Letters for the week of October 24-30, 2007

Hotel (Northern) California

A lovely place: The front page cartoon for the "Vice Hotel" article [Oct. 10] is a cruel and bitter irony, for the cartoon appears to depict affluent dotcom refugees getting in touch with their bad selves by partying at the "Vice Hotel."

The irony is that many of the tenants at the Mission Hotel and every other residential hotel have been economically displaced by the newly arrived, which not so coincidentally is a coveted audience for SF Weekly advertisers.

Grinding poverty is the rule, not the exception, at many residential hotels. I would know, because I worked at several Tenderloin Housing Clinic hotels for two years. Almost all of the tenants make less than $800 a month, and most spend their days trying to survive. Those tenants do not have enough money to party, and I would imagine that there is probably far more recreational drug use among the staff of the SF Weekly than the Mission Hotel tenants.

The article is grossly unfair and insulting to the tenants of the Mission Hotel, all of whom are struggling on very low incomes. This article makes mockery of their economic circumstances. It also appears that it is based entirely upon anonymous sources and one application for a restraining order that has not been granted.

One of the most obvious features of gentrification is that the newly arrived have an economic incentive to depict their neighbors as criminals. Being poor in itself is not a crime, but portraying low-income housing as a seething hotbed of criminality in combination with a few well-placed newspaper "stories" may get rid of one's unwanted neighbors.

The article goes out of its way to acknowledge Randy Shaw's advocacy for tenants, but what I fear is that funding for nonprofits will be reduced and the tenants will be thrown overboard, not Randy Shaw. I am sure that local real-estate interests are quite pleased.

The Sucker-Full Chron

Criticizing our criticism of the Chron's criticisms ... meta!: This criticism is a bit unfair ["Sucka Free Chronicle Watch," Oct. 17] — the Chronicle Watch is the best thing about the Chronicle, and I'm surprised the Weekly would be so critical. I mean, it's the one thing in that paper that's locally focused, and doesn't concern Gavin Newsom's hair or sexual habits. And it gets shit done. There are a lot of things wrong with the Chronicle, but don't hate on the Chronicle Watch!

Hobo Photos

Nevius, insidious: The Chronicle and Gavin Newsom are both working to raise their own popularity by giving the frustrated middle class permission to hate a powerless minority ["The Call for 'Vagrant' Hunters: San Francisco Chronicle's homelessness crusade raises ethical questions, Oct. 12," The Snitch, S.F. Weekly news blog]. The climate they are trying to create in San Francisco bizarrely exempts homeless people from the usual late-20th-century moral strictures against public expressions of bigotry.

Our civilized restrictions against prejudice based on gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc., seem to have penned up reservoirs of hate in some people. These otherwise inhibited haters are now being given permission to dump out their very worst on the most disadvantaged people.

What kind of city is it that tolerates a campaign of hatred against its poorest people for the crime of having no money?

Correction

Last week, we ran a Free Will Astrology column intended for a different week. SF Weekly regrets the error, and any cosmic confusion we may have inadvertently caused our readers.