Supervisor Melgar Launches Her Own Homeless RV Village in District 7

SF Stats refute Melgar’s & media reusing a lone family's photos to propagandize . homeless families are living in RV’s

On April 26, 2023, I attended a Public Safety Townhall at St. Brendan’s Church Hall.  In attendance were DA Brooke Jenkins, SFPD Chief William Scott, and Supervisor Myrna Melgar.  

One attendee asked Melgar the question on the encroaching RV camping on Portola Drive as well as the flotilla of RV’s setting up residency on Lake Merced Boulevard (all in her district).  The supervisor quilted the attendee by claiming the RVs housed families with children.  The crowd audibly groaned in refutation. 

The crowd understood Melgar was just using the “unsheltered children myth” (myth #3 of the top ten homeless myths.)^[i]  I too wondered, “Where are all these mythical unsheltered homeless children?”  For 20 years, I spent 10 hours per day driving or bicycling SF streets as an SFPD officer.  Over those tens of thousands of hours of observation, never once did I see a homeless family with a child.

Last week, Alex Mullaney of the SF Standard published a heart wrenching article depicting three children from Mario Herrera’s family living in an RV near Lake Merced.  The intent of the SF Standard’s photographs of poster child victims of homelessness was to tug at the reader’s heart.  How could one not be moved by the faces of the children portrayed living in RVs?  But were the children an anomaly?  For 18 months (Jan 2020-June 2021), I bike commuted on the Lake Merced Boulevard bike path and never once saw a homeless child.

Without venturing into the border debate, Herrera should be commended for seeking a better life for his family of six.  I am confident his familial attitude will launch his decedents in an upwardly mobile trajectory. 

However, is it possible that Melgar and Mullaney are using the photographs of children as part of their conspiracy to once again implement the two-part West Portal playbook?

Play #1: Melgar takes an extremely rare tragic visual, and then guilts the public that this will frequently reoccur without implementing her proposed changes.  How can you not feel sorry for the family killed hundreds of feet away from West Portal Station?  Don’t you care about young children living in RV’s? 

Play #2: Melgar engages the community through her theater of limiting their choices to only her solutions for change.  The status quo or small changes are not an option.  Then Melgar bulldozes her non-D7 beliefs upon the neighborhood while disregarding her constituents’ livelihoods, mobility, and quality of life. 

The accidental killing of the family at West Portal was as rare as lightening striking the same spot three times, but are San Francisco children living in RVs equally scarce?

In one of Mullaney’s articles he stated, “many of Herrera’s neighbors are families with small children.”    Mullaney went on to use the same family’s photos, including one-year-old Jaden, in three separate articles (one, two, & three.)¹  Then this morning, the SF Chronicle, in another advocacy article, included a photo of baby Jaden and his siblings.  This raises the obvious question that if there are so many small children around, why is the media all recycling photos of the same lone family?  It smells of manipulation and misrepresentation! (Within the two weeks since this article was published, 7 different photos of Jaden were published between the SF Chronicle and the SF Standard.)

Enough with our observations about extremely rare unsheltered homeless children.  What do San Francisco’s homeless stats say?

Melgar is wrong, per city’s homeless stats, unsheltered SF homeless families are extremely rare

What are the stats on homeless families and children living in San Francisco?  The last San Francisco published “point-in-time” homeless census was taken in August 2022.  At that time, there were 7,754 unhoused individuals (below) in the city.

The census documents that a component of the 7,754 homeless individuals were 205 families consisting of 605 family members (below). 

Per the census, of those 205 families only 27 families did not live in a shelter (205 families x 13%).

Granted, homelessness presents fluid census numbers.  However, Mullaney quoted the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) claiming that “As of July, the department had moved 23 families out of vehicles and into housing.”   Thus, 27 families minus 23 families that are no longer living in vehicles equals only 4 remaining families.  So, throughout the entirety of SF, there are approximately only 4 families living in RVs, cars, or tents? While four unsheltered families are four too many, don’t you find it amazing how Mullaney was able to find one family from only four potential families within San Francisco’s 49 square mile haystack?

Melgar is wrong, per city’s homeless stats, unsheltered SF homeless children are extremely rare

If the 2022 point-in-time homeless census found that 13% of 605 “family members” were unsheltered that means only 79 individual family members were unhoused.  Of those 79 family members, by definition, one family member must have been an adult.  That reduces the maximum unsheltered homeless children’s census to 40 (39.5).  However, per the way the census is calculated, some of the 70 families could be composed of several adults and one child.  That would reduce even further the maximum possible number of unsheltered San Francisco children below 40.

If there are fewer than 40 unhoused children living in SF, that means they represent less than half of one percent of the total San Francisco unhoused population.  Again, with 1-in-200 odds of finding a homeless child, how was Mullaney able to find the children for his story?  And then Melgar was immediately again available to him as a source to demonstrate her compassionate opinions?  This reeks of a coordinated staging!

