City Hall Digest: Progress In Combating Supply Side of Drug Crisis and a Small Victory in Encampment Sweep Fight

City Hall Digest is TogetherSF Action’s weekly dispatch from San Francisco’s City Hall, broken into bite-sized pieces—because understanding local government is your fundamental right.

City Makes Progress Combating Supply Side of Drug Crisis

Last week, an in-depth piece from NBC Bay Area highlighted San Francisco’s progress on combating the supply side of the city’s drug crisis, with law enforcement making tangible gains reducing the amount of fentanyl on our streets. TogetherSF Action’s public pressure campaign earlier this year called attention to this crisis, and resulted in over 57,000 letters sent to City Hall demanding action. 

In May, Mayor London Breed organized and brought SF’s various law enforcement agencies together to combat the drug crisis, including the San Francisco Police Department, San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, the District Attorney, and the Department of Emergency Management. Other law enforcement agencies like the California Highway Patrol, California National Guard, and even the United States Drug Enforcement Agency stepped in as well. 

Now, we’re seeing the results of this coordination. Let’s dive into the numbers and what they mean for the drug crisis. 

Since May 2023, law enforcement agencies have made more than 800 arrests, including at least 300 arrests of drug dealers and 123 arrests for people wanted for other crimes. Additionally, the different agencies have removed 103 kilograms (227 pounds) of drugs from the street, which includes 56 kilograms (123 pounds) of fentanyl. This is enough fentanyl to kill approximately 28 million people. 

Law enforcement is just a part of this complex equation—getting people off the streets, into treatment, and ultimately sober is the other. But the early results of this operation show that this kind of careful coordination and execution deserves recognition.

There’s plenty more work to be done in terms of making the addiction care system more robust and navigable for people who need it most, and also in directing more funding to addiction treatment and recovery options for the city. Those changes need as much attention and resources as the law enforcement component has received if we are going to permanently solve the drug crisis.

City Claims Small Victory Over Court’s Language in Encampment Sweep Fight

Last week, the City of San Francisco claimed a small victory in a major legal case that currently prevents it from conducting homeless encampment sweeps. It’s a bit complicated, so we’ll break down the basics of the case, but the key takeaway here is that the city could have some more wiggle room to conduct sweeps because of the court’s language in a decision made last week. 

Last September, the activist nonprofit Coalition on Homelessness filed a lawsuit against the City and County of San Francisco, which hinges on the idea that it is illegal for the city to conduct homeless encampment sweeps when it cannot offer sufficient housing or shelter to place those people into. It is unclear whether the city has the actual capacity to ever meet the demands of this constraint, i.e give every homeless person a space in permanent supportive housing, a finite resource in San Francisco.

In December, the judge hearing the case issued an order that effectively agreed with the Coalition’s position that the city does not have enough shelter or housing space for the people they ask to move from the street. Since then, the city has not been able to clear encampments. Elected leaders ranging from Mayor London Breed to Governor Gavin Newsom have criticized the decision as being a roadblock to progress on solving homelessness, and joining them in their criticism was TogetherSF Action, with our Chief Executive Officer Kanishka Cheng speaking at a rally protesting the injunction

City Attorney David Chiu and his team have been litigating the case in an attempt to ease the conditions of the order, which brings us to the most recent development. A recent motion by the City aiming to modify the conditions of the order was denied, but City Attorney Chiu celebrated one small win: the judges’ language appears to agree that if someone living on the street refuses services or shelter, they are not “involuntarily homeless,” and can be told to move off the streets. 

The city views this agreement on language as a minor victory—and, for the time being, it is. This may give the city more room to maneuver as it attempts to solve the homelessness crisis by allowing the city to tellunhoused people who refuse services to move off the streets. We can’t let city streets become waiting rooms for people who need shelter and services but refuse them.

Supervisor Calls for Audit of City’s Largest Addiction Treatment Nonprofit After Service Interruption

Last week, District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani called for an audit of HealthRight360 after a COVID outbreak among staff caused them to halt intake of new clients into a 48-bed, $37-million a year program for withdrawal management. Given that the nonprofit handling this program just two years ago had serious financial mismanagement, Supervisor Stefani is aiming to make sure history does not repeat itself and that the organization is able to provide the services they are being paid for by San Francisco.

However, it’s worth noting that on the same day of the alleged outbreak, three employees of HealthRight360 took that day off to set up an illegal popup safe consumption site in the Tenderloin. This coincidence raises questions as to whether the act of “civil disobedience” (as Supervisor Hillary Ronen called it) contributed to the closure. 

HealthRight360 is the largest organization contracted to provide addiction treatment services in San Francisco, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the city on an annual basis. HealthRight360 took over management of this withdrawal program from a problematic program operator, and Supervisor Stefani says the audit is meant to ensure that HealthRight360 is able to fulfill their obligations. 

Even if the employees’ activism did not interrupt service, we have to wonder: three city contractors paid with taxpayer dollars took time off to actively set something up that the city itself says it cannot support. This is a perfect example of dysfunction in the city, wherein nonprofit providers who are supposed to help the city achieve a common goal are ideologically opposed to the city’s methods. 

The employees say they reversed two overdoses in the time the popup was open—but our legal, organized street response teams reverse overdoses daily, on a much greater scale with far less risk. We can’t help but wonder what sort of liability those workers brought on themselves, HealthRight360, and the city by providing jerry-rigged medical services in an alleyway. 

For their part, HealthRight360 publicly welcomed the audit, saying that they have been raising the alarm for several years now about being understaffed due to their inability to pay competitive salaries.

Holding service providers accountable is essential, especially when people’s lives and sobriety are at risk—not to mention the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars that fund these programs. This audit is a commendable move from the supervisor, demonstrating a willingness to hold providers accountable, and we hope that answers about HealthRight360’s capacity to provide services are answered.