On 12/23/23 01:21, San Francisco is Nancy gay promoting Pelosi's
district wrote:

San Francisco’s once-trendy downtown area has descended into a
drug-addled hellscape — where addicts regularly overdose in city-
funded “dens of death.”

Historic hotels in the Tenderloin neighborhood — which used to be
the City by the Bay’s premier entertainment district — are now the
face of the progressive California city’s deterioration.

The Tenderloin of San Francisco has not been an entertaiment
center since the discharged soldiers returned with bad habits.

Around 20,000 rooms in about 500 hotels have been converted from
coveted tourist destinations into roach- and vermin-infested
“Single-Room Occupancy” (SRO) housing for vagrants.

This is a ttal misunderstanding of the measures taken during
the worst of the Covid epidemic to get people off the streets.

Many of the century-old buildings are now overrun with drug-addled “zombies” high on fentanyl and the flesh-eating animal tranquilizer dubbed “tranq,” residents told The Post during a tour on Tuesday.

“It’s like living in a prison, but worse,” Robert Blackburn said of
his squalid room in one of Tenderloin’s SROs.

The neighborhood, located just 2 miles south of tourist hotspot
Fisherman’s Wharf, was “once one of San Francisco’s fashionable neighborhoods, home to Bonanza Kings, politicians and millionaire merchants,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Bonanza kings were mid-19th century and the really fashionable
residential neighborhood was around Union Square. <https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=A_HISTORY_OF_UNION_SQUARE>
Now-a-days the Union Square area is center for commerical exploitation
of the Holidays and most of the rest of the time it hosts various
events but with Macy's to the South, Saks 5th Avenue and Apple Store
to the North, a gigantic Hotel to the West and seveal more within a few
blocks and very expensive shops on the East side. The most prestigious
hotels and and apartment building with a few private residence are now
on Nob Hill with the very impressive Episcopal Cathedral, which became accessible with the invention of the Cable Cars.
I moved to San Francisco in the 1960s and the Tenderloin was
full of hookers on the street and eating places. There were some
gay bars with drag entertainers who were obiliged to wear mail clothing
under drag by city ordinance. A few blocks from Fisherman's Wharf was
North Beach with plenty of entertainment for the Tourists including
Finochico's night club and numerous alcoholic watering spots and clubs
with topless dancers. It had a Playboy Club.
Also in the North Beach area were the coffee shops where Beat
poets like Ginsberg and others hung out and City Lights book store
where their works were sold...
And Chinatown on the East and North sides of Nob Hill.
bar with entertainment of im
to the East

Now, Blackburn says he sees overdoses “all the time” as drug dealers
run the corners just steps from the squalid hotels.

Well about 700 dealers have lately been arrested on Drug Charge
And hundreds of pounds of drugs seized as the liberal-progressive
Mayor has gotten the National Guard and California Highway Patrol
to assist the SF LEOs.

“I’ve had human feces come up and out of my shower,” Blackburn told
The Post. “I try my best to keep my room clean, but there’s been
mice [and] lots of roaches in other rooms.”

Longtime Tenderloin resident JJ Smith, who lives near four of the
city-funded buildings, said that “once they put these people in
these SROs, it’s like they are stuck.”

Well it is big news when SRO families are able to move into
larger apartments and homes. The main reason is job loss due to
the Covid threat and Real Estate Speculation. I moved into my
present studio apartment in 1974 when it was priced at $125/mo.
Since then the owner died and the property has changed hands multiple
time. Due to rent control I am still able to afford this apartment
at what looks to be around $625/mo. To move to a newer place of
the same size would take all of my Social Security pension and
would cost in the range of $1500 to $2500 per month as well as couple
of months rent for security deposit.
The companies that own this small building have gone into
serious debt to aquire title. In the 2008 recession the owners
went bankrupt and their empire disintegated. In 2023 the owning
company has again over-extended themselves and has not been able
to repair the elevator that quit working in February. The 4th floor
tenants have departed and the building may lapse into desuetude.
That is Real Estate speculation for you.

“The biggest issue is there are too many deaths in and out of there.
On a daily basis, I see five overdoses, at least one or two of them
end up dead,” he said.

“The only way they leave there is in a coroner’s bag.”

Smith estimates that he’s personally helped revive at least 50 SRO residents in the past year, sharing graphic video of one such
harrowing scene from June.

The shocking video shows the woman unconscious on the ground of the
filthy room as Smith passes Narcan to the boyfriend to try to revive
her.

He squirts the Narcan — a drug used to reverse overdoses — into the woman’s nostrils, but she doesn’t move.

“Wake up, girl,” the boyfriend says. “Come on, baby girl! Don’t die on us!”

Smith repeatedly calls out her name, while her boyfriend shakes her repeatedly in a desperate effort to wake her up.

