The key to addressing San Francisco’s overdose crisis, say community activists and medical experts in the city, is harm reduction.

That’s an approach that acknowledges not all drug users will achieve abstinence, and that focuses on keeping them safe and alive if they are not ready or able to quit. Drug overdoses killed more people in San Francisco than did COVID-19 in the first two years of the pandemic — 711 deaths in 2020, and 645 in 2021.

Laura Guzman, a senior director at the National Harm Reduction Coalition, described the approach as “a social justice movement” that got its start during the AIDS crisis. The movement focused on practical solutions such as syringe exchange, she said, while also developing strategies and principles that minimize the harms caused by drug laws targeting Black, brown and indigenous communities.

“Reducing harm means also to undo the stigma, and to undo the incredible impacts of a violent system that is not just policing and incarceration of people who use drugs, but also systems that really neglect the overall health of people who use drugs,” she said.

Offering clean needles and distributing naloxone — a drug that can stop an opioid overdose — to drug users are first steps.

Programs to get naloxone into the hands of people who can help stop overdoses have been around for decades. Eliza Wheeler works with the Remedy Alliance/For the People, which gives harm reduction programs across the country access to naloxone. The top priority for naloxone distribution is people who use drugs.

“People who are potentially at risk of overdosing are often around other friends or other people who are using drugs,” Wheeler said. “And those people are in the most important and crucial position to reverse those overdoses, especially in a time-limited situation where it’s not always possible to get first responders to come.”

Some wonder why naloxone isn’t distributed more broadly. Wheeler said the challenge is that supply-chain issues in manufacturing are common, pointing to a production delay that occurred last April at a Pfizer plant.

“This happens quite frequently in pharma manufacturing,” she said. “The manufacturing of generic injectables is one of the most highly regulated and it has to be extremely safe.”

Wheeler’s organization has an arrangement to acquire the drug through a buyers’ club that distributes to 120 harm reduction programs operating in 39 states and the District of Columbia. The club purchased 1.3 million doses in 2020.

While Wheeler prefers that harm reduction service programs distribute naloxone resources to drug users, she is not opposed to other people acquiring and carrying naloxone, and learning how to use it.

“You can get nasal naloxone from pharmacies,” she said, adding that it can be acquired without a prescription. “And I would strongly recommend everyone carrying it.”

A concerned bystander who believes they’ve encountered someone experiencing an overdose should call 911, Wheeler said, and then help get the person sitting up or laying on their side to increase airflow.

In the short term, an overdose requires emergency response. In the long term, people who have used drugs and experienced overdoses might choose to seek treatment.

Dr. Dan Ciccarone, a clinician and a professor at the department of family and community medicine at the University of San Francisco, California, Medical Center, who researches the public health aspects of drug use, said treatment for opioid use disorder can take many forms.

“If we recognize that opiate use disorder is a brain disease, and we through clinical experimentation, find treatments that work for that, then we’re working on a disease model. We’re working on a biological medical model of disease,” he said. “The good news is that we have medications that work. We have treatments for opiate use disorder.”

Three proven medications are buprenorphine, methadone and an extended-release form of naltrexone.

Methadone is highly effective but can only be used in methadone clinics, which are highly regulated.

Buprenorphine can be prescribed by anyone with a prescribing license, and Ciccarone said that he and other addiction medicine professionals would like to see regulations reduced so that it could be prescribed as easily as insulin is for diabetes. That would mean many more medical professionals would be authorized to help those who need treatment.

San Francisco is recognized for having a robust treatment system, but not everyone with opioid use disorder gets treatment, said Dr. Hillary Kunins, director of behavioral health treatment in San Francisco’s Department of Public Health.

“We have some of the most effective forms of treatment for opioid use disorder, in particular for opioid addiction, available, and that most effective treatment scientifically is treatment that includes the use of a medication,” she said. “Nonetheless, not everyone takes advantage of getting that treatment for many different reasons. One is part of the disease of addiction is somebody might not be ready for treatment, feels ambivalent about their use, or experienced the drugs sort of as being part of their life, that it’s hard to give up.”

While treatment may involve going through detox, Kunins said that is not enough.

“Without ongoing medication support, that strategy, a person will have a very, very  high rate of returning to drug use — more than 80%,” she said. “It is simply not effective.”

And for those who go through detox, not taking maintenance medication can put them at higher risk for overdose if they use opioids again.

“When a person has stopped using all opioids, their body becomes what’s called naive to the substance,” Kunins said, noting that makes them extremely vulnerable to overdose. Taking methadone or buprenorphine, she added, “decreases risk of overdose, protects them from a relapse and improves their health outcomes, including mortality.”

Outpatient treatment with methadone or buprenorphine might last months or even a few years. While a residential treatment facility offers a more comprehensive approach — perhaps including counseling, assistance getting housing and employment or vocational training — the use of medication leads to the best outcomes, Kunins said.

Rehab treatment quality, philosophies and cost vary dramatically. Tracy Helton Mitchell, an addiction specialist and author of “The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin,” said rehab programs need more regulation.

