In a bid to address the city's drug crisis — and the crime and homelessness that come with it — San Francisco voters shifted right in Tuesday's primary, approving ballot measures that aim to boost enforcement powers.
Hasn’t the failed war on drugs shown the narrative that drugs cause the homelessness and crime and are not just another symptom of the underlying problems is a lie?
If the more progressive policies are helping, that impact is getting drowned out by other factors pushing parts of town in the other direction.
As someone who lives in the SF / Oakland area, I can attest to people constantly talking about drugs, crime and homelessness going in the wrong direction. People bring it up without being prompted.
My theory is that more progressive addiction policies work, but that’s just one variable. And there are other things impacting day to day vibe in the city that are overshadowing the stuff that’s working.
When people go to the ballot box, nuance often goes out the door. When things aren’t great, they vote for whatever is different.
Of course they’re going to talk about crime, what else are they going to talk about, the weather that never changes?
In all seriousness though I do think it’s the lack of other issues that’s driving this. Most other issues liberals care about have come to a secure consensus in the city, abortion and LGBT rights are as secure as they can get, marijuana and even mushrooms are basically legal, the last gun store has closed, the city has a good recycling and composting system and a green energy option, the parks and schools get decent funding etc. The only thing left is affordable housing and crime. Since the minutia of housing policy is boring that just leaves crime for the media and people to talk about, so even if crime itself is stable or even declining, people’s awareness of it increases.
You can see this during the pandemic where homelesness and crime were just as bad if not worse, but people were focusing on other things.
The lack of other issues also demobilizes the average liberal voter who already has everything they want and doesn’t see a need to vote, so the election becomes dominated by people who care about that one remaining issue.
If you look at something like car break ins in SF, the data did show that it dropped a ton during the pandemic, then rebounded to the 2019 craziness.
It wasn’t something that was in people’s heads. The SF Chronicle has been pretty good about charting this stuff, and if you search for things like car break in graphs, Google images will get ya past some paywalls.
IMHO, those of us who have been living in the area for decades have some legitimate observations and experiences that are supported by data. I’m not saying the solution has to be super conservative policies. I’m just saying that the problems are real.
Car break ins did go up during/after the pandemic, just as crime went up across the entire country, but that early 20s crime wave seems to be subsiding. This election took place in a context where car break ins are declining and crime in general is decreasing. If these propositions were truly a reaction to real crime then they would have happened in 2022 when crime was peaking and looked like it was going up.
I’m not saying the problem isn’t real, there is crime. But I don’t think the idea it’s getting worse is true. I’ve only been here for 5 years but my understanding is that SF, like most cities, was far worse in the 80s and 90s . Maybe there was some golden era in the 2000s , early 2010s where it was slightly better but just comparing to what I’ve seen since I’ve been here I haven’t noticed any changes that warrant this recent tough in crime bend that local politics is going.
Here is the broader data set going back to 2009. I wish it went back further do capture life before the great recession.
Cutting things off at 2018 doesn’t really tell the full story and doesn’t really show you why people who’ve been here for 10, 20, 30+ years are unhappy.
The concern is the post pandemic uptick it was the overall trend going back a decade. Things have gotten a LOT better over the past 6 months. Whether that’s because of the aggressive 2023 crack down efforts, or because of something else, I don’t know. All I know if that people in the region are not reacting to the past couple years, they’re reacting to the past decade or more.
They wouldn’t have to shoot up in the streets if SF still had the safe injection sites up. People who shoot up in the streets do so mostly because they want to get found if they OD.
Making it illegal to be high won’t make addicts want to stop getting high, it will just push them into dark corners where they die when they OD. Imo that’s way more unacceptable.
Not disagreeing, just curious. How can they safely inject the kind of fentanyl that’s out there now? When milligrams can kill you? What if they prefer to smoke it? Do the safe injection sites provide the drugs or do the users just bring their own stuff there and do it under supervision?
