Dear Dennis Herrera, City Attorney, et. al. In June of this year, many tents started to proliferate around the 1515 South Van Ness property on Shotwell at 26th Street.  I had asked Paul Monge to have them moved since I didn't want a repeat of what happened in 2016 when a huge tent encampment surrounded this property. Paul Monge wrote to me on July 1: "Francesca, the Emergency Operations Center is currently looking at city owned properties that could be temporarily activated to help relocate individuals whose tents are set up on public walkways and in front of other resident's homes. One thought that was proposed was opening up the outdoor parking space at 1515 South Van Ness to move the tents around the property and within the immediate vicinity within the bounds of the property (similar to what was done in 2016 but at a much smaller scale). I wanted to get your thoughts on that proposed measure." I asked my neighbors what they thought of this proposal and got a resounding no. Their instincts were correct. Mr. Monge promises, in his email, that tents would be inside the property, not outside. He refers to 2016 but what he means is 2017 when Supervisor Hillary Ronen persuaded Lennar (who owned the property and was in the process of getting city approval for a 157 unit housing project there) to use the property as a Navigation Center since construction was constantly delayed because of  San Francisco's bad-faith manipulations. At that time, the Inner Mission Neighborhood negotiated with Supervisor Ronen to have a tent-free zone around the vicinity, among other demands.  This was particularly important because, after reading about the first Navigation Center at 1950 Mission Street, it was clear that the homeless put up their tents around the NC only using it as a 'watering hole' and for services.  At the time, good friends of mine lived on Stevenson Street and I saw first hand how the neighborhood deteriorated when the Navigation Center was installed.  In fact, my friend's block got so bad that, even though they lived there for over twenty years and wanted to stay in San Francisco, they were forced to sell their property and move to the suburbs. Laura Wenus interviewed a resident from the 1950 Mission Street Navigation Center in the Mission Local on December 8, 2016. Wenus quotes him as saying: “I don’t sleep here…I have stuff out there,” he said. “I’ve been on the streets for eight years, it’s hard to break the cycle. This is what I do. A lot of folks there were placed there but they were still in the encampments. Either their partner didn’t get in or [they did and] there was some kind of rule violation,” he said. Or, “People had excess of stuff so they have storage…They had a lot of stuff they had accumulated over years of being on the streets.” The articles goes on to say: Though allowing possessions is one of the navigation center’s distinguishing characteristics, Glass said it’s not always possible for the center to store everything a resident may come in with...Randy Quezada, a spokesperson for the Department of Homelessness, said while the shelter does try to accommodate belongings and doesn’t have a specific limit to how much an individual can bring, some come in with hoarding disorders, or people may simply want more space. It can also be hard to adjust to a new lifestyle, he said. “To the extent that you may have some people who will slip out and go back to the tents at night, that happens, and that’s part of the engagement process.” Quezada said. “For some people … that have been living on the streets a long time, it’s hard to re-acclimate to being indoors.” For the people in my community, it was critical that the 1515 South Van Ness Navigation Center not make our dense, immigrant, POC, and predominantly low-income neighborhood worse. We pressured Supervisor Ronen to agree to a tent-free zone and other provisions. Still, there were residents in the  South Van Ness Navigation Center that brought a lot of drug use and unstable behavior to our community. Fast forward to December 2020 and Mr. Monge, as I said above, intimates that tents will be in the parking lot area, not outside of it. Paul Monge and Supervisor Hillary Ronen are representative of the type of city behavior that demonstrates an absolute lack of concern for the people who are negatively impacted by their agenda. We now have a particularly huge vehicle encampment taking over the whole sidewalk between Virgil Alley and South Van Ness Avenue (this vehicle has appropriated huge parts of our sidewalk way beyond its perimeters. San Francisco pandemic parking rules state that  "Parking enforcement [be] suspended for the following: 72-hour overtime parking limit and towing, except for towing in Temporary Emergency Transit Lanes." This exemption does not say that people in cars parked permanently during this time can also take over huge swaths of public sidewalks. Included in that encampment are a lot of bicycle parts and other belongings that clearly belong to the residents of the Safe Sleeping site.  