The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-06)

SUNDAY, MARCH 6 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

BY SCOTT WILSON

san francisco — There is in
the pure energy that is Adama
Bryant, the up and down and
sideways nature of her life, a
parable of these 50 square blocks
in the downtown district of one
of America’s wealthiest cities.
She is a reflection of where she
lives, of its unpredictable
rhythms, of its churn and tenaci-
ty.
Her peak-and-valley journey
has taken her from homelessness
to a rent-controlled apartment,
from pride over her daughter’s
academic brilliance t o the pain in
knowing she would need to send
her away for school, from out-of-
work Lyft driver to unpaid advo-
cate pushing for the Tenderloin’s
children to be shown the wild
beauty beyond these streets.
It is a story bound and shaped
by the Te nderloin, historically a
first stop for the hopeful and a
last for the desperate.
For Bryant it is simply home,
another of its 36,000 residents
seeking opportunity and security
within its d owntown boundaries,
angry they have earned through
hard experience the unusual ur-
ban ability to tell the difference
between human waste and dog
feces by smell alone.
“Unless you are living in the
TL you d on’t k now it, you c an’t be
committed to it,” said Bryant,
who is Black, taking in the winter
sun beaming between buildings
one recent morning.
The neighborhood, many
things to many people over the
decades, helps define the sharp-
est edge of this rich, troubled city
at the epicenter of Blue America.
This city is the domain of Demo-
crats, a place that has produced a
number of influential state and
national political figures over
several decades but is run largely
by party members well to the left
of their national counterparts.
This is also a city that once
pioneered the ‘do-your-thing’
ethic of equality, a place where
ideology has often clashed with
practicality. That pair of cher-
ished civic traits now complicat-
ing efforts to address its more
visible, disconcerting social fail-
ures as Democrats argue over
how the meaning of compassion
in a neighborhood where violent
crime is rising, drug abuse is
visibly rampant and homeless-
ness is the defining aspect of its
streetscape.
The question at stake is
whether a great American city
can help a neighborhood,
through a surge of law enforce-
ment or through a preponder-
ance of patient social work, or
fail in a very public way? Free of
Red State friction, the Democrats
here have all opportunity and
hold all the risk, facing a chance
during a midterm election year
to see if a city can save a central
part of itself and remain true to
its liberal virtues.
Now 47, Bryant knows these
tensions all too well. She grew up
in the city’s Western Addition
district and, in the notorious
projects that defined the area,
got to know her neighbor, now-
Mayor London Breed (D). Bryant
was homeless for years and now
lives in a spacious, rent-con-
trolled apartment — “a very nice
place,” as s he puts it, “in a terrible
neighborhood.”
She has a 16-year-old daughter
named Asha, a star student, now
enrolled at the respected Phillips
Exeter Academy boarding school
far from Ellis Street. “I was ready
to pack up and move with her to
New Hampshire,” Bryant said.
“A nd the reason I h ave not looked
to move out of here is that I am
too afraid of being homeless
again.”
One other child lives at home
with her, Genesis, the youngest, a

nonbinary teen who suffers from

a serious anxiety disorder.

“I attribute it to the constant

noise here — it is impossible to

get used to,” Bryant said. “But I

got to the point too where I could

tell the difference between the

smell of human poo and dog poo

— and I hated that, hating the

idea of being able to know that

difference.”

An out-of-work Lyft driver

now, she has been making ends

meet with food vouchers and

unemployment benefits. She has

been protected in her home by

pandemic-era eviction moratori-

ums. But she has also been work-

ing for two years without a salary

to get her project, Weekend-Ad-

ventures, up and running.

The concept is simple: Ar-

range weekend day trips for the

Tenderloin’s children to experi-

ence nature just beyond the

neighborhood: the Muir Woods

National Monument and the

Marin Headlands, Lands’ End

and the Point Reyes National

Seashore. There are museums

and aquariums and libraries

close by, too.

“This is my heart’s work,” Bry-

ant said, a wistful reminder of

weekend trips decades ago over

the Bay Bridge and the Golden

Gate with a grandmother who

treated her t o pumpkin ice cream

on the other side.

She cannot find that taste

here.

Whose harm to reduce?

In mid-December, Breed de-

clared the Tenderloin “an emer-

gency,” largely due to the soaring

cases of drug-overdoses, which

have exceeded the number of

covid-19 deaths in this city by

nearly double over the same

time.

The most controversial el-

ement of the plan was Breed’s

decision to send additional po-

lice officers into the Tenderloin,

probably a couple dozen, which

she said was necessary to help

disrupt the much-photographed

open-air drug trafficking. Breed

is also seeking more than $

million in additional overtime

for police and fire departments.

She also wants officers to have

easier, more timely access to

surveillance camera footage in

the Tenderloin. Voters here, his-

torically leery of government

surveillance, will probably de-

cide through a ballot measure

later this year whether she will

get her way.

“A ll you heard during the

emergency declaration hearings

were people complaining about

how we were treating those ad-

dicted to drugs, right?” Breed

said during a recent interview at

her City Hall office.