“She survived that time, but she died about a month later inside the SRO,” Smith told The Post.

“I saw her body be wheeled out by the coroner. She overdosed and
died because no one was there to help her that time.”

She overdosed and died because she wanted more of the
drug than she could handle. Fentanyl is more deadly than
heroin and is likely to be mixed with other strong respiratory
depressants. Fentanyl should only be used by anesthesiologists.
They seldom kill their patients. Alcohol, tobacco and caffeine
all kill more people but it generally takes longer.

The city runs nearly 20,000 rooms in about 500 SRO hotels, according
to San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspections 2021-22 stats.
The rooms are typically 8 by 10 feet and the residents share a
common bathroom on each floor.

Many of the residents in the city’s hundreds of SROs are vagrants
who first lived in encampments or one of the homeless shelters
before securing a room. Some are recovering addicts, but many “fall
off the wagon” and start using drugs again while living in the SRO,
which is against the rules each resident must follow.

It may take many tries to quit using even relatively
innocuous substances but nicotine and heroin lead the way
in difficulty of quitting. Fentanyl will kill even people
who want to quit using but started quitting after the
serious habit developed.

Blackburn, a recovering heroin addict who is now taking methadone,
said the SRO desk managers who man the doors and check on residents “don’t do much” to push them into seeking treatment and counseling.

“They don’t push it because they can’t control us, and really, it’s not their job,” Blackburn said.

The SROs were not meant to be used as permanent housing, but many of
the recovering and still-struggling addicts stay in the roach- and mice-infested rooms for years.

“We need help,” Blackburn said. “We keep asking, but our voices aren’t being heard.”

Block after block in the Tenderloin district, drug dealers can be
seen handing balled-up foil to addicts on the street.

Business owners said they are frustrated with the amount of
homelessness and drug overdoses happening right in front of their
doors.

Residents and business leaders alike said the blight surrounding
Tenderloin and other areas in downtown have contributed to the
city’s “doom loop” and flagship businesses like Nordstroms and Whole Foods to leave the area.

That is correct as far as it goes but Nordstrom's lost
tourist business with the pandemic. Since the pandemic restriction
were relaxed the locals could not make up for the tourists/
Whole Foods which is nowan Amazon company pushing the Prime
memberships closed one store then had opened at the edge of the
Tenderloin but the the reason they closed was finding an OD in a
bathroom. The first Whole Foods which drove several small stores
out of business and at least one other location near the Castro
are still in business and while the stock is less catholic than
formerly still getting lots of business. I shopped at the Casro
Location quite often under the Pandemic restrictions then crossed
Market to the Safeway on Church and Market riding buses all the
time double masked.

“A lot of people just don’t want to come down to this neighborhood anymore,” said Tommy, who owns a Vietnamese and Chinese restaurant
on Larkin Street.

“We had the grand opening 10 days right before the [COVID-19]
pandemic, but business is so slow. People see the street conditions,
the homeless. I hope this neighborhood will get better.”

Workers from local non-profits paid by the city come to the
Tenderloin to power wash the streets where families and young
students walk daily. But right after the sidewalks dry up, the
homeless addicts go right back to squatting on the street.

On Monday night, a homeless man allegedly holding a knife and
threatening residents at the 300 block of Jones Street was shot by
San Francisco Police. The unidentified man was rushed to a local
hospital with life-threatening injuries, police officials said.

The next morning, a group of homeless men sat a few blocks away from
where the shooting occurred and hot-wired one of the city’s electric
poles, which they used to operate a TV in one of their tents.

“If they are smart enough to do that, I want to get them into some
program because they can get a job where they can actually use that
skill,” said one former city worker who wanted to remain anonymous.

City leaders said their hands are tied because of an injunction
banning San Francisco Police from clearing most homeless
encampments.

And clearing them out is just forcing removal to another
location.

A judge ordered the injunction while a lawsuit filed by the
Coalition on Homeless — which claims the city has violated state and federal laws on homeless individuals’ rights — is ongoing.

“It is not humane to let people live on our streets in tents,” said
Mayor London Breed last week. “We want a reversal of this injunction
that makes it impossible to do our jobs.”

Meanwhile, residents of the once-fashionable district say that while
there are services available to them provided by non-profits and
paid by the city, nothing is being done to push them into dr > rehabilitation treatments — and they are ultimately left behind.

Pushing people seldom is productive. People have to want to
be rehabilitated before a serious attempt will be made.

Overdoses from fentanyl claimed 62 lives out of 71 total deaths from
drug overdoses last month, according to statistics released by the
Medical Examiner’s Office. The grim figure now places San Francisco
on track to break a 2020 record for the total number of overdoses,
when 712 people died.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/30/inside-san-franciscos-drug-addled- dens-of-death/

New York Post is a sensationalist tabloid just over the
line from the National Inquirer and its Alien Baby stories.

bliss

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