Original Post Date
2020-11-15 08:57 PM
Original Body
We houseless, very poor, indigenous, Black and Brown San Francisco residents hereby demand that UC Hastings, an "elite" law school located in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, who filed a lawsuit against the City and County of San Francisco about its "homeless problem", give-back one of the many buildings they "bought" to houseless people so we can build our own solutions to our homelessness.
Herstory on UC Hastings and Homelessness:
Excerpt of the lawsuit:The Tenderloin, always a community of tolerance and compassion, is now blighted; its sidewalks are unsanitary, unsafe, and often impassable. The conditions now prevailing in the Tenderloin constitute a violation of the fundamental civil rights of those residing and working there.
The odd aspect of the aforementioned "conditions" listed in the lawsuit, is that UC Hastings places the blame on us unhoused people for our own houselessness when they (UC Hastings) , like so many other millionaire/billionaire businesses developers and institutions located in San Francisco, are actually responsible for increased homelessness, criminalization, evictions, gentrification, harassment, theft of indigenous land and resources, eugenicist endowments, and most importantly graft-based equity through a historic combination of tax breaks, pay-offs, interest-free loans, patronage, zoning laws, white supremacy, land speculation, exploitation of the labor of Black, Brown, and working class people, and the increasingly high tuition charged to all students.
After UC Hastings filed the lawsuit against people who already had nothing, they worked with the City to contract with private policing agencies to build an outdoor cage for houseless residents and to operate ongoing sweeps, power-washing, harassment, and removal of houseless humans in the Tenderloin like we are trash.
Because of all this and the fact that the law school's only "Solution" was more removal of houseless people, not to mention the fact that UC Hastings claims legal possession over two blocks of Mama Earth in Occupied Yelamu, San Francisco, we hereby propose that UC Hastings reparate one of the sites in the Tenderloin that they "bought" for the use of houseless people to build their own self-determined housing projects like the innovative model called Homefulness.
For the Mayor
Because the Mayor's office has targeted, harassed, policed, evicted, red-lined, non-profiteered, zoned against, and gentrified the poorest mostly Black, Brown, Asian, Pacific Islander, Disabled, Elder and Family San Francisco residents through an endless series of white supremacist, pro-business, pro-corporate, anti-poor policies, laws, agendas and decisions, we demand that the City and County of San Francisco cease and desist ALL SIP evictions, give back surplus empty land and buildings, and reparate and at least five million dollars of the money the City has received for providing "homeless serivces" to houseless people so we can build our own solutions to our own problems, like the Homefulness project.
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