"UN report calls Bay Area homeless crisis human rights violation"

From Curbed:

Special rapporteur cites SF and Oakland along with worst slums in the world

In January, United Nations Special Rapporteur Leilani Farha visited Oakland and San Francisco as part of a fact-finding mission about housing and expressed shock and horror at the living conditions of homeless residents in one of the wealthiest societies in the world.

Last week at the UN General Assembly in New York, Farha presented her findings in a report titled On Adequate Housing as a Component of the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living, which made special mention of the Bay Area’s “cruel and inhuman” treatment of the homeless.

Farha’s presentation made only a few direct references to the Bay Area, in the same breath as cities like Belgrade, Mumbai, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Delhi, Mexico City, and Santiago, where she visited “overcrowded shacks,” “damp abandoned buildings,” “unrecognized settlements,” “half-demolished homes,” and even entire neighborhoods where residents live in “complete darkness during the daytime.”

Farha’s report recounted experiences in various impoverished communities around the world, including violent mass evictions, garbage piles, and teeming rodent populations.

Amidst all that she singles out Bay Area homeless camps—and city policies surrounding them—for what she alleges amount to human-rights violations:

Attempting to discourage residents from remaining in informal settlements or encampments by denying access to water, sanitation and health services and other basic necessities, as has been witnessed by the Special Rapporteur in San Francisco and Oakland constitutes cruel and inhuman treatment and is a violation of multiple human rights, including the rights to life, housing, health and water and sanitation.

[...] The right to a secure home is a universal right under international human rights law. Lack of security of tenure can never justify forced evictions of those residing in informal settlements.

Farha estimates that nearly a quarter of the world’s population live in “informal settlements”—i.e., slums, encampments, or other kinds of makeshift cum permanent or semi-permanent communities that form in almost any major city and are consistently in danger of forced removal by governing agents....MORE

Previously:

Feb 22
San Francisco: "UN expert decries homeless conditions in Bay Area as ‘cruel,’ ‘unacceptable’"
You may have seen the story.
The UN's special rapporteur on Adequate Housing has been jet-setting around, Mexico City, Mumbai, S.F., documenting what she sees:

“In Mexico City, I visited a low-income settlement that had been moved by the city onto empty land near a railway line,” [Farha] said. “They had no running water. They stole electricity.” The camp was noisy and dangerous. She noted that the camp in Mexico is virtually identical to those she visited in Oakland, including the Wood Street and 23rd Avenue encampments....

The above snip is from the East Bay Express reprinted in Curbed San Francisco.

Curbed has had one of the most impressive series on the situation of any major media.
There's the January 22 piece  we used for the headline which wraps up with:

After her trip to the Bay, Farha headed out to assess conditions in LA, an errand she told the East Bay Express she dreaded after observing encampments here.

Additionally they had coverage a week later with "How SF tourism industry deals with the homeless crisis":
“I actually think it’s the worst it’s ever been”

February 12's "San Francisco backs new law to intervene with severe homeless population":
“This is a public health issue and needs to be treated as such”

February 19's "Some SF streets filthier than world’s poorest slums, says UC Berkeley professor"
So kudos to Curbed.

Someone else who's been pointing out various aspects of the culture that is San Francisco is Elaine Ou who we linked to last summer in: San Francisco's Dirty Little Secret
And again in November's "Elaine Would Prefer That Amazon Not Move to San Francisco (AMZN)".

As I noted the first time we linked to the Curbed headliner:

It's a deliberate policy decision by the municipal and county government. More on that point next month....

Still not ready to do that but I thought we should update with the nod to Curbed. And earlier:

Bonhams Auctioneers Has Allegedly Installed Sprinklers To Douse Homeless Outside the Building
It seems they got the idea from the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Now, the auctioneers may think they are offering the homeless a cool, refreshing shower but boy the optics are bad.

From Curbed San Francisco:   
SF Luxury Auction House Allegedly Turns Sprinklers on Homeless [Update] 

...Using a sprinkler system to remove homeless people from structures is not a new idea. In 2015, the San Francisco Roman Catholic Archdiocese got into hot water after it was discovered that they were using sprinklers to regularly douse people camping overnight in the doorways of St. Mary’s Cathedral.... 

When youv'e lost the Catholics...