A group of residents and businesses in San Francisco's Tenderloin have taken the city to court, seeking a court order requiring the city to address rampant crime and sanitation issues in the famously gritty neighborhood, and end an alleged unwritten policy seeking to contain open air drug dealing and other criminal and dangerous behavior there, to prevent their spread to other parts of San Francisco.
The lawsuit was filed on March 14 in San Francisco federal court by attorneys with the firms of Walkup Melodia Kelley & Schoenberger, of San Francisco, and Kline & Specter, of Philadelphia.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of residents identified only as Jane, Mary, Susan, John and Barbara Roe, some of whom are identified as immigrants, elderly and disabled.
Other plaintiffs include businesses including Phoenix Hotel; Funky Fun LLC, which operates a restaurant inside the Phoenix Hotel; and El Camino LLC, which operates the Best Western Road Coach Inn.
According to the lawsuit, the Tenderloin has always had a reputation as a place for people arriving in San Francisco to live and attempt to make their fortune, beginning with those arriving in California during the Gold Rush of 1849.
According to the complaint, the Tenderloin continues to offer entrepreneurs the chance to start a business with relatively little capital, given its location, demographics and rather rough around the edges reputation.
Throughout its history, the neighborhood has been integrated and culturally and ethnically diverse.
According to the complaint, the neighborhood today is home to many low income and working class families, including more than 3,000 children, which the complaint notes is higher than other San Francisco neighborhoods.
However, the complaint asserts San Francisco police and city officials have for years established a de facto policy of allowing a greater degree of criminal activity to occur in the Tenderloin than in other neighborhoods in the city.
"The City tries to keep such crimes and nuisances out of other San Francisco neighborhoods by 'containing' them in the Tenderloin," the complaint asserts.
The plaintiffs note they have no written evidence to substantiate this particular assertion, but they said it is understood to be the case by those who live and work in the Tenderloin, and others within the city.
But the plaintiffs assert this policy since 2019 has allowed the Tenderloin to descend into such a state that the neighborhood has become all but unlivable, and businesses struggle to survive.
The plaintiffs note that sidewalks and streets throughout the Tenderloin are packed not only with homeless individuals, but gang members and others selling and taking drugs of all kinds, including fentanyl and other "potent, highly addictive and deadly opiates," while other criminal activity of all kinds flourishes.
Plaintiffs assert open air drug markets are common right outside of apartment buildings and homes in which children and families live, operating without fear of law enforcement.
The Phoenix Hotel asserted the dangerous and unsanitary conditions outside its doors have contributed to a loss of two-thirds of its income compared to 2019. They say patrons repeatedly praise their actual hotel property, but decline to return to stay at the hotel so long as they sidewalks and streets in the surrounding neighborhood remain in their dangerous and unsanitary conditions.
They included numerous comments and reviews from patrons who stayed at the hotel, but refuse to return, with one saying he was "glad I survived."
In their lawsuit, plaintiffs say they are not seeking any payout of money damages or other compensation from the city and county of San Francisco.
Rather, they say they are suing merely to force the city to address the societal breakdown that has made their streets and sidewalks dangerous, unsanitary and impassable. They are seeking a court order compelling the city to end its "containment" policy in the Tenderloin and give the neighborhood and its residents the same public safety and sanitation services provided to other areas of the city.
The city, they say, has allowed the rampant lawlessness, violence and squalor "to become the norm, rather than the exception, in the Tenderloin.
"It is inconceivable that the City would tolerate such ... turmoil in Pacific Heights, the Inner Sunset, Alamo Square, Bernal Heights, or Telegraph Hill," they said.
"... The consequences of the containment zone policy to the residents of and stakeholders in the Tenderloin have been devastating and constitute a violation of their dignity and fundamental civil rights," the plaintiffs wrote. "This is a state-created danger. It is both a public and a private nuisance. It has deprived plaintiffs of equal protection of the law and of fundamental liberty interests protected by the United States and California Constitutions."