by Randy Shaw on November 13, 2023 (BeyondChron.org)
Tents and trash get cleared only to return
An Action Plan for City Hall
On May 24 Governor Newsom told business leaders he wanted San Francisco’s open air drug markets closed before APEC. As of mid-October there were few signs of progress.
But the last two weeks were different. Daytime drug activity visibly declined in the Tenderloin, 7th Street, and Stevenson Alley. UN Plaza’s transformation into a recreational park has virtually ended daytime drug activities in most of the plaza. Van Ness has also improved.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Tenderloin, Market between 7th and 8th, and 7th and McAllister are still overflowing open air drug markets at night.
Credit the US Attorney and DEA for finally stepping up daytime enforcement (there has been isolated nighttime crackdowns but they have not been consistent). When the feds arrest a dealer, unlike the SFPD, they are not allowed by the courts to resume selling in two days.
Tents used by those rejecting shelter or housing are finally being removed. These tents provide cover for drug activities. Their removal is essential. Credit Sam Dodge’s crack HSOC team for accomplishing this.
The bad news is that stopping campers from returning to areas cleared by HSOC requires police intervention—which often is lacking. Only the police can ensure that illegal camping is stopped for good in the Tenderloin.
I’ve worked in the Tenderloin for over forty years. Tenderloin sidewalks are more filled with drug users and trash than ever before COVID. Some people talk about the Tenderloin as that’s the way it always was. False! The neighborhood had dealers and users but they didn’t take over multiple blocks. And since the founding of the TLCBD nearly two decades ago Tenderloin sidewalks were pretty clean; today, many constitute public health hazards.
What City Hall has allowed in the Tenderloin since 2020 is unacceptable. So what should be done? Here’s a clear action plan for revitalizing the neighborhood.
The City Has No Strategy
Revitalizing the Tenderloin starts with a strategy for clearing out drug dealers and users. This strategy is still lacking.
In December 2021 Mayor London Breed issued an Emergency Declaration for the Tenderloin. It followed over a year of unprecedented drug activity in the neighborhood.
The Declaration raised hopes. But Chief Scott never added additional officers to the Tenderloin neighborhood. The mayor’s crackdown never happened.
I concluded that Scott’s refusal to follow Mayor Breed’s orders justified his firing (See “Mayor Breed Must Replace Chief Scott,” February 28, 2022). But Chief Scott is still there. I spoke to him about the Tenderloin’s ongoing problems last Thursday. He still believes his approach will eventually pay off—even though no deadline for success has been set and there is no end in sight.
We see the city’s lack of strategy in its inability to permanently clear tents in the Tenderloin used by refuseniks. Once tents are cleared there’s nobody from SFPD checking whether they return the next day. Or the day after. So we have a Sisyphus-like situation where huge city efforts go into clearing the 600 block of Ellis or 400 block of Leavenworth only to have the tents and drug users soon return.
Beat cops? Chief Scott uses them for Union Square but not the Tenderloin. The working-class families and seniors living in the Tenderloin don’t add funds to city coffers like Louis Vuitton in Union Square.
Uniformed beat cops make tourists and restaurant patrons feel safer. Undercover officers do not. The Tenderloin Business Coalition has repeatedly asked Chief Scott for beat cops on the 600 block of Eddy (which has multiple tourist hotels and is the entry to Little Saigon) only to have their request denied.
A successful strategy requires consistency. Getting officers to clear a block for a morning or afternoon means little if dealers return later in the day. Hotel guests and potential restaurant customers need to be able to rely on a consistent standard of public safety.
That’s what SFPD’s reactive approach fails to provide.
The Tenderloin Needs Economic Assistance
Restoring public safety in the Tenderloin must also be accompanied by an economic revitalization plan. The city has secured funding for such efforts in Downtown, Union Square, and Mid-Market. But not for the Tenderloin. All the Tenderloin gets are ambassadors who are not stationed on blocks with drug dealers (they don’t feel it’s safe).
City Hall actually spends millions to sustain drug users and encampments in the Tenderloin. A big example is the COVA hotel on Ellis and Larkin. Pre-Covid it was filled with tourists. It became a SIP hotel during Covid and is the only tourist hotel still housing the unhoused.
The COVA essentially added a massive new homeless shelter in the Tenderloin. Nearby encampments and drug users have sharply increased (the notorious encampment on 600 Ellis was a block from the COVA).
The city’s transformation of the COVA into a giant homeless shelter hurts business at Little Saigon restaurants (see accompanying story), the Red Coach tourist hotel at Eddy and Polk and the legendary Phoenix Hotel. Dealers and users around the Epik hotel across from the Red Coach led the owners to temporarily close their tourist business.
In other words, city action has made key parts of the Tenderloin neighborhood less safe and less economically successful.
How about reversing course and finally investing in the Tenderloin’s future? How about the city taking the same actions to revive the tourist hotels on the 600 block of Eddy as it did for those on Seventh Street in SOMA?
Bring Vacant to Vibrant to Tenderloin
The city can change course by extending its Vacant to Vibrant program to Little Saigon. The $710, 000 program uses pop-ups to activate vacant storefronts. It is a perfect strategy to get people to return to Little Saigon and to encourage tourists to stay in the area.
The combination of beat cops on the 600 block of Eddy, the closure of the COVA as a homeless shelter (likely impractical until spring) and a pop-up arts program filling Little Saigon’s many vacant retail spaces sets the stage for returning the Tenderloin to its pre-Covid direction. The Tenderloin Museum’s Compton Cafeteria play opens in February on Larkin between O’Farrell and Geary; that should also boost Little Saigon and nearby tourist hotels.
The Tenderloin is not asking for much. It never has. But it desperately needs a Vacant to Vibrant program to revive its core commercial corridor and boost its nearby tourist hotels.
The city’s investment in the Tenderloin actually saves money by reducing police and social service work in the Little Saigon/600 Eddy area. And the payoff is big—the economic revival of the city’s largest working-class and ethnically diverse neighborhood.
Don’t believe those who say that the Tenderloin can’t be revitalized. City Hall can do this—it’s always been a question of political will.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including 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. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco
