Email sent February 27, 2022
Dear Bureaucrats and Politicians,
It took David Campos and then Hillary Ronen six years to destroy my community.
We bought this house in 1994. It was a stretch. Since then, we have touched every square inch of it with love. Sadly, Campos and Ronen have exploited the community around it in order to advance their misguided ideologies and now the neighborhood is no longer livable. In fact, it is harming our health and well being. My husband, at 82, is gifted with tremendous health and vitality. Part of this extends from the fact that he walked everywhere. One of the reasons we moved into this neighborhood is that we could walk to everything and we rarely had to drive. Now, we put on our blinders when we leave the front door, rush into the car, and drive out of the neighborhood to walk, go to work, or go shopping. Why? Our neighborhood has become choked with encampments since 2016. The squalor from encampments and the sheer amount of trash on the streets from illegal dumping and littering generated by San Francisco policies that promote these conditions have turned our streets into what can only be described as third-world-slums. There is no joy in walking in our neighborhood.
For years, we have contributed our talents to the betterment of San Francisco. My husband and I work in the arts. I have been an arts educator since 1997, teaching at The San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, City College, and now UC Berkeley Extension. I am an artist and work in my home studio. I have shown work nationally and internationally in museums and galleries. I have now opened an art gallery that champions older artists that are at the height of their artistic output. My fourth exhibition at the gallery will be on March 11. My husband is an architect and has run his own architect office for forty-eight years. He has been a leader on outdoor trips through the Sierra Club for over twenty five years. He is also an educator and has taught at the University of Oregon, the City University of New York, and UC Berkeley Extension. We have five children and seven grandchildren.
San Francisco policy, for six years, is at cross purposes with communities. In 2016, we thought that San Francisco’s goal was to shelter and house the homeless. It has become apparent, however, that San Francisco’s policy is to use our public sidewalks as a holding area for the un-housed. This has created intolerable conditions in neighborhoods like mine that have high populations of immigrants, low-income people, and people of color-- populations that lack the political and financial clout to successfully fight for the environmental justice they deserve.
I am a two time cancer survivor. Even thoughI have taken dance classes, danced professionally, and eat well, my genetic makeup is prone to cancer. My recovery and survival depends on not sustaining high levels of stress. Long walks in the neighborhood and yoga have helped keep me on an even keel. However, the deterioration in my neighborhood has put me in an acute and constant state of stress. I now have high blood pressure. I am angry all the time. I can’t sleep through the night. Within the last month, the woman in the encampment in front of my house has yelled at me twice (including yelling at me yesterday). Their dogs bark through the night. I feel that I can no longer sustain the level of stress caused by living in the severely compromised conditions in my neighborhood. More infuriating, is that these conditions are perpetuated by the failed policies of Hillary Ronen and the city of San Francisco.
I recently walked to a doctor appointment at CPMC on Valencia and Cesar Chavez (about six blocks) and this is only a fraction of the squalor I had to walk through (three people I passed were completely zoned out on god knows what):
But worse is the complete abandonment by Ronen, the mayor, the Board of Supervisors, and the police, of myself, my husband, and my community at large. We have been dismissed, disrespected, and treated like we are a nuisance. We are expected to put up, shut up, and to tolerate the people taking over our sidewalks along with their trash, drug selling and usage, drinking, dogs, and bad behavior. We are supposed to embrace the poorly managed Self Sleeping Area that Ronen forced into our community and is now a half a city block of trash and graffiti. We are expected to keep our mouths shut when this same Safe Sleeping Area kicks out their unruly residents that then set up enormous encampments on the sidewalks in front of our homes. If we complain, like I have for the last six years, we are blacklisted. Hillary Ronen and her assistant do not answer my phone calls or emails. Even when I reported to her the brutal beating of my husband from a deranged person in June of this year, she said nothing. I have been complaining to the Mayor's office for years through 311. The office is supposed to respond within seven days. I received one email in all those years but it led nowhere since they did not follow up.
I ask you, how are we supposed to exist here when you have completely degraded our community? How do we exist in a place where we have become invisible? How do we exist in a community where the politicians don't care about our health and safety? This is not a rhetorical question. It is the same question I have been asking since 2017 and every year after. How is it ok that we have to put up with sprawling and squalid encampments in front of our houses and businesses, under our windows, and attached to our homes? How are we supposed to co-exist with the mentally ill and substance addicted people who inhabit our sidewalks when we have no experience or training in public health? Why do politicians and bureaucrats not care that the majority of people in my neighborhood no longer feel safe? I have never received an answer. And, after all these years, things have only gotten exponentially worse.
It is crystal clear to me that people like myself and my husband are no longer appreciated or wanted in San Francisco. We are long-time San Francisco constituents who have, for years, brought value in their communities through service, education, arts, culture and the sustainment of small businesses. We are no longer seen as an asset. San Francisco has now shifted its business model to that of a homeless industrial complex. It no longer needs the mom-and-pop stores, the artists, the small businesses, or entrepreneurs, because there is plenty of money to be made off the backs of the less fortunate through the funding of nonprofits and city agencies that are perfectly content with the status quo.
Sincerely,
Francesca Pastine
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