My truck is legal.
My truck was legally parked.
My truck hadnโt been in the same spot even 48 hours.
I wasnโt leaving trash, setting up a โyardโ, or other สสสแดษฅs behavior like running loud AF generatorโฆall night.
The SFPD/SFMTA are simply waging war on the unhoused.
I work here.
I pay into the economy here.
I pay for my SFMTA MUNI rides instead of hopping turnstiles or ignoring the clipper tag like a lot of unhoused folk and a fair percentage of others regularly do. I park legally, get around honestly, and donโt bother anyone with nonsense or BS. I stay in my lane.
My children live here. I stay close for them.
I had housing up until nearly five and a half years ago.
The city didnโt bother me while I had housing.
Now I donโt. I have a truck as what was meant to be a temporary housing situation. Very temporary.
I lived here for fifteen years and the city loved me, and I it. Fifteen years a roof and a place to hang a hat.
Divorce and financial hardship changed that.
I am still the same guy. Iโm older (this life ages you) and Iโm physically older anyway. The same adopted local who went to school, married, labored, divorced, labored more and ended up unhoused in this city.
My kids are growing up here and live with their mother. They are the third generation to be born here.
Thereโs no illicit activity. No drugs (mehbe a bit of medical MJ) of the scary sort, certainly no alcohol. No shady สฤฑษฅs going on.
Iโm just trying to live my lifeโฆwork hard to support my childrenโฆstay near them to still be presentโฆand maybe begin to get out of the cesspit of despair this ฦuฤฑสษnษ city seems determined to kick me further down into.
This ฦuฤฑสษnษ city which I love, it would seem to my own detriment, which happens to be named after St Francis of Assisi. You know. The guy who was all about helping the poor and fed birds at his monastery or some สฤฑษฅs?
Now San Francisco is a mockery of its namesake with how it treats its unhoused.
This is the third time Iโve been unjustly harassed like this. Specifically for parking longer than 72hrs but having been there for less than 48; All since the city decided the undesirables had to go.
And all I want to do is stay here for my kids and return to a housed situation. Iโm working hard in hopes to do that but have been stymied at every turn. But I still work and have hope I can find a roof and four walls with a place of peace to return at the end of the day and have my kids with me half the time, like a normal broken family!
I donโt like living vanlife. Iโm good at it but that doesnโt mean itโs good for me long-term. But itโs better than being on the street. SF REALLY hates you if you live there. I just wish they didnโt make it so difficult on people trying to bootstrap it.
สษnษ the Taraval station and their heartless สแดษฅsllnq policy of blindly targeting the struggling families out here.
Most of us living in our cars and trucks work jobs in town the city would collapse into disrepair without. We donโt make enough to even have a room there. But we work there and our city is better for it. But all the SFMTA, the SFPD, and their campaigning overlords in City Hall care about is making us just disappear.