“There is no set agreement in the United States, what a rehab is supposed to be, what the outcomes are supposed to be, what is the treatments they’re supposed to be providing,” she said.

“A lot of these rehabs are based around abstinence-based ideologies where they don’t want to let people on these medications come into their facilities,” Mitchell said, referring to maintenance medications. “So, the United States is in a great state of upheaval now, because you have so many people wanting to get into rehabs.” She pointed to an insufficient number of beds and disagreements about treatment protocols as major obstacles to providing adequate help.

Guzman of the National Harm Reduction Coalition reinforced the idea that treatment involves more than just an abstinence-based approach.

“A lot of people equate ‘works’ with treatment, recovery and being 100% clean, and that does not work for everybody,” she said.  

“The goal is to get our folks to be treated with dignity and respect,” Guzman said. “And also, to allow them to shine, whether they use drugs or not.”

This way of thinking is gaining traction in San Francisco. Groups like Code Tenderloin and other community organizations are partnering with medical institutions such as UCSF, and incorporating expertise from people who have worked in clinics and those who have experience with drug use. San Francisco’s Department of Public Health is also taking a multifaceted approach to the overdose crisis, said Kunins.

“Lots of folks are not in that moment ready to agree to stop using or even to reduce their use of drugs,” she said. “And so how do we help them in the moment?”

Broad support for harm reduction practices represents a significant shift in both local and national policies.

For years, cities tried “arresting our way out of the problem,” Kunins said. “The hope and theory was, if we could stop drug sales, we would reduce the number of people addicted to drugs, and we would reduce the consequences of people being addicted to drugs.”

While there may still be a need for public safety interventions, she said, “what we have learned is having health approaches at the center of our solutions, and often in the lead part of the solutions, is critical to successes that we’ve seen both historically and now.”

Ciccarone said he is hopeful that harm reduction will finally become a pillar of federal drug policy.

“One does not see much evidence to support the billions upon billions upon billions of dollars that we’ve spent in reducing drug supply,” he said. “Maybe what we’ve been doing has been keeping it from getting much worse, but reduce criminal penalties, reduce levels of incarceration, because that’s clearly not helping — it only helps people become more dysfunctional in their life as opposed to healthier.”

“For the first time in American drug policy history, harm reduction is going to be a pillar of the 2022 National Drug Control Policy,” he said. “I’m proud to say that I was a key figure in making that happen. It’s going to be sort of the capstone of my career, is reorienting American drug policy toward harm reduction,” which treats people where they are, destigmatizes their circumstances and works on principles of equity and fairness.

“Because it’s inclusive, because it’s inviting and a trust-building. It engages people, and it’s the one missing piece in the problem here,” Ciccarone said. “If people are running and hiding because they’re afraid of being judged, they don’t come to your clinic. They don’t come to your treatment program.

“Harm reductionists have been engaging them for 20 years now. And it’s about time we support the harm reductionists and the harm reduction community to continue that work.”

Use the player at the top of this story to listen to the full episode for an extended conversation on these topics and others related to overdoses. For Part I of this series, see: “Surge in Overdose Deaths Is a Puzzle Public Health Experts Are Desperate to Solve”

The post Harm Reduction Critical to Addressing Overdose Crisis, Local Experts Say appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

In San Francisco, drug overdoses killed more people than did COVID-19 in the first two years of the pandemic — 711 deaths in 2020, and 645 in 2021.

These figures are troubling, even without counting nonfatal overdoses and other suffering associated with this crisis. While fentanyl is often cited for the rapid increase, many factors contribute to this trend both in San Francisco and nationally.

Dr. Hillary Kunins, director of behavioral health for San Francisco, said the trend that culminated in the 2020 spike in overdose deaths began two years earlier. Although numbers have declined since then, they have remained higher than in previous years.

Until recently, communities struggled to address overdoses effectively, Kunins said. Social stigma contributes to misunderstandings about the disease of addiction, and what might lead a person to develop such a condition.

“What has happened in the last few years across the country, including in San Francisco,” she said, “is a willingness to expand the approaches that we know to be effective scientifically, try new and innovative approaches that have the potential to be effective, and continuing to invest in and really ask all of us — community members, health professionals, government — to take every step we can to change the trajectory of this epidemic.

“What we are increasingly, I think, facing, both here in San Francisco and nationally, is the extent to which addiction and substance use really has underpinnings around a lot of what we call social determinants of health, particularly around income inequality, inaccessible access to living wages, discrimination — racial and otherwise — resulting trauma from racism, from other kinds of life experiences.”

Dr. Dan Ciccarrone, a clinician and a professor at the department of family and community medicine at the University of San Francisco, California, Medical Center, who researches the public health aspects of drug use, described the 20-year trend of opioid overdoses as a triple-wave epidemic, with a new fourth wave emerging in 2021.

“The first wave are overdoses due to opioid pills — that peaked around 2010,” Ciccarrone said. “And as we became aware of that wave, we started a number of programs — for example, prescription drug monitoring programs, guidelines on prescribing opioid pills. That brought that wave to come down slightly.”

