A group of fed-up Shotwell Street residents has dropped their lawsuit against the city for not doing enough to clean up the street-level sex trade, but they still say the city is not doing enough to clean up the street-level sex trade.
If you saw this weekend’s Chronicle’s headline declaring that “SF residents say sex work has ‘spiraled out of control’ in this neighborhood,” you probably could have guessed exactly what neighborhood they’re talking about. That is of course the Capp Street/Shotwell Street area of the Mission District, which has been a hotbed of street-level sex trade for nearly 30 years.
Capp Street got some street barriers in 2023, which may have had some positive impact, but also just moved the sex work over to Shotwell Street — something neighbors correctly predicted would happen. City officials have since put up similar barriers on Shotwell too, but residents say the sidewalk-level sex trade is still menacing the street nightly from 8 pm through the morning.
“I would be concerned if I had kids walking around,” resident Camilla Torrens told KPIX. “Going to work very early when you leave, you might see someone having sex. Like out in the street, just like that.”
The Chronicle says that residents are now asking for a “handful of improvements,” like more cameras, police presence, and street lighting, But the Chronicle also has the news that residents who had sued the city over the prevalence of sex work there have since dropped that lawsuit, but they’re still leaning on SFPD to do more.
Specifically, they're calling for an audit of the “Dear John” letter program, where they let people know that SFPD saw them soliciting sex with the sex workers, with a letter saying “it is illegal to engage in or solicit prostitution.” The Chronicle reports that SFPD has sent only 57 of those letters in the last eight months, which works out to only about seven letters each month. KPIX also asked SFPD about that effort, but that station says they “got no response in time for our broadcast."
The sex workers themselves say the barriers are not going to stop them.
“Honestly it’s probably just fucking up the morning commute more than it is affecting our business,” one sex worker named Kim told the Chronicle. “You can see the girls are still out here working and people still find a way to maneuver around to get to us.”
Complicating matters for SFPD, anyone arrested for either buying or selling sex is probably only going to be charged with a misdemeanor, and would likely be back on the street in no time.
Image: Joe Kukura, SFist
