Dear Mayor Breed,
Today I woke up with tightness in my chest that scared me. I then realized it was from anger. I have been carrying around this anger since you, London Breed, have been intentionally reverting my neighborhood into a slum. I am angry and it’s a horrible place to be, especially when I need to be my healthiest. I say that because, at 65 years old, I am in a high-risk category for dying from COVID 19. Studies have proven that emotional health is essential to a healthy immune system and that that one’s health is related to their zip code. You, with the help of Jeff Kositsky and his years of failed policies, have turned the block across the street from me into a slum in just two months. Let me define what a slum is:
SLUM: Urban slums are settlements, neighborhoods, or city regions that cannot provide the basic living conditions necessary for its inhabitants, or slum dwellers, to live in a safe and healthy environment.
You did not respond to my last email wherein I asked a series of questions so I am resending them. I want real answers and not excuses including that Covit 19 is responsible for the complete degradation of the sidewalks in the Mission. In four years since the beginning of this crises, the city could have enacted real conservatorhip law. The city, like Rhode Island, could have had real drug rehabilitation programs with the necessary teeth to make it effective.
1. How is it ok that there is, again, a surge of encampments in the Mission as pernicious and prolific as there were four years ago? This is not rhetorical. I want answers.
2. Why is Jeff Kositsky is now head of HSOC when, obviously, he has not been able to maintain clean and healthy sidewalks in the Mission for the last four years ago? This is not rhetorical. I want answers.
3. The Mission is so filthy and depressing that I actually drive either to Potrero Hill, or Noe Valley, or Diamond Heights, or Glen Park, or upper Market, or the Haight, to take walks. Leaving the boundaries of the Mission is like passing into a different country. In the Mission you have massive slums, in other neighborhoods you have a semblance of normalcy. There is not a tent in sight, no garbage clogged sidewalks, no urban blight. The failure of your homeless policies do not exist in these ‘wealthier” neighborhoods. I have to ask, why do you think it is ok to concentrate your policy failures in the Mission? This is not a rhetorical question. I want answers.
4. How do you call yourself progressive when you allow marginalized neighborhoods, like the Mission, to become choked with homelessness on its sidewalks when the Mission is already suffering from overcrowding, the highest rate of COVID 19, a high percentage of people of color and immigrants, and is already one of the densest neighborhoods in San Francisco? How is this progressive? This is not a rhetorical question. I want answers.
5. Why is the city sanctioning the development of third-world slum conditions in the Mission? This is, in fact, San Francisco generated and sanctioned blight. Your sanitizing stations are a pathetic Band-Aid for your failure to house the homeless. This is not a rhetorical question. I want answers.
6. London Breed, why are you turning my neighborhood, willingly and with intention, into a slum? I am asking you, personally and as my elected representative.
The homeless people on both Shotwell and 26th are using my front retainer wall as a urinal and it stinks like piss. I caught one of the homeless guys a week ago in my side yard taking water from my garden faucet and, today, I caught him trespassing in my neighbor’s yard. I have not been in the ally behind my house but my neighbors who use it complain that it has become a latrine (which is what happened in 2016 when there was a massive homeless encampment in the same location. During that time, periodically, my deck would be covered – literally – with black flies that were breeding on human feces in this ally).
Your handling of the homeless is not progressive. If I were to be kind, I would categorize it as negligent mismanagement, but the truth of the matter is it is a willful abrogation of your office to maintain safe and clean sidewalks in marginalized neighborhoods. And, Jeff Kositsky, I am including you in this letter because you switched the policy to not respond to 311 calls vis-à-vis tents on public sidewalks. Then in March you resigned before having had to take the blow back for your policy to not remove tents that, as early as January, create encampments and slum conditions in the Mission. Mr. Kositsky, this was not only a cowardly act but also a complete dereliction of your responsibility to the residents of the Mission. To top this off, ironically, you are now appointed by London Breed to be Manager of the Healthy Streets Operations Center (HSOC). This after you had four years and generous taxpayer money to help the homeless off the streets and failed spectacularly. Today, when I look out my window or take a walk in the Mission, it is as bad as it ever was in 2016. You taking over the HSOC is the height of hypocrisy!
The people in the Mission deserve better. The homeless deserve better. You have money and means but you have no imagination. You think small and take the easiest route. If this is what you call good governance, you should all take a good look at what you are burdening your constituents with and, if that is ok with you, there is something profoundly not ok with your ability to govern.
Sincerely,
Francesca Pastine
Commentaires