City Hall Digest: Updates on Safe Consumption Sites, Street Conditions, and Conservatorship

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 It More Likely That Safe Consumption Sites Will Operate Under Nonprofit Contracts

Last week, the Board of Supervisors moved one step closer to allowing safe consumption sites in San Francisco if they are operated by nonprofits, similar to how New York runs safe consumption sites. Specifically, the board voted to undo a 2020 law that required safe consumption site operators to obtain licenses from the Department of Public Health. Because these sites are still technically illegal under federal law, the city essentially “looks the other way,” and the city does not directly fund the sites.

In the wake of the Tenderloin Center’s failure to connect drug users to treatment, this decision by the Supervisors leaves us feeling less than confident any new sites will be more effective. Given the fact that the Department of Public Health judged the success of the Tenderloin Center on questionable data, it’s unclear whether there would be guardrails in place to ensure drug users aren’t just cycling in and out of the center, but rather are getting connected to drug treatment services at high rates. 

The fact that these sites would be privately funded also leave questions as to accountability and transparency—for instance, there has been little in the way of discussion regarding who would be responsible for the safety and cleanliness of the surrounding areas. It’s not immediately clear that our elected officials would be able to directly affect any problems that arise at potential sites. 

We’re supportive of safe injection sites, but they absolutely must be executed in tandem with city-funded recovery programs and law enforcement keeping users and residents safe from dealers and dealing-related violent activity in the areas surrounding the sites. Otherwise, the city is simply reversing overdoses while doing nothing to prevent them.

Local Elected Officials Support State Bill to Expand Eligibility for Conservatorship

Last year, California lawmakers got within an inch of passing legislation by State Senator Susan Talamantes-Eggman (D-Stockton) that would have made it easier for people with debilitating mental illness to be compelled into rehabilitative care. Eggman’s bill failed, but she is back again this year with a fresh pair of bills. Last week, State Senator Scott Wiener and Mayor London Breed expressed support for the bills at a press event. 

The main bill, SB 43, would update California’s 50-year-old conservatorship law by streamlining the eligibility criteria. The changes would take into account how likely the person is to suffer physical or mental harm as a result of their mental illness, as well as their ability to care for themselves. 

The other bill, SB 363, would create a state data dashboard with information on how many psychiatric and substance use disorder beds there are across the state. The goal of this bill is to reduce the reliance on short-term hospital stays, which are extremely taxing on frontline workers here in San Francisco.

Critics may say that the expansion of conservatorship will lead to mass institutionalization, but in California, it’s incredibly difficult to conserve an individual. The purpose of expanding the law is to focus solely on the people who are dying on the street because they cannot care for themselves. 

Drug Users Face Numerous Hurdles to Recovery—Street Conditions Shouldn’t Be One

San Francisco’s drug crisis is omnipresent, and that’s most true for the thousands of drug users that are trying to get into recovery. Among all the other obstacles they face, none may be more difficult than having to pass by users publicly consuming drugs.

Last week, the Standard reported this exact scenario happens daily at one of the largest methadone clinics in the city—the Bay Area Addiction Research and Treatment (BAART) clinic on Seventh and Market street. Around 40 percent of the clinic’s 750 patients have to go to the clinic on a daily basis to get their medication at a downtown location where public drug use and sales occur in plain sight. 

While we can talk about this subject from a distance, this is the reality for countless people seeking help—and is a perfect example of how our government could be doing a better job at getting people into recovery. There have been legislative proposals to address this exact problem, such as Supervisor Matt Dorsey’s “Right to Recovery” zones, which would create a zero-tolerance policy for public drug use within a certain radius of drug treatment centers. However, despite a flurry of other law enforcement-oriented legislation to address the drug crisis, we have yet to see this crucial piece of the puzzle be implemented. 

Want to learn more about San Francisco’s approach to recovery programs? Sign up for our upcoming event, “Does San Francisco Enable Drug Use?” here.

TogetherSF Action is making advocating for an end to the drug epidemic in San Francisco a top priority this year. Our first step? Flooding inboxes at City Hall. We need thousands of concerned San Franciscans to send letters to their leaders demanding they end open-air drug markets in 2023. Are you in?