
Amber Richmond | 舊金山鳳凰
@AmberRichmondSF • 1,403 subscribers
Bay Area Native From surviving to thriving. ✨ Recovery • Accountability • Hope Crystal & heroin free. Dog & Cat Mom. Views are my own.
Videos

When is San Francisco going to seriously address this? I was just offered this lettuce for $2 by someone selling groceries on the sidewalk. These are the same kinds of items I regularly see being distributed through free food programs, and I’ve repeatedly watched people set up large amounts of groceries for resale on the street. The other day, police came by and made vendors pack everything up. They did — and then moved a block away and set everything back up once the police were gone. If food that is being provided for free to help people who can’t afford groceries is being collected and resold for cash, that’s a problem. Those resources are limited, and there are families, seniors, and people living on extremely low incomes who genuinely depend on them. So what is SF actually doing about the resale of donated food and repeated unpermitted vending? Moving it one block down the street isn’t enforcement. It just moves the problem.
Amber Richmond | 舊金山鳳凰113,703 views • 5 days ago

Today I visited Mission Dolores for a college field trip. I was excited to sit outside afterward and sketch one of San Francisco’s most historic and beautiful landmarks. Instead, I watched a couple openly smoking drugs on the sidewalk outside the church. A few minutes later they disappeared under a blanket together, and it appeared they were engaging in sexual activity in public. On the opposite side of the church, someone else was camped in a tent. These weren’t isolated incidents hidden away from view. They were happening at one of California’s oldest and most significant historic sites, where students, families, tourists, and parishioners come to learn, worship, and appreciate history. As someone who spent years homeless and addicted in San Francisco, this doesn’t make me angry because I don’t understand addiction. It makes me angry because I do understand it. I know what it’s like to have drugs become the only priority. I also know that accepting this as normal isn’t compassionate—for the people trapped in addiction or for the community that has to live with it. We should be able to preserve places like Mission Dolores without people having to step around encampments, public drug use, or sexual activity on the sidewalk. We can have compassion for people while also expecting our public spaces to be safe, clean, and respected.
Amber Richmond | 舊金山鳳凰32,791 views • 1 month ago

This is what we’ve normalized in San Francisco. Someone can be passed out, drooling and incoherent, with their legs hanging into the street—and cars just drive past while people walk by without a second thought. At what point did seeing another human being like this become so normal that we stopped even checking if they’re alive?
Amber Richmond | 舊金山鳳凰15,259 views • 25 days ago
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