SF mayor ends Tenderloin state of emergency after three months

San Francisco Mayor London Breed will allow a state of emergency for the city’s Tenderloin, announced with much fanfare in December, to expire this week as drug-related arrests stay low.

The strategy, including police overtime, began after a surge in gun violence, brazen thefts and rampant drug deals put a national spotlight on the city and stirred concern that real estate values could suffer. Breed boosted police overtime to disrupt the sale of stolen goods and amended surveillance ordinances so that law enforcement could intervene in real time.

Three months later, drug-related arrests have remained consistently low, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The city hasn’t had much of a repeat of the grab-and-go banditry that appalled local residents in November, home sales and rents are rising and three Market Street buildings have reported more leasing, as more workers return to the office, filling more streets and reducing open-air drug deals.

“It’s not what it should be, we know, but it’s going to get better as we continue the pressure,” Breed said, according to the newspaper. “The Tenderloin has been very much problematic since I was a kid. My goal is to improve the conditions, but most of all to improve safety for the people who live there and work there.”

Breed will maintain street cleaning and outreach services for those using drugs, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. A linkage center at the U.N. Plaza, where people on the streets can access essential services and get connected to housing and drug treatment, will remain open. The mayor is rasking 14 staff workers pulled from across city departments to work at the linkage center be allowed to remain until the city hires permanent workers to replace them.

The state of emergency allowed the city to speed up the hiring of 100 behavioral health workers and create the linkage center, which would have taken months otherwise because of local laws. Francis Zamora, a spokesman for the Department of Emergency Management, said to the newspaper that policing would remain the same after the emergency expires.

[San Francisco Chronicle] — Gabriel Poblete

Read more

San Francisco

No more “bullsh*t:” SF home prices soar even as property crimes jump

San Francisco

Bay Area rents inch back to to pre-pandemic levels