Pretty easy to Google that kind of thing since that’s quite a lot of questions and is better answered by an article or website from one of these places that breaks it down
I did Google it and I didn’t find anything specific to Fentanyl, which is what kills in the majority of the ODs in San Francisco. That’s why I wanted to ask here as there are people who seem to have more knowledge on the subject.
First, no they don’t give out free drugs. Even tho having clean drugs would help a lot in reducing the harms of addiction, I don’t know any government that would pass that.
Obviously fentanyl is fucking dangerous and toxic, no matter how you take it. Overdoses at those sites happen. That’s why they are equipped with Narcan, and also have a line to medical services. So users that would OD somewhere in private and not make it to the ER have a chance.
The second important part is all the stuff that goes with taking the drugs themselves. Usually addicts don’t have a ready supply of syringes and other paraphernalia to use their drugs. This leads to them sharing needles, using dirty gear and other behaviors that spread diseases like hepatitis c. By handing out clean needles and other things, a lot of those diseases can be avoided. They also hand out other medical supplies to treat the damage from the drugs and living in the streets.
Finally, they always offer addicts that want to quit support and help them find treatment. This is the most important part. Addicts trust the people at those sites, because they treat them like people, not junkies. So there is a higher chance that they feel safe enough to ask for help when it’s time for them.
I hope that answers some of your questions. If you want to learn more, Channel 5 with Andrew Callahan has a great series on drugs and homelessness on YouTube. There’s one Episode where they go to a safe injection site, but the other episodes in Philadelphia and SF are definitely also worth a watch. You will see some absolutely harrowing and terrible shit tho. If you have the stomach I highly recommend them.
Edit: Reading some of your other questions in this thread I definitely recommend you watch those Andrew Callahan documentaries. They will answer a lot of your questions and hopefully clear up some misconceptions. Start with San Francisco Streets, then watch harm reduction facility and finally Philly streets.
Thank you for actually answering this. This answered a lot of questions for me. I actually work in a nasty part of the SOMA district of SF and have seen stuff there that I will never forget. 3 ODs have happened outside of my work while I was there so far. I’ve opened the door to leave and had somebody unconscious just fall in. A 16 year old girl’s corpse was defiled after she died from an OD down the alley. People screaming covered in feces and peeling off their own skin. Some of my smaller coworkers have been harassed and chased when trying to enter the building. I’ve talked to some of the addicts there of course, and many of them have told me they don’t care if they die. Most of them are not bad people, just mentally ill and disabled. Some of them definitely get the free needles but they all use outside. There is a needle disposal box around the corner and I’ve actually seen people breaking it open to steal the needles multiple times…
It just seems like none of this stuff works and we are all bending over backwards to cater to them, and then they end up dying anyway. Many of them are severely mentally ill or damaged from the drugs and it’s pretty obvious that they are never going to be anything near functional ever again. It’s like letting a 4 year old kid in an adult body addicted to opiates just go out on to the street to fend for themselves. They are not going to make choices that are beneficial to them in the long run, they’ve literally lost that ability.
After years of putting up with this stuff, I think your average person in the city just gets to the point where they’ve had enough, and people end up voting to try something else.
Sounds absolutely horrible, and I definitely understand that residents don’t wanna live or work in these environments.
I don’t think there is an easy fix for this problem tbh. Or at least not on a local level. From what I see SF is doing a lot of social stuff right, or at least better than the rest of the country. On the other hand you have crazy inequality pushing people into desperation and addiction. This somehow needs to be solved, but it might get worse before it gets better. Idk man, it’s tough.
Where I think people can make a difference is on a personal level. A little kindness goes a long way, and those people are yearning for empathy. You said they are like 4 year olds, and I think they are probably just as vulnerable. Addicts don’t have the luxury of thinking about consequences, they just survive until the next fix. So the right thing to do is be as kind and understanding as possible, even though they might make it difficult.
If you don’t have it already, might I suggest you get some Narcan for your workplace? Sounds like you could literally save a life with it someday.
