SF Supervisors Approve Mayor Breed's State of Emergency Declaration for the Tenderloin

San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood is officially in a state of emergency.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Thursday night to approve Mayor London Breed’s order to declare a state of emergency in the long-beleaguered city neighborhood, where the needs of people suffering and dying from poverty and substance use disorders have clashed with the needs of nearby families, who are demanding relief from the psychological toll of continuous open-air drug markets and unregulated use.

Some of the supervisors who voted to approve the declaration still expressed their concerns that the ordinance may condone the criminalization of those experiencing substance use disorders in the Tenderloin.

“I will note, the mayor can crack down on the Tenderloin today no matter what we do,” said Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who represents the Mission and other neighborhoods.

However, during the meeting, the mayor’s staff promised not to use the emergency powers to boost police funding, but instead to enable more services to help people with substance use disorders.

“Between now and January, if they use a cent to increase [the San Francisco Police Department budget], we can cancel this order on the spot,” Ronen said. “I’m going to vote to approve this order today, but I’m going to watch this thing like a hawk.”

The supervisors had seven days to approve Breed’s emergency declaration for the Tenderloin, which will last 90 days. Eight supervisors voted to approve the order, with Supervisors Dean Preston and Shamann Walton voting no, and Supervisor Aaron Peskin absent.

“I can say unequivocally our office will not use authority in the emergency order to provide appropriations [of funding] to the police department,” Mayor’s Office Deputy Chief of Staff Andres Power told the board Thursday night.

Instead, Power and other staff said, the state of emergency would cut red tape and enable San Francisco agencies to lease a location near the Tenderloin to establish a “linkage site” to help connect people who use drugs to health services and resources, staffed by social workers.

Without the emergency order, it would take months, perhaps a year, to create such a site in the Tenderloin, city staff said at the meeting.

The order also would allow the city to more quickly hire 250 behavioral health staffers to help people with substance use disorders heal from their illnesses by blazing through “byzantine” civil-service rules, city staff said.

“Those are things that can absolutely save lives,” Haney said.

Despite those assurances, other supervisors said they were disappointed Breed didn’t attend the meeting herself to tell them how much, or how little, the police would be involved in her plan.

Supervisor Dean Preston, who represents Haight-Ashbury, the Fillmore and Japantown, among other neighborhoods, was openly critical of the emergency order, calling it a “publicity stunt.”

Supervisor Connie Chan, who represents the Richmond neighborhood, also questioned the political nature of the declaration and asked why the mayor hadn’t taken similar action earlier.

“If this declaration was truly about tackling the fentanyl crisis, where was this declaration when we voted to urge the mayor to do so in September of this year?” Chan said, referencing a resolution introduced by Haney.

Some supervisors worried approving the emergency order would tacitly endorse Breed’s law-and-order messaging.

At a community market opening in the Tenderloin in mid-December, Breed was recorded on video saying, “We are going to make people who are dealing drugs, who are using drugs out in the open with no regard for the community, people who are assaulting and spitting on and stabbing and shooting and destroying this community, we are going to make life hell for them.”

Preston called out those words in the meeting — making “life hell” for those who use drugs — when public health experts consider substance use disorder to be a disease that can be treated.

At the meeting, SFPD Chief Bill Scott expressed frustration at the position his officers are placed in when addressing the sale and consumption of drugs in the Tenderloin.

“We’re in this ‘no-person’s-land’ where they’re being asked not to arrest, and they’re seeing people smoking fentanyl out on the streets,” Scott said. “What tools do they have to address this, if they’re not going to be arresting?”

In other critiques, Supervisor Shamann Walton questioned why there wasn’t an emergency order when homicides rose in the southeast of the city, which he represents, and Chan questioned why the mayor didn’t have similar urgency around attacks against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.

Hundreds of people called in to comment on the vote during the public meeting. Those supporting Breed’s emergency order ran the gamut: Some lauded Breed’s plan as compassionate for boosting access to services, while others embraced more police action, even going so far as to suggest jailing drug dealers on Alcatraz, or encouraging the police to commit violence against drug users and dealers alike. Callers often called the Tenderloin a “dystopia,” and called for “order.”

Other callers lived with their families in the Tenderloin, and were calling for help.

“Don’t forget that children and young people are affected in their mental health directly. It’s a day-to-day situation where they’re offered drugs and are afraid of being shot,” said Norma Carrera, a 26-year Tenderloin resident who spoke in Spanish with the aid of an interpreter.

Thomas Wolf, who previously struggled with substance abuse and became notable in San Francisco for going sober after his arrest by city police, told the board, “I’m alive today, and in recovery, because I was held accountable when I broke the law to support my addiction. Accountability is the cornerstone of recovery.”

People speaking publicly against Breed’s emergency order sometimes characterized it as police overreach, even though the mayor’s office pledged in the meeting not to add funding to policing by using the order.

Callers repeatedly described fear of the police, citing the police killings of George Floyd and Alex Nieto. They also often suggested officials boost funding for the Community Alternative Response Team (CART), a citywide program designed to connect unhoused people with community workers, as opposed to police.

Jessica Hernandez, an 18-year-old who said they were unhoused, said “instead of a police crackdown,” Breed should increase funding for housing initiatives to aid those living on the streets.

“I don’t want to live in fear,” they said.

Peter Murphy, a Tenderloin resident who works at the Mental Health Association of San Francisco, said his agency opposes the emergency order and any measure that would criminalize substance use disorders.

“I identify as an addict and an alcoholic. The only thing that’s worked for me is voluntary treatment,” he said, and suggested the city fund CART. “This is not the time to repeat the mistakes of the past, with over-policing the Tenderloin.”

Deaths attributable to drug overdoses have increased more than 200% in San Francisco since 2018, and last year, more than 700 people died from drug overdoses in the city, more than the number who died from COVID-19, according to Breed’s proclamation of a local emergency.

Nearly 600 people have died of drug overdoses through November of this year, with nearly half the deaths occurring in the Tenderloin and the neighboring South of Market neighborhood, the proclamation said. These areas make up 7% of San Francisco’s population.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin joined the city’s public defender Mano Raju at a news conference on Monday to denounce the mayor’s plan, saying that jailing people experiencing substance use disorders, mental health issues and homelessness would not work.

“If arrests and prosecutions alone could solve the drug crisis in this country or in this city, it would have been solved long ago,” Boudin said. “We’ve invested over a trillion dollars in fighting the so-called war on drugs, and where has it gotten us?”