A group of more than 125 students and alumni of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law have signed onto a letter to Chancellor and Dean David Faigman criticizing the school's lawsuit against the city of San Francisco seeking to address conditions on the streets in the Tenderloin neighborhood it calls home.

The letter, penned by a group of eight current students, most of whom have worked with public defenders offices as part of the school's criminal practice clinic, claims that the lawsuit brought on behalf of the school, local residents and business "defines the community in a way that implicitly excludes our unhoused neighbor." 

"We believe this suit will displace the Tenderloin's houseless population and distribute it throughout San Francisco, limiting these individuals' ability to organize and support one another," the letter says. "We also believe the City will use this suit to justify increased police repression of our unhoused neighbors, many of whom are people with disabilities, African American, and Latinx people displaced from their homes by economic and political violence."

Faigman in a phone interview Thursday said that the goals of the letter writers were "quite aligned" with what the school is seeking to accomplish through the lawsuit. But he added that the letter-writers "misunderstand" the litigation and that he plans to respond to them in writing. 

"As law students and lawyers well understand, a lawyer has to represent the interest of his or her client," Faigman said. The dean added that homeless residents of the Tenderloin weren't included among the plaintiffs not because of any sense of "animus," but because the homeless are "differently situated" than the plaintiff residents and business. 

 "I agree that the houseless have needs that need to be attended to, and I do believe that the outcome that we seek will benefit the houseless and the housed in the Tenderloin," Faigman said. 

The school joined other residents and businesses in the city's Tenderloin neighborhood earlier this month claiming in a federal lawsuit that San Francisco officials have allowed the Tenderloin to become "a containment zone" for drug and homelessness issues—issues further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The suit claims that the increase of people living on neighborhood streets in recent months has combined with the open-air drug sales in the neighborhood to make conditions "insufferable." Faigman said Thursday comments he's received in support of the lawsuit have outnumbered critical ones 100-to-1.

The open letter, however, claims that the school's approach would invite the city to treat the homeless as criminals. "As UC Hastings students and alumni invested in an equitable future for all Tenderloin residents, we believe our school should meaningfully challenge the social, economic, and political conditions that create and perpetuate homelessness," the letter said. "Doing so requires breaking the cycle of the failed 'war on drugs' and the gentrification that has forced so many of our houseless neighbors onto the streets."

Abel Mouton, one of the letter's authors who is in the class of 2021 at the school, said that the lawsuit should probably name San Francisco Mayor London Breed since she ignored a unanimous vote by the city's board of supervisors last month to house the city's homeless in hotels during the pandemic. "UC Hastings must realize that the relief sought from the lawsuit will have lasting effects on the Tenderloin community if [people experiencing homelessness] are displaced to the City's jails," the letter says. "By not criminalizing our unhoused neighbors, UC Hastings may begin to live up to its social justice values."

Faigman said Thursday that, ultimately, he thinks city officials, the school and the letter's signatories share a similar vision for the neighborhood where the unhoused can find shelter and access to sanitation and health care and where neighborhood streets are safe for residents and local businesses.

"Ultimately for me the bottom line is this is a political fraught problem there are rights and interest on every side including the city, the homeless and the residents and we need a strong federal judge, and I think we've got one with Judge [Jon] Tigar that is able to take into account all the rights and interests involved and come to a short and long-term solution," Faigman said.

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