Plaintiffs in lawsuit speak out as 'Tenderloin sinks into chaos'

SAN FRANCISCO - For the first time, we are hearing from the plaintiffs behind a lawsuit aimed at the city of San Francisco over conditions in the Tenderloin District. 

These residents say they want the city to take decisive action to improve conditions. The residents say it doesn't seem fair to them, they pay their taxes just like everyone else, but they don't get to enjoy the same benefits of clean and safe streets like other San Francisco residents. 

Conditions in San Francisco's Tenderloin are at the ongoing center of debate, and now at the center of a lawsuit filed last week.

Residents and hotels in the area say the city hasn't done enough to improve street conditions, and filed a suit in federal court saying while they pay their taxes, they don't get the same services that other city residents receive.

Several of the residents chose to remain anonymous, but are speaking out now for the first time about what it's like living in the Tenderloin. "It is dangerous to come outside,' said one female resident. "I work three days a week. I have to walk two blocks up there's drugs going on and drug dealers."

Another resident said she is raising two children in the Tenderloin and that it's not fair that they have to live in a dangerous neighborhood. "All I'm asking for is just one thing: security," she said.

The attorney representing the plaintiffs says the city has allowed the Tenderloin to sink into chaos. 

"It's even a little bit more than that, there's evidence that the city has treated this neighborhood as the containment zone," said plaintiff attorney Matt Davis. "This is where the city has directed this activity, with the hope, apparently, that if we can contain it to the Tenderloin perhaps it won't spread to other neighborhoods."

San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said everyone in the city deserves safe, clean streets, and that San Francisco is making a good-faith effort, working with state and federal law officials, to clear the Tenderloin, all that despite battling an injunction it says is hampering the effort. "The city has spent significant effort to reduce crime, to disrupt open air drug dealing, and address homelessness, all within the bounds of the injunction that we are under," said City Attorney Chiu.

The residents say they were worried when they heard the city initially asked that their identities be revealed, saying they've already been threatened by drug dealers about coming forward. They're worried having their identities revealed would be dangerous. "What is going to happen," asked the mother of two. "What's going to happen is those people have threatened to kill me, it's basically…I'm not going to wake up the next morning."

The city attorney said anonymous plaintiffs are unusual, and that the plaintiffs' attorney didn't initially file the request properly. Once that paperwork was filed, the city attorney's office said it filed its own paperwork saying it does not oppose them remaining anonymous, leaving the matter in the hands of the judge. 

"The fact that they have re-filed the motion demonstrates the fact that that first motion was inadequate," said City Attorney Chiu. "From our perspective, we don't want to put any Tenderloin residents in harms way. We're very sympathetic to the plight of what's going on in the Tenderloin."

The question of whether those plaintiffs will be asked to publicly reveal their identities is now in the hands of that judge. If the judge decides they have to reveal their identity, their lawyer says some of them will likely have to drop out of the case to avoid the possibility of retribution.