The suit argues the city is “punishing residents who have nowhere to go” in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The argument draws on the Ninth Circuit’s 2019 decision in the Martin v. Boise case, which found that people who are homeless can’t be penalized for sleeping on public property, if there is no alternative offered.

The suit also alleges violations of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the 14th Amendment’s due process requirement.

“They would come out at, like, four in the morning, five in the morning. Usually when you’re in the dead of sleep and it’s very, very cold,” said Toro Castaño, 51, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. He was living on the streets of the Castro for two years, until the fall of 2021. “It was very traumatic because it’s very cold outside and a lot of things they’re taking are warm clothes, warm jackets, blankets, things that you need just to survive.”

Castaño had his belongings taken from him by the city four times during the pandemic, according to the complaint, and settled a claim against the city for $9,000 after his property was destroyed. He now lives in a co-op in the city.

While Castaño was unhoused, he said he was asked to move nearly every day. “It makes you very sleep-deprived, makes it difficult to make decisions, to make appointments, to try to look for work or try to look for jobs — basically to function,” he said.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said the goal of the lawsuit is to stop sweeps, which she said only perpetuate homelessness. “When the city takes folks’ IDs, their cellphones, the things that they need in order to really navigate a very complicated route off the streets, that ends up extending their homelessness,” she said, explaining that people can lose contact with social service providers and miss out on housing opportunities. “What we hear from folks again and again is they feel like they’re starting from scratch.”

She argues the city’s enforcement resources would be better spent on housing and treatment programs. “It’s in everyone’s interest to really, truly invest in the permanent solutions we need to solve homelessness,” she said.

The suit names the city and county of San Francisco; Major London Breed; Director of the Healthy Streets Operation Center Sam Dodge; and several city departments as defendants.

Jen Kwart, director of communications for the city attorney’s office, said in a statement, “The City is acutely focused on expanding our temporary shelter and permanent housing options to alleviate our homelessness crisis. Once we are served with the lawsuit, we will review the complain and respond in court.”

The city’s latest point-in-time count found a total of about 7,700 people living on the streets or in shelters, a 3.5% decrease since 2019. But, Latinx homelessness spiked 55% and Black people continue to be overrepresented among the unhoused, at 38% of the total homeless population compared to 6% of the general population.

Based on the new count, officials now estimate that as many as 20,000 people experience homelessness in a full year.

From 2015 to 2022, the city built just 2,067 units of very-low-income housing, just a third of its goal, while far exceeding its goal for market rate housing, according to the city’s 2020 housing inventory.

Emily Cohen, deputy director of communications for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, points out that since 2017, the city has nearly doubled the number of housing units dedicated to people leaving homelessness.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs have filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, asking the court to ban the city from conducting sweeps or otherwise enforcing ordinances that punish sleeping on public property while the suit proceeds.

Castaño said he hopes the suit leads to more affordable housing and better conditions for people experiencing homelessness. “I’m hoping that people on the street will be protected a little more, that the things won’t be taken that they used to survive and to stay warm,” he said. “And there’s a little more compassion.”

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The woman at the center of a San Francisco police scandal after investigators used evidence from her sexual assault exam to link her to an unrelated property crime is planning to sue the Police Department, saying the incident made her feel like she was “reliving” her trauma all over again.

The woman in an interview with The Chronicle said she was first contacted by the police a few months ago, after neighbors called the police to her home for a loud fight she was having with her boyfriend. The police soon left but then came back with a warrant for her arrest.

She didn’t realize at the time that she had been tied to a recent property crime from a rape exam that she had given in 2016. She was kept in custody until last month, when her attorney told her that her charges were being dropped because of how police linked her to the crime.

The woman said she should have been happy to be released but stayed at home depressed for days.

“When you feel like you have nobody to talk to about it, it’s a lonely feeling,” she said. “I’m still adjusting how I feel.”

The woman felt that police failed to protect her privacy, and didn’t treat her like “a citizen.”

“I kind of absorb pain,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “It was just kind of like, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ And just making me feel really bad.”

The Chronicle granted the woman anonymity for this story and does not typically identify victims of sexual assault.

While the woman said she used to feel comfortable at least confiding in police, she has long felt they were unable to protect her.

Her belief stems from trauma in the woman’s childhood, when her mother was killed by her boyfriend.

The woman said she and her sister were being sexually abused by their mother’s boyfriend and that someone from her school reported it to the police. The girl and her siblings were taken out of the home, which prompted the boyfriend to confront her mother about the allegations.

“And he murdered her,” the woman said.

The officer who investigated the sex abuse came to the funeral, she said, and apologized for not protecting the girl and her mother, “which is what I asked for,” she said. “I asked to be protected and for my family to be protected.”

Even at a young age, she said, she learned that sometimes going to the police wasn’t in her best interest.

After the recent incident with her rape-kit DNA, the woman said, “Basically I’m reliving stuff all over again.”

Adante Pointer, an Oakland civil rights attorney representing the woman, called the practice “Orwellian” and has filed a notice of a claim, a precursor to a lawsuit.

