SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — The City of San Francisco argued Thursday afternoon that Tenderloin residents have not claimed the city took affirmative action causing a public health crisis in their lawsuit against the city over public drug use in the neighborhood.
Four unnamed residents of the neighborhood, along with the Phoenix and Best Western Hotels, claim the city is violating residents’ rights to equal protection and disability laws by allowing tents and people to crowd the sidewalks, creating a public nuisance. The residents first sued the city earlier in 2024, claiming the city treats the Tenderloin as a containment zone where it ignores drug use.
On Thursday, Thomas Lakritz of the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, arguing for dismissal of the suit, said that the plaintiffs are claiming that just because the city offers shelter, clean needles and street-based support to drug users in the Tenderloin that they are responsible for the conditions on the street.
“Yet they never describe how any of those three affirmative conducts or actions create either a public nuisance, private nuisance or how it creates any kind of state created danger claim,” Lakritz said. “All that they allege in the complaint and they argue in opposition is that it’s plausible that the conduct is because of the fact that we provide these services.”
Lakritz added that the plaintiffs have failed to prove that any of the people creating problems in the Tenderloin are the same people that the city provides service to, and even if the plaintiffs did claim that, the city cannot control if people who receive services create problems later.
“There’s no connection in the complaint or in the opposition that when the city provided the three things, which is the housing, the drug paraphernalia and the street-based support, that the city had the intent that it was going to cause harm or create danger,” Lakritz said, before adding that if the court ruled that the city could not provide resources in the Tenderloin, it would not be able to provide them anywhere.
U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, a Barack Obama appointee, called that last point “logical.”
Matthew Davis, counsel for the plaintiffs, said that Lakritz undersold the nature of the plaintiffs’ claims.
“We allege that the city actually affirmatively goes out to addicts who have refused offers of shelter and insist on staying on the sidewalks of this neighborhood, and provided some with drug paraphernalia and other services that support this decision that they’re going to live on the neighborhood’s streets,” Davis said.
Davis brought up the Cova Hotel, a city-run shelter which he said is run “like a drug house.”
“If a private landlord ran a facility where that private landlord knew that there was a lot of drug dealing and usage and criminal activity happening on their premises that were spilling outside the premises, then it would be foreseeable that that landlord would be sued for a nuisance,” Davis said. “We’re alleging the same thing with respect to the city’s operation of the Cova Hotel.”
Davis said that Lakritz’s argument did not hold water because then it would effectively be impossible for anyone to sue a government and hold them accountable.
On rebuttal, Lakritz said that there is no proof that people who stay at the Cova Hotel are the same people that the plaintiffs are complaining about.
Though Tigar initially dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims in July —saying that they had not proven the city affirmatively acted to create the conditions on the street in the Tenderloin, and allowing the residents a chance to amend their suit — he seemed persuaded by Davis’ final point.
Offering up a hypothetical to Lakritz, he asked what if a building owner kept a building in such a terrible state of uncleanliness that it caused an infestation of a neighborhood. Tigar said he didn’t believe the hypothetical building owner would not be able to be held accountable by saying there was no way to prove the infestation came from his building.
Tigar took the matter under submission but not say indicate when he would issue an order.