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A worker in an isolation suit is seen April 30, 2020, power-washing the plaza of San Francisco’s main public library, next to a row of tents. The library borders the Tenderloin neighborhood, which a federal lawsuit claims has become “an immediate and dire public health problem” because of escalating drug use and homelessness. (Photo by Dennis Callahan/Catholic San Francisco)
Updated May 13.
May 7, 2020
Catholic San Francisco
The city of San Francisco has allowed the Tenderloin to become a “containment zone” for citywide social problems such as homelessness, creating a “desperate crisis” for those who live, work and go to the school in the neighborhood that shares a border with Civic Center Plaza, a federal lawsuit alleges.
“San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood faces a desperate crisis,” states the lawsuit filed May 4 in U.S. District Court by UC Hastings College of Law, the Tenderloin Merchants and Property Association and four other plaintiffs. “The crisis in the Tenderloin presents an immediate and dire public health problem.”
The complaint accuses the city and county of San Francisco of 14 federal, state and local law violations, including deprivation of the constitutional right to due process and to not have property taken without compensation, negligence, public nuisance and violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The suit also claims “deprivation of the guarantee of safety and the pursuit of happiness” under the California constitution.
“The Tenderloin is a culturally diverse community comprised of seniors, persons with disabilities, people of color, immigrants (documented and undocumented), individuals with low incomes, LGBTQ people, and families with children,” the suit states. “All of its residents -- housed and unhoused -- are being put at risk” by city policies, actions and inaction.
“The lives and liberty of all San Franciscans should matter equally under the law, but that’s not how the City and County of San Francisco acts when it comes to the Tenderloin,” David L. Faigman, chancellor and dean of UC Hastings Law, said in Hastings' press release. “The health and freedom of our co-plaintiffs as well as our students, the neighborhood’s workforce including many front-line first responders, and all people in the Tenderloin are compromised by the city’s inadequate response to the public health emergency raging in our neighborhood. We are suing to achieve equal justice under law.”
The Tenderloin has more than 20,000 permanent residents, including 3,000 children -- the highest per capita concentration of children of any neighborhood in San Francisco, the suit says. The Tenderloin’s residents consist primarily of low-income and working-class individuals, senior citizens, disabled people and families with children.
Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the city effectively “used the Tenderloin community as a containment zone that has resulted in a dramatic decline in the livability and safety of the neighborhood,” the complaint states.
“The deplorable conditions tolerated by the city in the Tenderloin are not permitted in other neighborhoods in San Francisco.”
The complaint led by Hastings, whose campus borders the west side of the Tenderloin, argues that a citywide problem “should not be allowed to weigh disproportionately on a low-income, working class neighborhood.”
The plaintiffs say San Francisco “should be prohibited from abandoning a single neighborhood, in an apparent effort to spare other neighborhoods the burdens that confront the city at-large.”
Covering the history of the Tenderloin over the past 60 years, the suit says the neighborhood went from severe decline in the 1960s to sporadic resurgences in the mid-1980s and 2010s. But by 2019, with the city’s homeless population having surged for four years, the neighborhood had sunk to a new low, the complaint says.
“The recent influx of homeless people into the Tenderloin has created a variety of problems for all stakeholders -- permanent residents, businesses, schools, the police, and the homeless population itself (an estimated 39% of whom suffer from mental illness),” the complaint alleges.
“Open-air drug transactions are routinely tolerated,” and the easy availability of illegal drugs attracts users and intensifies the homelessness problem, the suit says, adding that some 42% of the homeless population are estimated to suffer from alcohol or drug addiction.
Tenderloin sidewalks are now packed with tents, some of which contain as many as six individuals, according to the suit, which included a photo taken April 11, 2020, of a tent at the corner of Jones Street and Golden Gate Avenue.
The number of tents and makeshift shelters on Tenderloin sidewalks grew from 158 on March 3, 2020, to 391 on May 1, 2020, the suit says, alleging that “the San Francisco Police Department has been directed not to remove or disturb those tents, despite the facts that they block the sidewalks and shield criminals and despite the health risks that they pose to permanent residents, business owners, pedestrians, and homeless people themselves.”
Hastings students, faculty and staff have suffered from the deterioration of their community, the suit says.
“Tent-blocked sidewalks, groups of addicts injecting themselves, the odors of smoked crystal methamphetamine and human waste, and open-air drug dealing immediately outside the Tower cause residents to fear for their safety; many are afraid to venture outside their building, particularly at night,” the suit states.
The school spends $2,000 a week for extra cleaning.
“Litter and used needles are found every day around the Hastings parking garage,” the suit says. “Human feces and urine are found in the doorways. Staff have to escort the homeless out of the garage regularly. Thieves break into cars.”
