A tale of two turfs

San Francisco continues its foot-dragging failure to improve conditions for its unhoused tent residents crowding the Civic Center and Tenderloin neighborhoods. Mission Local reports:

Although the Tenderloin plan calls for safe sleeping sites “in and outside of the Tenderloin” it did not list any specific locations, but it listed Tenderloin parking lots, sidewalks, and blocked off streets as possible safe sleeping sites.

[Pratibha] Tekkey, the director of community organizing at the Central City SRO Collaborative, said the parking lots listed in the plan, such as the vacant lots at 180 Jones and on Hyde and Turk, are “extremely small” and can only have up to 15 tents to be able to follow social distancing protocols.

“It doesn’t make sense to have 10 tents in each parking lot,” she said. “You’re still not changing what the problem is.”

That is, hundreds of homeless people in a dense neighborhood alongside 25,000 housed residents who also do not feel safe leaving their homes and going to essential businesses during the pandemic, Tekkey said.

Meanwhile in the far southeast of the city, there's this:

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

According to a San Francisco Examiner account, Bayview neighborhood non-profits got tired of waiting for action from the city.

Bayview homeless advocates and nonprofits have set up a tent encampment at Bayview Park in reaction to The City’s slow action to find shelter for the neighborhood’s unhoused residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Community organizers from the United Council of Human Services, also known as Mother Brown’s, and Beds 4 Bayview, established the camp in the park near the closed Martin Luther King Jr. pool with 40 tents arranged to allow for social distancing. Encampment residents have access to restroom facilities on site, and are being supplied with water, food, security and other services by the organizations.

It looked like a big improvement on city center conditions or even the doorways on Valencia Street to me. Though of course unhoused people are just as much attached to their accustomed neighborhoods as the rest of us ...