We have supermarket carts full of stuff that belong to residents at the Safe Sleeping area on Shotwell Street between Cesar Chavez and 26th Street. We have a burgeoning tent community on 26th Street and Shotwell, also directly across the street from the Safe Sleeping site. A month ago, this encampment started with one tent and has now expanded to three. If the city would remove tents before they attract other tents and, therefore, establish large encampments, it would probably be easier to get those people help. Instead, they allow tents to languish and expand until the situation traumatizes our communities.  This encampment is also particularly messy and their trash is often strewn all over the sidewalk and the street. The sidewalk there is very narrow and it is impossible to get around the encampment.  In fact, I watched a mother with a small baby have to veer out into traffic to get around it. Horace Alley between 26th and 25th now has the beginnings of an encampment and it is being used as a latrine. During a SF SAFE meeting on December 8, we walked through the alley so that the SAFE consultant could recommend how to keep our garages and yards more secure.  There were large piles of human feces everywhere, plus a lot more graffiti than I had ever seen there. Clearly, Paul Monge was disingenuous when he told us that tents, etc. would be inside the 1515 South Van Ness Property not outside.  As I have stated before,  creating a no-tent zone that extended a few blocks lessened the impact of the 120 bed NC in 2017.  The Navigation Center was only tolerable because our community studied the failures of the 1950 Mission Street Navigation Center and, therefore, organized and made demands that minimized its impact.  As always,  Supervisor Ronen was not interested in the impact of this NC on our neighborhood and hadn't we organized the narrative would have been very different. I am including a picture of the proposed Lennar project for this site to give you a framework of how malignant bad-faith policy and mismanagement has deprived our neighborhood of this positive outcome in our community. Apparently, in the view of Supervisor Ronen and the city of San Francisco, our community does not deserve better than trash, encampments, and shelters. After much neglect and blight, San Francisco, yet again, forces the result of their failed homeless policy on our community, a policy that, after six years of not moving the needle of the unsheltered occupying our streets, is an absolute failure. We did not want the Safe Sleeping Site here but now that Supervisor Ronen has forced it on us. The least the city can do is manage the surrounds in order to minimize the impact and suffering of our community. We have devoted much of our time and creative energy fighting to keep the streets of this small part of the Mission up to the standard that any normal, minimally well-run city would provide their constituents. As we have said over and over,  Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who obviously cares nothing about living standards and only focuses on those things that fit into her ideological framework, has emphatically failed us.  We are asking that the City of San Francisco begin working in the interest of their constituents and that Dennis Herrera, City Attorney, Supervisor, Norman Yee, President of the Board of Supervisors, step in to protect our vulnerable community. Sincerely Francesca Pastine Squatters on 26th Between Virgil and South Van Ness bring two huge commercial storage units onto the sidewalk. Across from Safe Sleeping Area. Not the stove, propane, huge storage units, chop shop operations. These people slept, drank, & used drugs in the doorways of this apartment building. The encampment persisted for almost a year. Safe Sleeping Area residents use the sidewalk to store their stuff.

Dear Mayor Breed, Today I woke up with tightness in my chest that scared me. I then realized it was from anger. I have been carrying around this anger since you, London Breed, have been intentionally reverting my neighborhood into a slum. I am angry and it’s a horrible place to be, especially when I need to be my healthiest. I say that because, at 65 years old, I am in a high-risk category for dying from COVID 19. Studies have proven that emotional health is essential to a healthy immune system and that that one’s health is related to their zip code. You, with the help of Jeff Kositsky and his years of failed policies, have turned the block across the street from me into a slum in just two months. Let me define what a slum is: SLUM: Urban slums are settlements, neighborhoods, or city regions that cannot provide the basic living conditions necessary for its inhabitants, or slum dwellers, to live in a safe and healthy environment. You did not respond to my last email wherein I asked a series of questions so I am resending them. I want real answers and not excuses including that Covit 19 is responsible for the complete degradation of the sidewalks in the Mission. In four years since the beginning of this crises, the city could have enacted real conservatorhip law. The city, like Rhode Island, could have had real drug rehabilitation programs with the necessary teeth to make it effective. 