What’s going on in San Francisco?
It’s a question you’ve likely heard, no matter where in the U.S. you live.
In the age of viral videos and politicized media, San Fran has become a symbol
for pundits and politicians who are looking to score points for their team.
In California, a pack of thieves flees with armfuls of stolen merchandise.
There has been another smash-and-grab robbery at a jewelry store.
It’s happened again: 4 women run off after stealing from a CVS pharmacy.
When they see these things go viral, the perception of lawlessness,
the perception that anything goes, really,
that has to be overcome, too.
The viral videos of people going into retail stores
and just wiping contents off shelves into garbage bags and running out,
those leave lasting impressions on people.
People have no idea that these disparities are there.
They can’t wrap their brains around,
‘Why would people steal that way in San Francisco?’
So why is the media so fixated on San Francisco?
San Francisco’s problems aren’t all that different from other major metros,
but the City by the Bay occupies a unique space
in the identity of the U.S., which is why so many pundits tend to pick on it.
I think you can trace that ideology all the way back
to California and its mythology as this place of opportunity.
This is Aliyah Dunn Salahuddin, a historian and educator
at Stanford University.
San Francisco’s always had this mythology of being this future-forward,
progressive city.
Its history really reflects much of that of the country,
and it’s been a struggle for many groups to maintain place here.
You have these myriad movements,
whether they be the Gay Liberation Movement,
the free speech movement, the movement for ethnic studies,
the Black Power Movement, the Black Arts Movement—all of which are happening here.
A lot of that ’60s and ’70s movements
really, I think, are what cemented that image.
But the rights of the disenfranchised
have historically always been undercut and challenged by a very powerful
and limited group of people who have different interests.
Critics calling for crackdowns don’t realize that the challenges facing
San Francisco are far too big to be solved with more policing and prosecution.
Many experts suggest that the real challenge facing San Francisco isn’t crime,
but rather, the income inequality that exists within the city.
San Francisco has changed, like, in the last 10, 20 years:
the way that housing has worked, access— the cost of living here is absurd.
The thing that is drastic in San Francisco is the amount of wealth
that exists here versus the poverty.
It’s a very paradoxical city and always has been.
You can have, on one corner, very nice, affluent, $6 lattes, cafes.
You turn the corner, and then, there are people
who are openly using drugs, suffering from a myriad of issues,
and people have become conditioned to that.
According to a study that looked at census surveys
from 2013 to 2020, the richest households in San Francisco made
That disparity was even worse among marginalized communities.
Black and Latine people in San Francisco make up 45% of very low-income families,
but only 13% of high-income families.
In fact, more than two-thirds of Black families
and nearly three-quarters of Latine families in the city
are considered low or very low income.
This inequality has left a mark on the city and the people who call it home.
[Dudley] We’re 49 square miles, 850,000 population,
but we have anywhere from 8 to 10,000 homeless population,
and an estimated 30 to 40% of those people have some sort of mental illness.
These are the consequences of investing not in the people who made the city,
but investing in capital
without really thinking about the, the aftermath and the effect.
Part of the policies and things that come into play,
whether it’s in San Francisco or the United States,
are based on a war on drugs
that, that criminalizes people and doesn’t actually listen to people who use drugs.
The current systems in place in the U.S.
punish the most vulnerable,
deprive them of resources, or ignore their pain entirely.
But over the last few decades, San Francisco has become a breeding ground
for innovative new solutions that address problems with empathy and care.
Trauma recovery centers, which help survivors
of violent crime live with resulting mental health conditions
like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, are one such solution.
One of the first centers was opened at the University of California,
San Francisco in 2001, though it quickly spread throughout California
and into other states, like Ohio and Illinois.
San Francisco is also home to pioneering organizations
like the Drug Overdose Prevention and Education Project,
a.k.a. the DOPE Project.
Through the work of people like DOPE Project Manager Andrea Figueroa,
the organization aims to destigmatize drug use
and give compassionate care to people who use drugs.
People who use drugs, harm reduction workers, health care workers,
they organized together in the ’90s
to be able to make Naloxone accessible to their communities,
to be like, ‘How do we prevent the heroin overdoses that were happening at the time
and stop our community from dying?’
And that slowly became the DOPE Project.
Naloxone is basically an antidote to opioid overdoses.
Our priority is to provide Naloxone directly to the hands of people who use drugs
and to provide Naloxone and to communities that are mostly disproportionately
affected by overdose deaths, so Black and Latinx communities in the city.
In one year, naloxone from the DOPE Project was used to reverse around
Beyond the individual lives saved, the philosophy of harm reduction
that started in San Fran has already started changing how the U.S.
treats people who use drugs.
[Figueroa] How do we make a social net to support
the people who are more marginalized in San Francisco,
rather than pretend that people are not using drugs. That doesn’t work.
Every study, every evidence-based, and every community
has shown us over and over again that harm reduction works.
So is San Francisco the crime-ridden dystopia
that talking heads on TV would have you believe?
but there are real problems facing the city—
some unique to San Fran, some that the country as a whole is dealing with.
Luckily, San Francisco is already laying the groundwork for solutions of the future.
With resources, patience, and open-mindedness,
San Francisco could once again serve as the nation’s model for compassionate and kind care.
I have hopes for the city,
but I think we have to make those changes now,
and if we want to prevent the increase of crime,
and more homelessness, more drug use, more death,
all the problems that come with these economic disparities.
It’s a place that has a lot of meaning to people,
in that it’s a city and a culture worth saving and preserving.
And although there’s lots of money to be made,
to me that money means nothing if it comes at the expense of the culture
and the people that literally built it up
and made it what it is.