In the early afternoon on Thursday, a silver Ford pulled up and parked illegally by a white curb on Mission Street between 15th and 16th streets.
Three people who had recently used drugs piled out of the car, carrying bags with goods they had just been vending illegally at the 16th Street Plaza before sheriff’s deputies came to disrupt their operation.
In past weeks, they might have been able to hang out at that spot for a while. But on this day, workers from Ahsing Solutions were there. They came up to the men and calmly explained that they needed to leave. Before long, that stretch of Mission was clear again.
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Starting on July 5, six to eight workers from Ahsing Solutions, a private firm newly contracted by the city, have come to the Mission every day from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. to clean the streets, deter illegal activity, reverse overdoses and connect homeless people and drug users to city services.
As the city’s Mission street team lead Santiago Lerma explains, the workers are a “force multiplier” for the city’s existing efforts, providing another set of eyes on the street to track conditions. Though they signed a six-month contract, Lerma says that the hope is for the city to fund Ahsing’s presence in the Mission long-term.
The $498,267 contract pays each worker $26,000, with the other money going to operating expenses and the employees directing operations, like Arleen.
Though only a week in, Ahsing Solutions seems to have made an immediate difference. Earlier efforts by police and the Department of Public Works could keep the vendors at bay when out on the street. But, once the city workers retreated, the vending and open-air drug use quickly resumed.
Both the SFPD and DPW are often on site with Ahsing, but the organization has given the city a more consistent presence. Last weekend, the alleys around 16th and Mission were clear of drug users and homeless people on both Saturday and Sunday for the first time in months.
And on Saturday morning, the vendors who usually gather before any official presence arrives appeared not to have had a chance. City workers were there and the streets were clear at 8 a.m. By 10 a.m., four police cars and vans were also on the scene on Caledonia Street, generally one of the least active blocks.
One officer said he did not know how many people had been cited, or if any had been arrested. It appeared to be one man sitting on the curb on Caledonia. Two trucks from BART were also stationed on the northeast plaza, which has been more problematic in terms of unpermitted vending and open drug use.
Ahsing Solutions was founded by married couple Arleen and Mike Luong, and only hires people who were formerly incarcerated, drug users or homeless. They think this is part of what makes their workers effective.
“A regular person on the street is never going to be able to approach those people on Mission the way that they do. They’re not gonna understand it. They’re gonna be scared. They’re gonna be timid,” Arleen said. Indeed, on their first day, the Ahsing workers ventured into all of the alleyways.
Arleen and Mike were both formerly incarcerated. They met on Write a Prisoner, a website for prisoners to find pen pals. The two began exchanging letters and calls in 2018, and soon fell in love. After serving almost six years, Arleen got out of prison in 2019.
But they wouldn’t meet in person until 2021, when Mike was released after 18 and a half years in prison in Texas for possessing large amounts of marijuana and having firearms at his residence.
Six months later, in December 2021, the pair got married. “Everybody thought I was crazy,” Arleen said.
TV producers even approached them to do a show, but they declined. “Their show thrives on drama,” Arleen said. “And we’re trying to stay away from the drama,” Mike added.
A year later, with the aid of CLECHA, which helps people who were formerly incarcerated become entrepreneurs, Mike and Arleen founded Ahsing Solutions, an LLC named for Mike’s Chinese name. The company started by providing staffing and security for events and concerts. Currently, they have three employees providing private security services.
Simultaneously, Mike and Arleen both had community-facing jobs in the Excelsior; Mike with Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit that hires formerly incarcerated people to do public safety work, and Arleen with Excelsior Action Group, which supports commercial corridors in the Excelsior. Though they weren’t technically co-workers, they frequently collaborated.
That’s what happened with Jose, a homeless man Mike would often ask to move off people’s doorsteps. One day, Mike asked him if he had any family in the area. He said he had a stepmom, but he didn’t know how to get in contact with her. Mike called up Arleen, who was able to track her down.
“We called, and we’re like, ‘Hey, you know, your son is willing to change if you’re willing to give him a chance,’” Mike recalled. Jose ended up going to rehab, stopped drinking and got himself off the streets.
In June 2024, Ahsing Solutions started its first community outreach job. Hired by the city through CLECHA, it was asked to support the pilot vending program on 24th Street, which allowed certain permitted vendors to sell legally on Mission Street between 23rd and 24th streets.
The city was pleased with Ahsing’s work, Lerma said. So, in July 2025, with the city now focused on street conditions around 16th Street, the city had Ahsing move from 24th Street to 16th Street.
“They’d really proven themselves just through the experience of their work on 24th to be really consistent, to be self-starting, to be self-motivated, and to be professional,” Lerma said.
Nowadays, Arleen works for Ahsing full time. Mike works for the San Francisco Public Library’s Excelsior branch as a ground patrol officer and volunteers with Ahsing on his days off.
Ahsing’s workers typically start the day by doing a “morning push” on Caledonia, Julian, Weiss, and Mission between 15th and 16th streets, clearing the streets of homeless people and drug users.
From there, depending on street conditions, workers may pick up trash or do more circuits to ensure the streets remain clear, coordinating their activities through walkie-talkies.
That Thursday afternoon, several workers were holding down positions along the west side of Mission, stationed at regular intervals. Lerma explained that in the past, drug users have congregated along the street, seeking out alcoves where the wind is blocked. Those alcoves hold the entrances to a childcare facility, Youth Art Exchange, and other nonprofits, though, so the team is trying to keep that corridor clear.
Other Ahsing Solutions workers roamed around; one group ran into a man attempting to light up in someone’s driveway. As the workers approached, he quickly started walking away.
Already, Arleen said, people are beginning to recognize her team, and leave before even being asked. “They see us and they’re like, ‘fuck,’ and they get up,” she said.
Nevertheless, challenges remain. For one, few people have been accepting resources, whether that entails offers for shelter or mental health services from city teams or hygiene kits assembled by Mike, which contained toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, socks, and T-shirts donated by the public library.
As Mike sees it, a better approach is to try to understand what people want and then provide for that need, rather than trying to force help on people.
“At the end of the day, to be honest with you, if a person doesn’t want to help himself, there’s nothing you can do for them,” he said. “It’s got to be within yourself.” Until then, he said, Ahsing workers plan to just respectfully move people along.
Ahsing’s contracted area includes Capp Street and the east side of Mission Street, but it was only this weekend that they ventured east of Mission Street. On Saturday morning, city workers appeared to be lending a hand on the northeast plaza.
It was clear of vending and drug use at 10 a.m., but the real tell on both sides of the street is the activity that begins after 6 p.m. The east side of Mission Street remains a problem from the late afternoon and into the night.
On Sunday, the Ahsing crew picked up trash and gently urged people to move on Capp Street. Later on Sunday, however, they stayed clear of the northeast plaza, where unpermitted vending and open-air drug use had resumed.
Arleen says she hopes to expand the group’s work there soon, but that they don’t currently have enough people to do so safely. “If we could, we would,” she said.
Nevertheless, Ahsing is getting positive feedback. People have clapped for them from their windows. On Thursday, a man wearing a black beanie and hoodie on a bike gave Arleen and Lerma his review as they passed by: “Y’all are doing a great job,” he said. “Ten out of 10.”
Lydia Chavez contributed reporting.
IO YEH GILMAN
REPORTER. Io is a staff reporter covering city hall as a part of Report for America, which supports journalists in local newsrooms. She was born and raised in San Francisco and previously reported on the city while working for her high school newspaper, The Lowell. Io studied the history of science at Harvard and wrote for The Harvard Crimson.More by Io Yeh Gilman
