Dear Mayor Nash and Council members,
Yesterday as I headed up the walkway to vote at the Arrillaga Center, I had to walk past a homeless woman on a bench with trash bags seemingly full of her belongings on one side, and a large pile of soiled toilet paper on the other side.
When I asked the information desk ladies about this, they said they’d notified the police but they left her there.
They said that may be because they’re employed by the city, and maybe I would get a better response.
So I phoned the police department, and was told the police know about the homeless woman who set up a tent-less camp there—and who was obviously using the Civic Center public walkway as her toilet--and offered her assistance, but she declined, and the woman I spoke with on the phone, who wouldn’t give me her name but said she was “Number 6”, told me "there is nothing else they can do.”
Is this any way to run a city?
This apparently means that if 10 or 20 or 200 homeless people decided to camp in our Civic Center, the city would do nothing about it.
If it’s not an issue for the police, why didn’t they immediately contact Public Works if it falls to them to handle it?
Is everyone passing the buck here?
Since this happened on Election Day, it serves as a striking metaphor for the way our city has been run under the purview of the majority of this Council.
Photos attached.
Sincerely,
Cherie Zaslawsky