But increased opioid pill use was complicated by an overlapping increase in the street use of heroin, he said, “where people, often patients, migrated from medical care with opiate prescriptions to street-based pills and heroin. And that led to ‘wave two,’ which was a heroin overdose wave. It started picking up steam around 2011 peaked around 2014.”

This was followed by “a very unfortunate and very deadly wave where heroin became adulterated, contaminated with, poisoned with synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. That wave is still with us,” he said. “It’s still growing.”

About 70,000 Americans have died from synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, in the last 12 months, Ciccarrone said.

He said the fourth wave of the overdose epidemic is driven by stimulants, which include cocaine and methamphetamine: “People are using them both independently, but also in combination with heroin and fentanyl.”

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is powerful and fast acting, and is regularly used in medical settings during surgery, in anesthesia and during childbirth, Ciccarrone said.

“We like it because it’s potent,” he said, “so, you can take someone who’s in severe pain out of severe pain.”

“Imagine that you’re in the childbirth setting where you use this powerful opioid,” he said. “You want it to wear off quickly — so you have control over it, and the mom and the baby can be kept safe.”

But fentanyl used on the streets is manufactured illegally with unknown levels of purity and potency. Most of it is produced in China, with some arriving directly and some coming across the border from Mexico and Canada.

The overdose crisis is complicated by people taking multiple drugs — sometimes unknowingly — that interact in powerful and surprising ways. In mid-March, San Francisco’s health department sent out a press release noting that three people had suffered a fatal fentanyl overdose (and nine people suffered nonfatal fentanyl overdoses) who reportedly had intended to only use cocaine.

Tracey Helton Mitchell, author of several books including “The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin,” is an addiction specialist and a person in recovery. She said the physical response to an overdose can vary depending on the drugs involved.

“There’s lots of different types of overdoses,” Mitchell said. “And also, what we see a lot in San Francisco is people using multiple substances at the same time.”

“Even if people are buying fentanyl, which is the main driver of overdose right now, they don’t know necessarily what the potency is,” Mitchell said. “So, there are people who are buying cocaine that’s somehow been cross contaminated with fentanyl. And then they are having an accidental overdose.”

Some organizations that work to prevent overdoses specifically use language that does not pin this overdose crisis on opioids alone.

“Opioids are an incredibly useful and crucial, essential medicine,” said Eliza Wheeler, director of the Remedy Alliance for the People, which works to ensure that harm-reduction programs across the country have access to the overdose-reversal drug Naloxone. “And there’s been a lot of objection to the term ‘opioid crisis’ among harm reductionists and folks working on drug policy work, and really wanting to shift the focus to ‘overdose crisis’ and ‘supply crisis,’ and kind of thinking about the way in which drug policy and prohibition have in fact created the overdose crisis, not the drug opioid itself.”

Wheeler said COVID-19 exacerbated preexisting conditions that contribute to overdose risk, citing “wealth inequality, folks being unhoused, having lack of access to resources, the impact of law enforcement and city crackdowns on folks who are unhoused, separating groups that were taking care of one another. People being isolated.”

“You see the huge spike right around the time that the pandemic began,” she said. “And the drug itself, fentanyl has not necessarily changed since 2015. But the conditions under which people are using have changed.”

Some overdoses in San Francisco happen on public streets, and so there is a tendency to conflate homelessness and drug use.

Laura Guzman, senior director of capacity building and community mobilization for the National Harm Reduction Coalition, said about one-third of people who become homeless have been affected by drug use.

“We know that there is a subset of people who, due to what we call chaotic drug use, may have become homeless,” she said. “But the majority of people who have gotten chaotic relationships or coping relationships with drugs have been as a result of their homelessness.”

Guzman also noted that people who have experienced homelessness often have trouble getting into housing again on their own. She also said that as in so many other areas, COVID-19 really intensified existing disparities.

“What we’re seeing is that, right now, as we talk generally about an opioid crisis, this particular moment, the disproportionate impact is on people who have been already impacted by health disparities, by the lack of health access culturally, linguistically competent, by the lack access to both actually mental health and substance use treatment,” she said.

“Those things kind of get combined. And COVID was really pivotal to see how those numbers continue to be increased. So, in San Francisco, the ratio of overdose-related death is 6-to-1 on Black folks over white folks, even though they’re, what, 5% of the population of San Francisco.”

This combination of problems is particularly visible in the Tenderloin, which has a reputation. Elgin Rose lives and works there — he’s director of outreach for Code Tenderloin — and saw some of the COVID-19 safety measures backfire a bit. Joel Yates is a case manager at Code Tenderloin. Both are in recovery, and neither is surprised that the Tenderloin is seeing such a huge number of overdoses.

Rose said the pandemic brought some attention to the neighborhood and got some people who were living on the streets into temporary housing. But with the focus on COVID-19, many underlying issues were not addressed.

“They put folks in hotels and all these things, you know, these cosmetic fixes, in the name of COVID, but didn’t dare touch the person or address what was going on with that person individually,” Rose said. “So, I would say that COVID, I think, almost was a bigger distraction for the core problems in the neighborhood.”

He said he sees people suffering on the streets in front of the buildings where he lives and works.

