This post is to show that an entire city department, The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) has been actively concentrating addicts and active criminals into the Tenderloin, Mid Market and SOMA for two decades. This is also related to a recent federal lawsuit holding the city accountable for nuisance
One of the hundreds of examples of businesses closing in the Tenderloin and Mid Market area, the Argentum Project, a Greek cafe on 6th street closed because of drug dealers and users harrassing them. Here's the letter they wrote before they left in 2020
Also, a member of the Central Market Community Benefits District recently testified that surrounding city subsidized SRO residents are causing problems around 6th and Market
This Tenderloin doom loop was described back in 2011 during the Twitter tax break hearings in 2011
also on Civic Center Blog
The Tenderloin downzone doom loop started in the 1980's with the goal of preserving housing for low income tenants, but over time has become corrupted and completely skewed from it's original intent. This centers on two laws from that era, the SRO Demolition Ordinance and a planning commission code limiting height in the Tenderloin area. Both of these are linked here
In 2011, the writer of these two laws, Randy Shaw, spoke at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and bragged about downzoning the Tenderloin. This was followed by H Brown saying that Randy Shaw has displaced the original working poor in Tenderloin SROs and replaced them with addicts. This is because Randy Shaw and other non profits contract with the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing which has a policy of prioritizing addicts for these SROs. Randy Shaw admits this in his own blog and also admits developing this policy prioritizing addicts. This means that the intent was not to preserve low income housing as has been claimed , but to replace low income working people with hardcore drug addicts from around the country. Update, a recent SFPD report in 2024 says that 91% of arrested drug users in SF are not from SF
This large scale replacement of low income people with hard core drug addicts is now described in a lawsuit involving the Granada hotel at 1000 Sutter charging there is a long term business plan to replace low income tenants with more profitable supportive housing tenants which are all primarily hardcore substance abusers, which has been the primary stated mission of supportive housing non profits since at least 2001
This has resulted in a containment zone as described by former police chief George Gascon io 2010
In 2010, Gascon said that supportive housing clients made up 4000 out of 20,000 SRO rooms. In 2024, that number is now over 13,000
This has resulted in maps like this which is causing the destruction of downtown. The highest vacancies in San Francisco are now in the Mid Market area, in the middle of these maps. Vacancies are now at 45% according to research
In his new book The Least of Us, author Sam Quinones posits that meth contributes to urban decay
San Francisco's 2004 homeless 10 year plan specifically says that the primary goal is to house people in the Tenderloin primarily those with chronic substance abuse problems. In fact, San Francisco officials claimed there was a voter referendum to convert Care not Cash into Housing First when there wasn't. The original 10 year Plan is located here. Another 2006 article says the same thing. The city's own 2009 landmark study on SROs admitted the city's own polciies concentrated chronic substance abusers into SROs which were almost all in the Tenderloin and SOMA. A 2009 Landmark Study on SROs shows the city knew they were concentrating addicts into the Tenderloin as early as 1998, a policy which has only expanded for almost 30 years through 2024
In 2014, KQED television broadcast a segment on the Tenderloin that included interviews with the police chief and this author
Cool Gray City of Love" author Gary Kamiya blames 'progressive forces and non profits for impeding progress and creating a museum of depravity in the Tenderloin
Further reading on the decades long eviction cycle in the Tenderloin known as The Churn
Post script. Jennifer Friedenbach, head of the Coalition on Homelessness admits that the UN Plaza night drug market exists because of nearby supportive housing residents