by Randy Shaw on July 20, 2026 (BeyondChron.org)
RESET Center Hasn’t Reduced 6th Street Drug Use
How SF Can Promote Recovery, Safe Streets. Of all the strategies San Francisco has used to reduce drug-filled sidewalks—- the $22 million Linkage Center, $13 million crisis clinic at 822 Geary, the $6-14.5 million for the RESET Center, and the over $10 million annually spent using tourist hotels as shelters—none matches the positive impact of drug-free housing.
So why hasn’t the city aggressively funded this strategy?
Why Drug-Free Housing is Best Strategy
Last week, the Board of Supervisors passed Matt Dorsey’s legislation mandating that new supportive housing sites be drug-free. The challenge now is to get the city to add sites, and to finally offer drug-free permanent housing.
Residents of drug-free housing are more likely than addicts to either work or be seeking jobs. They are not hanging out using drugs on sidewalks.
Contrast two hotels on the 600 block of Geary.
The city has leased the Abby Hotel at 630 Geary as drug-free temporary housing for years. There have been virtually no neighborhood complaints. But after the Breed Administration began using the Adante Hotel at 610 Geary as a shelter that was not drug-free, neighborhood complaints exploded. Responding to these concerns the Lurie Administration closed the Adante shelter earlier this year.
Similarly, the Tenderloin Housing Clinic’s drug-free program at the Drake Hotel at 235 Eddy left the area in front of and near the hotel clear of sidewalk drug activities even when they were exploding elsewhere. (I head THC and it publishes Beyond Chron).
Prior to the then-vacant Kean Hotel on Mission between Sixth and Seventh Street being leased to the Salvation Army, it had a huge open-air drug market nearby. It disappeared once the Kean became drug-free temporary housing.
Those seeking drug-free housing are out to improve their lives. They want to get as far away from drug users as possible.
That’s why drug-free housing involves more than recovery by individuals. It’s a core public safety strategy that San Francisco should expand.
City Invests in Costly, Ineffective Alternatives
It’s mind-boggling how much money San Francisco has spent trying to close open-air drug markets but instead making sidewalks and the city less safe.
The Linkage Center was supposed to get drug users off Tenderloin sidewalks. Driven by harm reduction ideology that says you can improve safety by creating de facto safe injection sites, it caused Central City drug activities to explode. The city spent $22 million wrecking the Mid-Market, SOMA and Tenderloin economy and expanding sidewalk drug use.
The city purchased 822 Geary because Mayor Breed saw an opportunity to open the nation’s first safe injection site. But legal concerns halted this plan. So after buying the site for $6.2 million the city had to find a new purpose. It became a crisis clinic Mayor Lurie routinely praises it as an example of what the city is doing to address the drug and public safety crisis.
But 822 Geary did not make the Tenderloin safer. There never was drug activity in front or near the site. It’s become a citywide clinic that should have been connected to SF General or another medical facility. Instead, the city converted what was a longtime grocery store and then a Goodwill into a crisis clinic.
For all the talk about the Tenderloin needing a grocery store, let’s be clear: the best site was at 822 Geary. It was long home to Solo Foods grocery. The city’s acquisition was a negative for the Tenderloin.
The RESET Center
It’s too soon to issue a final verdict on the RESET Center on Sixth Street. But it’s not too soon to conclude that it has not met expectations. And that it is virtually certain to fall far short.
I, along with the Tenderloin Business Coalition, backed the RESET Center. We thought it would return cops to the street faster after arrests. I spent a lot of time on this issue in 2014. We had a breakthrough then but it proved temporary.
The RESET Center at 444 Sixth Street has only served Southern Station. JJ Smith’s videos (check out July 12) show that Sixth Street drug activities are still thriving. SOMA activist Lara Hashimoto emailed the mayor’s office last week, stating “that despite having RESET in our neighborhood we continue to see the same volume of drug addicts and continue to rely on MMCBD and Urban Alchemy to move these individuals off our block every day.”
We appreciated Mayor Lurie’s RESET plan and his openness to new strategies for combating sidewalk drug use. But despite using RESET exclusively for Southern Station, the 6th and Market open-air drug market still thrives.
Under RESET police arrest people for public intoxication or being under the influence of illegal drugs. They are then brought to 444 Sixth Street instead of jail. The RESET Center is not a jail and those brought there are free to leave once they can care for themselves. Most of those arrested soon return to the streets. The first two reports found only 29% and 27% of those brought to RESET accepted treatment. The mayor’s office describes this as a success.
That’s a very low bar for “success.” The city is funding a program where over 70% refuse to even enter treatment. We don’t know how many leave after a week. Or stay until completion.
The RESET bottom line: the city is spending millions—even with its creative performance-based outside contract—on a population that overwhelmingly doesn’t want recovery. Police resources are not making a visible difference.
Why not instead prioritize drug-free housing for those who do want to get help?
Wouldn’t that do more to get sidewalk drug users off our streets?
The mayor’s funding of Urban Alchemy has reduced sidewalk drug activities on Sixth Street. So did drug-free housing at the Kean.
The city should prioritize proven strategies that close drug-filled sidewalks. How about following Dorsey’s legislation with a major investment in drug-free housing?
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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 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.