“We hope that the practice of weaponizing victims’ DNA against them is ended,” Pointer said. “We also want to ensure that this practice doesn’t ensnare anyone else.”

The woman’s interview comes nearly a month after District Attorney Chesa Boudin revealed that the Police Department’s crime lab stored DNA from rape victims infinitely in a database. The database, Boudin said, was regularly searched to identify suspects in crimes.

At the time, Boudin said his office was aware of one person who was arrested as a result of this practice but did not disclose other details about the woman, other than to say she was arrested for a property crime. Boudin dropped the case against her, saying that her constitutional rights were likely violated.

The revelation prompted a national outcry, particularly from sexual assault victims advocates, who said the practice would have a chilling effect on reporting the crimes to law enforcement.

The San Francisco Police Department is conducting an audit to determine how many other victims could have been identified or arrested through this practice. Police Chief Bill Scott said he supports legislation that would end the practice in San Francisco and elsewhere and that the department has already implemented an interim policy change.

“We must never create a disincentive for sexual assault survivors — or any crime victim — to cooperate with police,” Scott said in a recent statement.

However, some say that the current policy change doesn’t go far enough and would still allow victim profiles to remain in a database that’s searched by crime lab employees.

Policy documents reviewed by The Chronicle detailed how the crime lab operates what’s known as “quality assurance” database, which held DNA profiles from several categories of individuals — including rape victims — and was routinely tested against suspect DNA found at later crime scenes.

The quality assurance database has two components. One includes “every single source and … evidence profile analyzed since tracking began in 2015,” which could include DNA profiles from rape suspects, sexual assault victims, child victims, consensual sex partners of rape victims or other people unrelated to a crime whose DNA may be found at a crime scene.

DNA evidence from victims or other non-suspects is collected and stored in order to separate it from that of the suspected offender.

The second component is an elimination database that holds DNA samples from lab staff members, visitors and police officers, to test for DNA contamination.

According to internal emails reviewed by The Chronicle, the Police Department’s new policy does not remove victims’ DNA profiles from the searchable database. Instead, it states that if DNA from a victim’s rape kit matched DNA found at another crime scene, analysts would not be allowed to share this information with anyone outside the crime lab.

State Sen. Scott Wiener and San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen are both seeking legislation to ban the practice.

Ronen’s measure would require police to dispose of the DNA samples within 60 days and prohibit police searches against the database within the 60 days. It would also require police to purge all victim DNA profiles by June 1.

In an interview, Ronen said she had considered scrapping the proposal after hearing that the Police Department had already ended the practice. However, she said, self-policing doesn’t go far enough.

“Clearly, we can’t trust the judgment of the very people who engaged in this practice for years as far as we know,” Ronen said. “The fact that the (new) policy … still allows the crime lab to store victim data and potentially search against it is just unacceptable.”

Megan Cassidy (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: megan.cassidy@sfchronicle.com, Twitter: @meganrcassidy

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Grubhub and DoorDash have filed a lawsuit against San Francisco after capping delivery fees to 15% last month.

On Friday, the two food suppliers filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California arguing that the maximum fees are in violation of both the U.S. and California constitution. Court documents show that DoorDash and Grubhub argued that the cap could potentially lead to higher prices for consumers and affect delivery couriers, among other things.

“The City of San Francisco has passed hasty, adverse and unconstitutional price controls that leave us no choice but to resolve this matter in court,” a DoorDash spokesman said in a statement shared with SFGATE. “Constant price controls are not only against the US and California constitutions, but will likely harm the restaurants the city claims to support. The introduction of permanent price controls is an unprecedented and dangerous exaggeration by the government and will limit the ways small businesses rely on to compete in an increasingly competitive marketplace. “

The delivery companies also said that the 15% fee cap could affect business as it would entail renegotiating or terminating existing contracts with local restaurants. Part of their reasoning was based on marketing and other services that DoorDash and Grubhub said were unable to cover the costs.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who co-sponsored the law in June, condemned both grocery companies in a tweet Friday following the complaint. He wrote that he was not surprised at the lawsuit.

“Hardly surprising of giant corporations that have just spent over $ 200 million to deprive their own workers of basic services,” wrote Peskin on Twitter. “I stand by small businesses and my legislation to stop the rampant exploitation of the San Francisco restaurant industry.”

No wonder with giant corporations that have just spent over $ 200 million to stamp out basic services for their own workers.

I stand by small businesses and my legislation to stop the rampant exploitation of the San Francisco restaurant industry. https://t.co/1j3rmGcelK

– Aaron Peskin (@AaronPeskin) July 17, 2021

Last April, Mayor London Breed announced a temporary fee cap to prevent grocery delivery apps from charging restaurants more than 15% to help local businesses stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, it was said that the provisional order should remain in place until the remainder of the local emergency or until restaurants can reopen for dine-in service.

Court documents argue that with the advent of vaccinations, the local emergency has been “mitigated”. San Francisco was summoned to court on Monday.

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