San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors have concurred with the Mayor’s Declaration of a Local Emergency in the Tenderloin, an area defined by the San Francisco Police Department’s Tenderloin District boundaries, as mapped above, and within one block of its perimeter.
As such, City officers and employees will be required to take direction from the Executive Director of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management (“DEM”) to address the overdose and overdose death crisis in the Tenderloin. City departments will be empowered to procure services, goods, and public works to address the emergency using emergency procurement procedures. And all Planning, permitting, public notice and other restrictions that would limit the opening of temporary facilities to address the emergency within the area – including public health, behavioral health, social, or housing services, as recommended by the Director of the DEM or the Director’s designee – shall be waived, including for the use of City sidewalks and parks.
The Declaration is effective immediately with a term of 90 days.
Who is the executive director of the DEM and what incentives do they have? Does this mean nicer tents or better law enforcement?
It means more bureaucrats on DEM’s payroll
The Mayor’s statement when this was announced:
…gave me hope that it would mean better law enforcement (as a way to direct people into treatment and on their way to getting clean and sober along with a reduction in drug dealing), but the description of the problem as an “overdose and overdose death crisis in the Tenderloin” rather than a “tolerance of drug use and acceptance of open drug dealing in the Tenderloin” is telling and I now think means this is just a way to override sensible objections to supervised drug consumption sites and/or so-called “drug sobering centers”, because the Department of Emergency Management won’t have to provide any public notice or get any permits.
I believe allowing homeless addicts to use dangerous street drugs in taxpayer-subsidized facilities because the drug use will no longer be in open view of the public is immoral. This emergency order is just a way to avoid having to deal with the repercussions of that choice.
I look forward to seeing what sort of Ecksmas Miracle we’ll get from Mary Ellen Carroll and team.
It took this long?
It took them this long to basically *acknowledge* the problem. It will be years before they come up with a real solution.
Opportunistic pandering to avoid getting voted out.
Woke is broke. Re-calibrating to reality.
This neighborhood has been getting steadily worse for 30+ years. Getting worse directly as a result of intentional City policies that favor every other neighborhood over this one. Never actually trying to help these people in any meaningful fashion – sweeping them under the rug – out of sight – out of mind. How is a 90 day ” Mayor’s Declaration of a Local Emergency” going to make any sort of positive difference to reverse that?
If the Mayor, and the BOS members actually started showing up in the neighborhood on some sort of daily basis, walking the streets, participating, instead of ignoring people, then there might be some faith that this is not just more empty lip service. Another meaningless exercise to assuage their own conscious over the holidays….
man, come on. You can’t shoot up in the street in American society. You can’t poop in the street. You can’t rob stuff from stores and re-sell it in the street.
It’s the way things have always been. It’s the way these addicts understand, having grown up in American society.
If they keep doing it? over and over again? Prison. That’s it. Enough is enough.
Ment
You say they “can’t ” shoot up, poop, rob ( that SFPD vary carefully ignores) etc…. But the truth is they can, and they do it every day with zero repercussions.
The City is never ever going to put anyone in prison for those crimes. Nobody in Pacific Heights or North Beach cares. They are happier pretending the neighborhood doesn’t exist. Sigh.
Frustrating issue.
I agree with Pablito. The City Family (which is to say the people at City Hall who run the place) doesn’t really care what happens in the TL because it does not affect them.
I don’t know if the TL better or worse than it was 20 years ago. I was here then and it seems to be about the same. I do not think it will ever change.
Success to be declared as soon as the Tenderloin crowd fans into SoMa and inner Mission.
Separately, good luck with that drug treatment program. Generally takes two years for the brain of a hard core addict to rewire itself. Relapse rate is very high.
Status quo was not working. It really sucks that good abiding citizen like me and my family have to put up with the drug dealing, addicts on the streets. We can’t even feel a safe waking on our own streets in San Francisco. Tired of all this compassion bull.S, and I’m a liberal when the homeless and drug advocates and continue to condone irresponsible and inhumane behaviors
The real solution is “wet segregated communities”. Not incarceration per se, but basically yeah, free involuntary single-person, efficiency housing, free food, free education, free medical and education and counseling and segregated dry transition for those who actually want it – but far away from any city and walled off with oversight more than guards. Must be non-violent or they go back to the ultra-violent drug-free prisons.
