DECEMBER 7
Dear Hillary Ronen,
There is now yet another tent that is set up in front of my house. It is most likely another person that has been kicked out of the Safe Sleeping site because I see her hanging around with the residents there.
I am tired of my neighborhood being negatively impacted by out of control encampments for the last SIX YEARS. My health and income have been adversely harmed by it. I am forced to live day in and day out surrounded by enormous out-of-control encampments, trash, petty crime, and the horrors of seeing people shoot-up or having to witness scenes like a mentally disturbed person ranting down the street covered in their shit, or having to roll up my sleeves to clean up a horrible case of diarrhea in my driveway-- not for a day, not for a month, but for six straight years. All of this takes its toll.
Politicians like you, beholden to special interest groups like the Coalition for the Homeless, do not have to live on a daily basis with the consequences of your reckless policies. It is the people in neighborhoods like mine, generally low-income, poc, immigrants and the working class, in short, vulnerable communities, that are burdened with the brunt of absorbing the squatters, Navigation Centers, and Safe Sleeping Sites. You have thrown your constituents in my neighborhood under the bus because we don't have the financial or political clout to stop you. This is not progressive, it is not compassionate, it does not solve the problem.
Right now, in addition to the tent in front of my house, we have a mentally ill person who has attached a cardboard structure to a neighbor's house. He has been hanging out in our neighborhood for months trespassing, screaming misogynist rants, and exposing himself to young women in the neighborhood. He has already started a fire large enough to warrant a response from SFFD, yet he continues to light candles in his structure. The people in the building have been working with the HOT team to get him placed but he does not want help.
The situation is a failure for both the mentally ill man who is languishing unhelped on the street and for the community that is put in danger because of him. This tragic failure is also the result of hypocritical progressives like you who live in wealthy white neighborhoods; you wring your hands about homelessness but do not participate in the problem. And it is constant because you and other San Francisco politicians don't care if residents in my neighborhood have a very mentally disturbed person loose on our sidewalks who is also a sexual criminal that could potentially burn the building down that he has attached his structure to. This is only one such example of years of horrible situations my community has had to absorb.
My health has deteriorated because you and other politicians feel it's ok to allow these situations to fester in front of my house, on my block, and in the community I live in. The Coalition for the Homeless should advocate for the unsheltered. However, it is the politicians responsibility to find a balance. When the politicians turn their back on poor under-served communities, when they take advantage of us because they know they can, this is not compassion-- it is environmental injustice. I don't buy into a mock-compassionate stance that helps no one and, instead, hurts people-- and particularly those with the severe issues that go unchecked because you and other supervisors find it easier to enable them than to help them.
When you create policy based on ideology, not reality, you get failed policy. You only need to walk in certain neighborhoods to see that San Francisco policy is a colossal failure. You only need to read the statistics of overdose deaths in SF compared to those in NYC or West Virginia to see that we are failing the very people your progressive politics purport to care about.
Stop pretending to care about the people in my neighborhood and, instead, do something that actually helps us. Remove the graffiti covered Safe Sleeping Area that contributes to urban blight and attracts other squatters that set up their encampments around it. Start enforcing the ordinances that are on the SF.gove website: Safe Sleeping Guidelines for Unsheltered Individuals. Better yet, bring up a vote for Mandleman's A Safe Place for All that would positively impact neighborhoods like mine. Your failures are my realities.
Sincerely,
Francesca Pastine
Comments