“A nd I was wondering: What

about the people who live there,

who are not addicted to drugs?

What about the people who work

there? What about the people

who have been suffering for the

longest with all of this? Where

are their advocates? Why do they

not have advocates?”

Breed’s critics on the left say

she is criminalizing human de-

spair — the homelessness, addic-

tion and mental illness at the

core of the Tenderloin’s prob-

lems, but not the underlying

cause of them. T hose who oppose

Breed’s plan advocate for what’s

called a harm-reduction ap-

proach to the crisis, rather than

one that involves law enforce-

ment.

Such an approach would em-

phasize social work and drug

treatment over homeless en-

campment removal and small-

scale drug arrests, treating it

more as a public health emergen-

cy than one that requires arrests

and jail time. City officials say

more than 6,800 overdoses were

prevented last year through the

use of naloxone, a fast-acting

nasal spray that counteracts the

effects of potent opioids.

“I give credit to the mayor for

stepping up and doing some-

thing — this is an emergency,”

said David Campos, a Democrat

and former county supervisor

and police commissioner who

will face an April runoff for a

vacant state Assembly seat repre-

senting the Tenderloin. “But I

don’t think arresting people is

the solution.”

Breed is pushing the city’s

Democrats in a direction that, at

times, conflicts with the left’s

most closely held orthodoxies. A

member of the city’s dwindling

Black community, she has had to

alter some of her own long-held

positions, particularly her life-

learned skepticism around pub-

lic safety and policing, in devel-

oping a Tenderloin plan with

more law enforcement involved.

But she said the neighbor-

hood’s rapidly declining condi-

tion have forced the change. Last

year, according to San Francisco

Police Department statistics, the

number of murders, rapes and

assault c ases in the Tenderloin all

jumped by double-digit percent-

ages. The number of robberies

declined.

“The main purpose of any

leader, I believe of any city in this

country, is to ensure the safety of

the people that you represent,”

Breed said. “A nd the fact is, when

a line is crossed and there’s

violence, there is a need for

police officers — police officers to

take the report, police officers to

do the investigation and ulti-

mately for police officers to make

the arrests.”

The Tenderloin debate, and

the larger questions about race,

crime and policing that it impli-

cates, has also set off a very

angry, public argument among

the city’s Democratic leadership,

many of whose members have

known each other for decades.

The White district attorney,

Chesa Boudin, is facing a recall

later this year. Three school

board members were recalled

this month after prioritizing —

with campuses closed during an

early peak in the pandemic — the

renaming of more than three

dozen San Francisco public

schools while the board had yet

to draft a plan to return thou-

sands of students to classrooms.

Breed supported the school-

board recall, which includes one

member whom she initially ap-

pointed. The largest mainstream

daily newspaper in the city used

to the special election to remind

voters that “competence matters,

even for progressives.”

“We’re in an extreme period

right now, and even though we

have Mayor Breed and Chesa

Boudin and everyone in office in

this city is progressive, we have

to govern,” said state Sen. Scott

Wiener (D), whose district in-

cludes the Tenderloin. “A t times

that means leaving the ideologi-

cal approach by the wayside as

we focus on whether our transit

system is running consistently

and our schools are educating

out kids.”

Adnan Alameri, a small-busi-

ness owner and father of three,

needs such an advocate. He v oted

for Breed, but he sees his neigh-

borhood deteriorating quickly

despite new resources, vigilance

and social programs.

“I tell people I live in the

Tenderloin and they are like, ‘Oh,

okay, do you think we could meet

somewhere else,’ ” said Alameri,

who since immigrating from

Yemen in 1993 has lived in the

neighborhood with his family.

“It’s like a war but we should be

the ones deciding how to fight it.

We are the ones who suffer so we

should have the loudest voice.”

Alameri owns a 7-Eleven on

the eastern edge of the Tender-

loin, roughly five blocks from

Twitter headquarters. His busi-

ness calls unfold in a mix of

English and Arabic, and on a

recent afternoon, he is arranging

a meeting between Tenderloin

residents and the city Human

Rights Commission.

The whiteboard in the em-

ployee area promotes an under-

lined “Cleanliness” on the list of

store values. He i s short, bald a nd

grave.

In recent months, he has

watched fellow markets begin to

go-along to get-along, selling sin-

gle cigarettes, carrying extra tin

foil, selling glass pipes — all

items useful to drug users. He

doesn’t blame the business own-

ers, whom he says are just doing

what it takes to get by.

“They keep adding program

SEE SAN FRANCISCO ON A

San Francisco’s humanity tested by imperiled Tenderloin

PHOTOS BY MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST

A fenced-in tent city for the homeless population, run by Urban Alchemy, as seen on Jan. 26. The encampment is located a block away from

San Francisco City Hall in the Tenderloin — a neighborhood that houses some of the city’s most burdened and disadvantaged residents.

“Unless you are living in the TL you don’t know it, you can’t be committed to it,” said 47-year-old
Adama Bryant, an out-of-work Lyft driver, who was once homeless but now lives in the Tenderloin.

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