Mayor Daniel Lurie expanded his comments on the ICE raids a bit today, but only a bit—and framed the sitiuation once again as a “public safety” issue.
“As mayor my goal is to keep everyone safe,” he told the supes during Question Time. “These tactics are intended to instill fear that makes the city less safe.” He said that, under city policy, “local law enforcement does not participate in federal immigration enforcement,” but he never used the term “Sanctuary City,” and he never mentioned undocumented residents.
The Sanctuary City Ordinance goes well beyond what Lurie described: It generally prohibits any city employees, including all law enforcement, from cooperating with ICE in any way. That means, for example, that the SF Police shouldn’t help federal agents remove peaceful, law-abiding protesters who are, for example, picketing in front of an immigration court facility. It means that if Donald Trump sends in the National Guard to help deport people, the SFPD can’t coordinate with or help them.
It means that San Francisco city agencies are supposed to protect all residents, including undocumented residents.
After only a minute or so addressing a crisis that brought more than 5,000 people into the streets of the Mission last night, he shifted to his new policy to crack down on people living in recreational vehicles.
Lurie’s plan, which would need the supes approval, would set a two-hour limit on parking for oversized vehicles anywhere in the city. People who live in RVs could get tickets (which most of them probably can’t pay anyway). The only way this would ever work is if people who didn’t pay the tickets got towed, which means evicted from their homes.
Lurie said “we can give people on the streets a better option,” and I think most people would agree that a stable affordable housing situation is better than living in an RV in the city.
But that “stable affordable housing” is not available for some 500 people living in RVs, and won’t be anytime soon. Check out the Chron’s story on a couple who are living in an RV (that appears clean and safe). They paid $4,000 for the place, which was less than three months’ rent on a tiny apartment one of them shared with five people.
From the city’s homelessness department director:
Living in a vehicle compared to living on the street or in a shelter is a highly rational choice for many folks who become homeless because RVs offer relative autonomy, safety, privacy and comfort,” Shireen McSpadden, director of the city’s homelessness department, said at a recent public meeting. “Housing offers therefore must be a rationally better choice than staying in a car or an RV.
That would mean, for this couple, very low rent, and a place where they can have their own space, including a bedroom, kitchen and bath, and keep their dog. The mayor is shifting $90 million into temporary shelter—and most of those slots do not give couples a private room, with cooking facilities, and pets allowed.
I get that some neighborhoods have been crammed with RVs, and that can lead to problems with trash and parking. (Although I live in Bernal Heights, where for years about a dozen RVs parked along a street where I walk and jog with my dog almost every day, and I never saw a serious problem.)
But if this is really, as Lurie says, “compassionate,” the city has to offer a lot more than temporary shelter beds.
Then Sup. Shamann Walton raised his question, about why shelters for the unhoused keep moving District 10. As the mayor tries to “clean up” downtown for businesses and tourists, Walton said, the crisis has been displaced to one of the city’s most vulnerable and underserved neighborhoods, which already has several shelters and navigation centers.
“Nobody can say we didn’t do our fair share,” Walton said, but the expansion of an existing facility on Jerrold Street has widespread opposition. “Not one business or resident supports this,” Walton said. “You continue to say you will work with us in good faith, but you continue to make unilateral decisions. … will you continue to disregard the community voice?”
Lurie said that “interim housing capacity is one of the most urgent and humane steps we can take as a city.” Walton persisted: “You didn’t answer my question: You claim that you would like to address homelessness the areas where we see people who are unhoused, but yet there’s not a proposed shelter by the beach, there’s not a proposed shelter by Golden Gate Park, there’s not a proposed shelter by Lake Merced.”
That’s part of what will be an ongoing debate at the board over the next month as legislation that would mandate a shelter or supportive housing project in every district makes its way through the legislative process. The proposal by Sup. Bilal Mahmood has support from a politically diverse group of supes: Matt Dorsey, Jackie Fielder, Myrna Melgar, Danny Sauter, and Walton are all co-sponsors.
But it also bans most new facilities in part of Soma, the Tenderloin, and the Haight.
Fielder told me that “it was more about other wealthier neighborhoods doing their fair share.”