You’re right, definitely couldn’t hurt to have some Narcan around. I’ve called 911 when I see people that look like they’re in danger, and the emergency services have come pretty quick each time. Many of them tend to use in tents, or place covers over themselves though. This makes it pretty difficult to tell if they’re ok. Its very common to see people completely passed out but not dead. You can usually tell if they’re actually danger by their skintone. Purple/blueish = bad.
Yeah I wish more cities in this country could devote the same amount of resources that SF devotes to these issues. Many of the addicted people I’ve talked to are actually from out of state, particularly red states. It shouldn’t be up to certain cities to take most of the burden of this national problem, but it seems like that’s what is happening. Income inequality is definitely out of control and I agree it seems to be a huge factor in pushing people into these situationss. Multi billionaires just should not exist when we have shit like this happening to to our people.
Yeah, that thing about red states sending their homeless to you guys is absolutely fucked. Makes policies that would actually help seem like they don’t, because more desolate people keep showing up, even though you guys are doing your best.
Also agree about the billionaires obviously, and I think the whole silicon valley tech culture also doesn’t help. FAANG employees with their big salaries can just afford way higher rents and costs of living than the average american, driving up the prices. But I’m sure as a resident you know all of those issues better than I do.
I hope it gets better for you guys, it’s an incredibly sad situation, especially in such a beautiful city like SF.
If you don’t want people injecting in the streets then kicking drug addicts out of shelters and taking away their rent subsidies seems pretty counterintuitive.
The ordinance specifically does not have a sobriety requirement for continued shelter and assistance. It just requires treatment. Even if you’re still using, you don’t lose assistance. You just also need drug treatment.
I know, but there are going to be some people who refuse treatment and are forced out of there living situations and onto the streets, thus exasperating the problem the guy above mentioned.
I’m just saying If your main concern is seeing people doing drugs on the street your main priority should be giving them somewhere else to do them, either a safe injection site or shelter, and anything getting in the way of that is counterproductive. You can try and get them off drugs but coercing people into treatment like this rarely works.
Where do they end up in that system? Is the idea to just keep them safely on drugs for the rest of their lives since treatment rarely works? Safely locked away in a shelter, dependent on opiates?
Hopefully one day they seek treatment, and any system should make that option as open as possible at any point, because treatment can work if the person is truly committed to it. It almost never works when you coerce someone into it though, especially if whatever’s forcing you into it is as alienated from you as the city government. Maybe if the addict truly loved a person or group of people could an ultimatum like it’s me or the drugs work, and even that fails sometimes. But the city government, a government that you may blame for the shitty circumstances your in, telling you that is more likely to turn someone away in spite then awaken some actual desire in a person to seek sobriety.
So it sounds like that’s a yes then. Keep them on drugs and just hope. Hope that they change, all while their minds and bodies are actively being destroyed and whittled down by the drugs, and the Honduran gangs in SF gain money and power… This just doesn’t seem to be sustainable. There is a seemingly endless supply of people coming here from all over the country who are addicted to this stuff, and it really fees like it’s turning parts of the city into a zombie land. Many people in this city, especially those that live and work in these areas are just fed up. And the votes reflect that.
I’m not saying it sustainable or good, just that these propositions are short sighted and not the way to do it, and most addiction specialists would agree. Fixing this problem doesn’t require more law and order and discipline which we’ve been doing to no effect, but to solve the underlying socioeconomic issues causing addiction. No one is going to quit drugs if it’s the one thing making their life on the streets bearable. To get people to quit, or even not abuse drugs in the first place, they need a stable living situation, a purpose and a regular job and a support structure, these propositions provide none of that. Turning people away from the welfare programs that can provide these will only push them deeper into addiction.
Hasn’t the failed war on drugs shown the narrative that drugs cause the homelessness and crime and are not just another symptom of the underlying problems is a lie?
Guess not to the general public.
