San Francisco Mayor London Breed speaks about drug use in the Tenderloin district, December 18, 2021. (NBC Bay Area/via YouTube)

The San Francisco board of supervisors voted 8-2 early Friday morning to codify Mayor London Breed’s state of emergency declaration, which will allow the city to take aggressive action to clear homeless camps populated by opioid addicts from the Tenderloin neighborhood.

The decision will empower the Department of Emergency Management to take over crisis response and eliminate unnecessary red tape so the city can quickly open up a special facility in the area to provide services to drug users, per a Breed plan announced last week.

Breed’s original pitch caused some unease among the board, however, as some members feared she would use the emergency declaration to justify more aggressive policing and criminalizing drug users. Ahead of the vote, supervisors Matt Haney, Hillary Ronen, and Dean Preston were extremely vocal in their opposition to the emergency declaration, which will last for 90 days, arguing it will be weaponized against people struggling with drug addiction. They said they favored a rehabilitation-based approach for those dealing with substance abuse.

Two people per day died of drug overdoses in San Francisco, with one in five of those deaths in the Tenderloin, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

During the meeting before the vote Thursday, Ronen said concern on the board stemmed from the way Breed had advertised her plan to the press as a police-heavy policy. After announcing “defund the police” type initiative in July, Breed’s statement last week represented a major platform reversal. She promised to end “the reign of criminals who are destroying our city.”

Breed’s strategy for curbing crime and drug overdoses in the city seemed to recommend deploying more sticks than carrots, which some supervisors took issue with Thursday. After sharing her plan, Breed had said “the goal is to not let anyone stay out in the streets.” She stated that people who use drugs in public will have two choices under her plan: seek treatment at the linkage center or go to prison.

“We are going to be a lot more aggressive with implementing the existing laws on the books in order to get people off the streets,” Breed said.

During the meeting Thursday, Ronen said she was worried the plan would be “doubling down on a centuries old failed drug war.” Preston echoed this sentiment. “Criminalizing an illness doesn’t make anybody better. Incarcerating people does not help them get well,” Ronen added.

She insisted during the meeting that city’s jails are already at maximum capacity because of the pandemic and that “our system can’t handle it” if people who refuse services are arrested.

An official from the mayor’s administration attempted to assume Ronen’s fears by promising that Breed would not use the authority of the declaration, if approved, to appropriate more funds to the police department.

Haney, the representative for the Tenderloin, described in detail how overwhelmed his neighborhood has become by the drug overdose epidemic which, he urged, requires a “robust and coordinated response.” Instead of a crackdown, however, he advocated for safe drug consumption sites and to “flood the streets with social workers and outreach workers.” He asserted that “jail or prison is not a solution to addiction,” adding that incarcerating people for drugs is “counterproductive, wrong, and dangerous.”

An official from the mayor’s office clarified Thursday that the order would focus on “connection to services” via the linkage center, which will be “low-barrier” and “voluntary” and will provide amenities to those who need it. Law enforcement will step in as as last resort, she assured.

Chief William Scott of the San Francisco Police Department said he and his fellow officers, who are understaffed and under-resourced, are looking to engage with drug users and usher them to the facility for proper care rather than escalate enforcement action they’re not equipped for The chief affirmed that the idea behind Breed’s plan is to involve crisis intervention teams, community paramedics, and other trained personnel rather than police officers as much as possible.

Nonetheless, Scott said his police units have made about 500 arrests for drug deals, mostly of fentanyl, in the Tenderloin neighborhood in the last year alone. He asserted that the arrests of these sales need to continue to keep drugs off the street.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – After hours of debate, the San Francisco Board of Directors overwhelmingly voted early Friday to approve the state of emergency proposed by Mayor London Breed for the city’s criminal and drug-infested Tenderloin District.

The most controversial aspect of the plan was a dramatic increase in the number of police officers patrolling the neighborhood, but when the final vote was taken, eight out of ten overseers in attendance were in favor of the plan.

CONTINUE READING: The San Francisco guards debated the mayor’s emergency ordinance under heavy criticism

“The tenderloin needs change, and that requires us to do things differently,” Breed said in a statement. “We showed during COVID that we can get things done and make real, tangible progress by using an emergency statement to overcome bureaucracy and the barriers that stand in the way of decisive action.”

As part of her tenderloin intervention, the mayor also wants to open a new service center for drug addiction and housing brokerage. She wants to hire more emergency services and open a safe injection site. In order for all of this to happen quickly, a state of emergency had to be declared and the board had to be voted yes.

“This is a status quo that must be questioned and disrupted with everything we have,” said District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney. “And if this is not a public health emergency, then that phrase has no meaning at all.”

While Breed’s tone caught everyone’s attention last week, it was also the opening bell for a conversation that was supposed to move across the building to the board of directors.

“I’m really frustrated with how this plan was announced in the media and the public,” said Supervisor Hillary Ronen. “It affected the way we all see it.”

Ronen, for example, raised concerns about doubling up a failed drug war while saying she would like to vote for the declaration of emergency. And that was something of a topic for the meeting – opponents of the mayor’s plan or their rhetoric, hoping everyone will come together and make something work.

CONTINUE READING: UPDATE: Residents skeptical about San Francisco mayor’s promise to get drugs and crime out of Tenderloin

“Threatening people to arrest is not a means of bringing addicts into treatment,” said Dean Preston, the San Francisco manager, who wants the mayor to raise money to expand mental health services, police alternatives, and hotel rooms Homeless people.

“We can do this, but only if we learn from past mistakes instead of repeating them,” he said on social media.

The tenderloin includes museums, the main public library and government offices, including the town hall. But it is also teeming with people who are homeless or in marginal homes, with a high concentration of drug dealers and drug users.

