By David Woo, HANC Vice President

HANC welcomes our new neighbors in the Tenderloin to District 5. We hope to build together around issues that face our communities and struggles for affordable housing, tenants’ rights, and supporting our houseless neighbors.

The San Francisco redistricting process was a joke. The Redistricting Task Force created a predetermined map, aimed specifically at attacking tenants, low-income and working-class residents, communities of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and established neighborhoods. The Chair of the Task Force even admitted to multiple people that he was under immense pressure from the Mayor, who had appointed him to the Task Force, to make specific changes. The impact of outside influences on certain Task Force members, in an attempt to shift the political landscape of the current districts, became abundantly clear as the months wore on in the redistricting process.

Central to the shifting boundaries in the redistricting process was District 6 and the Tenderloin. Tenderloin and South of Market residents gave testimony, submitted evidence, and spoke again and again about the deep connection and community that spans the two neighborhoods. The refusal of these two neighborhoods to be split from each other, and remain together in District 6, was a consistent demand articulated by the Black, Filipino, LGBTQ+, and Arab communities who live in these two neighborhoods.

The Task Force, charged with keeping communities of interest whole and listening to the public, instead decided to ignore the avalanche of public testimony and ended up splitting the Tenderloin from the South of Market, moving the TL from District 6 to District 5. This move keeps the wealthy D6 neighborhoods of Rincon Hill, Mission Bay, and the newly created “East Cut” intact and shifts District 6 in a moderate/conservative direction. For District 5, changes to the D5 boundaries also included the removal of portions of North of the Panhandle, the entire Inner Sunset, Cole Valley, and UCSF - all opposed by the majority of D5 residents.

HANC and D5 residents spoke in solidarity with residents in the Tenderloin and SOMA to keep the two neighborhoods together. While the new map resulted in the split of the TL and SOMA, we continue to be in solidarity with the Tenderloin and residents of the TL.