Megan Phalon at our 2024 Staff Retreat

Hi! My name is Megan, and I am the Director of Taimon Booton Navigation Center. I have the incredible honor of introducing our presentation this afternoon regarding how TBNC represents being the safety net of the safety net.

I've worked in the shelter system in San Francisco for nine years. Last summer I was feeling frustrated. I was working at another company and leading multiple shelters, and I felt trapped. I kept coming back to the question, ‘are we doing more harm?’ I couldn't shake the fact that the guests in our shelters, specifically people of color, trans folks, and folks who used drugs were not getting the care I knew they deserved. I'll never forget—I was sitting in my car, having a good cry to the song What Was I Made For by Billy Eilish, and my phone rang. It was a colleague of mine, and he was like, “Megan, the provider who is running TBNC might be pulling out. I don't know what we are gonna do. I'm not sure of another provider that would be able to run it... it might close.” I shared some thoughts and ideas and told them to keep me posted. Even though I was not a part of the shelter, I knew the importance of TBNC. [TBNC is] a shelter dedicated to our unhoused trans folks and sex workers. A safe place. We constantly had requests from guests at other shelters if they could be placed there.

The shelter was named after a non-binary person named Taimon. While I did not directly know Taimon, they were a guest at one of our shelters, and I knew many people who loved them very much. During the pandemic Taimon was moved to a shelter-in-place hotel and unfortunately passed away. I remember one of my friends and co-workers called me in the middle of the night to tell me what happened, and that they were about to call their mom. Taimon changed our lives and changed different policies going forward regarding harm reduction to try and keep people safe as best as we could.

Taimon's legacy carries on at our shelter. Little did I know that phone call planted seeds in my life. And a few months later, I was given the opportunity to be a part of everything happening here—to help be a part of creating a safety net. We are the safety net of the safety net. We create a safe environment for all people that aren't given the opportunity to live safely at other shelters. It's the honor of my life to introduce you to some of my team. They represent a small snapshot of all the incredible people that work at TBNC who have given their lives to serve our guests.