by Randy Shaw on November 3, 2025 (BeyondChron.org)
Hyde Street between Eddy and Ellis
In October 2018 the New York Times described the northwest side of Hyde Street between Eddy and Ellis as “the dirtiest block in San Francisco.” I describe in my new book reporter Thomas Fuller’s take: “a single span of Hyde Street hosts an open-air narcotics market by day and at night is occupied by the unsheltered and drug-addled slumped on the sidewalk.” This intersection only blocks from City Hall and Union Square reminded him of “developing-world squalor.”
That block of Hyde is just as dirty today. Its sidewalks remain drug-filled.
The open-air drug market still thrives.
The New York Times story did not cause Mayor Breed or the SFPD to clear the Hyde drug market for a single day. Mayor Dianne Feinstein would have closed it down within an hour. It might have taken former mayor’s Gavin Newsom and Ed Lee a few hours.
On her second day as District Attorney on July 12, 2022 I led Brooke Jenkins on a tour of the Tenderloin. Jenkins requested, despite my concerns, that she walk through the drug market on Hyde. I think that experience further encouraged Jenkins to become such an aggressive prosecutor of Tenderloin crimes.
But the Hyde Street open-air drug market remains: For over seven years City Hall has allowed a high-profile corner of the Tenderloin to become a permanent open-air drug market.
The drug market has never been cleared for a full day. Arrests are made, the drug-market is occasionally disrupted but for over seven years San Francisco has forced Tenderloin residents and workers to avoid the entire side of the main pedestrian route to Civic Center transit, the Farmers Market, and City Hall.
Why Does San Francisco Tolerate This?
I have asked this question to Mayors Breed and Lurie, to Chief’s Scott and Yep, and to every Captain we have had in the Tenderloin since 2018. Without quoting their responses, here’s my take.
The Hyde Street open air drug market has become too big to close.The SFPD does not see closing it down as the best use of scarce police resources.
Urban Alchemy has never served the block hosting the Hyde and Eddy drug market. It staffs the southeast corner but not the northwest corner where all the problems are. Urban Alchemy has told me it does not feel safe for its workers to operate on that block.
I agree with Urban Alchemy that their presence requires police to first close the drug market. That’s when unarmed ambassadors can keep the block safe.
So why hasn’t the SFPD done so?
No Powerful Voices at Hyde and Eddy
San Francisco has closed much larger open-air drug markets than the one on Hyde. The Pelosi Federal Building, Stevenson Alley, UN Plaza, 8th Street between Market and Mission, and the first block of Little Saigon are among them.
Those areas all had powerful voices pushing to close these drug markets. The Hyde drug market lacks that. It is almost entirely residential. None of the owners have political clout. Around the corner from Hyde and Eddy is a PG&E substation that occupies the entire block. Nobody lives or works there.
Brendan Murphy, whose family owns the building across the street from the Hyde drug market, describes the impact. “My tenants have to live with constant harassment from dealers and addicts. Can you imagine coming home after a long days work or school (preschool in one case) and being greeted by this. Not to mention the smell of urine. It’s nauseating. And to add insult to injury the city has previously threatened us with citations if we don’t keep the sidewalk clean in front of the building. There is something very dysfunctional about all of it. Let’s just say you don’t see this kind of thing in most other places.”
Since 2018 the SFPD has used Hyde and Eddy as a drug containment zone. City Attorney David Chiu is aggressively challenging a May 2024 lawsuit from residents and businesses claiming that the city treats other parts of the Tenderloin in the same way. Chiu has assigned multiple attorneys to fight for the right of nonprofits to distribute drug paraphernalia in the Tenderloin—is that really what Mayor Lurie wants? Is that what the Board of Supervisors and the people of San Francisco want the City Attorney to be fighting for?
Too Big to Close
The Tenderloin has a similar “Drug Market is Too Big to Close” problem at Jones and Ellis. And the 100 block of Leavenworth adjacent to TNDC’s Kelly Cullen Community Center.
As Darshil Devdhara reported on August 5, 2025, “Ellis & Jones continues to be one of the worst intersections in the city. The intersection repeatedly had over 20 daily drug users with a high of 38 on July 31. People openly use in front of the permanent supportive housing at the Mentone Hotel and across the street. It’s been completely taken over by drug/alcohol-users despite being only a block away from Tenderloin Police Station.”
He added: “Also out of control is Golden Gate and Leavenworth Street outside the TNDC-owned Kelly Cullen Center. I routinely saw 20 users/dealers with a high of 28.”
The SFPD recently imposed an effective strategy to reduce Tenderloin drug activity. It prevents parking adjacent to drug-filled sidewalks. I haven’t seen this strategy imposed at Hyde and Eddy but if so it was very temporary. Parking is occasionally blocked off on the 100 block of Leavenworth but when cars return so does the drug market.
Hyde Street is the Tenderloin’s busiest traffic corridor. It offers many San Francisco voters their only close up view of the neighborhood.
That’s why I never understood why former Mayor Breed didn’t make sure to close such a highly-visible drug market. That failure helps explain why Daniel Lurie, rather than London Breed, is now the city’s mayor.
Randy Shaw
<I>Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. </I>
