San Francisco Will Allow City Officials to Fundraise for Safe-Consumption Sites

San Francisco leaders are making an exception to their own ethics policy so city officials can solicit donations for safe-consumption sites.

The Board of Supervisors passed a resolution on Tuesday that allows Mayor London Breed, her officers and officials at the Department of Public Health to seek out donations for nonprofits, which would then use the private funds to operate safe-consumption sites, where medical staff can supervise people using drugs and respond if there is an overdose.

The vote allows city leaders to bypass an ethics policy put in place after a recent corruption scandal surrounding the Department of Public Works. Today, city leaders are largely prohibited from soliciting behested payments, which include donations made by individuals, foundations or companies at the request of a public official, either to a city department or nonprofit.

Supporters of the resolution (PDF) said in a previous hearing that the opioid epidemic is dire, and that directing private donations to nonprofits that will operate safe-consumption sites is an appropriate reason to seek a waiver for the anti-corruption law.

The waiver lasts for six months, after which supervisors could potentially reapply for the waiver.

Watchdogs on the city’s ethics commission did not comment on the specific proposal, but said the rules are in place to uphold good governance and that waivers are permitted.

“The prohibition on soliciting behested payments is an important pillar of the city’s ethics rules. These rules help ensure that government decisions are made on the merits and that special interests can’t use charitable donations to curry favor with public officials,” Michael Canning, policy and legislative affairs manager for the San Francisco Ethics Commission, told KQED. “Any waivers issued for these rules should be carefully considered, serve the public interest, and not create an appearance of impropriety in the eyes of the public.”

San Francisco officials are largely in agreement that safe-consumption sites are a tool they want to employ to help reduce overdose deaths. Currently, the city is poised to replicate a model used in New York City, which has two operating safe-consumption sites privately paid for and operated by nonprofits.

But because safe-consumption sites are still illegal at the state and federal levels, funding them remains a puzzle.

This year, San Francisco passed a local policy that would allow the city to move forward with a funding model similar to that in New York.

Still, the nonprofits eager to run the services said funding them alone will be difficult. The two sites in New York City, operated by a nonprofit called OnPoint NYC, cost around $1.4 million annually, OnPoint’s executive director Sam Rivera previously stated.

The privately run sites in New York provide a calm and sterile indoor space for people with substance use disorders to use drugs in a safer environment and potentially get connected to treatment, city officials who visited told KQED. The program boasts that staff have intervened in 819 overdoses and that zero overdose deaths have occurred there. Mayor Eric Adams has said he wants more of them.

There are nearly 200 safe-consumption sites operating around the world, including in Canada, Australia, Norway, Portugal and Spain, and they have had success at keeping drug users alive and reversing opioid overdoses with a medication called naloxone. Also at the sites, patients can typically access a variety of services, such as showers and meals, or sign up for housing and other health programs.

San Francisco also ran a safe-consumption site in 2022, as part of Mayor London Breed’s emergency initiative for the Tenderloin neighborhood, where a large portion of overdoses in San Francisco have occurred (PDF), according to data from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

But, Breed ordered that the Department of Public Health shut down the facility after 11 months of operating, stating then that it was never intended to be permanently located at United Nations Plaza, a bustling corridor of businesses, residences, government buildings and public events.

Many overdose prevention advocates criticized how there was little support for the hundreds of daily visitors at the Tenderloin Center once it abruptly closed. Overdose deaths in the months following slightly increased in San Francisco, according to medical examiner data.