This year marks the 50th anniversary of football’s Super Bowl. Fifty years is a momentous occasion, whether you’re a sports fanatic or not. Celebrations—and marketing—are underway. But guess who’s not welcome to the party? San Francisco’s homeless, that’s who. Super Bowl 50 will take place this year in Santa Clara, about an hour’s drive South of San Francisco and yet, you’d think the game was being played on San Francisco’s streets.
A “Super Bowl City” has been set up, a pedestrian-friendly village of shops, entertainment, exhibits … even a trophy collection named after famed Green Bay Packer Coach Vince Lombardi, whose name adorns the Super Bowl trophy is on display. Also on display is San Francisco’s special brand of cruelty.
“We wanted to ask San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee about his plans for the homeless, in light of the big game. We met him at the opening of Super Bowl City.”
Noyes: “Is there a special push to hide the homeless for the Super Bowl?
Lee: “No, I don't think we're hiding anybody. This is a city of a lot of tolerance, but we do want to get people off the streets. I mean that is our ultimate and day-to-day goal.”
“But homeless advocates say the tactics are having the opposite effect. Dustin Edwards got a $100 citation for blocking the sidewalk. He told us, “The police showed up and basically just wrote it out for me because I was here on the sidewalk.”
“He doesn't know how he'll pay.”
According to Salon.com:
The first official signs of Super Bowl 50—six-foot-tall, 1,600-pound, solar-powered number 50s, each with its own Super Bowl-themed design—started popping up at photogenic landmarks around San Francisco two weeks ago.
The first unofficial signs—rows of tents and tarps lining a major thoroughfare under the I-80 freeway to the Bay Bridge—started popping up two months ago.
That’s when Oscar McKinney, a 49-year-old hearse driver, pitched a tent on the sidewalk across from a Best Buy parking lot.
McKinney moved there after being ousted from an encampment near the downtown staging area for Super Bowl City.
“They’re herding us like cattle,” he said.
Within weeks, McKinney’s “neighborhood” has grown from a couple of dozen sporadic encampments to San Francisco’s most visible tent city. At least 100 tents stretch over a dozen blocks, side streets and alleys. Many tents, even the popup pup tents, house two people and at least one dog. Even jaded San Franciscans are stunned by the sight.
So San Francisco began clearing out its homeless two months ago? While we aren’t privy to actual discussions and notes from meetings, it’s a safe bet to say that plans for the city’s celebrations were drawn up long before there was actual movement on the streets.
Speaking of movement on the streets, it’s San Francisco, so you know protests have been held and more of the same are planned.
Activists upset with the NFL hoopla sweeping San Francisco plan[ned] to set up a homeless tent camp near the carnival-like Super Bowl City along the Embarcadero Wednesday afternoon and warned that hundreds of protesters are expected to participate.
[…]
Organizers of the protest tent city say they expect hundreds of participants to set up camp near Super Bowl City at the foot of Market Street. Social media postings ask protesters to show up at 4:30 p.m. near the Ferry Building with their belongings.
“Our goal is to give homeless people an opportunity to speak, because they are feeling really disempowered and attacked,” said Lisa Marie Alatorre, an organizer of the protest with the Coalition on Homelessness.
There’s no timeline for how long the tent city will stay, though the adjacent Super Bowl City attraction will be dismantled not long after the football game on Sunday.
“We will stay at the tent city as long as we can hold it,” Alatorre said.
In fairness to the city of San Francisco, folks in city government are working on a winter shelter for the homeless. Because El Nino is no joke, ya know? The shelter will hold up to 150 people and those in need will be allowed to stay through March.