San Francisco gets mixed grades on effort to turn around troubled Tenderloin
SAN FRANCISCO -- In early 2022, San Francisco mobilized to tackle the problems that had been building over decades in the Tenderloin District: Homelessness, an exploding drug crisis, the growing presence of drug cartels and a sense that things were spinning out of control. Sixteen months later, what has changed?
What is happening in this neighborhood has drawn attention around the world over the past year. The Tenderloin is a dynamic neighborhood and conditions on any given corner can change abruptly. Exactly how things are changing over time depends a lot on whom you ask and when.
"It's almost every day," Jorge said referring to a mound of trash on the street. "Every single day they have a mess over here."
"It's been nice," Azalina Eusope said of recent conditions. "I would say about the last four weeks."
Every day is a little different here and there are some changes unfolding but lasting change was always going to depend on finding ways to help the people that are struggling here.
"Nobody should have to live like this," said Mark Mazza with the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management, as he looked over a sidewalk encampment. "No one should have to walk through this. This is a pathway right here kids take to the playground up the street."
Mazza is taking on a challenge some might think impossible. As the Tenderloin Streets operation manager, he sees a lot of these streets.
"I do a lot of walking," he said. "Probably about 50 miles a week."
All that walking reflects a shift in city strategy -- this one driven by the Dec. 2022 closure of what debuted as the Tenderloin Linkage Center.
"When the Tenderloin Center closed, we had to focus 100 percent on bringing those services to the street," Mazza explained. "So that's when we just divided the neighborhood into four areas and every day we work that area, seven days a week. HSH, DPH, DPW -- we've divided the Tenderloin into four different zones. We come through, we offer to get people to shelter with wellness checks. If someone has somewhere to live already or they're in a shelter, we try to get them back there."
It's a slow, day-by-day, case-by-case process that often means revisiting the same people in the same tents for months with occasional breakthroughs.
"We had somebody, it was a couple, and we had a couple navigation center beds down in the Bayview," Mazza said at one stop.
Then there is the scale of the challenge in a city with an unsheltered homeless population of about 4,400.
"We can't keep up," Mazza acknowledged. "There's so much need out here and not enough of us to help and everybody out here doesn't want to be out here."
"They just started contacting people when COVID happened," said Abe, who lives on Tenderloin streets. "Before that, there weren't any people really offering. Occasionally if the police caught you nodding off, they'd take you to a navigation center."
Abe has been in San Francisco for 10 years, almost all of it on the street. He says he is seeing more offers for help.
"So they just started going after people, during COVID," he said.
Why is he still on the street? He says it comes down to the available options and that is something Mazza hears just about every day
"This group, they would go inside if they were eligible for what they want," Mazza said, talking about another group on the street. "They want hotel rooms and they don't meet the eligibility requirements so they want to stay out here."
"It's totally BS," Abe added. "They come up and they want you to throw away all your personal property, drop everything and go with them and go to a, like, a dorm where they're just stacking everybody It's like a metal house in there. For real."
"I can't blame them for not wanting to go into a congregate shelter," Mazza said."That's their decision."
And that's just one example of how resolving any single case can be difficult, under difficult circumstances, for everyone.
"These guys are out here every day, often getting yelled at, working hard," Mazza said of his team. "People are mad at them. People who are on the streets are mad. People who are housed are mad at them."
"It's the people that are actually the hardest workers are the ones that are being shafted in this," said homeowner Alex Alvarado.
Alvarado may not be yelling at city workers but he is frustrated. He was one of the neighbors KPIX met last year. At the time he was encouraged by the street-cleaning efforts. One year later, he's disappointed.
"If we didn't clean here, this place would be a complete disaster," Alvarado said.
In 2022, Stu Barkouki spoke to KPIX about the struggle to run his deli. One year later, he tells us it was just too much, He sold and moved on.
Others are digging in.
