On the steps of City Hall on Thursday, Supervisor Matt Dorsey held a rally to build support for his drug-free supportive housing legislation ahead of a Public Safety Committee hearing.
The legislation would require all city-funded permanent supportive housing to be drug-free, adopting the same lease rules governing evictions for illicit drug use that apply to every standard residential lease in San Francisco. Of San Francisco’s roughly 9,000 site-based permanent supportive housing units, only 42 are designated as drug-free.
It would also require a survey of permanent supportive housing residents to ask whether they would prefer to live in a drug-tolerant or drug-free residential community, and to establish, as city policy, San Francisco’s intent to meet that demand.
“This legislation is not opposed to harm reduction. It is not prohibiting drug-tolerant options for those who choose to live their lives as active drug users,” Dorsey said. “But it is time to end the arrogance of assuming that everyone who lives in permanent supportive housing is an active drug user or that all permanent supportive housing residents deserve a tenancy standard that is below that which every other San Francisco tenant enjoys. It isn’t fair, and it needs to change.”
On-site illicit drug use would be grounds for eviction, though legal substances like alcohol and marijuana would be accepted.
Also at the podium were District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, DCCC member and Positive Directions Equals Change founding member Cedric Akbar, drug addiction expert Tom Wolf, and The Way Out SF Executive Director Steve Adami.
Roughly 100 people crowded the steps, holding signs that read “Give Recovery a Chance.” Many came from recovery programs, including Harbor Light, Hope House, TRP, Father Alfred Center, and the Joseph McFee Center.
“Why is this even controversial?” Jenkins asked. “Why are we debating this? This is common sense. This is what the people of San Francisco deserve.”
Jenkins said people should not be relegated to subpar living conditions in drug-infested, violent environments. “We have an obligation, as city leaders, to save lives,” Jenkins said. “That’s what this will do. … This should be passed unanimously.”
Mandelman said permanent supportive housing was well-intentioned but has largely failed.
“Too often when we are taking people off the streets, still actively using, and putting them into these units, we are condemning them to die,” he said.
“We are creating destination markets for the dealers. My goodness, you’re telling me my way to make a living today is to go and stand outside this building where I have an entire building full of active customers? And the city and county of San Francisco do not see it as its job to do something about that and to help those people to live? It’s shameful.”
Adami spoke next, contending that housing first and radical harm reduction have been the most regressive policies in his lifetime. He held a list of 960 names of people who unnecessarily died in permanent supportive housing over the past five years. “This city needs to stop being the largest enabler and funder of active addiction,” he said.
Cedric Akbar said: “We fight for our sobriety, stability, and our future that a broken system has given us. Systems that put us in harm’s way, they call it help, but it’s not justice. This is neglect dressed up as policy. It is failure dressed up as compassion.”
On the drug-free housing legislation, Akbar said, “We’re not asking anymore, we’re demanding. We want it to be a requirement.”
Amber Richmond, a San Franciscan in recovery who lived in drug-tolerant supportive housing, spoke passionately about the legislation.
“If we genuinely believe in meeting people where they are, we also need to meet the people who are ready for something different: ready for peace, ready for stability, ready to be surrounded by neighbors who are ready to move forward,” she said.
Dorsey pointed out that the city and county of San Francisco protects tenants’ rights to live in residential communities free of illicit drug use, yet permanent supportive housing requires 100 percent of residents to live in drug-tolerant communities, whether that’s what the resident wants or not.
“By committing city funding to drug-free supportive housing from now on, we can finally start making progress on the choices supportive housing residents deserve,” Dorsey said.
He also emphasized that the drug-tolerant standard has been a driving factor in the city’s overdose crisis. Per data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, San Francisco now has the second-highest overdose death rate among large U.S. cities and counties.
At least 26 percent of fatal overdoses in San Francisco occur in the permanent supportive housing that taxpayers fund. Too often, these sites drive chaotic and violent conditions in neighborhoods; some average two police calls a day.
At the hearing that followed the rally, Dorsey reiterated what the legislation would do and how it would help. Public comment included broad support, though some speakers said they wanted to strengthen the legislation with protections for people who relapse.
Liza Murawski, cochair of the San Francisco Behavioral Health Commission, voiced concerns about implementation. “We need proper mental health assessments with wraparound services, but instead they are cutting services,” she said.
Marie Hurabiell, who is running for Congress, urged approval. “The issue is not complicated,” she said. “Men and women who are trying to reclaim their lives from addiction deserve more than a bed. … Housing should be a foundation for rebuilding their lives, not a setting in which recovery is constantly facing jeopardy. Drug-free housing should be one of the tools the city provides to those who want to be sober.”
At the end, Supervisors Danny Sauter and Alan Wong voiced support and voted to send the legislation to the full Board of Supervisors. With six sponsors, including Dorsey, it has majority support and is likely to pass.
In a follow-up interview, Dorsey said one of his frustrations with so-called “housing first,” or drug-tolerant permanent supportive housing, is that even from a harm-reduction perspective, it does nothing to get drug use off the streets or reduce the harm that drug users inflict on themselves or their neighborhoods.
“I’m informed that as much as 80 percent of public drug use on the Sixth Street corridor is by residents who live in nearby PSH (permanent supportive housing),” he said. “So if we’re going to have drug-tolerant buildings, why don’t we require things like a peer-observed use room inside, to keep drug disorder off the street? It’s a fraught conversation legally, because that may or may not put us in violation of the federal crack house statute (21 U.S. Code Section 856).”
As Supervisor Mandelman noted, a shift this pronounced — toward recovery, accountability, and drug-free supportive housing — would have been almost unimaginable just a couple of years ago. Yet with overdose deaths remaining stubbornly high and public drug disorder entrenched in the Tenderloin, South of Market, and the Mission, frustration with the status quo has finally boiled over. A reckoning is now underway at City Hall.
