Toxic location: heavy metals in my body now as a result of being put 300′ from NPL SuperFund site Hunter’s Point Shipyard. I never go out and walk around. It’s scary to live in a place you KNOW is poisonous.
Remote and scary location, especially when my old car broke-down. No one helped. I sat in office crying in front of five men hired to help people get their vehicles – and lives – in better shape, and not one iota but of help. My daughter gave me a minivan three months later. I need things done to it too, but there’s no way for that to ever happen here. Even though this is called the “Vehicle Triage Center”, there is not a work area, much less a covered garage; there is a not a set of tools, nor an account at AutoZone, and not a mechanic anywhere in sight. There’s no pathway to getting one. I have been lied to (tapes and emails) from 4.15.21 to 10.4.24 by three non-profits (Episcopal Community Services, Bayview Hunter’s Point Foundation, and Urban Alchemy) about repairs+ registration. That’s three-and-half years. I have terminal cancer. I am disabled on SSI. These people (including Dept of Homelessness: Jimisha Baker, Angelica Valera, and Louis Bracco) have kept me in a state of suspended crisis, never actually funding the case plan (shown here as it was when I entered the VTC) so I feel hopeless.
Social Isolation (while battling cancer): my son has to sign up to be my IHSS worker in order to have access to me. My two daughters have not seen the inside of my home in two years. We meet in the park or at coffee shops. How is that going to work when I get really ill? Will they be denied access to me when I die? Like the actual time…will I have to plead with some mean UA staffer to have pity? Will that be their last memory of me?
Invasion of Seclusion with a constant stream of people coming to give meals (no set time, just when it gets delivered), “wellness checks” at 11 am and 9 pm where you have to stop what you are doing and go to the window and show your face to prove you are … alive? Not high? Coherent? No. It’s just prison -like control tactics. That’s WHY Urban Alchemy chooses to hire long-term prisoners. They don’t think it’s abnormal to do this.
Malnutrition due to only $23 foodstamps monthly allotted due to me being given meals here. In other words, my federal food stamps (normally $279 a month would be my allotment). The food delivery I have kept photo and video account to show its inedible and has little nutrients. This is the food from Meals-on-Wheels since July 2024
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmSrEMBpjm6cxEzdHzpUgiUagCp0Q_BhQ&si=sIJjW44vnH7VTmhd
Lack of utilities for two years (not to mention the lack of fire suppression) has destroyed any sense of living in a normal environment. Grateful I had my own solar set-up before I got here. I have built on it. But I do intensely resent the bad water. I won’t shower in it. I go to my son’s. I never drink it nor give it to my pets. I do carry jugs of it (in my car) to use to dump the toilet. Urban Alchemy is too cheap-minded to pay the pump out truck to put water in our RV tanks, so we could shower. Everything here is to make you dependent on them. Same with laundry. The original plans for place called for a laundry trailer. Instead it’s a service that does a terrible job. Clothes come back ruined. And look at these prices.
No security/ VTC location is dark + far away from town… lack of communication to office in an emergency… if I had been able to move into a normal RV park, I wouldn’t have had to sleep with one eye open for both the staff and the neighbors plus the back fence is easily entered into out here. This isn’t a joke. It took weeks to get the overhead lights put back in. Urban Alchemy (or the City?) took them out. It was so dark you couldn’t see six inches in front of you. Basically, it’s terrifying in here, so I can’t sleep at night. I have cancer and thus environment is NOT conducive to any sense of “getting better” or having peace for the final days. In fact, I spend a lot of time worried about how exactly is it going to be for me in here. At least in prison, when they die they can go to the infirmary. Here, you can’t even get a roll or toilet paper.
Pattern of Retaliation: tried to get me up for filming the violation of a disabled woman’s housing rights; towed away the car I gave/ lent a man who has a wife with serious health issues (no notice, no posted signs, no warning – man was in process of getting it registered and they just took it. They being Urban Alchemy Director Danielle LeBleu. Also gave me this when my RV has rotten tires and can’t start and has no registration. I simply emailed her (and her bosses) a photo of one of the tires. Another time she called the police on me for collecting soil samples, physically trying to block me at same time. I called 9-1-1 on her for touching me.
This is what living under Urban Alchemy’s rules are like. Being told what to do and when to do it. Like jail. Degradation. Oppression. Lies. Sneaky moves like having the car towed and then telling me it was because I already had one in here. Well, yes, I had two. That’s why I gave/ lent one to another person who needed it and used it and it had his tools in when it was towed.
CALIFORNIA VEHICLE CODE 22650(b): Any removal of a vehicle is a seizure under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and Section 13 of Article 1 of the California Constitution and shall be reasonable and subject to limits set forth in the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence without a warrant.
But by far, the worst thing about being here is the way Bayview Hunter’s Point Foundation (BVHPF) has ignored the damage done to my RV by the men they hired. See, this is domestic abuse. They come to work on-site. They get paid to be here all day with “wrap around services”. It’s a facade. But we live here. We are forced to live because we are unrepaired and unregistered. On the streets, we’ll be towed in a day or two, tops. We have no way to leave. We are beholden to these “case managers”. We have no money to repair our RVs. There are no RV parks. I always had the case plan to return to the rural area and live in an RV park. It’s what I was doing when my husband died at the beginning of the pandemic and my life capsized. All I have in the world is this RV. To intentionally ignore the roof and window damage that the workers they (BVHPF) hired (Nov -Dec 2023) is plain wrong. The fact I’m 64 and so sick makes it even more wrong. Short tapes show how it still leaks. Now the windows do as well. They took off all the silicone from the windows and replaced it with white house caulk (Kelly’s as well — her front windshield fell out as a result and she can’t go anywhere! See next photos as they are her RV and it’s clear what would happen to my RV if I drove it):
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmSrEMBpjm6dfnClL49cWUYaMQCFXy-BP&si=GIxNJ1nOHvdrFHdr
That playlist shows how roof still leaks. But it’s the external damage done that means my RV will never be accepted in another normal RV park. I had always hoped to return to the Thousand Trails camping resort system. Not now. They would never accept my RV. They turn you away at the gate. I have seen it happen to many, many people. Google RV ten-year-rule. The nicer RV parks only accept you if you are in an RV ten years or newer. Thousand Trails RV resorts will take you if your RV is decent-looking. Clean. Repaired. And you yourself, the same. They can deny you service instantly
Yeah. Right. Now you understand why there are so many old RVs parked in the side of the road. No one regulates how to treat the RVs of the extremely-low-income. Mayor London Breed is just saying out loud what everyone thinks. Clear the streets of those ugly, rotten, falling-apart metal boxes.
This is what my RV looked like before I was forced into the VTC 8.9.22. This is a few weeks before the sweep:
I took this photos this week (10.4.24) after two years at the VTC waiting for help that never arrived, or if it did, it left me in a lot worse shape. For one thing, I have rats in my RV – I hear them chewing constantly. I have to run a white noise machine constantly to drown out the noise. I do have two aggressive cats but they only keep them out of the living quarters. They can’t reach them in the ceiling. It’s horrible to hear your home being tore up from the inside and feels powerless to leave to somewhere not so rat prone.