If the more progressive policies are helping, that impact is getting drowned out by other factors pushing parts of town in the other direction.
As someone who lives in the SF / Oakland area, I can attest to people constantly talking about drugs, crime and homelessness going in the wrong direction. People bring it up without being prompted.
My theory is that more progressive addiction policies work, but that’s just one variable. And there are other things impacting day to day vibe in the city that are overshadowing the stuff that’s working.
When people go to the ballot box, nuance often goes out the door. When things aren’t great, they vote for whatever is different.
Of course they’re going to talk about crime, what else are they going to talk about, the weather that never changes?
In all seriousness though I do think it’s the lack of other issues that’s driving this. Most other issues liberals care about have come to a secure consensus in the city, abortion and LGBT rights are as secure as they can get, marijuana and even mushrooms are basically legal, the last gun store has closed, the city has a good recycling and composting system and a green energy option, the parks and schools get decent funding etc. The only thing left is affordable housing and crime. Since the minutia of housing policy is boring that just leaves crime for the media and people to talk about, so even if crime itself is stable or even declining, people’s awareness of it increases.
You can see this during the pandemic where homelesness and crime were just as bad if not worse, but people were focusing on other things.
The lack of other issues also demobilizes the average liberal voter who already has everything they want and doesn’t see a need to vote, so the election becomes dominated by people who care about that one remaining issue.
If you look at something like car break ins in SF, the data did show that it dropped a ton during the pandemic, then rebounded to the 2019 craziness.
It wasn’t something that was in people’s heads. The SF Chronicle has been pretty good about charting this stuff, and if you search for things like car break in graphs, Google images will get ya past some paywalls.
IMHO, those of us who have been living in the area for decades have some legitimate observations and experiences that are supported by data. I’m not saying the solution has to be super conservative policies. I’m just saying that the problems are real.
Car break ins did go up during/after the pandemic, just as crime went up across the entire country, but that early 20s crime wave seems to be subsiding. This election took place in a context where car break ins are declining and crime in general is decreasing. If these propositions were truly a reaction to real crime then they would have happened in 2022 when crime was peaking and looked like it was going up.
I’m not saying the problem isn’t real, there is crime. But I don’t think the idea it’s getting worse is true. I’ve only been here for 5 years but my understanding is that SF, like most cities, was far worse in the 80s and 90s . Maybe there was some golden era in the 2000s , early 2010s where it was slightly better but just comparing to what I’ve seen since I’ve been here I haven’t noticed any changes that warrant this recent tough in crime bend that local politics is going.
Here is the broader data set going back to 2009. I wish it went back further do capture life before the great recession. Cutting things off at 2018 doesn’t really tell the full story and doesn’t really show you why people who’ve been here for 10, 20, 30+ years are unhappy.
Visualization: https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sf-car-break-in-data-18639763.php Source: https://datasf.org/opendata/
The concern is the post pandemic uptick it was the overall trend going back a decade. Things have gotten a LOT better over the past 6 months. Whether that’s because of the aggressive 2023 crack down efforts, or because of something else, I don’t know. All I know if that people in the region are not reacting to the past couple years, they’re reacting to the past decade or more.
Whether they are a cause or symptom, people shooting up in the streets and leaving needles everywhere is unacceptable.
They wouldn’t have to shoot up in the streets if SF still had the safe injection sites up. People who shoot up in the streets do so mostly because they want to get found if they OD.
Making it illegal to be high won’t make addicts want to stop getting high, it will just push them into dark corners where they die when they OD. Imo that’s way more unacceptable.
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Not disagreeing, just curious. How can they safely inject the kind of fentanyl that’s out there now? When milligrams can kill you? What if they prefer to smoke it? Do the safe injection sites provide the drugs or do the users just bring their own stuff there and do it under supervision?
Pretty easy to Google that kind of thing since that’s quite a lot of questions and is better answered by an article or website from one of these places that breaks it down
I did Google it and I didn’t find anything specific to Fentanyl, which is what kills in the majority of the ODs in San Francisco. That’s why I wanted to ask here as there are people who seem to have more knowledge on the subject.