“People are not happy. People are in pain, and it has — it’s out of hand,” he said.

“We do want to scream to the top of the heavens that this place needs some support. That the overdoses shouldn’t be at the level that they are on, and just, the drug flow shouldn’t be here,” he said. “And so, until it’s actually responded to as an emergency, the people are gonna just be constantly be in trouble. So, bring the help.”

Yates echoed Rose’s plea.

“I put it simply: It’s just a lot of people dying slowly,” Yates said, adding that he had never seen a situation like this before he moved to the Tenderloin. “Then, the victims of it were my friends. They’re just people in a neighborhood who I could see fall apart over the years. When you, like say, put a face to it, you don’t forget it. If you don’t believe the news, just come see it.”

Use the player at the top of this story to listen to the full episode for an extended conversation on these topics and others related to overdoses, including why people who lack housing might use drugs, how social isolation during the pandemic may have contributed to the increase in overdoses, and myths linking homelessness and fatal drug overdoses.

We will continue this discussion in an upcoming “Civic” episode examining what measures have been taken to address increasing overdoses, how people who use drugs are reversing overdoses themselves, other harm reduction efforts, what treatment and recovery can mean and how activists, volunteers and the city are trying to help people find their way there. (Part II: “Harm Reduction Critical to Addressing Overdose Crisis, Local Experts Say”)

The post Surge in Overdose Deaths Is a Puzzle Public Health Experts Are Desperate to Solve appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Fires in encampments, tents and other makeshift shelters occurred more frequently in recent years, reporting from the San Francisco Public Press and Mission Local shows. But incident counts alone do not offer a clear explanation of what is happening on the street.  

In late February, as temperatures dropped, a fire at a freeway overpass killed one woman and critically injured three people. KQED reported that the woman killed was survived by three children.  

While people without shelter do use fire to keep warm, fire incidents don’t seem to be linked very closely to temperature.  

“I kind of found less seasonal variation in them than I had expected,” said Mission Local data reporter Will Jarrett. “It’s used for cooking a lot and that kind of thing. So, I don’t think it’s necessarily entirely about heat, although that is obviously a big one.” 

The reporters also found that clues about a fire’s origin or nature were only reflected in detailed fire department “narratives” that are not as readily available as information like time, date and location of a blaze. Even basic data needed to be pulled out of static documents to be analyzed. 

“They would give us reports, like full PDF reports, when we asked for spreadsheets,” said Public Press data reporter Jenny Kwon. The data would be sent in rounds rather than all at once, “and sometimes not even within the date range that we requested.” 

In some cases, the information recorded in the fire department’s database did not match the experience of its victim. Jarrett said one victim Mission Local spoke with said their tent had been set on fire from the outside while they were sleeping 

“They had some burns, but they weren’t too badly hurt,” he said. “It could have been worse, but still pretty terrible. And then when we looked up the fire in the dataset, it was classified as a garbage fire, and there was no indication of injury or possessions that had been damaged.” 

Using flames in or near tents carries risk, but it is a risk many people are willing to take.  

“It’s really hard for these fires to cease if people don’t have the basic materials to actually make this safer, like be able to cook in a safer way, stay warm in a safer way,” said Yesica Prado, a multimedia journalist who has been covering homelessness for the Public Press. “We were seeing in the data, we saw that from 2019 to 2021, the fires is still kind of on the rise, you know. They haven’t really dropped down.” 

Clearing encampments or forbidding people from using heat or light sources when outdoors is not likely to be effective, Kwon, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, said.  

“It’s not, again, addressing the main reasons they’re starting fires, which is for survival purposes,” they said. “And it’s not actually advocating for the safety of the victims of these fires who are unhoused.” 

Prado and Kwon have also investigated ways to address the problem of tent, encampment and other outdoor fires. A related complication is that fire victims who live on the street feel they are not given the same consideration and empathy as housed fire victims. 

“I feel like there has been a lot of fires happening in California,” Prado said. “We have all these kinds of things set up to help fire victims, and right now, we just don’t have anything locally to help the people that are on the streets.” 

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post What Reporters Learned Mapping Encampment Fires appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The last remaining statewide tenant protections against eviction for pandemic-related rent debts are expiring at the end of the month. San Franciscans are protected from eviction for unpaid rents due in and after April, but they will still be vulnerable to eviction for past rent debts.   

At the same time, the state’s rent relief program will stop taking applications at the end of March. Applications will still be processed and payments completed beyond that date. But a new report from PolicyLink and the Western Center on Law and Poverty indicates applicants have been waiting months for the state to make decisions on their cases, and that most applicants have not received payment.   

Long wait times could spell trouble for tenants whose protection from eviction hinges on their rent relief applications. Until the end of March, a tenant who has applied or is approved for rent relief from the state cannot be evicted for their pandemic rent debt, based on the logic that landlords should not seek to evict tenants for debts the state might cover. With that shield removed in April, even tenants who tried to get their debts covered by the state could lose their housing.   

