Bayview-Hunters Point Residents Protest Planned Homeless Shelter
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — Approximately 2,000 Bayview-Hunters Point residents have signed a petition protesting plans to put a 100-bed homeless shelter in their neighborhood. On Tuesday demonstrators took their concerns to San Francisco City Hall and said they have enough problems to deal with in an "over-burdened" area.
Last month the city's Board of Supervisors voted for a plan to fund a shelter next door to Mother Brown's Dining Room where a drop-in center without beds already exists on Jennings Street.
"Placing yet another homeless complex in our over-burdened neighborhood will compound our problems and compound the problems of the homeless, not solve them," said resident Jonathan Jermaine.
Merchants and residents in the area have complained the shelter already in the neighborhood isn't full and that almost two-dozen other service programs exist.
SF's Bayview-Hunters Point Residents Protest Planned Homeless Shelter In Their Neighborhood
"Concentrating poverty in one neighborhood leads to adverse impacts on health, both physical and mental of its residents," Jermaine added.
Advocates for the homeless said the shelter will offer help to people who sleep in chairs outside the drop-in center.
Even if the funding is available for the new homeless shelter, a zoning change is still needed before it can be built and according to the planning commission that could take up to a year.