The creation of District 7’s Melgar Homeless RV Village 

On June 28, 2024, the US Supreme Court reversed the 9^th Circuit’s decisions in Martin vs. Boise and Johnson vs. Grant’s Pass.  Per the Supreme Court’s decision, they determined cities could enforce law restricting homeless encampments.   Mayor London Breed used the new court’s ruling to discourage the proliferation of homeless encampments throughout SF, including the RV’s stacked up near the students at Lowell High School and SF State. 

While the mayor and San Francisco were trying to move the RV armada off Lake Merced Boulevard, someone backdoored the redirection of the RVs to her campsite at Zoo Road (a horseshoe street on the westside of Lake Merced^[ii]). 

Does this mean children are playing near the dumped sewage of immobile RVs?

The Pomeroy Center shares the parking spots on Zoo Road that were consumed by the RVs’ relocation.  The center is a nonprofit community, run by CEO David Dubinsky, which services young people with developmental disabilities and brain injuries.  Dubinksy is empathetic to the plight of the homeless (including Melgar and Mullaney’s lone unhoused family). 

In Dubinsky’s correspondence to the Pomeroy Center board, he stated that some of the RVs lacked wheels and required tow trucks to assist in the relocation—not a small clandestine operation.  It also means that if these RVs are not mobile, there is a 100% chance they are dumping their raw sewage in the immediate area.  Myrna, don’t you care about the environmental impact of this dumped sewage and the unhoused children’s exposure to it?

Per Dubinsky, “The City Attorney’s office sent an investigator to ask questions and look at images that our security cameras may have picked up.”    The mystery of the homeless advocates’ militia is rather simple to solve, just ask the towing companies who paid their bill and trace the flow of funds to their approvals.

Supervisor Melgar is definitely Suspect #1 in this operation.  Dubinsky stated, “Melgar’s staff has been to the (Pomeroy) center and made it clear they want the RVs to stay.”  And, as she proved with her West Portal traffic reconfiguration, Melgar doesn’t listen to her voters—nor the mayor in the case of the new Melgar Homeless RV Village.

Either Melgar must answer for her involvement in this unauthorized operation of shifting RVs’ and the environmental impact of sewage dumping at Zoo Road, or this needs to be investigated by an agency more competent than the City Attorney’s Office. 

In Dubinksy’s email, he voiced concern that the RV Homeless Village will, as he says, “right or wrong,” create a negative perception for people visiting or using the Pomeroy Center. Is there a base for his comments?

Myth #10, Homeless don’t sell drugs

When I worked at the SFPD Narcotics division, unhoused people were one of our primary sources for access to drugs and drug sellers.  That is because most of our unhoused sources either used drugs, sold drugs themselves, or conspired with drug dealers.  Has it changed?

Just recently, on May 30^th, SFPD arrested individuals selling narcotics out of an RV at 17^th and Shotwell Street.  Melgar will tell you that arrestees were living in an RV because of the high price of housing in San Francisco.  But SFPD seized $630,000 and nine pounds of narcotics.  Myrna, $630,000 equates to a 20% deposit on a $3+ million home.  By the way, that would exceed the value of your husband’s home by over a million dollars.^[iii]

Transacting in drugs is one of the main hobbies in the Melgar Homeless RV Village that Melgar wants to preserve, and in proximity to her sole unhoused family.

This all comes down to the optics of assigning a child’s face to the homeless community

By Melgar falsely claiming that San Francisco RV campers are filled with children, she is just applying Marketing 101.  She is projecting children’s photos as the face of homelessness, even though those children represent a microscopic component of unsheltered homelessness.  

If one is seeking grants for the homeless industry, photos of children’s puppy dog faces create an air of sympathy, whereas the images of chronically narcotics-involved, tired-looking unhoused adults do not.  Think about it: the faces of just four unsheltered San Francisco families moves hundreds of millions of dollars to the adult homeless industry.

Supervisor Melgar is an integral part of this bait-and-switch ruse, it is obvious she is involved the preservation of RV’s in Melgar’s Homeless RV Village, and she could care less about the objectives of the district 7 voters she is supposed to represent.  She should be replaced in November.

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^[i] Top Ten myths about homelessness: 1) homeless is caused by the high price of homes,  2) adding more housing will eliminate homelessness, 3) Many unhoused families with children are living on the streets,  4) homeless people don’t spend most of their money on drugs, 5) Some of the people living in RV’s are public employees who can’t afford SF’s housing prices, 6) The majority of homeless have lived in San Francisco a long time (Ask them what high school they attended?), 7) Most homeless were recently evicted because of greedy landlords, 8) Most homeless just recently lost a job, 9). Unhoused people prefer to live inside, and 10) see story above.

^[ii

^[iii] I’m sorry if this comes off as sexist.  It was intended to expose Melgar’s misrepresentation that she is a “homeowner.”    Her name does not appear on the title of any residences in San Francisco.  There is nothing wrong with not being a homeowner, but why lie?  It goes to her integrity.

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