Prospective students often cite the neighborhood environment as a reason for not accepting admission, the suit says.
Hastings' press release on the lawsuit cited a Compstat report from the San Francisco Police Department showing that year-to-date crime from 2019 to 2020 has skyrocketed. For the period ending March 31, 2020, homicide was up 50%, robberies were up 30%, aggravated assault was up 39% and burglaries were up 23% for the Tenderloin district.
“If what the city tolerates every day in the Tenderloin went on for one day in Pacific Heights, Bernal Heights, or Diamond Heights, to name just three other neighborhoods, the city would shut it down. That is the opposite of equal justice under law,” Hastings' Faigman said.
The city attorney's office did not respond to a request for comment as of publication.
Following a survey of the Tenderloin neighborhood April 28, San Francisco's Human Rights Commission published a plan to address the community's needs May 6, laying out a block by block vision for addressing the issues there. The city will especially focus its efforts on 13 of the neighborhood's 49 blocks which have been particularly challenging.
The recommendations outline creating safe sleeping encampments, encouraging social distancing, adding bathroom and water stations, ensuring safe passage through the neighborhood and increasing police and health services.
According to the planning document, the city has already been working on marking sidewalks to show how far apart people should be, adding drinking stations and garbage cans, and establishing an ambassador program to increase outreach to Tenderloin residents.
Mayor Breed said the plan, which was developed over two weeks, "was informed by an on-the-ground assessment of the current challenges in the Tenderloin and with input from the community, and our city employees and nonprofit partners who are out there every day interacting with and serving the people who are experiencing homelessness. By implementing this plan, we can help improve health and safety of everyone living in the Tenderloin.”
Breed added that the plan is "going to be a challenging one" and "We are set to be as aggressive as we can be for implementing it.”
Breed said in a May 6 tweet launching the initiative that "COVID-19 has limited our ability to accept people into shelters and get them off the street. We're moving folks into hotels, but the conditions in the Tenderloin have become unacceptable."
In a UC Hastings press release, Rhiannon Bailard, the school's executive director of operations, said the “proposed plan appears to support the status quo, rather than serving as a detailed blueprint for protecting the housed and unhoused during the immediate health crisis or for the long-term sustainability of the Tenderloin neighborhood."
UC Hastings Law Chancellor and Dean David Faigman called the plan "entirely inadequate,” and said "We need action, not talk. We need the tents and the drug dealers removed and the unhoused moved to safe and temporary housing, such as large tents or other shelter, until a permanent solution is accomplished."Shannon Eizenga, executive director of the Gubbio Project, the safe sleeping nonprofit operating out of St. Boniface Church and St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, said the pandemic has put "inequities and injustice that existed pre-COVID in much more stark contrast now."
The Tenderloin has never been a stranger to that side of San Francisco, but several factors have compounded the neighborhood's conditions. The city on March 17 stopped its practice of breaking up encampments and confiscating tents for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, shifting instead to a focus on reducing the spread of coronavirus in the homeless population.
In addition, the San Francisco Chronicle reported about 1,000 tents have been handed out to unhoused people since the start of the pandemic.
Interim guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discourages clearing encampments because it increases the potential spread of coronavirus and breaks a homeless person's connections to support services.
Eizenga said breaking up encampments is not "the solution to the problem of homelessness," but the neighborhood was now dealing with a situation "where many people don't feel safe leaving their home to go out and run errands and get fresh air.
"We absolutely need to have clean streets where communities can move around, and folks who have accessibility needs have to navigate sidewalks clear of refuse."
Another factor in the explosive growth in tents has been that shelter capacity has decreased: some shelters stopped taking in new referrals at the start of the pandemic, and congregant facilities like homeless shelters have been hotspots for the rapid spread of coronavirus.The Gubbio Project tried to stay open as long as it could, Eizenga said, before shelter-in-place orders were issued, and her team has been discussing how to reopen. Before they closed their doors, 75% of their volunteers had stopped coming because of their health concerns, while the number of guests they served had increased significantly, she said. The Friday before the shelter in place orders were issued, about 140 people were at St. Boniface, nearly twice the normal amount of guests.
When the Gubbio Project does return, she said, it will not be able to host the same amount of people as it had before.
Eizenga praised the city for its neighborhood assessment which included non-profit, advocate and residential voices in the plan. "The Tenderloin historically has felt unseen and unheard. There's certainly a lot that needs to be done, and I think success or failure comes down to how its implemented and whether the community is involved in its implementation," she said.At the heart of any response to homelessness, Eizenga said, should be the reminder that "behind all of these numbers and statistics we hear about, the tents, hotel rooms, people on the streets, they’re humans with inherent worth and dignity that are worthy of and deserving of our prayer. I pray that we embody our city’s namesake in how we respond to this."