Homeless Being Evicted...From Tents

"Despite assurances from officials that the practice would stop, city workers continue to confiscate homeless people’s tents and remove encampments as the coronavirus spreads across a shuttered San Francisco, according to residents, a city employee and 311 call records."

This is the opening paragraph from the San Francisco Public Press. Atrocious, yes?

Imagine that you are in your home, you can barely keep a roof over your head, you have the basics of shelter and then boom....the big weight bullies come in and evicts you. This is exactly what city workers have done. Mayor London Breed has washed her hands from helping the homeless, as did her predecessor Edwin Lee when he gave wealthy tech companies extortionate tax breaks. The idea was that these tech companies would relocate from Silicon Valley to the Tenderloin district, to help boost the economy. The tech companies, nevertheless, sat in their ivory towers, employed overpaid and under-worked staff that caused greedy landlords to illegally evict 50% of the current residents, so they could rent at double the price to the new influx of hoodie/backpackers.

As a result, the homeless numbers rocketed back in 2012 when the tax break incentive was launched. During the past few years, the new developments of condos (to accommodate the hoodies) hit such a high in construction, San Francisco was officially named the most rapidly developed city on the planet. You couldn't see the skyline for cranes, scaffolding and building work. Developers tried to rip down the Palace of Fine Arts...to make condos. They tried this attempt with the flower market, one of the biggest in the U.S.A....to make condos. The Mission district's kooky and diverse, ethnic and culturally gorgeous area was demolished and replaced by hipster cafes, bars, barbers and obscenely priced produce that no normal person on a normal wage could ever afford to pay.

As more tech companies entered the city in droves, the poverty levels rose rapidly and where we're now at today is an epidemic.

So when Covid-19 reared its ugly head the past few weeks, pushing everyone towards shelter-in-place, the mass of homeless that really needed a break in life, saw that window of opportunity close once again.

Instead of the city using the 30,000 vacant hotels (due to tourism depleting within days) to house the homeless and keep them safe from spreading Covid-19, City Hall decided to ambush these poor people and take away their last shred of dignity and ownership: the roof over their head.

Supervisor Dean Preston, upon being continuously ignored about his hotels-for-homeless program, decided to take matters into his own hands. Launching a GoFundMe page, his team have raised over $70,000 with all the cash being spent on hotel rooms...for the homeless.

The only way we fight for the little people, the meek, the innocent, the down trodden, the ones that will inherit the planet in the future, is by supporting this GoFundMe. The city supervisors are now battling to house the homeless in hotels.

Everyone is seriously tight on cash but if you think about back to three weeks ago (yes, just three weeks), when bars were full, restaurants were jammed and cinemas had no empty seats, consider how much you spent on a weekend of entertainment. Now divide that into thirds: one third to save, one third to spend on necessities/essentials and please give that final third to Dean's GoFundMe.

SF CARES has forever advocated for the poverty stricken. We MUST help these people, today.