SF Supervisor Dorsey steps in it

Ifa San Francisco supervisor has a complaint and wants changes made to the city budget, the time to do that is before the spending plan is adopted, not weeks later. Yet, here is gay District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey issuing a news release and lengthy letter to Mayor London Breed, dated August 4, basically stating that he wants to see drug users jailed and that they can get services behind bars for their addictions. Dorsey wants Breed, who signed the 2023-24 budget July 26, to reallocate the entire $18.9 million budgeted over the next two years for the city’s planned Wellness Hubs for Jail Health Services.

Dorsey, a recovering addict himself, claims to still be a “staunch supporter” of supervised consumption sites, whereby people can use drugs on site under the supervision of trained staff. But his news release and letter to the mayor call that into question. He wrote that the reason for his about-face is that the city’s plan has shifted from opening three Wellness Hubs to only one, which would be in his South of Market district.

In fact, the city has budgeted for three such facilities, with the SOMA location being the closest to opening. We should also add that the Wellness Hubs won’t provide safe consumption services – that will have to wait until nonprofits get such programs up and running as public funds cannot be used for them, per City Attorney David Chiu.

We’re skeptical of Dorsey’s motivations. Instead, we see Dorsey, who used to be San Francisco Police Chief William Scott’s communications director, attempting to remove drug users from the streets by jailing them. That won’t make things better on San Francisco streets. And as a person in recovery, Dorsey should know that people don’t change their habits or seek treatment for addiction until they are ready.

In other words, you can make someone who’s in jail stop using drugs in that controlled environment, but that may not stick once they’re released. Under that scenario, there would be no Wellness Hub for them to avail themselves of harm reduction, counseling, or other services after incarceration because Dorsey would have cut all the funding.

It’s a head-scratcher.

District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen issued a blistering news release of her own in response to Dorsey’s. She calls him out on the points we mentioned above, like waiting until the budget has already been signed and not speaking up about his concerns during the numerous budget sessions convened by the Board of Supervisors – exactly the forum for such debates to occur.

“Politicians like Supervisor Dorsey are why we can’t make headway on the overdose crisis in San Francisco,” Ronen stated. She also pointed out the seven “well researched and vetted plans to address the drug crisis on our streets.” These include: Mental Health SF, which Ronen and Breed are collaborating on and which is making headway; the Overdose

Prevention Plan; Treatment on Demand; Supervised Injection Task Force; Methamphetamine Task Force; Drug Dealing Task Force; and the Tenderloin Emergency Center.

“Each of these laws, task forces, or emergency interventions have implementation plans – not one of which has been completed,” she wrote. All involve time, money, and expert input to create. None of the plans have been given sufficient time or resources to fully implement, she added.

Ronen wrote that Dorsey himself supported the Wellness Hub plans when he voted for the budget last month. “Had Supervisor Dorsey paid attention at the appropriate times, he would know that the request for voluntary services at the one harm reduction center that currently exists have risen from 150 people a day to 500 people,” Ronen wrote. “These are 500 individuals with a drug addiction illness seeking voluntary help every single day from just one center in his district that cannot meet the demand. The funded Wellness Centers are designed to meet that demand.”

Speaking to the Bay Area Reporter Tuesday, Ronen noted that the three Wellness Hubs budgeted for this fiscal year – in SOMA, the Mission, and the Tenderloin – ideally would open at the same time. That is not possible, however, and in fact a site in the Tenderloin hasn’t yet been secured. The SOMA and Mission facilities are closest to opening, she said, and she would support those two locations starting services simultaneously as a way to lessen the impacts on a single neighborhood.

Broad condemnation

Ronen, HealthRIGHT 360, and the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club all stated they were appalled at Dorsey’s idea, which is a remnant of the War on Drugs strategy that proved spectacularly unsuccessful and has been discredited. “The War on Drugs, which this regressive law enforcement-first approach represents, and the criminalization and stigmatization of

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