1. How is it ok that there is, again, a surge of encampments in the Mission as pernicious and prolific as there were four years ago? This is not rhetorical.  I want answers. 2. Why is Jeff Kositsky is now head of HSOC when, obviously, he has not been able to maintain clean and healthy sidewalks in the Mission for the last four years ago? This is not rhetorical.  I want answers. 3.  The Mission is so filthy and depressing that I actually drive either to Potrero Hill, or Noe Valley, or Diamond Heights, or Glen Park, or upper Market, or the Haight, to take walks.  Leaving the boundaries of the Mission is like passing into a different country.  In the Mission you have massive slums, in other neighborhoods you have a semblance of normalcy. There is not a tent in sight, no garbage clogged sidewalks, no urban blight. The failure of your homeless policies do not exist in these ‘wealthier” neighborhoods. I have to ask, why do you think it is ok to concentrate your policy failures in the Mission? This is not a rhetorical question.  I want answers. 4.  How do you call yourself progressive when you allow marginalized neighborhoods, like the Mission, to become choked with homelessness on its sidewalks when the Mission is already suffering from overcrowding, the highest rate of COVID 19, a high percentage of people of color and immigrants, and is already one of the densest neighborhoods in San Francisco?  How is this progressive? This is not a rhetorical question.  I want answers. 5. Why is the city sanctioning the development of third-world slum conditions in the Mission? This is, in fact, San Francisco generated and sanctioned blight. Your sanitizing stations are a pathetic Band-Aid for your failure to house the homeless. This is not a rhetorical question. I want answers. 6. London Breed, why are you turning my neighborhood, willingly and with intention, into a slum? I am asking you, personally and as my elected representative. The homeless people on both Shotwell and 26th are using my front retainer wall as a urinal and it stinks like piss. I caught one of the homeless guys a week ago in my side yard taking water from my garden faucet and, today, I caught him trespassing in my neighbor’s yard. I have not been in the ally behind my house but my neighbors who use it complain that it has become a latrine (which is what happened in 2016 when there was a massive homeless encampment in the same location. During that time, periodically, my deck would be covered – literally – with black flies that were breeding on human feces in this ally). Your handling of the homeless is not progressive. If I were to be kind, I would categorize it as negligent mismanagement, but the truth of the matter is it is a willful abrogation of your office to maintain safe and clean sidewalks in marginalized neighborhoods. And, Jeff Kositsky, I am including you in this letter because you switched the policy to not respond to 311 calls vis-à-vis tents on public sidewalks. Then in March you resigned before having had to take the blow back for your policy to not remove tents that, as early as January, create encampments and slum conditions in the Mission. Mr. Kositsky, this was not only a cowardly act but also a complete dereliction of your responsibility to the residents of the Mission. To top this off, ironically, you are now appointed by London Breed to be Manager of the Healthy Streets Operations Center (HSOC). This after you had four years and generous taxpayer money to help the homeless off the streets and failed spectacularly. Today, when I look out my window or take a walk in the Mission, it is as bad as it ever was in 2016. You taking over the HSOC is the height of hypocrisy! The people in the Mission deserve better. The homeless deserve better. You have money and means but you have no imagination. You think small and take the easiest route. If this is what you call good governance, you should all take a good look at what you are burdening your constituents with and, if that is ok with you, there is something profoundly not ok with your ability to govern. Sincerely, Francesca Pastine

MORE BAD GOVERNANCE Wed, Sep 22, 5:26 PM Dear Hillary Ronen, et. al., I see people sweep handfuls of merchandise off the shelves at Walgreens and walk out the door. I then see that same merchandise being sold at the corner of Mission and 24th. Good governance would not allow just anyone to lay down a blanket and sell merchandise on our public sidewalks. There would be a permit process to make sure the sellers are legitimate and not selling stolen goods. Permits would also regulate how many people could sell things at a single corner to make sure sidewalks are not clogged and impassable. Unfortunately, good governance is not a requirement to be a supervisor. The corner of 24th and Mission is another casualty of Hillary Ronen's bad policies. Every day, my neighborhood deteriorates because we have a supervisor that