"You know people have been loving and caring for the Tenderloin since probably the beginning of time." Eusope said, pointing to her restaurant wall collection of Tenderloin photos. "You can see all these little signs and you don't get that in any other neighborhood in San Francisco."
Eusope proudly boasts of being a fifth-generation street food vendor. Opening the restaurant means running a gauntlet of city fees, rules and regulations -- an stark contrast to the disorder she was seeing just outside. After being spit on by someone camping in her doorway, she joined a group of business owners demanding help from the mayor's office.
"If you're placing a regulation or rules or a process that needs to be followed," Eusope said. "It has to be equally distributed and everybody has to act the same way and I just feel like that's what is missing here."
Saving the Tenderloin has meant different things over the years. Now for entrepreneurs like Eusope, that means finding a way to make this neighborhood a viable place to run a business.
"Should I say fight?" Eusope asked. "Maybe that's not really a positive word but it's gonna take a lot of loud voices from small people like us."
When Mayor London Breed announced the Tenderloin emergency initiative, her language around the use of law enforcement drew a lot of attention but significant policing changes haven't really come until recently.
KPIX observed a typical drug bust made by a six-member undercover team, launched in late November.
"Extra baggies," said an SFPD officer, going through a bag of evidence seized in a drug bust. "More fentanyl"
Days later, more arrests at the very same corner. There are new rules. A uniformed officer must be on hand but it's not slowing them down. At the start of April, Tenderloin Station had made 217 arrests, putting it on pace to pass last year's total by more than 50 percent.
"We have recovered triple the amount of drugs year to date as opposed to last year," said Tenderloin station Captain Sergio Chin.
"We have charged almost double the amount of cases in the period since I took over compared with the previous year," explained San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.
Jenkins began her tenure by coming to this neighborhood and promising action against drug dealing. While the busts are really old-fashion police work, they're hitting challenges. A complaint was filed against one officer alleging that Latinos are being unfairly targeted. Officers say they're simply targeting fentanyl and problematic corners. As for prosecutors, their drug arrest cases are just now reaching courtrooms. The first two cases ended with hung juries.
"The defense that was offered in both of those cases is that the defendant had been trafficked and that's why they were selling narcotics," Jenkins said. "This is a new issue. When I was handling drug dealing cases five years ago, there was no allegation that anyone was being trafficked so it's something that we are having to adapt to rapidly."
"We're not gonna have any more luck arresting our way out of that crisis by arresting street-level dealers than any prior administration of that or that this country has had," countered District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston, who now covers a portion of the Tenderloin. "If you have an addressed the underlying causes and reasons that folks are out there and dealing if you have an investor in the community you're just moving people around."
Out on the street, it's not hard to find those who say the stepped-up presence alone is long overdue -- at least on their corner.
"We've tried to call the police many times before," said Jessica, a travel agency owner. "Sometimes they come, sometimes not. Right now, it's really better with the police on the streets right now. I prefer to have the police on the streets."
In the same way Urban Alchemy only patrols some of the neighborhood, police can't be everywhere at once.
"They've moved them all the way up to Post Street," observed Tony Kushmaul. "So they move them block-to-block or they move them around the block."
"Even though the sellers may move around and others engage in criminal activity, we're going to stay on top of them and on top of what they're doing regardless of where they go," promised SFPD assistant chief David Lazar
So the police are making more arrests, taking on a wave of drug dealers as residents watch and wait to see what it might accomplish.
"The police, they need to make more walking routes, you know," a man named Gordon said of what he'd like to see from SFPD. "Walking around -- at least scare these guys."
Another part of this story that has stretched on for decades is neighbors trying to find their own ways to push back against problems. Lately more of them are doing that by making some noise.
"Before I started doing this, all these people that's over there, that's using drugs," said resident JJ Smith of his sidewalk-clearing. "They all were using their drugs, right here."
For Smith, it started with things like clearing paths for school kids, checking on neighbors, building relationships with those on the street. After a while, he too hit something of a breaking point.
