SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A group of residents and businesses in the Tenderloin neighborhood filed a federal lawsuit against the city of San Francisco Thursday morning accusing the city of allowing open-air drug markets and homeless encampments to proliferate in the neighborhood.
The plaintiffs in their 30-page complaint accuse the city of allowing the neighborhood to become a “containment zone for narcotic activities.”
“For years, the de facto policy of the city has been to corral and confine illegal drug dealing and usage, and the associated injurious behaviors, to the Tenderloin. The city tries to keep such crimes and nuisances out of other San Francisco neighborhoods by ‘containing’ them in the Tenderloin,” the plaintiffs write.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four unnamed residents of the neighborhood, as well as the Phoenix and Best Western Hotels, who claim the city is violating residents’ rights to equal protection and disability laws by allowing tents and people to crowd the sidewalks, creating a public nuisance.
The residents, who are represented by the Walkup law office in San Francisco, claim large crowds of people gather outside their homes selling and using drugs and shilling stolen merchandise — at times forcing residents to walk in the street to get away from the crowds.
Matthew Davis, a shareholder at Walkup, accused San Francisco of indifference and neglect.
“[T]he city’s policies and practices have rendered the sidewalks and public spaces around our client’s homes and businesses unsafe, unsanitary, and impassible," Davis said in a statement.
"It is inconceivable that the city would tolerate such dangerous nuisances in other neighborhoods. The residents, families, and small businesses in this historically diverse neighborhood will no longer tolerate this discriminatory treatment.”
The hotels claim the conditions in the neighborhood hurt their businesses by scaring away customers and making it difficult to staff the hotel, since employees are reluctant to work in the area. The complaint included examples of negative reviews in which guests complained of noise — including screaming and constant police sirens — as well as unpleasant smells, drug use and the presence of homeless people, all leading to an environment where they felt unsafe.
The Best Western property borders Willow Street, where activists opened an unsanctioned safe consumption site last August where the city, according to the suit, “made no effort to punish or reprimand those who operated it.”
The plaintiffs also say the city tolerates violence, theft and the fencing of stolen goods in the Tenderloin.
They are not seeking any monetary damages; rather, they want the court to require San Francisco to keep the sidewalks and public spaces “clean, safe and accessible.”
“They demand an end to the rampant illegal street vending, and from the squalor and misery that exists throughout their neighborhood because the city has decided that people in the throes of addiction can live and die on the Tenderloin’s streets,” Davis said. “We view this lawsuit as an opportunity for the city to take immediate action to effectuate real and lasting change in the Tenderloin. We seek what is not only good for the neighborhood, but also San Francisco as a whole.”
San Francisco has been unable to sweep homeless encampments without first offering immediately available shelter to the residents since December 2022, due to a federal injunction that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld in January 2024.
That suit — now on pause while the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a similar case — was originally filed by the Coalition on Homelessness, which argued that sweeping encampments violated the rights of the unhoused.
The city touted its efforts in response to that case in reaction to the residents' and businesses' suit filed Thursday.
“While we understand and share the frustration of Tenderloin businesses and residents, the city is making progress in reducing crime, disrupting open-air drug markets, and addressing homelessness, all while complying with the preliminary injunction issued in the Coalition on Homelessness case,” Jen Kwart, spokesperson for city attorney David Chiu, said in a statement.
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