First, no they don’t give out free drugs. Even tho having clean drugs would help a lot in reducing the harms of addiction, I don’t know any government that would pass that.
Obviously fentanyl is fucking dangerous and toxic, no matter how you take it. Overdoses at those sites happen. That’s why they are equipped with Narcan, and also have a line to medical services. So users that would OD somewhere in private and not make it to the ER have a chance.
The second important part is all the stuff that goes with taking the drugs themselves. Usually addicts don’t have a ready supply of syringes and other paraphernalia to use their drugs. This leads to them sharing needles, using dirty gear and other behaviors that spread diseases like hepatitis c. By handing out clean needles and other things, a lot of those diseases can be avoided. They also hand out other medical supplies to treat the damage from the drugs and living in the streets.
Finally, they always offer addicts that want to quit support and help them find treatment. This is the most important part. Addicts trust the people at those sites, because they treat them like people, not junkies. So there is a higher chance that they feel safe enough to ask for help when it’s time for them.
I hope that answers some of your questions. If you want to learn more, Channel 5 with Andrew Callahan has a great series on drugs and homelessness on YouTube. There’s one Episode where they go to a safe injection site, but the other episodes in Philadelphia and SF are definitely also worth a watch. You will see some absolutely harrowing and terrible shit tho. If you have the stomach I highly recommend them.
https://youtu.be/Ym7qS27oiHU?si=UpV19WFJL7MU9Zqq
Edit: Reading some of your other questions in this thread I definitely recommend you watch those Andrew Callahan documentaries. They will answer a lot of your questions and hopefully clear up some misconceptions. Start with San Francisco Streets, then watch harm reduction facility and finally Philly streets.
Thank you for actually answering this. This answered a lot of questions for me. I actually work in a nasty part of the SOMA district of SF and have seen stuff there that I will never forget. 3 ODs have happened outside of my work while I was there so far. I’ve opened the door to leave and had somebody unconscious just fall in. A 16 year old girl’s corpse was defiled after she died from an OD down the alley. People screaming covered in feces and peeling off their own skin. Some of my smaller coworkers have been harassed and chased when trying to enter the building. I’ve talked to some of the addicts there of course, and many of them have told me they don’t care if they die. Most of them are not bad people, just mentally ill and disabled. Some of them definitely get the free needles but they all use outside. There is a needle disposal box around the corner and I’ve actually seen people breaking it open to steal the needles multiple times…
It just seems like none of this stuff works and we are all bending over backwards to cater to them, and then they end up dying anyway. Many of them are severely mentally ill or damaged from the drugs and it’s pretty obvious that they are never going to be anything near functional ever again. It’s like letting a 4 year old kid in an adult body addicted to opiates just go out on to the street to fend for themselves. They are not going to make choices that are beneficial to them in the long run, they’ve literally lost that ability.
After years of putting up with this stuff, I think your average person in the city just gets to the point where they’ve had enough, and people end up voting to try something else.
Sounds absolutely horrible, and I definitely understand that residents don’t wanna live or work in these environments.
I don’t think there is an easy fix for this problem tbh. Or at least not on a local level. From what I see SF is doing a lot of social stuff right, or at least better than the rest of the country. On the other hand you have crazy inequality pushing people into desperation and addiction. This somehow needs to be solved, but it might get worse before it gets better. Idk man, it’s tough.
Where I think people can make a difference is on a personal level. A little kindness goes a long way, and those people are yearning for empathy. You said they are like 4 year olds, and I think they are probably just as vulnerable. Addicts don’t have the luxury of thinking about consequences, they just survive until the next fix. So the right thing to do is be as kind and understanding as possible, even though they might make it difficult.
If you don’t have it already, might I suggest you get some Narcan for your workplace? Sounds like you could literally save a life with it someday.
