on the roof, and not on large ground-level alcoves, which are apparently convenient for sleeping in, should you happen to be homeless. Cathedral officials decided to do something about this.
They installed sprinklers in the alcove ceilings. The idea was that being doused with water every night for an hour and a quarter would discourage people from sleeping or camping there. Also from leaving messes.
It didn’t stop people, but they didn’t like it. Last week, local KCBS radio did a story about the situation – which had been going on for a few years. It got picked up by other news outlets.
Suddenly reporters were asking whether that wasn’t a really MEAN thing for a CHURCH to do? The city’s Building Department roused itself to say the sprinklers had been put in without a permit and to issue a violation order. The church set workers tearing out the sprinklers.
Madonna & Child at old St. Mary’s Cathedral, SF. It’s not easy to depict a rain poncho in marble.
Can I just say that we’re having a horrible drought here in California? We can’t spare water for this.
Reporters on the scene noted trash, crack pipes, needles, cigarette butts, and the smell of urine. They interviewed homeless people who indicated relief at the removal of the sprinklers.
Cathedral officials opened their mouths. Church spokesman Larry Kamer adroitly explained that the sprinklers were never intended to get people wet. No, no, it was just meant to be a deterrent. And a cleanser. (Most of us know that if you pour water on a mess, you get a wet mess.)
“The trouble was that you have people who wanted to be there even if the sprinklers were on,” explained Kamer. “So it didn’t really work as it was intended.”
The rector of the cathedral, Bishop William Justice, issued a statement.
He began by enumerating the archdiocese’s extensive support for homeless services in the city. The Cathedral is part of this, giving food and shelter “for five weeks over the holidays.”
They got the idea for sprinklers, he writes, when they learned businesses in the financial district favor them. It was a “safety, security and cleanliness measure to avoid the situation where needles, feces and other dangerous items” were left in the alcoves and seen by people on the way to mass or school.
He says they warned people that the sprinklers were going in.
The idea was not to remove those persons, but to encourage them to relocate to other parts of the Cathedral, which are protected and safer. The purpose was to make the Cathedral grounds as well as the homeless people who happen to be on those grounds safer.
We are sorry that our intentions have been misunderstood and recognize that the method used was ill-conceived. It actually has had the opposite effect from what it was intended to do, and for this we are very sorry.
Bad apology. ‘Woe is us, you misunderstood us! In fact, we misunderstood us.’ The argument that they were trying to protect homeless people and keep them safe doesn’t make much sense. If there were such lovely protected areas on the Cathedral grounds, why didn’t homeless people go there? And if they had, wouldn’t mess have followed them?
The architecture of the Cathedral has other unintended consequences, such as the locally famous “two o’clock titty” and slightly less famous “ten o’clock titty.”
Photo: Art Siegel. https://www.flickr.com/photos/artolog/355522101/
(The apology also contradicts the Bishop’s remark to CBS that “It improved. Actually there weren’t as much needles and condoms and such around. That doesn’t make it – in hindsight – right.”)
San Francisco has a big problem with homelessness. The church does a lot of work to help homeless people. They bungled this particular thing, probably just to keep things separate. Over here we’re compassionate, and over here we’re awe-inspiring.
But a church has a great option for dealing with people relaxing on the grounds. Go out and talk to them about God. If they’re interested in talking about religion with you, what a win! What a triumph! What a chance to save a soul!
If not, they will almost certainly go away. Try it some time, Bishop Justice.
Oh, dear. That church is pretty dear to my heart, as I sang a concert there as a sixteen year old (with a high fever and a dripping nose, but it was A Big Concert which could not be missed, because we could all swoon at how well we sounded beneath that lovely ceiling… *sigh*), so I am doubly-deeply disappointed with their shenanigans. I feel like those “passive” homeless deflectors – spikes, sprinklers and the like – are a great failure of humanity in any event, but from a church… and then for them to lie about it? Not cool at all.