works for special interests groups and not her constituents. Theft is encouraged, blight is encouraged, squatting is encouraged, while housing that would support stable families that have an interest in bettering the community is discouraged. I have been writing for years about the worsening condition in my neighborhood to no avail. I believe the critical mass of years of bad governance and bad policies have finally completely overwhelmed this community. As a resident in the Mission since 1994, I have witnessed, in the last six years, a complete deterioration of civil life in the Mission. There are broken windows everywhere, trash, huge and persistent encampments, crime, and feces everywhere. Now the 24th Street BART station is clogged with criminals fencing stolen goods. When I think things cannot get any worse, they get worse. Unfortunately, I fear that if Hillary Ronen continues to govern we will see this continuing down-hill spiral in the Mission. Sincerely, Francesca Pastine Pictures of Bart Stations and surrounding bus shelters at 24th and Mission:

A MISSION NEIGHBORHOOD IN CRISIS AND A POLITICAL CLASS THAT COULD GIVE A DAMN Nov 27, 2020, 1:46 PM Dear Supervisor Hillary Ronen, et. al. These pictures are of my walk on Thanksgiving day to Bernal Heights; they were taken between Shotwell and Folsom Street with a shallow dip into Horace Ally. Once I crossed Cezar Chavez into the Precita area, I walked along the South Side of Precita Park to Harrison Street then up to Bernal Park. It was a stark picture of how you and the Mayor consider neighborhoods in terms of class and race. The south side of Cesar Chavez is pristine. No encampments, no outdoor sinks or porta potties that attract people living in streets and campers, and no trash. (Below the photos taken on Thanksgiving day, are photos that I took this morning, the day after Thanksgiving). I have been complaining for years that this neighborhood has been deteriorating. There is more trashnd now since January, more people squatting on our sidewalks. Your policies are the main reason for this crisis. I have begged you for years to do something about the overwhelming trash in this area. I have been complaining for years about groups of men drinking by the empty warehouse and lot on 26th and then passing out and leaving beer boxes and bottles on the sidewalks (which, by the way, the 1515 South Van Ness property has been a blighted block since 2016 because of your misguided anti-housing ideology). Then, in January, Jeff Kositsky stopped the HSH from responding to 311 calls that resulted in huge encampments that linger for months. You and Mayor Breed then set up porta-potties and outdoor sinks to encourage people to colonize our sidewalks. On top of all these endemic social problems, you then decide to exacerbate the existing squalor by adding as many as 60 people living in 40 tents at the 1515 South Van Ness Parking lot. These photos expose layer upon layer of bad policy decisions around the 1515 South Van Ness property. One bad policy decision is followed by another and on top of general neglect this area has become an unlivable nightmare. Worse, it has been unrelenting since 2016. The disastrous policy to put a safe sleeping site at 1515 South Van Ness is particularly unconscionable. My neighbors and I have clearly pointed out systemic problems in this community over the years but you chose to ignore us and the results are the photos below. These photos typify what our community of low-income, POC, and immigrant families have to navigate every day. There are a whole generation of children growing up in the Mission that think this is normal. Why are there no porta potties and sinks at Precita Park? Why are they not set up at Holly Park? Why have they not been set up by Alta and Lafayette parks? Clearly, your so-called progressive politics are a sham. You have over the years specifically exploited the Mission. Do you think just because we are a low-income community that we are ok with squalor? Like it's ok for us but not Bernal Heights? Like somehow, we don't deserve better than this? If the deplorable conditions reflected in these photos (that you are responsible for creating) are okay with you, then you really need to check your conscience. But, moreover, you do not have the moral character or leader skills to be a Supervisor. You either need to step up to your responsibility to our community or step down from your office. Sincerely, Francesca Pastine

