When they told me I could pick a color for one wall in my new apartment, I chose turquoise. Not navy, not pink — turquoise, because it felt bright and happy and like something a person with a future would choose. I stood in that empty room, and I thought, This is it. This is the beginning.
I had found 737 Towers the way most people find everything now — I Googled it. “Apartments that accept Section 8.” I contacted them, went in person, and toured the units. The first time I walked into that apartment and saw the bay window, the city view, and my own kitchen and bathroom, I started crying. I thanked God. I thanked my mom and my grandma, both gone by then, for making this possible from wherever they were. I raised the deposit on GoFundMe, passed the inspection, picked up my keys, and ran to get my dog.
I still have the video from the first night. Just Duchess and me in an empty apartment with nothing but the clothes on my back and a pile of dirty laundry to sleep on. I couldn’t stop smiling.
A few hours later, I needed drugs.
I want to be honest about something that nobody in San Francisco’s housing policy conversations ever says out loud: Getting housed did not save me. For a while, it made things worse.
I was a full-blown addict when I got those keys — heroin and crystal meth; what people here call goofballs. I told myself I’d quit soon. I told myself that a lot. Soon didn’t come for four years.
The first person to show up for me in that new apartment wasn’t a case worker or a Section 8 follow-up or anyone from the city. It was a girl I went to middle school with, someone I hadn’t spoken to since junior high school, someone I had once fought with over a boy. She saw my GoFundMe, reached out on Facebook, and showed up with her husband and a small U-Haul trailer. They brought me everything — kitchen supplies, towels, bedding, pots and pans, a bed with a box spring and a mattress. Her husband put the bed together for me. She brought me a bread box. I had never owned a bread box in my entire life.
No one from the city ever knocked on my door and asked if I was O.K. No one ever said — you have housing now, what do you need to actually stay alive inside of it? They gave me the turquoise wall, and they left.
I was grateful in a way I still don’t have the right words for. But I was also sitting with something painful — that the only person who showed up was someone I barely knew. That the family I did have, my sister and my brother, we hadn’t spoken since our mom died. That I had no one to call and share this happiness with, no one who was purely, simply happy for me. The city had handed me a key, and everyone disappeared. Section 8, the agencies, the people who had been in contact with me leading up to the move — silence. I knew no one was coming either, because I had no one. So, it was just me. Me and my dog Duchess, the turquoise wall, and a needle.
Within weeks, I was overdosing in my brand-new apartment. I’d wake up on the floor with black eyes from knocking myself out cold. My dog would be lying right there next to me when I came to. I’d go out running the streets trying to make money for drugs, and she’d be alone in the apartment for hours. Then I’d come home and spend hours getting high or trying to get high, then nod out, and she’d be alone again.
I went to the needle exchange and stocked up — boxes of syringes in different sizes, cookers, all of it — so I wouldn’t have to be seen going as often. When maintenance came to fix something, I’d hide everything away fast. I was “housed.” On paper, I was a success story.
My mom and grandma died while I was out running around San Francisco. I had a home to go to with them, but not while I was an addict using drugs. And that’s what I chose to be. That’s what I was when they died. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to look them in the eye and tell them I was sorry. That is a weight I will carry forever.
No one from the city ever knocked on my door and asked if I was O.K. No one ever said — you have housing now, what do you need to actually stay alive inside of it? They gave me the turquoise wall, and they left.
I am telling you this because San Francisco is about to have a very loud conversation about housing and recovery and what works and what doesn’t. I’ll be part of that conversation — I’m joining the new RESET Center, I have my Certified Professional of Occupancy (CPO) license, I’ve been clean from heroin for over a year, and off of crystal since December 2025. I am genuinely in my after era.
But I need the people making decisions in this city to understand what the before era actually looked like from the inside. Not from a report. Not from a statistic. From a woman who chose turquoise because it felt like hope and then spent four years dying behind it while nobody checked.
Housing First without what comes after is just a key and a closed door. We can do better than that. I know we can, because I’m still here.