For more than two years, the City of San Francisco and the United States Postal Service have been locked in a costly federal court battle over how to deliver some people’s mail.
The issue is the post office’s method of delivery for 11,000 people who live in San Francisco’s residential hotels.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera says that single-room-occupancy units in hotels are just like apartments, and that the post office should place letters into individual, locked mail boxes. The post office counters that S.R.O. hotels are just like tourist hotels and that the mail can simply be dropped at the front desk.
“It’s unconscionable that they refuse to live up to their legal obligations,” Mr. Herrera said, arguing that the post office’s refusal to deliver to locked boxes results in lost public-assistance checks and medical records and other problems for the hotels’ often-impoverished residents.
The city argues that its suit will eventually help people like John Mallery, a 56-year-old former resident of the Crystal Hotel on Eddy Street, who says that his general-assistance and Social Security disability checks were regularly intercepted by building management as a form of punishment.
Continued, link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/us/17bcpostoffice.html
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