Dear Dennis Herrera, City Attorney We are writing to ask for your help, guidance and action. Supervisor Hillary Ronen plans to put a 40-tent ‘Safe Sleeping Area’ for the homeless in the parking lot of 1515 South Van Ness Avenue. I am asking you to stop the planned ‘Safe Sleeping Area’ until there is an independent study on the impact of such a site to our neighborhood and requires studies in such circumstances. For years, Hillary Ronen and the city of San Francisco have neglected this block and surrounding residential and business areas, and when it serves their purpose, uses it to warehouse the causalities of their failed homeless policies. The 1515 South Van Ness property has been a site of contention since December 2015 when the Lennar development agency planned a 157-unit apartment building there. Supervisors Campos and then, Supervisor Ronen, at the persistence of special interest groups, made so many unreasonable demands that the developers walked away from the project. Ground floor retail space would have promoted local businesses and street activity. The project’s affordable/ low-income units would have been over the legal requirement. Had the project been approved, the development would have taken roughly two years to build, with a completion date in 2017. The site is a few blocks from the 24th Street BART Station and major bus lines and the project would not have displaced any residents. In fact, it would have provided much-needed residential space. Instead of a thriving residential and business development, for ten months in 2016, the abandoned property became an enormous homeless encampment that wrapped around a half city block. Hillary Ronen did nothing to cleanup this encampment despite the neighbors’ protests. In 2017, Ronen negotiated with Lennar to put in a Navigation Center (sometimes hereafter referred to as “NC”) on the property that opened in June and was slated for 9 months, but ran three months beyond the closing date. The 120-bed NC cycled homeless through premises every 30 days meaning countless people with severe issues were brought into our community. In addition to the NC, Ronen negotiated a $1 million payment to a “cultural stabilization fund” run by Erick Arguello of the Calle24 Council putting more financial stress on the developer. Meanwhile, construction costs kept rising and the developer finally sold the property in 2019 to the City of San Francisco (who proceeded to further neglected the property). For years, the City and Hillary Ronen disproportionally made worse the very population they purport to care about. Instead of contributing stability and vibrancy to this area, they contributed to its decline. At the beginning of this year, homeless people moved back on the block sending us right back to where we were with the 2016 homeless encampment problem. Our neighborhood has two solid blocks of low-income housing, Bernal Dwellings, between Folsom Street and Harrison Street, and 26th Street and Cesar Chavez.  Last year, the city built a nine-story 95-unit tower (four stories above the legal height limit) for senior low-income housing directly next door to the blighted property at 1515 South Van Ness. These are low-income seniors who will be put at risk by the exposure to a large homeless population. After the COVIT-19 lockdown, Mayor Breed and Hillary Ronen actively encouraged the homeless to squat on our public sidewalk by drawing rectangles abutting our public parks and instructing people to set up their tents in them. We have written countless letters of protest to Supervisor Ronen over the years regarding continuing abuses to no avail. This area of the Mission, with a high percentage of people of color and immigrants, is suffering from one of the highest rates of COVID-19 in San Francisco.  The few blocks between South Van Ness, 23rd St., Harrison Street, and Cesar Chavez were the focus of a UC San Francisco infectious disease research project that tested nearly 3,000 people who live or work in this specific census tract for active COVID-19 infections. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that researchers chose to focus their study on the Mission because of its high population density, overcrowding, and large Latino population. The racial disparities seen in coronavirus cases across San Francisco were amplified in the Mission. Of those who tested positive in the study, 95% were Latino — despite Latinos making up just 44% of total participants. The Cities homeless policies take advantage of this vulnerable population by having encouraged tent encampments and using this property as a Navigation Center. Supervisor Ronen continues to threaten the health and stability of this community with a ‘Safe Sleeping Area.’ The Mission is not homogeneous and the 26th corridor between Valencia and Harrison is underdeveloped and could have benefited from the reinvigoration the Lennar project would have brought. This site deserves better than the years of either neglect or having homeless people brought on to it. My neighbors and I want the ‘Safe Sleeping Area’ blocked until there is an independent assessment of the impact of adding 40 homeless tents and as many as 60 homeless people into an already over-crowded and suffering community. Surely, in a city with such substantial economic resources as San Francisco, there are ways to accommodate the homeless and to benefit our immigrant and minority neighbors, without contributing to the decline of a potentially vibrant business and residential community which has been our home for decades. We all deserve better. Sincerely, Francesca Pastine The sidewalk at 26th and Shotwell Street close to an encampment.