"It's not normal," he said of the neighborhood's condition. "But it is normal."
He set out to change that "normal" by showing it to everyone. He turned his Twitter account into a raw, no-apologies chronicle of life and death in this neighborhood. The suffering on the street, the violence, the drugs and the casualties.
"I just want my voice to be heard," Smith said. "I want people to be able to see what I see. Understand what I deal with every day when I walk out my door."
"I felt I had to use the tools that I had to do something," said another resident who chose not to be identified for obvious reasons. "To sort of fight back"
Turning several lenses on a problem: a now-growing collection of neighbors who are connecting via closed-circuit security cameras.
"Been in San Francisco for 30 years and I've been a resident of the Tenderloin for 29 years," they explained. "Basically, shock that what I saw was going on. Nothing was really being done about it."
So they turned the focus on the blatant, open-air drug trade that had consumed their blocks and put it online.
"There's a regular. He's out there all the time and there he is using a mule," they explained, pointing to some of the videos they had collected. "It was something that people would just deny -- that's not going on -- but there it is, you know? Just look at it. You can see the drugs. You can see what's happening."
They say the dealers eventually saw what was happening as well and a funny thing happened.
"They are well aware of it," they said of the dealers. "They have moved their operations up a block."
The cameras shuffled the problem down the street so now more neighbors are building similar systems.
"So it does give me hope that you know how to make change." they said of the camera deployment. "I would not recommend anyone just do this. It's a very dangerous activity."
But, for a lot of people, the current situation has created a sense that, even if risky or unpopular, they have to say something.
"I can place myself in everybody's shoes because I've been there," Smith said. I can put myself in the tenants' shoes because I am a tenant. I can put myself in the business people's shoes because I was once a business owner and I can place myself in the homeless -- or addicts' -- shoes because my family has been like that. My brother was like that so I understand what everybody's going through. I can see it. I can feel it."
A centerpiece of the initial emergency effort was the Tenderloin Linkage Center, which closed in December.
"People were -- initially -- they were directed to services to some capacity but you know that wasn't always happening," Mayor London Breed said of her decision to close it. "We had all of the different services at one location and that wasn't completely translating to help and other locations."
"I mean, this Tenderloin center was not perfect," countered Supervisor Preston. "There were many things, if I were running it, that I would've done very differently but we should've -- when we closed it -- had two more opening in the community."
The Tenderloin linkage center opened and closed with controversy. It was the city's first de facto, safe-use site and the discussion over how or where to open another one continues. The drug crisis isn't just complicating the effort to get people off the streets -- it's driving it in many cases.
"Urban Alchemy is on the lower TL so that's moved a lot of things up," Mazza said of the shifting neighborhood. "So now, Ellis, O'Farrell -- we're seeing a lot more people. You know, people go where the drugs are."
In the day-after-day, camp-by-camp effort to connect people on the streets with some kind of shelter, there is the one element that looms over just about everything.
"There's complicated pieces and there's some that are pretty obvious," Mazza said. "And people out here will be clear with us. They are addicted to drugs that they need to be using constantly."
"Like, I'm surprised that I'm not dead yet and I'm 40 years old." said Phillip who lives in a tent by Polk Street.
Phillip arrived in the city from Puerto Rico with his mother when he was two years old.
"Ever since then I've been out here in San Francisco," he said.
He ended up homeless when he was 11. Twenty-nine years later, he says, the street is all he knows and when he's been placed in shelter or housing, he has struggled..
"It is very weird because it's like I'm not used to this inside environment they're trying to give me," Phillip said. "I wanna be somewhere where I'm comfortable."
Part of being comfortable, he says, means staying alive.
"The drugs that I do, because I do heavy drugs -- I do opiates and, for people who do these types of drugs, they can end up living and dying on the street, you know. It's really easy," he explained.
"That's why they're out here," Mazza said. "And that's why we keep coming back to try to catch them at the right time, when they're ready to do something different."