“It will be a complete failure if people who’ve applied to this program are evicted because we let these protections lapse — if they are just waiting for their applications to be reviewed and they’re evicted,” said Sarah Treuhaft, vice president of research at PolicyLink. “It completely counters the entire premise of the program and will contribute to homelessness.”  

PolicyLink’s numbers are dire, showing that just 16% of applicants to the state’s Emergency Rent Assistance Program actually received funds. The report also shows the median wait time for an applicant to receive a decision was more than 100 days, and that the majority of the roughly half-million applicants to the program are awaiting a decision.   

Geoffrey Ross, deputy director for the California Department of Housing and Community Development, disputed the report’s findings, saying the analysis uses a dataset that does not count more than 100,000 payments that the state has made. PolicyLink, which used data from the state acquired through a public records request, stands by its analysis.   

But both groups agree that tenants who are behind on rent for reasons stemming from the pandemic should apply to the rent relief program before it ends. Funds will be made available to cover the requests.   

“The money is not the issue,” Treuhaft said.   

“The program really is in a position to make sure that every eligible application submitted on or before March 31 for rent and utility debts incurred between April 1, 2020, through March 31, 2022, can be paid,” Ross said.   

But Treuhaft also said the state should extend its protections for tenants and the rent relief program. If not, it could see a drastic increase in evictions.   

“The most important thing is to extend these limited eviction protections for those who’ve already applied to the program. And they need to be extended without preventing local jurisdictions from enacting stronger protections,” she said. “What we’re really seeing here is a long-term issue. So, the pandemic is not over for all workers in the state of California. But this program is ending March 31. It really needs to be extended because people still have rent debt.”  

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post Tenant Protections are Expiring as Thousands Wait on Rent Assistance appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

It’s loud on 13th Street under the freeway, but despite the noise and the bright morning sun, people are sleeping in tents and on makeshift beds. Others are going about their day, sweeping or moving their possessions or heading to work or meetings. Alicia Hanson, ferrying some belongings on a bike, said she has done her utmost to get into housing, but has been repeatedly rebuffed. 

“I just wanna be inside so bad,” Hanson said. “I will take wherever.”  

Hanson said she does not understand why she has become bogged down in the process. 

“I’ve been trying to, and ready, for like months. Like, maybe like five months,” she said. “I’m document-ready today. Why am I still in a tent and I’m document-ready? Like, I’m ready! I’m pushing.” 

“I feel very, like, swept under the rug,” she said. 

A recent investigation from the San Francisco Public Press and ProPublica indicates Hanson is not alone in her frustration. But the problem is not that there is nowhere for people to go. Rather, hundreds of units of permanent supportive housing — rooms in hotels or full apartments intended to get people experiencing homelessness a roof over their heads and connected with services — are sitting empty. Meanwhile, more than 1,600 people have been approved to move into them, and more than 400 people on the streets have been waiting to be housed for more than a year.  

That finding is likely a surprise to most city residents, but the vacancy problem has been known to city officials.  

“This is not a secret,” said reporter Nuala Bishari, who broke the story. “They have been reporting out these high vacancy numbers every single month in a PowerPoint to the Local Homeless Coordinating Board.” 

The board is intended to play an advisory role to the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, but this agency and its half-billion-dollar budget have no official oversight body. 

“One of the things that I keep being asked is, you know, what is the department going to have to do in order to fix this problem? And from my understanding, it’s just not being prioritized, this issue of high vacancies,” Bishari said. 

While the department is making some changes, it has not been successful in filling all the move-in-ready units. Officials hired a team tasked with moving people from hotel rooms where they had been staying to protect themselves from the coronavirus. 

“Despite having 18 dedicated staff members to this, in a good month, they only managed to move about 150 people indoors,” Bishari said. “Meanwhile, we have not had less than 800 vacant permanent supportive housing units in the past year.” 

Her story examines several factors that likely contributed to the persistent vacancies, including errors in the city’s software for tracking people who need housing. If a candidate for housing is out of touch with a case manager for 90 days, their spot on the waitlist expires, and the system may kick them back to the end of the line by incorrectly indicating they have been waiting for days or weeks, not months. 

This problem has drawn attention from software engineers. 

“Since the article came out, I’ve had so many Twitter messages and emails and comments from people who work in tech in the Bay Area who are like, ‘How do we fix this?’” Bishari said. “They keep telling me, you know, the first step when you’re designing a product is to make sure that it is meeting the needs of the population that it is being created to serve. And from all of the people I’ve talked to who work at these nonprofits, who are case managers, who are frontline workers, who were interfacing with the software system every day, they are saying this is not meeting the needs that we need it to.” 

Other readers have responded with frustration that so much of the work falls to nonprofits, and suggested that these organizations depend on the problem’s continued existence for their own funding, so intentionally fail to address it. 

“I think it’s easy to want to find a villain here,” Bishari said. “And I’m reluctant to apply that label to anyone, because I think everyone in this process whether it’s the city, or the nonprofits, or the caseworkers all want the same thing, right? We all want to get people off the streets and into housing. There’s a lot of bureaucracy that is kind of overriding the decision-making ability of a lot of these nonprofits. But my experience is that the people who work at these nonprofits are deeply passionate about their work and really want to help people get indoors.” 

