Last December the mayor’s public safety policy manager Maria Rubio took a trip to San Francisco with the vice president of the Portland Business Alliance, Mike Kuykendall. They were there to talk to mayor Gavin Newsom and others about Portland’s “street access for everyone” (SAFE) program, which spawned our ghastly sit/lie ordinance. Now, San Francisco has a SAFE committee of its own, and SF Chronicle columnist C.W.Nevius writes hopefully about that committee today.

So far, no sit/lie law is being mentioned. Instead, the committee is talking about a drug free zone around the city’s train station. People are talking about “public urination, aggressive panhandling, and drug use,” and there’s an overall impression of collaboration being given off by Nevius’ write-up. My caution would be that we had the same air of cooperation here in Portland, when the SAFE group began convening. People were optimistic about new levels of understanding between homeless advocates and the business community. But all they got was a bunch of promises to work on services, and a discriminatory and controversial law.

“Based on the last meeting, it was pretty disappointing,” Nevius quotes Coalition Against Homelessness director Jennifer Friedenbach as saying. “It seems pretty clear that they want some kind of a criminal justice push for what are poverty issues.”

Sounds all too familiar.

I’m beginning at last to understand why Sam Adams just took a trip to China: It would be nice if Portland could export something other than its intolerant and amoral strategies for further marginalizing poor people. Hope springs eternal.

Matt Davis was news editor of the Mercury from 2009 to May 2010.

5 replies on “San Francisco’s Own Sit/Lie Process”

  1. Rather than the old routine of blame and argue, which has paralyzed discussion for 20 years or more

    No one does more for that game than C.W. Nevius. That guy is a major homeless-hating asshole. (Oops, guess I’m playing some blame and argue myself.)

    When I first moved here last year, he was penning a long series of reports about (*gasp*) homeless people sleeping in Golden Gate Park. Newsom jumped into “action” and essentially forced them all out. So of course they just ended up sleeping in front of people’s houses in the Sunset and Richmond neighborhoods that surround the park. Smart. Eventually Nevius moved on to other annoying topics and the homeless went back to the park.

    I don’t trust Newsom to do anything useful about the problem at all. He’s not a terrible mayor, all things considered, but a city as liberal as SF certainly deserves better. He pretty much coasts by because people that don’t pay attention only remember his support for same-sex marriage and overlook everything else he does. And now that he’s essentially campaigning for governor, he’s only getting worse. For example, ignoring many of the city’s very strong voter-supported pro-immigrant laws, even ones that he’s on record as supporting, because he knows they won’t fly in the rest of the state.

  2. Oh that first line was a quote from Nevius’ column . I always put quotes in italics, but the new Merc comments don’t allow italics. It makes me so sad.

  3. Actually, a sit/lie ordinance for San Francisco is definitely in the works. Nevius didn’t mention it, but as I reported on the last meeting of this work group:

    “According to the description on the meeting agenda, VIP zones would be established around downtown, the Yerba Buena center, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, and Union Square as areas subject to ‘special enforcement of drug laws, aggressive panhandling, sitting/lying on sidewalks’ and other ‘quality of life crimes.'”

    You can read the entire story here:
    http://www.sfbayguardian.com/entry.php?entry_id=7121&catid=&volume_id=317&issue_id=396&volume_num=42&issue_num=51

    Cheers,
    Amanda Witherell
    Reporter
    San Francisco Bay Guardian

  5. SAFE is classic double-speak. ASk a homeless person who has had their head stomped and shit stolen cause he didn’t get up fast enough for these “SAFE” enforcers.

    They’re trying the same ruse in SF by talking about ‘drug-free zones’. But it will involve the SAME abuses and brutality against those ‘dirty hippies’…

    WARN THEM- a war is coming soon

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