There are, of course, other challenges to keeping people in housing.
"Hoarding and cluttering disorders are a real thing," Mazza said of the challenges.
That's exactly the kind of case the team had been struggling with recently and an individual they were trying to help agreed to go into housing. Only the man came right back to the same corner and familiar ways, collecting an entire sidewalk full of items pulled from garbage cans and recycle bins. So the team asked if he'd like to go back home.
"He agreed." Mazza said. "He said he didn't need any of this stuff. He had gone through it. He didn't want to take any of it with him. He gets walked home by outreach. He's somewhere warm now. The street is clean. People can pass through."
So there are a lot of steps forward and backward for any number of reasons.
"What happens out on the street and what keeps people safe out here get them kicked out of the housing," Mazza explained. "If you want to stay out here, you need to be scary. You need to be able to yell at people. You need to be loud to keep people away from you. So, unless we're working on that out here on the street before people go indoors, the same things that kept them safe out here get them right back out on the street."
As hard as it can be to find housing and get someone placed in it, the city is having a much harder time with something else: Getting people into successful drug treatment or recovery.
Phillip was asked if he was interested in any kind of drug treatment
"That's funny because it was asked to me a couple times and I gave a blank answer to that," he answered. "Because it's hard. The opiates that I do, the detox and withdrawal, it's not a good feeling. So I would probably leave that as an unanswered question."
"If we're ever going to make a dent in this, we need some type of quality treatment that people are interested in going into," Mazza said of the drug challenge. "People are out here because they're on drugs. There's places for people to go when they're ready. There's housing, there's money for people that aren't eligible for housing. We're trying to get people off the streets but the drugs are keeping them out here. "
"It's a wonderful community," said Tenderloin worker Andre Harris. "I love my city. Don't get it wrong, I was born right here. I love San Francisco but it's complicated sometimes."
Harris was sharing a thought many San Franciscan have said to themselves at some point and "complicated" is something this neighborhood has been for a long time.
"My overall goal is to see the Tenderloin be a place where people can live in peace and safety," Mayor Dianne Feinsten said shortly after taking office in 1978.
Not just peace and safety. Neighbors and the city have been trying to corral trash and litter on the streets here for generations.
"But it is still the same," Jorge said. "No changes. It's still the same, you see? You see the broken glass? A lot of mess every day."
The Tenderloin is where fixing problems can feel like turning back the tide and measuring progress can be difficult..
"Business owners come to my officers on a daily basis and they thank them," Captain Chin said. "You probably say 'you guys are pretty successful at this location and why not at this location?'"
"We can't keep up," Mazza said of his work. "There's so much need out here and not enough of us to help.
The city has been placing as many as 200 to 300 people, sometimes more, into some type of housing every month and those numbers are a bit higher than in years past.
"I think we're starting to see some visible differences on the streets," said Jennifer Friedenbach with the Coalition on Homelessness. "We can't qualify that until the count but it's -- certainly if you look at the numbers -- they're doing a lot of placements."
Then there is how to take some control of the drug crisis. Discussions on that topic now pack community meetings with residents increasingly frustrated by the lack of better outcomes for those on the sidewalks.
"The people who are on the sidewalk should know that there's people out here trying to help them get indoors," Mazza said. "And when they get that opportunity, whether it's to go into housing or go into treatment, whatever it is, they deserve something that's high quality and they deserve people that will be there to help them get back on track. I just want people to see how much work is going on out here and how hard people are trying. The Tenderloin is going to be the Tenderloin but this is unacceptable."
That is one thing that has not changed since last year -- the sense of urgency. The feeling that more people are paying attention and looking for ways to push the neighborhood forward
."I know it's a long shot but I feel like it's a change that's happening." Eusope said. "If we all have that, we might get this balance. We don't need to wait another 60 years."
"I think we need to fix this matter in the Tenderloin," Jorge added. "That's all I can say."