LEO

by

HAROLD L. CALL

President

Mattachine Society, Inc.

INVOLVEMENT

Most unique, perhaps, among projects and direction in the homophile movement today is the Mattachine Society's involvement in aspects of the "War on poverty" program at San Francisco. In contrast to the main emphasis toward and exclusive concern for the homosexual adult in other homophile organizations, this effort by Mattachine represents for the first

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time a major thrust to the total community. After some four or five months of intensive effort, the involvement has attracted widespread intrest among professional persons, ministers, academicians and social workers as well as officials in the Office of Economic Opportunity. And in addition it has sparked keen attention with no little resentment from some elements of the homophile community, including some apprehension and hostility from some of the people who will benefit from the program.

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From a study of considerable depth made in San Francisco's "Tenderloin" during the late months of 1965 and early 1966 by two ministers and a lay resident, considerable publicity about the emotionally and financially deprived conditions of this district was published in the city press. Rev. Ed Hansen, Glide Foundation Young-Adult minister, Rev. Fred Bird, Methodist minister, and Mark Forrester, resident of the area, compiled a report which pointed out the severe economic blight and social problems of the district. It said in part:

"The youth of the area are, when between the ages of 12 and 20, often there simply because of their inability to deal with a world not of their making. Dropouts, juveniles with police records, deviants, prostitutes (both male and female), addicts, "pill-heads" and others, live in the Central City because of their rejection from home and community. They cannot live elsewhere in the city, so to the Central City they go. Where once there were but a handful their ranks are now increasing and it can be expected that if these conditions are not reversed, soon the Tenderloin area will present the sweet aroma of youthful decline and degeneration of 42nd Street in New York. "For once we have the chance to attack a problem before it reaches epidemic proportions which will cost far more than solutions now will. Given another five years like the last, the youth of the Central City will have no possibility of relief from their problem but addiction, jail and death. Degradation of an order unknown to our society is common; cynicism of the utmost degree has shriveled the souls of most and all but the slightest flicker of faith and hope has been abandoned by these inhabitants of the "meatrack" our colloquialism for the city's proud symbol, Market Street."

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In this report it was shown that, in comparison with the other Anti-Poverty Program Target Areas then established in the city, the Central City area had: About the same number of residents; the lowest median income; the highest unemployment rate; the highest percentage of children not living with both parents (41%); the highest juvenile delinquency rate, the highest percentage of persons over 65 receiving Old Age Assistance; the highest percentage of inadequate housing (77% of the residences in the South of Market St. area do not have private 5