Mask on. Plastic gloves on top. His San Francisco 49ers cap fell on his forehead.
Rosa Alvarado, a 58-year-old, seven-year-old grandmother, is serious. Monday afternoons is the time when you are allowed to escape your small apartment on Leavenworth Street in Tenderloin to pick up the food, toiletries and medications you want for the week.
Plotting the safest direction through tents, outdoor drug markets and crowds of other unmasked people on sidewalks is an ongoing challenge. . Her husband is batting prostate cancer and she doesn’t think he will.
“Getting out of space is easy,” he said. I have to be very careful. “
Twelve weeks after the city settled a lawsuit filed through UC Hastings Law School and the businesses and citizens of Tenderloin, the Community of Alvarado has improved, but it only shows how dark it had become.
The number of tents increased from a shocking high of 448 last May to just 21 on Friday after the last giant camp cleared, in three hundred blocks from Ellis Street, and those who lived there moved to the sleeping place at 180 Jones St City Data on August 31 shows that about 600 homeless people living in Tenderloin have been moved to hotels , places to sleep and shelters.
The city nevertheless began to address Tenderloin’s harmful arteries after years of inaction, a final component of Jones Street for 4 blocks to give other people space to walk and exercise while taking a social distance. Part of Turk Street will be closed on Saturday and turned into a playground, and parts of Golden Gate Avenue and Larkin Street will be closed 4 days a week for alday dining.
Finally, the other invisible people in Tenderloin (families, children, immigrants, business leaders, grandmothers like Alvarado) get the help they deserve for a long time, but they want much more.
Although the agreement resolved much of the devastation that affected the back that was already in trouble at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it did not even start rampant drug trafficking.
The Hyde Street block north of Golden Gate Avenue remains an embarrassing and apparent outdoor drug lair with young men promoting heroin and fentanyl, and those who buy fatal products faint and spread over concrete. Golden Gate Avenue final on Hyde Street for al fresco dining is what finally drives dealers away)
It’s too simple to buy drugs online and, unfortunately, too simple to die for. New Statistics from the Department of Public Health show that another 441 people died last year from a drug overdose in San Francisco, more than one per day. More than part of the deaths have been attributed to fentanyl, and city officials expect the death toll this year to be much higher.
San Francisco’s inertia to control this crisis is terrible for drug addicts, but also for those living in poverty. During a recent Zoom call with the moms who live in Tenderloin organized through La Voz Latina, a Resource Center for Latino Neighbors on Ellis Street, the prevalence of drugs in the community is the main complaint.
Karla Burgos, 31, said she appreciates that sidewalks are more commonly transparent from tents now, but dealerships remain a big problem. Her 10-year-old recognizes transactions for what they are and she tries to plan routes to buy food so he doesn’t see the sadness.
“I’m frustrated,” he said in Spanish as an interpreter. ” It’s unfair to children. “
On weekends, she tries to get her children out of the community and realizes that nearly the rest of San Francisco, Tenderloin’s outdoor drug outlets are empty, piles of trash and unmasked crowds refusing to distance the therself from social media.
Norma Carrera, 50, said her 13-year-old daughter was angry because she was trapped in the house and was looking to get her out to “stretch, get some new air, see the outside world and then walk inside. “seems like a threat every time, she says.
“A lot of other people don’t take the obligatory precautions,” he says. They don’t wear their masks. They kiss. This is not a social estre. Looks like it’s a big net party, so we’re still. “internal to stay safe. “
Margarita Mena, 60, lives in Tenderloin with her husband, two daughters and 4 grandchildren ranging from a baby to 11.
“I must point out that in Tenderloin there are many families with young, young people,” he said. “I am pleased that young people in other wards can faint and do activities. I hope the young people here can do it, the same thing.
The Mayor of London Breed said last week that the camp settlement team that moved many homeless people to other interns “surely was amazing” and dealt with other camps that popped up near the DMV, Ocean Beach and Duboce Park, They said they knew many. more neighborhoods need help too.
“I know that many other people in this town are tired and frustrated, and I also know that unfortunately there is a lot of poverty and lack of housing and resources for many other people,” he said. “It’s all we are, running hard to fix. “
He said that while tenderloin sidewalks are now passable more frequently, many social ills remain.
“It’s really terrible, I just want to be honest,” he said, adding that the city wants to be much more competitive in the fight against drug trafficking. “We want to leave this net blank so that other people walking the streets with baby strollers don’t have to go out on the street to walk with a lot of other people who are dealing and shooting drugs. Is it okay for families to live like this?”
No, I don’t. But there is little consensus on what to do
Tenderloin police continue to arrest traffickers, and district attorney Chesa Boudin said in a brief that these cases represented one of the largest categories of crime cases dealt with in their workplace, and the highest rate of crime record changes, i. e. some other arrest for it. crime, of any category.
However, it does nothing for bicycle dealers who enter and leave criminals do anything and need to create a new specialized court for bike dealers trafficking in Honduras who paint for drug cartels. You also need the village to nevertheless create the safe injection site discussed for a long time where other people can use drugs indoors under surveillance and build rehabilitation centers where addicts can get help right away. State Senator Scott Wiener has continually tried to pass a law that gives San Francisco the strength to open a safe injection site, but has failed.
“The stage at The Tenderloin is unacceptable,” Boudin said. ” If we want to save the network, we want it to be less difficult to get help than to keep it suspended.
As for Alvarado, the grandmother of seven who emerges to do her shopping once a week, she rushes around the men’s men’s men’s men’s men on a couch on the corner of a sidewalk, around other people promoting pieces strewn over blankets and across the street when she sees a camp along a block that has since been cleared. She dodged a boy screaming and violently waving her hands so as not to say anything.
“I’m a little scared,” she says, periodically rubbing her gloves with disinfectant.
Eventually, he returned to his Leavenworth apartment, with his suitcase with wheels full of food and medicine and said goodbye with a contactless elbow.
“I think I’m in a position now,” he says.
She’s safe. For some other week.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears on Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle. com Twitter: @hknightsf Instagram: @heatherknightsf
Heather Knight is a City Council columnist covering everything from politics and homelessness to the flight of the family circle and the peculiarities of living in one of the most desirable cities in the world. She believes that politicians are responsible for her decisions or often her absences – and tell the stories of other genuine people and their struggles.