FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRESS RELEASE
Press Contact: Brian Wilkes
Cell: 415.230.XXXX
Live updates to be posted Oct. 10th at
http://www.HomesNotJailsSF.org and
1.XXX.50.SQUAT(1.XXX.507.7828).
Today at 6:41PM, the former Cathedral Hill Hotel at 1101 Van Ness Avenue
in San Francisco was occupied by demonstrators led by the squatters'
collective Homes Not Jails and reinforced by the activists of Occupy San
Francisco. Approximately 30 occupiers are presently inside the building,
which contains 600 housing units. They report that most if not all of the
rooms remain furnished and in habitable condition.
The historic hotel known once as the Jack Tar, which was damaged by a fire
in 2008, reopened to the public in 2008, and finally closed its doors on
October 31, 2009. For two years it has sat vacant while the deep economic
crisis precipitated by avaricious Wall Street bankers has forced more and
more working people into poverty and homelessness.
Activists demand that habitable housing stock be put into use for people
not profits, and point out that enough residential units exist in San
Francisco to eliminate homelessness in the City.
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