LIVININTHELOIN

An enlightening article on the “poverty pimp” complex operating in The Tenderloin, and surrounding areas:

Petitioners Line Up Against SoMa’s Mak Hotel for Bringing Cops

Friday, November 6, 2009, by Andy J. Wang  [Curbed SF]

The former Kink.com porn studio and planned 15-story three-star hotel at 942 Mission is planning on moving ahead “at a rapid pace,” but so far it’s had its day at the Planning Commission pushed back a couple times in a row now. The Mint Developers project has already grabbed a go-ahead from the Planning Department, which declared it “could not have a significant effect on the environment,” but it seems certain parties are seeking a rollback of that decision. What’s the beef? Perhaps a super secret spy cam will tell us!

In the below video, left on Curbed SF’s front porch this morning, petitioners go door to door in what looks like an SRO, warning about an “expensive high-rise hotel” that will “displace people like you and I.” The signature seeker goes on to say, while referring to 942 Mission, that people like “you and I aren’t going to have any place to live around here,” though one must assume the video doesn’t take place in the abandoned porn studio. Then, (and perhaps here’s the kicker!) the Mak Hotel would also ominously “create more of a police presence” in the Mission and 6th area.

It’s not obvious who the petition seekers are in the video, but our scout blames the “appeal to the ghetto” indirectly on a Tenderloin housing advocate who “wants to stop any development in the tenderloin area. He will keep the area a ghetto if it’s the last thing he does, as long as he doesn’t live there himself.” Friends are so hard to come by these days.

More, from [bluoz.com]:  “The two petitioners are employed by the Central City SRO Collaborative, and is a part of Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which is run by activist Randy Shaw. The entire operation, all three, are paid for with city funds and is primarily geared, by contract, for advocating and housing for the homeless.”