Breed said last week it was time to “be less tolerant of all the bull – that destroyed our city”. She said it wasn’t fair that residents couldn’t use their parks or leave their homes.

“If someone openly uses drugs on the street, we give them the opportunity to take advantage of the services and treatments we offer. But if they refuse, we won’t allow them to continue consuming on the streets, ”she said on social media this week. “The families in the neighborhood deserve better.”

The number of overdose-related deaths in San Francisco has increased more than 200% since 2018, and over 700 people died from drug overdoses in the city last year, more than the number who died from COVID -19 died, according to the proclamation.

MORE NEWS: UPDATE: SF Mayor London Breed Announces Fight Against Crime; “Less tolerant of all cops – who destroyed our city”

Nearly 600 people died of drug overdoses this year through November, with nearly half of the deaths occurring in the Tenderloin and neighboring South of Market District, the proclamation said. These areas make up 7% of the population of San Francisco.

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Will Breed’s $ 1 billion homeless plan actually work?

San Francisco Mayor London Breed is donating $ 1 billion to help fight homelessness. The goal is 6,000 home brokers by June 2022, an ambitious but achievable goal – if the city gets it right.

Will the city get it right? I think it can.

There is skepticism that American cities will ever end homelessness. The federal government has missed the crisis for so long that many have given up hope. The pandemic has left people even more resigned.

But for the first time, we have a President and Governor of California who are committed to providing the means to end homelessness. And Prop C is giving San Francisco far more local money to house the homeless than ever before.

San Francisco’s goal of 6,000 placements by June 2022 won’t end homelessness, but it will transform the public and political landscape around it.

So what should San Francisco do with the federal, state, and city on board?

Act with urgency

San Francisco needs to act urgently. This may seem obvious. But as I say in the new foreword to Generation Priced Out, no American city treats homelessness and housing affordability as an emergency. Instead, it is treated like a manageable crisis.

That did not work.

A sense of urgency has accompanied all of the major increases in San Francisco in housing the unhoused. Consider:

• After the earthquake on October 17, 1989, the city signed a contract with the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which I run, to replace the hotel hotline program with our Modified Payment Program (MPP). The sudden demise of the hotline due to the quake prompted the city to go to our MPP, which it had previously implemented gradually. Due to the city’s compulsion to act, more than 1000 formerly homeless hotline participants were soon given permanent accommodation.

• After a lawsuit delayed the launch of Care Not Cash for over two years, Mayor Gavin Newsom was keen to ramp up the program quickly in early 2005. Non-profit organizations were urged to lease SRO hotels at a record rate, and nearly 2,000 former homelessness recipients secured permanent housing.

• The spring 2020 pandemic closed emergency shelters, prompting the city to use FEMA funding to quickly move around 2,000 of the uninhabited accommodations to SIP hotels. A lawsuit dated May 4, 2020, filed by Tenderloin participants alone, prompted the city to quickly accommodate around 400 people who previously lived in tents in the Tenderloin. Why was Mayor Breed’s SIP hotel program so successful? As I wrote in January: “Because the mayor called in staff from the personnel agency, the real estate ministry and her own staff to help HSH. So the expansion of the living space for the uninhabited in San Francisco must take place. “

San Francisco has made its biggest gains in housing people without shelter when it is under pressure to act. When the city lacks urgency – as it did for several months in 2020/21 when thousands of SRO hotel rooms available for rent or purchase were vacant – progress will be made.

Reach the 6000 goal

Several strategies are required to reach 6000 placements. The city will buy a minimum of 1000 SRO units, and adding Project Homekey could bring the total to 2000. Newly released home vouchers could add an additional 1,000. A more efficient occupation of existing vacancies in the cities through permanent supportive housing offers adds another 500.

Add the regular sales of the current master lease units that should bring an additional 1,000 or more placements (estimate based on THC’s total of 337 in 2019, extrapolated to the city’s portfolio). When newly built units will actually open is difficult to predict, but 500 placements by June 2022 seem feasible.

That brings us to around 5,000. The rest can be balanced out with homeless programs for target groups (e.g. young people) and extended Section 8 programs for homeless families. There are enough additional rental subsidy programs to help meet the 6000 target.

San Francisco has more than 6,000 uninhabited people, although the exact number is controversial. So no one should expect the city to end homelessness in the next year. But if the city takes an all-hands-on-deck approach, homelessness will be significantly reduced.

Ultimately, San Francisco cannot end homelessness without opening up affluent neighborhoods to the uninhabited. This struggle is not required to meet the June 2022 goal, but the city cannot end homelessness by only allowing projects in a very limited number of neighborhoods.

The role of the mayor

Mayor Breed faces re-election in November 2023. She recognizes, like past mayors, that voters will judge her by her performance in combating homelessness. Most San Franciscans have focused on their own health, jobs, and the impact of the pandemic to pay close attention to the city’s homeless policies. This will change when the city reopens.

Breed allowed a dysfunctional Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) department to run for too long, but as of May 1, the mayor put a new, more effective team in place. The improvement is already noticeable.

Critics point out that the mayor’s $ 1 billion budget plan is heavily reliant on funding from an electoral measure – Prop C – which she turned down. Point made. But most voters will judge the mayor by how quickly and effectively she uses Prop-C funds.

Randy Shaw

San Francisco’s goal of 6,000 placements by June 2022 won’t end homelessness in the city, but it will transform the public and political landscape around the crisis. Further progress is likely as Prop C, as well as President Biden and California’s funding increases, will continue beyond June 2022.

San Francisco finally has the means to end its homeless crisis. It’s time the city got together and did this.

Randy Shaw
HereafterChron

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