In San Francisco, we are told that “Housing First” is the ultimate cure. But for years, I lived on the dark side of that promise. I was awarded a Section 8 voucher — the “golden ticket” — but without accountability, it became a license to disappear into my addiction. When I was awarded housing, no one ever asked how I would manage my heroin and crystal meth habits. I got the key, walked inside, and just kept using, except now I was doing it behind a closed door, alone.
Within weeks, I was overdosing in my brand-new apartment. I’d wake up with black eyes after knocking myself out cold. I was “housed,” but I was dying. A roof doesn’t fix a needle in your arm.
Stopping is a mountain that feels impossible to climb when you can walk out your door and find drugs on any street corner in your neighborhood. In San Francisco, it is literally that easy: if you are “cute enough,” you can just ask a person on the street to share a smoke of “fetty,” and the cycle starts all over again. I thankfully never got into fentanyl, but anytime my heroin was laced with some, I woke up in the hospital or with black eyes.
When I was awarded housing, no one ever asked how I would manage my heroin and crystal meth habits. I got the key, walked inside, and just kept using, except now I was doing it behind a closed door, alone.
Amber Richmond
Every time I shot up, I knew I was killing myself, but I still couldn’t stop. I would look at my pets and start to cry because I knew that if I didn’t stop, I would die — and I was terrified of where they would go without me. I’d sit in my room in tears, fed up and angry at myself, angry at the person I’d become, the person I lost, and trapped in a body that wouldn’t obey my heart.
My addiction led me to open-heart surgery. Not once, but twice. By June 2025, I was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension. I was 32, and my body was failing because I had been handed housing without a plan for help.
The cost of my addiction wasn’t just my health; it was my family. While I was running the streets of San Francisco, boosting to survive and chasing a high, I lost my mom and my grandma. They died while I was still homeless and using. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to look them in the eye and say I was sorry for the hell I put them through — the stealing, the lying, and the absence. That is a weight I will carry forever.
But if they could see me now, I know they would be proud.
The turning point was unexpected: The Taylor Swift Eras Tour. I had tickets for the show in London on my 32nd birthday. I knew I couldn’t get through international travel or experience the music if I was chasing a fix. I wanted to feel it all.
In June 2024, I surrendered. I got on Sublocade (Buprenorphine). I wanted to be sober for that concert, and standing in Wembley Stadium, crying and singing along with 90,000 other people, I realized I wanted to live more than I wanted to use.
Today, I am over a year clean from heroin, and crystal-free since December 2025. I am no longer the ghost of the Tenderloin; I am the big sister I was always meant to be to my two younger siblings, the best human I can possibly be to my fur babies; I help people struggling whenever I can because I know what it’s like to be in their shoes, and I never forget what the streets were like and how grateful I am to be off of them. I have traded the needle for a Certified Professional of Occupancy (CPO) license because I realized that survival shouldn’t depend on luck. My goal is to use this professional expertise to help manage and design the very systems of accountability I’ve advocated for in this article.
Beyond advocacy, this license represents my path to true independence. I’m not just looking for a job; I’m building a career that I hope will one day allow me to hand back my Section 8 voucher because I’ve earned my own way out. To go from being a ghost in subsidized housing to a professional managing the industry is the full circle I am working toward — not just for myself, but to prove to every person still struggling that recovery and self-sufficiency are possible if the system actually values your life.
My experience proves that we need a system that doesn’t just hand over a key and look the other way.
We need:
Accountability for dealers: Arresting the “Hondos,” who make it too easy to die on our street corners and holding them responsible for the lives they take.
Mandatory Medical Support (MAT): A medical approach to treating addiction that combines FDA-approved medications like Sublocade to treat opioid and alcohol dependencies like with behavioral therapies, counseling, and recovery services must be brought directly to those in subsidized housing, so they don’t have to fight the mountain alone.
A system of care: We should prioritize models like the Salvation Army’s The Way Out because they know that handing an addict a key without support is a death sentence. That’s the hard truth San Francisco politicians won’t say. Real success requires structure, regular drug testing, and a commitment to transformation rather than just a headcount.
I am using my “After” era to make sure the “Before” era of so many others doesn’t end in a quiet, lonely room. We need a city that chooses recovery over the status quo.
Amber Reid Richmond lives in San Francisco with her dog Duchess. Follow her recovery journey on X at https://x.com/missamberreid.