I want to go back to SF and see what it’s like compared to when I was there in the late 90s.
But that article I posted made it look a lot worse. https://archive.ph/GY6w5
Jessica said she doesn’t even get high from fentanyl anymore, but it helps with an intense pain in her left leg that she has refused to let doctors examine because she hates hospitals. She keeps the wound, which smells rancid and oozes pus, wrapped in dirty bandages.
Jessica had mostly lived on the streets for years but was staying at the Monarch, a shelter-in-place hotel on Geary Street, during the pandemic. Free room. Free food. Free drug paraphernalia. She just needed money to buy drugs, she said, and she openly acknowledged she gets that money by swiping goods from Target and reselling them.
The Monarch is one of 25 hotels used by the city during the pandemic to house homeless people. Still, the city seems to have mostly missed the opportunity to coax people living in the hotels and addicted to drugs into treatment. Of the roughly 4,000 people who lived in the hotels at any point in the pandemic, just 10 — one quarter of 1% — moved into residential drug treatment programs, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
Department of Public Health outreach teams made contact with 1,500 people living in the hotels during the pandemic, and nearly half of them were connected to mental health care, drug treatment or medical care, but there’s no data on the outcomes, said Angelica Almeida, director of street-based and justice-involved behavioral health services for the city’s Department of Public Health.
Jessica said her life might seem hard, but it’s actually pretty carefree, and she offered a sweeping explanation of one reason why her mom would face such long odds trying to pull her out of San Francisco.
“The city is way too easy for people with nothing to get by,” she said. “That’s why I’m still here nine years later. You get by with doing drugs and suffer no consequences. I like it here.”
I’m all for progressive programs if they work. But you’re not going to convince me that just giving addicts money and a safe space to do drugs is the best course of action. It has nothing to do with punishing the addicts, just not enabling them.
Adam runs a controversial, in-your-face Twitter account called @bettersoma that shows the city’s drug crisis close up, angering some advocates who say he is insensitive and exploits homeless people. He argues that the tweets depict a reality that City Hall politicians and homeless advocates are unwilling to face. A recovering alcoholic himself, he said he wants more police presence, incarceration for dealers and far more treatment for people addicted to drugs. He doesn’t think the city’s focus on harm reduction is working.
While his online persona can be edgy, Adam is engaged in the lives of homeless individuals and posts videos of them sharing their stories. He gives them free sandwiches, money, odd jobs and a listening ear.
I would bet a lot of money that Adam has a lot more compassion for homeless addicts than the people who just throw money at the problem and never live it up close.
Also it seems like smoking crack in the open is ok now? If true that is just never going to fly with residents long term. Something has to give.
I knew some street kids when I lived there. They weren’t mentally ill, they just would rather be on the streets in SF than in an apartment in Cleveland. Which is fine. But giving them a stipend seems like it’s going a little far.
But again - that’s what I want to go back and see for myself. I lived in Nob Hill and walked through the Tenderloin all the time. I have a reference point to compare it to.