Ultimately, she said, letting housing sit empty while people languish outdoors must be acknowledged as a dangerous situation. 

“I think that in order for this issue to be addressed, we really need to view it as the absolute crisis that it is,” Bishari said. “The fact that that many people are going to be sleeping on our streets and in our shelters when they could be indoors is catastrophic. It’s devastating, and it should be fixed.” 

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post Hear Why Hundreds of Homeless San Franciscans Wait Months as Rooms for Them Sit Empty appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Walk into Animal Care and Control’s bright and clean new facility on Bryant Street and you might be greeted by a human volunteer or an adoptable dog. But behind the scenes, officers are investigating alerts about possible abuse, errant wildlife and distressed animals. Animal Care and Control is an emergency service, and officers have been on the job throughout the pandemic, even having to cut hours temporarily as employees fell ill. Though call volume dropped dramatically with the first shelter-in-place order, as workers in many other sectors return to the job and are out and about more, and as kitten season approaches, the facility could see an increase in activity. For the staff on duty, each day can bring surprises.  

“That’s what makes the job so exciting, is that you have no idea what the day holds,” Lieutenant Eleanor Sadler said. “So you’re responding to all these calls. And it’s, you know, a sick pigeon that just looks sad on somebody’s doorstep or a raccoon hanging by its foot from a fence or hit-by-a-car possum, or squirrel in a chimney. There’s just a million variations of the trouble the animals can get into that they just needed a little bit of help with.” 

Sadler has decades of experience as an officer responding to calls, but she also works with the public in a less tactile way. She is the voice behind the widely popular Officer Edith Twitter account. With the likeness of a former resident Amazon parrot as its avatar, the account posts photos and insights that range from comedic to heartwarming to insightful.  

When Sadler first took over the account, “it was me and, like, 100 people, and it was just nonsense. And then I got retweeted by a local journalist,” she said. “And then suddenly, there was a massive input of followers, and things started getting really fun. And I started trying to figure out what works, what represents the agency well or is also interesting to people.” 

Neither the Twitter account nor the parts of the facility that are open to the public capture the entirety of what animal control officers do day to day.  

“You can’t ever really know what we do until you have this kind of conversation. It’s like, people have no idea that we arrest for animal cruelty,” Sadler said. “But they also don’t see the officer that picks up the 2-week-old kitten and it’s in bad condition but they’re like, ‘we’re on the fence about euthanizing this guy, we don’t think he’s gonna make it,’ and then the officer is like, ‘I’m going to take him home.’ They spend every two hours waking up making formula, warming them up, feeding them, peeing them. You know, it’s not just a job. It’s like a vocation for the people that are here.” 

Animals can end up at the shelter many different ways. They can be surrendered by an owner or found loose. Wildlife may need to be removed from an unsafe situation. Sometimes pets need a temporary home, like when the owner goes to the hospital, dies or is incarcerated. Some pet owners find themselves overwhelmed by multiplying animals. Officers also investigate allegations of animal abuse and may seize an animal in a welfare investigation. 

“We have hundreds of complaints a year. The majority are either a misunderstanding or just false. And then periodically, we get one that’s really serious. And we have to investigate it thoroughly and put all the pieces together,” Sadler said. “Our main goal is to make sure these people cannot have animals again.” 

Last year, a suspect in such a case was arrested after a lengthy investigation found he had inflicted multiple broken bones on his golden retriever puppy. The man pleaded guilty to misdemeanor animal cruelty and neglect.  

In many cases, however, officers play less of a law enforcement role and more of an educational one. They teach residents why it’s detrimental to feed wildlife, and how to handle an unexpected animal.  

“The general rule of thumb is to move slower than you think you have to be, quieter than you think you have to be. And don’t panic,” Sadler said. “If it’s an animal that we need to deal with, call us. And we will help you. But don’t put yourself in danger.” 

Where domestic animals are concerned, the Animal Care and Control center on Bryant Street could be the place prospective pet owners find a new companion. But domestic or no, pets can also be too much to handle. Animal Control is equipped to help in both situations. 

“If you’re interested in adopting an animal, go to a shelter or rescue group. If you’re overwhelmed in the animal you have, there is no shame in surrendering them. Doing what’s right is most important. And if you are unable to take care of an animal properly, there are people who will do that and they won’t shame you or judge you,” Sadler said. “We are a resource for people and we want people to use this resource.” 

For animal-related emergencies, Animal Care and Control can be reached 6 a.m. to midnight at 415-554-9400.  

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post Beyond Cute: SF Animal Control Enforces the Law, Educates, Helps Wildlife appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Voters who feel confused or misled by the bombardment of political advertising that comes with every election season might seek out a neutral, straightforward explanation of a ballot measure or campaign. For many voters, that search leads to Ballotpedia. Though the site is exhaustive and may seem formulaic, its content is not automatically generated. Professional writers and editors carefully curate the material that lands in this elections encyclopedia, which covers everything from ballot measures to judges to redistricting. 

