Opinion: A stroll by means of San Francisco’s zombie apocalypse
Walking through San Francisco’s beleaguered neighborhoods is a study in the surreal.
lecturer hundreds. Thousands of suffering, drug-addled street people inhabit our core metropolis. From City Hall through the Tenderloin, down into SoMa and out to the adjacent neighborhoods, zombies walk among us.
The victims carry pieces of foil and a straw, the necessary tools for inhaling the devil. The vultures gather on the corners, selling death. The police drive past it all, making the occasional intervention, but they’re essentially overwhelmed. A growing army of social service workers try to clean things up, but they’re just working a losing puzzle, moving the pieces a block here, a block there. Never solve the whole picture.
I walked for blocks. Miles. I saw it all for the umpteenth time. I wondered what new there is to say.
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Matt Haney, District 6 Supervisor and candidate for Assembly District 17, pictured outside the Tenderloin Museum. (Al Saracevic/The Examiner)
Supervisor Matt Haney sits in La Cocina, an oasis in his Tenderloin district, on a recent Friday afternoon. He represents more than this neighborhood; he lives here and his political legacy feels cemented to these streets.
It’s a lovely little food market on the corner of Hyde and Golden Gate, a spot that used to be overrun with drug dealers and their customers. The venue is a success story in a neighborhood under siege, so no surprise he chose it.
Haney’s an engaging young politician, poised to climb the ladder. He is the front-runner to win a runoff election scheduled April 19 and become the District 17 assemblymember. Meanwhile, he splits his time between campaigning and governing, walking the streets of his district and trying to find solutions to intractable obstacles.
“Most of the problems the Tenderloin experiences have their roots outside of the neighborhood,” says Haney. “People don’t have adequate access to housing. They’re living in poverty, being displaced, leaving hospitals or jails without any connection to effective treatment. These things disproportionately impact this neighborhood because this is where people end up. They’re not allowed in other neighborhoods. They’re not served in other neighborhoods. So they end up here.”
They sure do. Matt and I strolled the Tenderloin streets on a windy, sunny afternoon. Dozens of workers from the nonprofit service agency Urban Alchemy milled about cleaning the streets, manning drop-in social service stations — known as “fixed posts” — and generally patrolling their areas, which are remarkably free of blight.
But as soon as you step outside of the service agency’s prescribed area, the stark reality returns. Walk down Hyde Street, starting near Civic Center Plaza. The first few blocks are heavily manned and cleaned up. When you get to the corner of Hyde and Eddy, it’s back to open drug dealing and drug use up and down the street.
This is the tale of two Tenderloins.
Haney hopes to reduce the disparities by expanding Urban Alchemy’s territory.
“We needed a street presence that wasn’t solely the police,” said Haney. “Police don’t do ‘fixed posts’ like this. And unfortunately, they don’t walk the beat too much. So the police are mostly in their cars and the Urban Alchemy folks are on the streets. This is a new model of managing. It certainly has a positive impact where they are. Our issue then becomes where they’re not.”
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San Francisco Police detain a man at UN Plaza. (Al Saracevic/The Examiner)
Further down Eddy Street sits another oasis of sorts. Boeddeker Park is a place for the residents and children of the tenderloin to play. It’s patrolled by members of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, another nonprofit trying to save the neighborhood.
Haney is greeted warmly by a class of elementary school students and their teachers as they walk out of the park and back to their nearby classroom. This is not uncommon. Dozens of folks said hello and wished him well during our walk. One man said, “There goes the mayor!” He wasn’t wrong. Haney is the mayor of the tenderloin.
One of the TLCBD workers, Stephen Tennis, came by to tell us a story of a recent visitor who became unruly and started a fight when asked to leave. Tennis did what he could and suffered a nasty cut to his forehead and a sprained hand in the dustup. Police came and removed the individual, described as “not all there,” but the security guard didn’t press charges. He was a product of these same streets and didn’t want to cause the troubled man any further problems.
“I just wanted him to calm down,” said Tennis.
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A man does drugs near San Francisco’s Linkage Center at United Nations Plaza. (Al Saracevic/The Examiner)
I bid Mr. Haney adieu and continue my journey through our broken city.
Down in the Civic Center BART station, a trio of drug users use a shelf on the central kiosk to divvy up their stash. Directly above them, an SFPD squad car is parked on the sidewalk, with two officers detaining a young man. About 100 feet away, an elderly gentleman sits on a bench, smoking fentanyl in plain sight. He’s just one of many holding their foil and piping up, oblivious to the cops, the social workers and anything else.
Across the way, The City’s new linkage center is taking in visitors. A security guard tells me people seem to like it because they can do their drugs there. A tent city of homeless people sits across the street, surrounded by high chain-link fences.
And it’s all happening, literally, in the shadow of City Hall.
Across Market Street, things get dodgy. Seventh Street has become an active corridor for drug dealing and using, rife with dealers gathered on corners and users shuffling around in shabby clothing. The scene grows even more intense in front of the Good Hotel, on the corner of Mission. I watch a young mother pushing her baby in a stroller through the drug market, dodging bodies laying on the sidewalk.
The San Francisco Federal Building stands silent, bearing witness.
I stop by the Deli Board, a nearby Folsom Street sandwich shop run by Adam Mesnick. Over the years, he’s been a vocal critic of how The City has handled this crisis. An Australian TV crew is on site, interviewing him for yet another story on San Francisco’s demise.
I ask how he’s been since his store got broken into earlier this year. “It’s been crazy. It’s crazy every day,” he said.
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So, what are we going to do about it? The prescriptions for change have been endless. It’s been going on for years. Nothing seems to change. I suggest three solutions:
- Let’s consolidate all the nonprofits working adjacent to homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness under one umbrella organization at City Hall. This should probably come out of the mayor’s office, with buy-in from the business community. In doing so, we’d create a unified strategy to combat the problems and create greater transparency on where city monies are being spent.
- Let’s get serious about enforcing our laws, while maintaining compassion in sentencing. gov. Gavin Newsom’s CARE Court proposal from last week, which would create a statewide path for conservatorship, would be a step in the right direction.
- Let’s rebuild our state mental health and drug rehabilitation system. There is nowhere for the worst cases in San Francisco to go. Let’s create the necessary institutions. We need to send our sickest residents to the hospital.
bottom line? If we continue down our current path — 10, 20, 30 years from now — we will be vilified for allowing masses to walk down a sure path to death.
We have an epidemic on our hands and we can no longer allow it to spread, putting civil liberties ahead of civic responsibility. The residents of our fair city cannot be forced to live in this reality. Let’s find the political will, and civic pride, to sew our fabric back together.
Editor’s note: The Arena, a column from The Examiner’s Al Saracevic. explores San Francisco’s playing field, from politics and technology to sports and culture. Send your tips, quips and quotes to asaracevic@sfexaminer.com.
