On the city of San Francisco’s website, the Homeless Oversight Commission displays a list of seven appointees, four selected by the mayor and three by the Board of Supervisors. Six of the seven seats expire between 2027 and 2029, except for one, which expired May 1, 2025. The box reads, “VACANT. Term expired 5/1/25. Holdover member — Christin Evans.”
Perhaps Evans was busy banning Harry Potter books at her bookstore on Haight Street — or, in a perfect world, she decided not to reapply after realizing Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration doesn’t believe “Permanent Supportive Housing” (a.k.a. “free housing forever for drug tourists”) should be a thing. More than likely, though, Evans just got comfortable like the rest of San Francisco’s mostly useless commissioners and forgot that her term was up.
Meanwhile, a seemingly qualified candidate applied for her spot: Thomas Rocca, who stated in his application that he was homeless in 1986, is now a successful real estate developer on the West Coast with projects including the 257-unit Yerba Buena Commons, a single-room-occupancy affordable-housing complex in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena neighborhood, and San Jose’s Cinnabar Commons, a 245-unit affordable housing project.
The Rules Committee was set to take up Rocca’s appointment on July 7, 2025 when Evans applied for reappointment “within an hour of being notified of the meeting,” but it was too late to be added. That should have been the end of it, but committee chair and lame-duck supervisor Shamann Walton took time away from hosting comedy shows in Alaska and his “100% Real” podcast to defer the appointment and allow Evans to slip back into consideration.
With the exception of Walton, socialist Jackie Fielder, union beholden Connie Chan (and occasional wildcards Chyanne Chen, Bilal Mahmood, Danny Sauter, and Myrna Melgar) the board is slightly more moderate than it was when Evans took the seat in 2023. Besides the board makeup, her late entry, and her refusal to acknowledge that fentanyl is the real root of the problem, Evans has serious conflicts of interest regarding the money the commission oversees.
Thousands of tents and a get out of jail free card
Evans is probably best known for supporting former District 5 supervisor Dean Preston and the radical harm reductionist group Homeless Youth Alliance (HYA), which hands out, along with clean drug paraphernalia, brochures on how to shoot up and get the most out of it (“Inject slowly so you can feel how strong the dope is!” … Enjoy your high!”).
In 2019, HYA, Preston, and Evans, with help from cohort Jennifer Friedenbach and her Coalition on Homelessness, handed out 1,000 tents on Haight Street, much to the horror of business owners and residents who found those tents full of transients living in front of their buildings.
It wasn’t the first time or the last time. In a March 2020 tweet, the coalition said, “Tents comin’ in & tents going out to unhoused folks who need ’em. Keep ’em coming!!” and thanked Evans as part of their “tent team.”
Evans has serious conflicts of interest regarding the money the Homeless Oversight Commission oversees.
On April 11, 2022, the coalition posted they had “ordered 39 two-person tents and 39 3-person tents! Distribution to come soon” followed by the party popper emoji. A search for “tent” on the Coalition’s X page brings up multiple other posts bragging about handing out hundreds of tents to the homeless. The city was soon overwhelmed with tents blocking sidewalks and businesses, and when officials decided it was time to remove them, the Coalition sued.
This week, after a three-year battle, the City Attorney’s Office agreed to pay a whopping $2.8 million in “attorney fees.” Like the legal costs for the case, if the Board of Supervisors approves the settlement, it will be paid courtesy of San Francisco taxpayers.
Because the ACLU Foundation of Northern California represented the Coalition and two individual plaintiffs pro bono, Friedenbach posted a statement on the Coalition’s X page trying to soften public perception, stating that the money will allow the “ACLU to continue doing this work and monitor compliance with the settlement.”
And how much will the two “plaintiffs” receive? Eleven thousand each. One of the plaintiffs, Molique Frank, has an extensive criminal record back to 2014 that includes possession of drugs (both for use and for sale), grand theft, burglary, and shoplifting, with his latest arrest in April of this year. He’s currently living at the Monarch homeless shelter (again, at taxpayer expense).
Both Friedenbach and Evans tirelessly stumped for democratic socialist Preston, a fellow multimillionaire trust fund baby married into a family of residential landlords (Evans’s father is an aluminum magnate, while Friedenbach comes from an almond dynasty). Evans maxed out her personal monetary contributions to Preston’s supervisor campaigns. In turn, Preston used his power to help and reward his friend.
In 2021, when Evans, as a volunteer with the Coalition on Homelessness, was arrested for interfering at an encampment removal, Preston called on the police chief to spring her (oh, the irony, coming from two police abolitionists). An even bigger reward, of course, was nominating her to that sixth seat on the Homeless Commission in 2023, which, according to bylaws, “shall be held by a person with significant experience providing services to or engaging in advocacy on behalf of persons experiencing homelessness.” If handing out tents and being arrested for interfering with their removal is “significant experience” then I guess Evans would be the right fit; however, she has zero expertise in the field, admitting that she “educated herself” about San Francisco’s homeless service system.
Another focus for the board should be Evans’ conflicts of interest, which stem from her long relationship with Friedenbach and her Coalition on Homelessness, and the fact the two lobbied together for the proposition that brought in the very money they now oversee.
Part 2 of this story will appear on Wednesday, July 30.