A coalition of businesses and residents of San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, led by the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, have sued the city and county claiming that government officials have allowed the area to become "a containment zone" for drug and homelessness issues in the city.

The federal lawsuit, filed Monday by lawyers at Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger in San Francisco and Greenberg Gross in Los Angeles, claims that the number of homeless people in tents on sidewalks in the working-class neighborhood has more than doubled since March when local "shelter in place" orders took effect to combat the spread of COVID-19. The plaintiffs, who include a local resident confined to a wheelchair, a manager at a single-room-occupancy hotel, and the part-owner of a local cafe, claim that the increase of people residing in the streets has combined with the open-air drug sales in the neighborhood to make conditions "insufferable."

"This is a matter of fundamental fairness; what is a citywide problem should not be allowed to weigh disproportionately on a low-income working-class neighborhood," the complaint says. "San Francisco should be prohibited from abandoning a single neighborhood, in an apparent effort to spare other neighborhoods the burdens that confront the city at-large."