by Randy Shaw on February 26, 2024 (BeyondChron.org)
Drake Hotel is among successful models of transitional drug-free housing.
Falsehoods and Misinformation Deny Opportunities
Chinatown merchants have stopped the opening of 150 drug-free permanent supportive housing units at 935 Kearney. Their campaign exposed troubling falsehoods about sobriety programs. Unfortunately, many media accounts that followed the excellent February 8 stories promoted these false beliefs; the recovery community was rarely given a chance for rebuttal.
Grateful that the city is still committed to opening a drug-free hotel, it’s time to set the record straight.
Drug-Free Hotels Do Not House Drug Addicts
First, a drug-free hotel does exactly what it says: it does not allow illegal drugs. Nor does it house current drug addicts. Drug addicts and other substance abusers do not meet the entrance requirements of any drug-free hotel that the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which I head and would have run 935 Kearny, would operate.
We want to help people end drug addiction. That’s why we believe opening drug-free housing is important.
We also know that the quality of life for many SRO tenants has diminished in recent years as the number of drug addicts moving into their buildings has increased.
The North Beach hotel would have only admitted graduates from one-year recovery or treatment programs or longterm tenants that have remained sober for at least a year in permanent supportive housing. 71% of our existing residents who responded to our poll on the question said they would prefer to live in drug-free housing.
Opponents of 935 Kearny were driven by claims that a drug-free living environment would bring drug dealers and users into Chinatown. I was told by a community leader that when people in Chinatown hear “sober hotel” they think it will house drug dealers—the project was blocked before any community meeting could correct this falsehood.
Facts are often a casualty in neighborhood fights against affordable housing. That many relied on the falsehoods to stop 935 Kearny is disappointing but not unexpected.
Drug-Free Hotels are Not Homeless Shelters
We heard that many in Chinatown thought a drug-free program would transform the historic North Beach Hotel into a homeless shelter. This was also false.
First, a tenant moving to 935 Kearny or a future drug-free hotel would have to have been housed for at least one year. Nobody would be coming directly from a shelter.
Second, the contracting agency (THC) does not operate homeless shelters.
The only difference in operation between what the city planned and how 935 Kearny has long been used is that incoming tenants could not use alcohol and drugs. Yet this difference led Chinatown merchants to claim the program “was not the right fit for Chinatown” and did “not fit the neighborhood’s character.”
The specifics behind these statements were never announced. And the media never bothered asking what it was about drug-free housing that didn’t fit Chinatown.
Why didn’t the media ask what lay behind Chinatown’s opposition to drug-free housing? Opposition that went beyond the lack of advance notice?
I get that a drug-free hotel could be seen as inconsistent with the historic drinking activities on Broadway and Vesuvio Café a block away. But I don’t think that’s what Chinatown folks were referencing.
The website of Vesuvio Café says “this world-renowned San Francisco saloon located in North Beach just across from the infamous City Lights Bookstore.” But Vesuvio and City Lights are as much a part of the official boundaries of Chinatown as the North Beach Hotel.
Actual People Seek Drug-Free Housing
The media also wasn’t interested in hearing from those whose life-changing opportunities at 935 Kearny were being denied by Chinatown merchants. Instead, the latter were portrayed as the victims of a bad outreach process.
The mayor apologized for that process and the community meeting was put off for a month to give the community more time. But that didn’t change the media’s approach. The media never asked for specifics from these merchants about why it was so important for Chinatown to deny life changing housing opportunities to others.
I suggested to reporters that they talk to tenants at our Drake Hotel, a transitional drug-free housing program. They would have explained why they wanted the permanent drug-free housing Chinatown merchants had mobilized to stop.
But local media wasn’t interested in that story line. A media that promotes the city’s overdose and drug crisis was now uninterested in stories of people undergoing recovery.
Media had identified the “victims” in this story and it was not people denied a chance to transform their lives.
Media weren’t interested (I asked them) in telling their audience about Richard Beal, who was slated to run the recovery program at 935 Kearny and has spent three decades in the recovery movement. Or about the impact of other recovering addicts in our City like Supervisor Matt Dorsey, Steve Adami, Cedric Akbar, Tom Wolf, and many others in the recovery movement. These interviews would have helped explain why we need to continue to support this movement by providing Drug-Free permanent supportive housing for those proven to be committed to their recovery.
Or they could have talked to Jonathan Bonato, another former addict who has since transformed his life. Bonato told me, “when I stayed at North Beach Hotel in 2007 I was still sticking needles in my arm and getting high on crystal meth – somehow that is okay, but wanting a safe place to be clean and sober isn’t?”
Let’s hope the media interviews those benefiting from drug-free housing in future coverage.
Security is High
We also heard a lot of concern that a drug-free hotels would increase crime and threaten public safety. There is no factual basis for such beliefs. In fact, if those risks were real we would see such outside and nearby the transitional sober facilities like those at the Drake and the Minna. There have been no public safety problems in front of or near either facility.
Any city-funded proposed drug-free housing will have far more staffing and security coverage than the standard SRO or apartment building. This includes 24/7 Front Desk coverage, Resident Manager for after-hours emergencies, a secure entrance with locking front door and intercom, and security cameras providing coverage of building exterior (5) and interior (75) monitored by on-site staff.
A Boost for the City
There is a huge demand for drug-free housing. 71% of THC’s residents who responded to a poll said they would prefer such living environments. Graduates from one-year transitional programs have had no choice—the city provides no permanent supportive drug-free housing.
THC and the city are trying to fill this gap.
Drug-free housing offers a big boost for a city tackling an out of control drug crisis. San Franciscans can’t keep complaining about the city doing nothing to address this crisis and then oppose meaningful solutions.
We didn’t get a chance for 935 Kearny to set the record straight about drug-free housing at a community meeting. We look forward to getting that opportunity in the future.
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