Dear Hillary, In February of this year there was a burgeoning homeless community on Shotwell Street between 26th and Cesar Chavez that abuts the 1515 South Van Ness city owned property. After months of letter writing concerning this encampment, the tents were finally removed a couple weeks ago. I felt tremendous relief that, perhaps, my neighborhood can once again be livable and that I made headway in convincing you, Supervisor Ronen, to finally have some concern for the well-being and mental health of my community.  I mistakenly thought that perhaps you finally decided that we, your constituents that live around this blighted block, should have their lives, if not drastically improved, at least be free of the problems that the homeless bring.  Without the oppressive feeling that the encroaching encampments brought, I felt like I could dream of what could be.  Looking out my window the other day I was thinking that I would try to organize a tree planting around the 1515 South Van Ness property to make it look less blighted.  I was even considering renewing my request that you and the board of supervisors start an education campaign to keep the Mission clean, particularly the 26th corridor, which gets particularly trashy. Tragically, you do not see our neighborhood as a place that deserves trees or clean streets. In fact, I doubt you rarely even think of it at all (which is reflected in years of filthy streets and rampant homelessness) unless it fits into your agenda of encouraging tent encampments, creating homeless shelters, or catering to the anti-building demands of Calle 24. The 1515 South Van Ness property (which is cater-corner to my house) has been a site of contention since 2014 when the Lennar development agency planned a 157-unit apartment building there. This development would have had ground floor below market rate artesian studios and 25% percentage of low income/affordable housing. You and Campos with the support of San Francisco supervisors cynically blocked Lennar’s efforts to break ground on this building. Finally, after you demanded a million dollars from Lennar to give to head of a Latinx Cultural organization, the developer cut their losses and put the property for sale. In March of 2016, reporter J.K. Dineen from the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: “In addition to the $1 million payment to a “cultural stabilization fund” run by Erick Arguello of the Calle24 Council, the former McMillan Electric building on the corner of 26th Street and South Van Ness will also be converted into a temporary homeless shelter until construction begins.” (Really Hillary?? A million dollar to a pet fund of Erick Arguello? This borders on extortion.) The temporary Navigation Center opened in June of 2017 and was supposed to be removed at the end of the year but was further delayed at a tremendous loss to the developer. Construction never began. Because you and Campos blocked and drained funds from this project for eight years, I have had to live cater-corner to a ½ city block with a vacant and dilapidated warehouse/parking lot. For ten months in 2016 it became an enormous homeless encampment that wrapped around the whole of this property. When the Navigation Center went in, my neighbors and I negotiated that only the homeless from the Mission be eligible (although I don’t think you kept to that promise), that the huge tent encampment on that block be serviced there first, and that there be a surrounding no-tent zone. Apparently, according to Mission Local, at the first Mission NC, homeless kept their tents in the area  and used the NC as a watering hole.  We did not want this trend to continue at 1515 South Van Ness. This center, again, sorely compromised the community, bringing into our neighborhood 120 homeless people, many of whom had mental and addiction issues. I would like to note that there were 120 beds but the homeless were cycled through every 30 or 60 days meaning countless people with severe issues were brought into our community. I had to become very politically active to make sure that the Navigation Center was run in a way to minimize negative effects on the neighborhood.  This personally took time away from my business and a severe stress on my mental health. No matter how well the Navigation Center was managed, it was still a disruptive influence in the neighborhood. The sidewalk planter in front of the B&W repair shop and directly across from my house became a favorite hangout of people to inject drugs and smoke crack. A lot of mentally compromised people roamed the neighborhood making threatening gestures, running around naked or half dressed, acting out in the streets, and generally being a disruptive presence. A Hispanic family who created an amazing fresh Mexican Seafood restaurant on 26th and South Van Ness, Rincon Nayarit, endured ten months of the homeless encampment and then over a year of the Navigation Center. I felt horrible for the restaurant owner and his family because they invested so much into their restaurant to make it really nice with wonderful décor and super fresh food. However, because their large plate-glass windows faced the homeless encampment, and then the entrance of the Navigation Center where often residents were acting out their addictions or mental problems, they had a hard time attracting business and ultimately folded. The Navigation Center was extended  months beyond their move out date drawing out the pain of the neighborhood’s residents and businesses.  Finally, the Lennar developers gave up building on the site. The city then bought the property in June of 2019 and promptly let it turn into a neglected blighted area with trash and human feces strewn sidewalks and where groups of men congregated (and still do) to get drunk. So, instead of having a building with people who are investing their efforts and resources into my neighborhood, I have had to live with, for the past eight years, a large blighted block, homeless encampments, and homeless shelters. The vacant city block also attracts crime such as gang shootings and car theft.  