You’re right, definitely couldn’t hurt to have some Narcan around. I’ve called 911 when I see people that look like they’re in danger, and the emergency services have come pretty quick each time. Many of them tend to use in tents, or place covers over themselves though. This makes it pretty difficult to tell if they’re ok. Its very common to see people completely passed out but not dead. You can usually tell if they’re actually danger by their skintone. Purple/blueish = bad.
Yeah I wish more cities in this country could devote the same amount of resources that SF devotes to these issues. Many of the addicted people I’ve talked to are actually from out of state, particularly red states. It shouldn’t be up to certain cities to take most of the burden of this national problem, but it seems like that’s what is happening. Income inequality is definitely out of control and I agree it seems to be a huge factor in pushing people into these situationss. Multi billionaires just should not exist when we have shit like this happening to to our people.
Yeah, that thing about red states sending their homeless to you guys is absolutely fucked. Makes policies that would actually help seem like they don’t, because more desolate people keep showing up, even though you guys are doing your best.
Also agree about the billionaires obviously, and I think the whole silicon valley tech culture also doesn’t help. FAANG employees with their big salaries can just afford way higher rents and costs of living than the average american, driving up the prices. But I’m sure as a resident you know all of those issues better than I do.
I hope it gets better for you guys, it’s an incredibly sad situation, especially in such a beautiful city like SF.
If you don’t want people injecting in the streets then kicking drug addicts out of shelters and taking away their rent subsidies seems pretty counterintuitive.
The ordinance specifically does not have a sobriety requirement for continued shelter and assistance. It just requires treatment. Even if you’re still using, you don’t lose assistance. You just also need drug treatment.
I know, but there are going to be some people who refuse treatment and are forced out of there living situations and onto the streets, thus exasperating the problem the guy above mentioned.
I’m just saying If your main concern is seeing people doing drugs on the street your main priority should be giving them somewhere else to do them, either a safe injection site or shelter, and anything getting in the way of that is counterproductive. You can try and get them off drugs but coercing people into treatment like this rarely works.
Where do they end up in that system? Is the idea to just keep them safely on drugs for the rest of their lives since treatment rarely works? Safely locked away in a shelter, dependent on opiates?
Hopefully one day they seek treatment, and any system should make that option as open as possible at any point, because treatment can work if the person is truly committed to it. It almost never works when you coerce someone into it though, especially if whatever’s forcing you into it is as alienated from you as the city government. Maybe if the addict truly loved a person or group of people could an ultimatum like it’s me or the drugs work, and even that fails sometimes. But the city government, a government that you may blame for the shitty circumstances your in, telling you that is more likely to turn someone away in spite then awaken some actual desire in a person to seek sobriety.
So it sounds like that’s a yes then. Keep them on drugs and just hope. Hope that they change, all while their minds and bodies are actively being destroyed and whittled down by the drugs, and the Honduran gangs in SF gain money and power… This just doesn’t seem to be sustainable. There is a seemingly endless supply of people coming here from all over the country who are addicted to this stuff, and it really fees like it’s turning parts of the city into a zombie land. Many people in this city, especially those that live and work in these areas are just fed up. And the votes reflect that.
I’m not saying it sustainable or good, just that these propositions are short sighted and not the way to do it, and most addiction specialists would agree. Fixing this problem doesn’t require more law and order and discipline which we’ve been doing to no effect, but to solve the underlying socioeconomic issues causing addiction. No one is going to quit drugs if it’s the one thing making their life on the streets bearable. To get people to quit, or even not abuse drugs in the first place, they need a stable living situation, a purpose and a regular job and a support structure, these propositions provide none of that. Turning people away from the welfare programs that can provide these will only push them deeper into addiction.
I agree about safe injection sites, but the feds won’t allow it. SF and Philly both tried but got shut down.
So create safe injection sites then.
SF tried. So did Philly. Feds shut em down.
All of history has shown that getting tough by criminalizing drug use doesn’t solve the problem.