What no one wants to say is that these people want to stay high and will steal from and/or have sex with anyone if it will keep them high. Period. No qualifiers. The rest panhandle in between stealing.
By taking them out of circulation and buying national level quantities of drugs from the sources, it will erase the incomes of local drug dealers (who will run out of customers) and also the international cartels, who will be obsolete middlemen.
Honestly, it’s safer for them, lets them live closer to their families (many are trapped in CA via drug probation) and frankly it gives them some dignity in their dilemma, as they don’t have to use violence or sell their bodies to feed an addiction.
100% – they would get what they want (get high and be left alone) – and we’d all get what we want (out of sight, out of mind, looked after properly). I think the insurance companies alone would be willing to bank roll it just for the cost of all the car windows and their employee man-hours tied up taking all the reports.
Car window repair rarely costs more than the deductible, so I don’t think insurance companies would care. Many break-ins aren’t even reported because of this.
Concentrating a group of people that are high on heroin 24/7, what could go wrong?
The individuals are already concentrated, but they are out on the street instead of in some sort of residence, whether that is a “safe” use facility if not. So, we have ALREADY seen what could go wrong. At least if they were in some sort of facility, even if they kept using, it would be safer for them and everyone else.
Do “they” like to be in a “facility” concentrated with themselves? Or is their high only enjoyable because they have contact with the “normal” world?
People who are addicted like getting high, regardless of where they are. Their primary concern is getting high. To the extent most facilities do not allow a person to use drugs or alcohol, addicted people do not like being in them—but that is not what happens in a “wet” facility.
If you mean living outside a facility when you refer to the “normal world,” living on the street or in a flophouse is a horrific way to live. But, people who are addicted are generally too busy focused on getting high to spend much timing reflecting on their living conditions, or to the extent they do, such thoughts increase despair and anxiety and give them more reasons to use drugs and alcohol.
Too little to late. We took a proactive approach to the problems in San Francisco after seeing the city deteriorate over the last 40 years. First we stopped voting for progressive candidates to no avail. Our votes were outnumbered 10 to 1. (hand writing on the wall).
We witnessed smash and grab crimes rising monthly. Homeless camps set up on our street daily. Human wasted deposited on our sidewalks daily. Plies of used needles dumped in our parks and sidewalks daily. Attacks on citizens by deranged homeless, helpless mentally ill street inhabitants weekly. (progressive DA who would not prosecute “quality of life crime)
Over the last year we felt it was unsafe to walk our streets with our pets. We feared someone would pull up gun in hand and steal our pets from us. We found waking in our park with our pets dangerous due to discarded dirty needles in the grass. Or in the children play areas. We watch daycare groups comb the children play area for discarded needles before allowing the children into the areas to play on the equipment.
We didn’t see any progress being made in curbing crime, filthy streets, open air drug sales and use or mentally ill street inhabitants.
So we did the only thing that a rational person could do., We sold our properties and moved out of state. Unfortunately this was a hard choice for us because we loved living in San Francisco. We will miss living in the city. The only way we see out of this mess for San Francisco is for the voters to elect Supervisors and a DA who will stop giving lip service to fixing the problems and actually support law and order and clean up the crime, filth, and drug problems plaguing the city.
We hope London Breed can make a dent, but it’s a up hill battle for her given the current make up on the BOS.
This city will only improve when all incumbents are voted out and replaced with more moderate, rational leaders.
DEM issued the outline of the plan.
OK, I just read through all 4 pages of the “Plan”. Nothing to see here folks, “new plan” looks like the “old plan”. There’s an old saying that when you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again expecting a different outcome it’s a sign of insanity.
Several commentator’s including me have already have stated what needs to happen to effect real change in San Francisco. The voters are the only stakeholders who can effect real change in San Francisco. As long as the voters continue to elect progressive’s to the BOS nothing will ever change. At some point you run out of oxygen when you live in a bubble.
My heart goes out to the kids and families living in the Tenderloin. All the families who have to deal with the squalor conditions of daily life in their neighborhood.
At least one San Franciscan has woken up to the reality of progressive politics paralyzing the city. See name link. Here’s hoping more will do the same.