The one good thing is that the hard-core drug users and severely mentally ill who lived in the huge homeless encampment in 2016 and who were then brought into the subsequent Navigation Center  in 2017 no longer wandered the streets, although I expect that to change with the 'Safe Sleeping Area.' The Mission is suffering from overcrowding, one of the highest rates of Covit 19 in San Francisco, and, with a high percentage of people of color and immigrants, is already one of the densest neighborhoods in San Francisco.  Our neighborhood also has two solid blocks of low-income housing on 26th Street.  You pushed to get built a nine-story tower (four stories above the legal height limit here) for senior low income housing right next door to this blighted area. After the Covit 19 lockdown, Mayor Breed and you actively encouraged the homeless to take over our public sidewalks. Unconscionably, you never studied the socio-economic impact of either the Senior building or the Navigation Center to our already marginalized neighborhood. The zip code that you live in has been proven to influence your health. The stress of living in the middle of what can only be called city-government generated urban blight has taken a toll on my health and my income. The filth,  slum conditions, and the shelters add an additional burden on an already marginalized community. I hold you and Campos responsible for this ongoing fiasco that never seems to cease and has created horrible conditions in this area for eight years. It's easy to theorize about how to  govern, but what you don't realize is that your decisions have real-life consequences for people and your mismanagement and neglect of this site has been an enormous hardship to the constituents who live in this area. You call yourself progressive but you take advantage of marginalized neighborhoods like the Mission. You allow our public sidewalks to be taken over by encampments, you put the broken people from your failed policies into homeless shelters on our block, you turn a blind eye to slum lords, and you allow trash to accumulate on our streets. If I were to be kind, I would categorize your mismanagement of the my neighborhood as neglect, and it is true that you do neglect this area when it does not serve your purposes, but even worse than neglect, you are willfully using our community to warehouse San Francisco’s most desperately compromised people because we don’t have the power or financial clout to stop you. It is far easier, I am sure, to not care about the proliferation of tents in our community because you don’t get the pushback of more affluent neighboring communities such as Noe Valley, Potrero Hill, or Bernal Heights.  It is far easier to use our block for a Navigation Center than said neighborhoods.  It is far easier to use our block for a ‘Safe Sleeping Area’ than your own Portola neighborhood. But most egregiously, by stopping the development of housing on this site, you are directly responsible for this blighted block because you put your ideology over the interest of the people. Ours is a neighborhood of less affluent San Franciscans, people of color, and immigrants,  and so we can be used with little or no political sacrifice to you. In fact, we have been exploited for years by your neglect, mismanagement, and opportunism. Using the 1515 South Van Ness Avenue property to, yet again, bring in homeless from all over the city into our neighborhood,  is  one more notch in your deplorable record. The people in my community deserve better. You ask much of us but give nothing in return but empty symbolic nods to it being a Latinx  community. Has your neighborhood in Portola had its sidewalks used for housing the homeless? Has your neighborhood hosted a Navigation Center.  Is it going to host a safe sleeping area? Of course not. You destroyed the prospects of  permanent and stable  housing on this block and then you either neglect it or use it to solve the wreckage of San Francisco’s failed policies. If this is what you call good governance, you should take a good look at what you are burdening your under-privileged constituents with and, if that is ok with you, there is something profoundly not ok with your so called “progressive politics.” Sincerely, Francesca Pastine PS: It is already a done deal that you are going to use the 1515 South  Van Ness site as a ‘Safe Sleeping Area.’ That’s why you  removed the encampment on Shotwell Street, not because I wrote countless letters asking for its removal, because you had an agenda for the abandoned site and the tents were in the way of that.  I assume the encampment would still be on Shotwell Street, otherwise.  And here I thought my tiny little voice, and the voice of others that do not want slum conditions on their street, was heard. Now you’re going to set up a phony community meeting that will pit different factions against each other, the same shit-show you pulled when you decided to turn the building into a Navigation Center. But you have already decided on it with no community input so it’s just a useless dog and pony show designed to make you look good and waste everyone else’s time. Again, it’s all about you and not about your constituents. You really disappoint. Tens and car encampments quickly returned to the area. Ronen did nothing. Above: Car encampment on shotwell and 26th after Safe Sleeping Site was installed.

Here are pictures from around the 1515 South Van Ness Site that at this juncture should have been a 157 Unit Housing Project with 20% affordable and low-income housing with below-market-rate artist studios on the ground floor. Hillary Ronen killed this project. Instead, here is a letter from 2017 and images that show what I had to live with for over a ten month period. From here, things just got worse!!!