City Hall Digest: An Update on Wellness Hubs and a New Twist in the Encampments Lawsuit

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.

Unclear Future For Wellness Hubs After SDNY Statement

Some surprising news from New York City has complex implications for San Francisco’s drug policy, Mayor Breed’s budget, and some recent legislation proposed by Supervisor Matt Dorsey. Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, recently indicated that Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor is looking to shut down the city’s safe consumption sites, currently the only ones in the US. Stating that the supervised consumption sites are violating federal, state, and local law, Williams said that his office “is prepared to exercise all options—including enforcement—if this situation does not change in short order.”

Generally speaking, safe consumption sites are illegal under what’s known colloquially as federal “crack house statutes,” which prevent individuals from maintaining property where controlled substances are consumed. During the nearly two years that New York City’s safe consumption sites have been open, the Biden administration has essentially turned a blind eye to enforcing these statutes. But now, Williams has turned his attention to enforcing these laws, stating “I am an enforcer, not a policymaker.”

It’s a pivot for the Biden appointee, with broad implications for drug policy in San Francisco, and it highlights the recognition that the harm-reduction approach to solving drug overdoses is inadequate now that fentanyl is so pervasive. Advocates have repeatedly called for funding and resources for Wellness Hubs, which would be low-barrier sites to prevent overdoses and provide connections to resources such as basic medical aid, food assistance and connections to treatment. Like New York City, a third party nonprofit would have to fund and oversee the “safe consumption” aspect of these hubs. Mayor Breed recently allocated $18.9 million to implement Wellness Hubs in the city’s $14.6 billion budget. But Williams’s recent statements suggest that federal prosecutors could go after those sites if they were set up in San Francisco and included the safe consumption aspect, even if operated by a third party, making that investment potentially too risky to be worth it.

In a timely proposal, Supervisor Matt Dorsey urged that the $18.9 million intended for Wellness Hubs be instead dedicated to increasing jail health services for drug addicts who are incarcerated—Supervisor Dorsey no longer supports Wellness Hubs because they do not include safe consumption baked into them, which means they no longer have a lifesaving component and also won’t materially change street conditions for the better—he believes the money would better be spent on treatment elsewhere.

Supervisor Dorsey’s proposal would include immediate enrollment for people in jail with addiction issues in opioid use reduction programs such as buprenorphine regimes. We have to have more addiction treatment options for people in jail so that drug addicts have a foot in the door of sobriety when they are released. 

Two weeks ago, Supervisor Dorsey received pushback from Supervisors Hillary Ronen and Dean Preston for this proposed shift in funding. Supervisor Preston stated that there were “no legal obstacles” to implementing Wellness Hubs without safe consumption sites—which is correct, but with federal action looming on the horizon in New York, there may be a precedent for the impossibility of these sites as envisioned in their ideal form by supporters in the future.

The SDNY’s statement should be a reality check for City Hall. San Francisco shouldn’t spend limited funds on strategies like Wellness Hubs which have proven to be questionably effective, when rampant drug use is a known problem in San Francisco’s jails, and an estimated 70 percent of the jail’s population struggles with either mental health or addiction. The city needs to focus on getting people into recovery and getting them the treatment they need. Supervisor Dorsey’s proposal is a step in the right direction away from a legally fraught alternative.

Coalition on Homelessness Offers Settlement to City—And Is Promptly Rejected

Last week, the advocacy group Coalition on Homelessness, offered  to settle with the City of San Francisco in their legal battle over whether San Francisco can legally conduct sidewalk sweeps of homeless encampments. This settlement was quickly rejected—here’s why.

For some quick context: since December 2022, San Francisco has not been able to clear homeless encampments from city sidewalks due to a ruling in federal court, which was made during the course of litigation launched against San Francisco by the Coalition on Homelessness, represented by the ACLU of Northern California. 

The Coalition took the City Attorney’s office by surprise by very publicly offering a settlement deal that would end their lawsuit in exchange for the city’s cooperation on a set of terms. These terms included:

• Filling all vacant supportive housing units

• Spending all unspent Prop C and Prop I funds for housing, shelter, treatment by the end of the fiscal year

• Ending the practice of sending police to encampment sweeps. 

While these terms may sound reasonable, it’s highly unusual that a litigant would present their terms in the press like this, and even more unusual because the parties have been hashing things out in court. 

The Coalition’s move is likely designed to force the city into an awkward position: accept the terms, or reject the settlement and continue the status quo, riling up voters on a hot topic before an election year. However, the public nature of the settlement and its presentation out of court suggest that the Coalition may be pulling a PR stunt, rather than engaging in a legitimate, goodwill offer to settle a longstanding dispute. 

City Attorney David Chiu’s office agreed, saying: “Legal parties do not engage in settlement negotiations via the press, particularly when confidential settlement discussions are required.” Chiu also said that the Coalition “disrespected the Court’s efforts and discouraged thoughtful settlement discussions.”

If San Francisco wants to actually address its homelessness problem, political actors like the Coalition cannot continue to engage in this type of ideological bullying that ultimately keeps the city from implementing the immediate solution of moving people off the streets and into shelter.