The San Francisco Department of Public Health, at the direction of Mayor Lurie, is making deep cuts that disproportionately impact the city’s most vulnerable residents: seniors with mental illness, LGBTQ and homeless youth, new and expecting mothers facing tough health and/or personal challenges, medically fragile long-term care residents at Laguna Honda Hospital. While Mayor Lurie blames the city’s budget deficit for the cuts, he has come out against Prop D, which would bring in as much as $300M in revenue a year to protect public services like these.

Wednesday, a rally outside the South East Mission Geriatric Clinic—the city’s last remaining mental health clinic for seniors, slated to be closed in August—brought together communities impacted by the cuts. Seniors who receive services at the clinic; healthcare workers from there and the two youth clinics on the chopping block; clinical nurse specialists laid off from Laguna Honda Hospital; and public health nurses from the endangered Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Program rallied outside the clinic, calling out the billionaire CEOs bankrolling opposition to Prop D to preserve their Trump tax breaks at the expense of the city’s most vulnerable.

“I’ve been there since my son was killed by SFPD. Without them, I would have committed suicide. And I tried, and that’s how I ended up at South East Mission,” said patient Mesha Irizarry. “It’s my lifeline. It’s the only outpatient psychiatric center for seniors in the whole city of San Francisco.”

The Institute for Policy Studies released a report last month that exposed the deep pockets funding a misleading ad campaign to defeat Prop D and effectively ensure that clinics like South East Mission are shuttered. Among the corporations fighting the business tax, which would only affect corporations that pay top executives more than 100 times their median worker, are Amazon, PG&E, Comcast, Uber, DoorDash, the Gap, and Williams-Sonoma. At the rally, speakers called out these CEOs, via life-sized cut-outs, for their role in undermining public services to protect the massive tax breaks they’re getting under Trump’s HR 1.

Monday, many of the same workers and clients flooded the San Francisco Health Commission once again to give public comment at the legally-mandated Bielenson hearing about the closure of the clinics. 

“I’m emotional today because I know the suffering this will cause. These cuts are going to kill,” said SEIU 1021 member Francisca Oropeza, who has been a behavioral health clinician for the South East Mission Geriatric Clinic for 25 years, during public comment. ”This closure is unethical. The numbers that were presented and the stuff you’re talking about, that we can see our clients at home, that’s not going to happen. We all know that. We know how DPH works. We create revenue with Medicare billing. That’s 70% of my billing, and I do a lot of billing. I’ve been here 25 years. I know the suffering that’s going to happen to these wonderful people. They have community. This is the last mental health clinic for older adults—have compassion. This is fiscally irresponsible and frankly criminal.”

“The closure of ChPY (Community Health Programs for Youth) clinics doesn’t just represent a line item in a budget,” said Sophia Padilla, a behavioral health clinician at the Larkin Street Clinic who was denied time on the hearing agenda to give a formal presentation that challenges Director Tsai’s narrative on utilization numbers. “It represents the loss of dedicated, specialized staff, CBO relationships built on decades of advocacy, and low-barrier accessible services that meet marginalized youth where they are.”

The public outcry seems to finally be having an impact. SFDPH has already moved the closure date for the youth clinics to October from August. And after public comment at the Bielenson hearing, several of the commissioners expressed concern and asked pointed questions about issues speakers had raised, including effects on vulnerable demographics, transition plans, and how SFDPH would ensure continuity of care.

We will be rallying again at 12 p.m. next Wednesday, May 27, outside the Larkin Street Youth Clinic. Join us in purple!