DOZENS OF SAN FRANCISCO community members gathered in all-black, funeral-like outfits chanting “fight, fight, fight, housing is a human right” on the steps of City Hall earlier this week before the Board of Supervisors voted to impose two-hour parking restrictions on RVs and to reallocate a portion of extra revenue from Our City, Our Home housing funds.
The approved legislation enforces a two-hour parking limit on large vehicles across the city without a permit and evaluates large vehicle residents for permanent interim housing, large vehicle cash buyback, and large vehicle permits.
San Francisco’s 2024 Point-in-Time Count, a biennial effort to count the number of people experiencing homelessness on one given day, concluded that around 1,444 individuals and families reside in large vehicles throughout the city. A city analysis this past May found at least 437 large vehicles currently being used as homes in San Francisco.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie defended the legislation as a better option for people forced to live in vehicles and a way to “deliver safe and clean streets for our communities.”
“Those in vehicles deserve better options for raising their kids, and those just trying to walk down the street deserve safety and cleanliness,” he said in a statement released by his office. “I am proud to stand with the Board of Supervisors today to pass a plan that will finally give all of our families what they deserve.”
San Francisco’s 2024 PIT Count found 3,969 sheltered and 4,354 unsheltered individuals experience homelessness across the city.
The Board of Supervisors also voted on the allocation of Our City, Our Home homelessness funds. The board voted unanimously to reapportion $34.8 million of the funds away from long term housing to provide short term shelter beds. The Board voted 8-3 to authorize the Mayor’s Office to spend up to $19 million of the fund’s extra revenue without needing supermajority approval from the board over the next two fiscal years.
Following the board’s vote on each issue, members of the audience hissed and booed.
Prior to the board’s vote, protestors decorated the City Hall steps with black signs coated in white paint reading “democracy is being killed,” “lamenta la muerte de democracia” and “give us homes before tows.”
Supervisor Jackie Fielder for District 9 attended the rally in support of the protesters.
“Until we truly invest in affordable housing, shelter, comprehensive services, we have no business dismantling the fragile refuge that residents have managed to secure,” she told the crowd.
Fielder voted against the RV parking restrictions and reallocation of extra Our City, Our Home revenue.
‘Not an equal trade’
Several other San Francisco community members, including former legislators, RV residents and individuals experiencing homelessness, also spoke at the rally.
“I bought my RV with my last $2000 in my savings account when I lost my job, when I lost my housing, two years ago,” RV resident Armando Martinez said at the rally. “Constant noise, pollution, dirt trauma: that’s where we sleep.”
Still, Martinez found his RV preferable to a shelter bed.
“How am I going to give up my RV for a shelter bed where I have to live with X amount of people?” he asked. “It’s just not the same. It’s not an equal trade…I almost died in a shelter a few years ago.”
Former District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston called out legislators who didn’t want “to tax [their] rich friends” at the rally.
“There’s always money to double the police budget, but there’s never money to house people,” he said. “But you know what’s interesting? The folks who stand in the way of taxing the rich to make sure people have a home? They always show up for the ribbon cuttings.”
Preston said in an interview that he spent two decades representing people facing eviction and homelessness. He remembered a residential hotel where the elevator was broken for nine months, leaving people stuck in their rooms. He remembered an 83-year-old resident who had lived in the city for over 40 years and entire buildings where every single resident was evicted, often full of San Francisco natives and seniors.
“The model where you criminalize the poor, where you take money away from real solutions, and where you think you’re gonna have this gilded society is not sustainable. The cruelty that we are seeing — both locally and nationally — the cruelty will crumble,” he said.
Essential workers priced out of SF
Kristen Hardy is vice president of the Service Employees International Union San Francisco and works as a birth and death clerk at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. She also spoke at the rally and shared stories of the essential care workers she worked with who struggled to afford rent.
“I have nurses that are sleeping in their cars because they cannot afford to live in the city they work in,” she said. “I have people commuting from Sacramento, Stockton. I have somebody coming from almost as far as Reno, because they can’t afford anything closer in the Bay Area… but they showed up every day to help keep this city running during the pandemic.”
Miguel Carera, Lead Housing Justice Organizer at Coalition on Homelessness, said in an interview that he began volunteering for the organization after it helped him overcome homelessness.
“I am formerly homeless. I was in the streets,” Carera said. “It’s not easy for anyone who is a human being. It’s really difficult because if you do sit down and stay, or lay down in one place, somebody is coming, pushing you, kicking you. If it’s a house or place they’re calling the police and the police [are] arresting you, putting you in jail for one or two days.”
Following the rally, the protestors led a silent procession through the City Hall, black veils shrouding their faces, plastic candles cupped in their hands, their footsteps echoing through the hallway.
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