Larry Moore is a homeless man who decided to do something to improve his situation. He didn’t go looking for a handout, he went to work. Mr. Moore started a shoeshine business. After saving nearly enough for a down payment on an apartment the City of San Francisco literally pulled the rug out from underneath him.
In fact, until last week it looked like Moore was going to have saved enough money to rent a room and get off the street for the first time in six years. But then, in a breathtakingly clueless move, an official for the Department of Public Works told Moore that he has to fork over the money he saved for his first month’s rent to purchase a $491 sidewalk vendor permit.
“I had $573 ready to go,” Moore said, who needs $600 for the rent. “This tore that up. But I’ve been homeless for six years. Another six weeks isn’t going to kill me.”
The bureaucrat told Moore that she found out about his business after reading about his success in this paper.
Along Market Street, Moore’s supporters are indignant. Nothing happens when mentally ill men wander the street talking to themselves and drunkards pee in the alleys. Yet Moore creates a little business out of thin air, builds up a client base, and the city takes nearly every penny he’s earned.
Christine Falvey, spokeswoman for Public Works, said the department’s contact with Moore was meant to be “educational.”
Moore has been trying to pay for the permit the city requires, but he hasn’t yet jumped through enough hoops. But he refuses to give up and go back to a life of pan handling and he won’t move into government housing. He wants to do things the right way. Some of his customers put together a first month’s rent fund for him. They may want to keep that information to themselves, lest a bureaucrat read about it in the newspaper.
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