Combined bag for Mission’s homeless after federal injunction

Ten days after a federal executive order barred San Francisco from conducting most evictions at homeless camps, the situation at the mission is mixed: Some uninhabited mission residents say they were still told to pack up and move, especially before Carnival; Others say the sweeping work has stopped and they’ve been largely left alone.

And still others say that sweepers or not, city employees still come by to clean sidewalks and confiscate their belongings, a practice specifically mandated in the San Francisco injunction.

“Every time they force us to move, they take everything with them, be it trash or belongings,” EJ, who lives in a camp at Harrison Street and 19th Street, said Monday.

EJ and his friend Julian said Public Works Department officials told them to move on May 25, two days before Mardi Gras. When the city offered trucks to clear the area, they took some of EJ’s belongings.

“DPW is like a gang,” said Damon Sykes, who got shelter after a long stint on the road a few years ago but was visiting EJ and Julian on Monday. “They do what they want.”

A lawsuit filed against the city and various agencies last week alleges that San Francisco continues to criminalize unoccupied residents through house searches, threats of subpoena and illegal confiscation of personal property, despite an injunction issued in December prohibiting acts which, according to the plaintiffs, cause “permanent, irreparable damage”.

The request, filed on May 25, requires the city to take action to ensure compliance with the original injunction, which plaintiffs say the city has repeatedly violated. Testimonies from 25 homeless residents and lawyers confirm the ongoing raids.

U.S. District Court Judge Donna M. Ryu issued an injunction on December 23, 2022, prohibiting house searches and activities such as property seizures.

Jen Kwart, a spokeswoman for District Attorney David Chiu, said the application is being reviewed and plans to respond at the Aug. 18 hearing. “The City is committed to ensuring that the streets of San Francisco are clean, safe, and provide adequate transportation for all,” Kwart wrote in an email. “We are reviewing the application and will address specific points in court.”

“It’s not illegal to exist,” said John Do, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union representing the plaintiffs. “Several times a day, people are dispatched to respond to the mere existence of a homeless person.”

Mission District: 10,000 calls per month

Over the past month, the Mission received more than 10,000 311 complaints about camps. The emails and phone calls received by Supervisor Hillary Ronen’s office prompted her to produce a public report “tracking progress on District 9’s homelessness and street control efforts.”

Using data from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and the Healthy Streets Operation Center, Ronen compiles a weekly list of homeless people who are contacted and/or placed in shelters.

According to the tracker, between May 15 and May 21, authorities contacted 31 homeless residents and placed 10 of them in shelters (it’s unclear what type of shelters they are).

On the morning of May 25, the same day the enforcement motion was filed, Amadis Velez, who lives with his son in an apartment at 19th Street and Bryant Street, found a warehouse on Harrison Street swept and had been laid in front of his house.

Velez, a teacher at Mission High, was concerned about visible drug use around his 11-year-old child.

Velez went downstairs and spoke Spanish to a man in the camp. “They were ordered by the SFPD to proceed two blocks,” he said. “The person I spoke to was also a teacher in his country,” Velez said.

“He told me, ‘We’re in transition, we’re going to move on.'” When he returned in the afternoon, the camp was gone.

Though a homeless eviction brought his worries right to his doorstep, Velez didn’t agree with Judge Ryu’s restraining order. “Sometimes the camps can get out of hand,” he said.

On Monday afternoon, a group of nuns from the Queen of Peace Missionary Church in Folsom distributed hot meals to residents of a camp on 19th Street. Robert Kelly, a Church worker who was homeless a few years ago, said the missionaries usually distributed food to camps on Harrison Street and Folsom Street.

“But since Carnaval, everyone’s gone from there. They kill her on vacation.”

The lawsuit alleges violations of the constitution

The injunction and enforcement request are part of an ongoing lawsuit brought against the city by the Coalition on Homelessness and seven homeless people, alleging that the current measures taken against the homeless violate constitutional rights.

In last week’s motion, which will be heard on Aug. 10, plaintiffs are again asking for a special officer to oversee the city’s compliance with the restraining order, as well as regular reports on police and other agency responses to 311 and 911 calls homeless .

The special main and regular reports were first granted by Judge Ryu in the December restraining order. But according to Do, the reports never materialized.

Do said the plaintiffs specifically stated in the original restraining order that they wanted to know exactly what happens when an officer or worker is dispatched to handle a 311 complaint.

Public data shows that in the past three months, 311,353 homelessness complaints were logged and marked as closed with the note “Camp may remain open due to Judge Ryu.” But in the last week alone, 281,104 complaints have been filed about camps – many of which have been closed without much justification.

Many of the testimonies report worrisome experiences in emergency shelters; Several of the homeless residents say they faced fines if they didn’t move. The majority lost property they deemed necessary. All witnesses were searched without prior notice. Each of these measures violates December’s injunction, the motion filed last week said.

“We want them to respect the property rights of homeless people just as they would any higher income person,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness.

In the past five months, Friedenbach said, “we’ve received reports that they took medication and survival kits and in one case someone’s ashes.”

In a row of Best Buy tents on Division Street, two friends who were born and raised in Fillmore shared a tent and a small stock of bikes for sale. “No one has asked her to move for a long time,” said one, a man named Kahlua.

But almost every week the building department comes by and tells them to move and hoses down the sidewalk with water. Personal belongings are sometimes taken during evictions.

“What you hear about DPW – it’s all true. They come over and take our shit. I’m not saying they’re all bad, some of them are good.”

“Last week SFPD came by and told us if I didn’t cooperate they would send us to jail,” Kahlua said. “I had 12 bikes. They said you can’t have more than three. I buy bikes, trade bikes, fix bikes and sell bikes and I’ve told them so. But they took nine of my bikes.”

In the mission, the restraining order has effect

For his part, Santiago Lerma, Ronen’s adviser and hope for District 9 in 2024, said he “hopes something positive will come out of the federal injunction” and that the Office of the Inspector will continue to use agencies to enforce laws against camps, where there is “bad behavior” is reported.

According to Lerma, the warehouse that Velez had a problem with was actually located at 19th Street and Bryant Street, originally in Harrison, and he had it moved on the grounds that the “ringleader” ran a chop shop.

Because the chop shop violated a policy not embargoed by the injunction, Article 20, he asked city officials to shut it down.

On one occasion, when Lerma was visiting the camp, which he said housed three to five Spanish speakers, Lerma was accompanied by Mission Station Captain Thomas Harvey, who recognized a resident from ten years ago.

“We asked him why he’s here,” Lerma said. “He said his mother lived near the block. He felt safe there; he wanted to be close to his family.”

Lerma said the mission could already feel the effects of the injunction on the searches. But he is hopeful. “There are more ways to approach the camps. They are not all the same.”

Jake Pearson, a senior who has been part of a group of tents at Hampshire and 17th Street since January, said they were not being asked to move, except to cross the street every now and then to clean public works.

The city offers services, Pearson said, but only on specific points: “They come and offer most of them no offers.” He pointed to other tents. “They walk past all these people and they just come over to talk to me because I’m a senior and they say that’s a priority. But who does that help?”

“They come, they don’t tell us to move, they don’t tell us to move, but they convey the message – they want us off their street.”