Amée LaTour is a writer on the Ballotpedia Marquee team, which covers elections that require detailed explanations or background, either because they’re expected to be competitive or because the outcome of the election could change the balance of power within a governing body. LaTour’s career in writing about politics was sparked by an interest in philosophy. 

“Since I was an older teenager, I was really interested in ethics, and questions like how we find meaning and what we consider to be good,” she said. “To me there’s a natural connection between those ethical questions, and politics. Politics — my idea of it — is the concrete application of ethical ideas. That’s where people act on how they think the world should be.” 

But her writing for Ballotpedia includes no expression of how she personally thinks the world should be. Writers are fastidious about maintaining neutrality.  

“Everything is very, very thoroughly cited,” LaTour said. “If we’re including some things and excluding some things, we try to make it very clear to readers why.” 

That includes writing about things like poll results.  

“If we are covering polls in a race, and we include some of the polls, and not others, we will tell readers exactly how we make those choices so that they can better understand that and know that we’re not just cherry-picking the data.”  

It also means being conscientious of giving equal attention to the various sides of a contest. 

“When we’re covering candidates, we’re always very conscious of the depth of coverage we’re giving to candidates, and whether that’s unequal,” LaTour said.  

Writers also choose their words very carefully. 

“If there are terms that are primarily used by people who support a certain policy position, or who oppose a certain policy position, we don’t use those terms, because we don’t want to give readers the impression that we have a side on an issue,” LaTour said. 

Ballotpedia writers are not journalists, however. LaTour said she wouldn’t consider herself one mostly because she is not connected to the 24-hour news cycle the way a reporter might be. Her focus is on producing material that will still be available when someone looks up a ballot measure 10 years down the line.  

Much of the coverage comes directly from campaigns, she said.   

“We don’t really publish our own articles assessing the validity of different things,” she said. “If one candidate is saying something, and the other candidate says it’s untrue — and candidate A responds to candidate B saying it’s untrue — we might feature that back and forth.” 

Material that appears on Ballotpedia is edited. The process includes a review of the language and terms used to make sure they’re clear and easy to understand. And once material is published, readers can give feedback too, by email or through an error submission form on the website. Every single email and feedback message is read, she said. 

“We invite it,” LaTour said. “If someone sees something they think is either factually wrong or biased in some way, we absolutely want people to let us know.” 

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post Ballotpedia Strives to Earn Voters’ Trust With Comprehensive Elections Guide appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Laura Wenus   

Okay, so I think I’d like to start by asking if you could give San Francisco voters a quick review of the work that you’ve been doing between when you were District 9 supervisor — I know you were a deputy county executive in Santa Clara County, and after that became chief of staff to the San Francisco District Attorney, Chesa Boudin — but maybe if you could just give an overview of some of what you’ve been working on in that time? 

David Campos   

Sure. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I think that I’ll sort of divide the work that I’ve been doing since I left the Board of Supervisors into two different types of work. On one hand is the work that I’ve been doing on behalf of the Democratic Party. As you know, after I left the Board of Supervisors, I was elected chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party. And I’m very proud that in that role I work together to bring the diverse group of people that are San Francisco Democrats together to focus on common ground, and specifically work with Nancy Pelosi to help her take back the house in 2018, when we ran Red to Blue SF, and then in 2020, when we ran Vote Blue SF. And I’m very proud of that work, which really made the San Francisco Democratic Party very influential in what happens in the rest of the state, in the rest of the country. And out of that work is that I ended up getting elected to lead as vice chair of the California Democratic Party. So that’s one area that I’m very proud of where we have worked to make sure that we promote San Francisco values at the state and national level.  

The second area is, in terms of my work as a professional, after I left the Board of Supervisors, I was hired by the County of Santa Clara to be deputy county executive and, in that role, oversaw the operations of several agencies. And one of those areas included the Office of Supportive Housing, where we worked to implement the housing bond, Measure A, that was passed in Santa Clara in 2016 with the objective of building, over a 10-year period, 4,500 units of supportive housing that essentially provided housing and services — mental health, substance abuse — to people who are homeless. And I’m very proud of that work that essentially allowed for Santa Clara to really get a better handle on the issue of homelessness in a way, quite frankly, that San Francisco hasn’t. That work also included overseeing the creation of the Division of Equity and Social Justice that injected a social justice, racial justice and gender justice lens to the work of the county. And the last 10 months of my term in Santa Clara County, I worked to help oversee the communications and public education around COVID and the COVID response. And I’m very proud of that because Santa Clara, as you know, had the first COVID case in the country and essentially led the way in the Bay Area response to COVID through the work and the leadership of our health officer in Santa Clara, Sara Cody.  

Then I left the County of Santa Clara to help Chesa Boudin, and I’m very proud that during my term as chief of staff in that office, we worked to get the office more connected to what’s happening in the neighborhoods of San Francisco. We created the community liaison program that assigns prosecutors and other staff to supervisory districts so that we have a better grasp of what’s happening on the ground and to better respond to issues around crime and public safety. I bring to the table the experience of a supervisor who did a lot in eight years and was probably among the most prolific supervisors to tackle some of the most important issues facing San Francisco. And I also bring the experience of someone who has run county departments and agencies. And I think that combination of legislative and executive experience is something that is very unique and will be very beneficial to San Francisco. And that’s why I think in this campaign for State Assembly, I have support of people from across the political spectrum who don’t necessarily agree with me, who might be folks who have been on the other side of political fights but who respect my ability to get things done and to bring people together as I did as a county executive, as chair of the party and as the supervisor. 

