FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 21^st December 2022

MEDIA CONTACT: Raya Steier rsteier@lccrsf.org 530-723-2426

***PRESS RELEASE***

Tomorrow, plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the City of San Francisco for criminalizing homelessness will hold an in-person press conference at 11AM on the steps of the Ronald V. Dellums U.S. Court House in Oakland, CA before the commencement of the preliminary injunction hearing in the case. The address for the in-person press conference is 1301 Clay Street, Oakland, CA 94612. The preliminary injunction hearing will be remotely held at 1PM tomorrow via video conferencing.

In September 2022, the Coalition on Homelessness and seven individual plaintiffs sued the City of San Francisco, Mayor London Breed, the San Francisco Police Department and several other City departments for their efforts to criminalize homelessness through cruel and unconstitutional policing and property destruction. Plaintiffs in the case are seeking a preliminary injunction to put an end to these unlawful practices on an emergency basis.

The City of San Francisco has consistently and openly violated both the U.S. Constitution and San Francisco’s own policies that purport to require a service-first approach to the homelessness crisis. Contrary to its own policies, the City has forced unhoused people out of sight, seizing and destroying their personal belongings, and citing and arresting them for sleeping in public, all while unhoused residents of San Francisco have nowhere else to go. The City punishes the unhoused by enforcing more anti-homelessness ordinances than any other place in California. These regressive tough-on-crime, mass incarceration-era policies only worsen the City’s homelessness crisis. Mayor Breed and the City have scapegoated the unhoused and blamed them for the City’s own abject failure to create affordable housing for the thousands of residents who desperately need it.

Unhoused San Franciscans deserve proven solutions to homelessness like permanent affordable housing. They do not deserve to be punished through unlawful policing practices that make it more difficult for them to exit homelessness. Through the preliminary injunction hearing, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit seek to hold the City accountable for its illegal practices and to end its unconstitutional harassment of unhoused San Franciscans.

Speakers at tomorrow’s in-person press conference include the lawsuit’s lead organizational plaintiff, the Coalition on Homelessness, alongside unhoused plaintiffs and witnesses in the case and other community advocates. The hearing can be viewed remotely starting 1PM tomorrow with this link. Attorneys for the plaintiffs will be available for comment after the hearing via this Zoom link.

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