TLM Online: The Tenderloin and City Hall “A Century of Conflict”

Submitted by the Event Organizer

According to Randy Shaw, attorney, activist, and Executive Director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, for the last 100 years, the Tenderloin neighborhood has actively fought City Hall for survival. Treated as the black sheep of the Bay Area, the neighborhood, for all its cultural diversity and historical value, has endured more ongoing conflict than any other district in San Francisco. From the time City Hall shut it down entirely in 1917 to its present day status as a “containment zone—” an area where illicit activities are not only permitted, but propagated by the City—the neighborhood is now facing even more complex hardships during the ongoing pandemic.

In the past year, violent crime has shot up in the Tenderloin by 24 percent, and the neighborhood now has nearly 400 tents occupied by two to three people at a time. “We can’t offer a safe place to live, it’s an unsafe environment. There’s no other way to say it,” says Kathy Looper, landlord of the Cadillac Hotel, a nonprofit hotel on Leavenworth and Eddy which houses low-income and formerly homeless residents. According to Looper, children struggle to get to school in the area, and residents are afraid to get services—or basic resources like groceries due to crowding on the sidewalks. For Looper and Shaw, it’s integral that the City of San Francisco takes action and treats the Tenderloin as a community rather than a containment zone—which is why they worked together in conjunction with business owners, residents, and local law school, UC Hastings, to file a lawsuit against the City for its neglect of the neighborhood.

On Thursday, May 21, join the Tenderloin Museum for a digital panel discussion between Randy Shaw, author, Tenderloin Museum Founder, and Tenderloin Housing Clinic Director, and Kathy Looper, landlord of the Cadillac Hotel, the first non-profit SRO in the West. Advocates of the Tenderloin, Shaw and Looper will detail the neighborhood’s decade-by-decade conflicts, its present day hardships, and the future of the neighborhood’s social, political, and economic landscape.

About the speakers:

Randy Shaw, Executive Director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic Tenderloin, Tenderloin Museum Founder

Randy Shaw is a Berkeley-based attorney, activist, and author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. A longtime proponent of tenants’ rights, Shaw has drafted pro-tenant key city ballot measures and state laws, co-authored studies on housing crises, and authored six books on activism and social change since the 1990s. In 1980, Shaw opened the Tenderloin Housing Clinic (THC), which prevents tenant displacement and provides legal assistance to low-income tenants. THC is currently one of the largest nonprofits in San Francisco which offers legal, housing, and support services, and continues to spearhead housing efforts for San Francisco’s most vulnerable populations today. In 2015, Shaw founded the Tenderloin Museum, which preserves the Tenderloin’s iconoclastic history, where he continues to serve as a board member.

Kathy Looper

Kathy Looper is the Administrator and Executive Director of Reality House West, Inc., San Francisco, a non-profit that has provided drug detox and rehabilitation services; a youth offenders residential program; housing for 160 low income senior citizens; a re-entry program for Federal prisoners; and community and economic development work in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco. She has 51 years of experience in the non-profit sector, and has won multiple awards from the State of California and the City and County of San Francisco for her work supporting homeless, low-income, and disabled communities. Looper and her husband, Leroy Looper, purchased and renovated the Cadillac Hotel in 1977, which set the groundwork for “supportive housing” that we see in San Francisco today.

Photo: Phil Head

Free | Suggested donation of $10
The event is limited to 500 attendees.
Zoom link will be sent on the day of the event to those who register.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.