Introducing: Hostile Architects

How San Francisco Punishes Its Most Vulnerable

Hi, I’m Hazel, a political organizer and journalist who has been doing public records research in San Francisco for several years. My work around the city’s criminalization of poverty has been cited in the SF Chronicle, KQED, The Verge, the SF Standard, and Mission Local, and has been recognized with a James Madison Freedom of Information Award by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Hostile Architects is a Substack project intended to centralize my past work and publish future work and breaking news. You can also find me on twitter, but Substack will be the first place I post and the final source of truth.

There will be two main types of posts:

1. Breaking news based largely on new or archived public records and research, much of which I will share with other journalists to publish.

2. In-depth analysis and archiving of news I have previously broken and shared with reporters who have written about it in other publications. This analysis may include new public records, context, interviews, and commentary.

I take pride in being thorough and accurate which is how I’ve developed trusted relationships with journalists, advocates, and organizers across San Francisco. At the same time, I don’t believe there is such a thing as an apolitical journalistic project under capitalism. I do this work explicitly to further the cause of the poor and working class and my tone corresponds with that mission.

Not to be overly poetic, but under capitalism public records do not simply shine light onto a system that would serve the people if not for the misdeeds of corrupt officials who would scheme in its dark corners. On the contrary, they lay bare the brutal nature of a system functioning as intended and bring to the naked light of day its inherent contradictions - perhaps none more stark than the inability of a city as rich as San Francisco to house or even shelter thousands of its own residents, instead devoting endless resources to innovative ways to displace and punish them.

A “no lodging” sign hangs in the Mission District of San Francisco in 2019 warning homeless residents not to set up tents, citing a penal code which a federal judge would later bar the city from enforcing without offering shelter.

The architects of this hostility cycle in and out of power each election season and the system’s machinations adapt to changing conditions, sometimes attenuating, sometimes amplifying, but always serving the same basic function: managing the contradictions of capitalism to protect the interest of profits over the needs of the people.

This substack serves as a paper trail of that hostility.

I’m proud of this work but it’s a side project orbiting a broader and more liberatory one which I hope my readers will support: the organization of the working class towards a society that provides for all and not just the wealthy.

I plan to offer this Substack free of charge while I am employed, but if you have extra money and want to support it feel free drop a donation here.