In the November issue of the Nob Hill Gazette, Francis Ford Coppola is interviewed about his efforts to end homelessness in San Franscisco. He discusses how he founded North Beach Citizens nearly 20 years ago after seeing isolated homeless people pandhandling on his daily walks to his office.
Courtesy of the Nob Hill Gazette
Coppola remembers that people saw the homeless individuals who he saw on his daily walks as a collective nusiance or ignored them altogether.
Per the article:
“They were human beings,” Coppola recalls. “They were people who had, for whatever reason, fallen on hard times or couldn’t cope with certain situations or evictions or traumas or tragedies. … I was very offended by the notion that human beings could be put on a level of garbage. That’s not possible. Every human being is a vital, complicated, interesting story. It’s never something that can just be passed over or pushed out of your sight literally.””