Laura Wenus   

Maybe this is a good opportunity to talk a little bit about what the Democratic Party at the state and county level actually does, because as you mentioned, you talked about it making the Democratic Party more influential at the state level. For voters who only every once in a while get a ballot that has like 50 different people on it for DCCC, that doesn’t really necessarily mean a lot. So how does that affect the people who you are now asking for their vote for you to go to the legislature? 

David Campos   

Thank you for that question. That’s very important. You know, I was chair of the Democratic County Central Committee in San Francisco, known as the DCCC, for four years. And what I found when I took over as chair of the DCCC, is that you had San Francisco Democrats — and it’s a body of about 34 people, 24 of whom are elected directly to those seats, and others are elected officials that serve in those seats in San Francisco. But what I found was that the DCCC spent a lot of time with folks arguing and fighting with each other, and you went to those DCCC meetings, before I took over, and you would see a lot of animosity — a lot of infighting among San Francisco Democrats. And that happened sometimes in San Francisco because we’re passionate about local politics. And so, when I took over, I made it clear that I was not really interested in having this body spend the bulk of our time arguing and fighting with each other, that we have to reach an understanding that we would put aside whatever local differences we had, but that we needed to figure out how we as San Francisco Democrats helped what was happening at that time. And this is, by the way, in the middle of Donald Trump becoming president, right?  

And so, what I set out to do was to figure out how the San Francisco Democratic Party could help push back against the Trump administration, and the one area where we felt we could make a difference was in taking back the House of Representatives. And so, we reached out to the state party at the time — the party at the state was not interested in working with us on that. So, we communicated with Nancy Pelosi, our representative, and clearly she was interested in doing something to take back the house. That’s what she was focusing on, and we decided to be partners. And Nancy Pelosi and the San Francisco Democratic Party ran this operation that we call Red to Blue SF. We rented a space at the corner of Market and Castro where we, basically, for the last two months of the election in 2018, we had thousands of volunteers, San Francisco Democrats who came in to focus on calling swing districts throughout the state of California. We started with about seven swing districts, districts that we wanted to turn from red, Republican, to blue, Democrat — that’s the name: Red to Blue SF. And we started out with seven congressional districts. That number, quite frankly, grew because we started getting more volunteers coming into that space. And by the time that we had finished that effort in 2018, the number of districts that we had focused on was about 19, actually, and we ended up being players and helping to flip about 16 of them. We ended up including districts outside of California, just because we had so many people that were interested. And so that’s an example of how the local San Francisco Democratic Party can influence what happens at the national level.  

What happened as a result of that is that we as Democrats took back the House of Representatives. And not only that, but we helped Nancy Pelosi get elected speaker. Because our efforts had a lot to do with some of the new members that were elected, and I’m very proud of that. And I think that I’ve always understood, and one of the reasons that I did it was that as much as we have differences, when it comes to local issues, as San Francisco Democrats we have a lot more in common with each other than we want to admit, and that when people work together on something, that it creates a special bond. And so, I think there’s something to be said for sitting next to your local political opponent, perhaps, calling the same congressional district in Orange County that you’re both trying to flip. 

Laura Wenus   

I want to bring us back to this particular race — although that is interesting — because I only have a limited amount of time. You mentioned opponents. This might be a good segue into a question about your opponent Matt Haney’s accusation that describing yourself as a civil rights attorney on the ballot isn’t accurate. Would you like to respond to that? 

David Campos   

Well, I think that the ballot argument speaks for itself. The reality is that I have been practicing in the area of civil rights all of my life. And in fact, one of the reasons that I was hired to play the role that I played in the District Attorney’s Office was to inject the lens of civil rights into the work of that office. Criminal justice necessarily implicates civil rights. When you are looking at whether or not to charge someone, the civil rights of that individual, that civil rights of the victim are necessarily implicated. And there are a number of special teams that we have in that office that focus on protecting the rights of workers, the rights of consumers. And I think it’s actually disappointing that a candidate would spend their time worrying so much about what another candidate does, and I understand that the supervisor hasn’t practiced law. (Editor’s note: Matt Haney has an active legal license with the California State Bar association. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has also served as a pro bono tenant attorney in San Francisco.) So, maybe that’s not entirely clear to him. But we’re very proud of the work that I have done, and it’s work that precedes the DA’s office, that goes back to my work in the City Attorney’s Office, to my work in private practice. I have been a civil rights attorney for most of my legal practice. I’m very proud of that and I think that voters have every right to know about that record.  

Laura Wenus   

One of the things that you want to work on at the state level is equitably addressing the economic recovery from COVID-19. At the time of this recording, we are seeing a massive spike in cases nationwide and in San Francisco. First of all, how do you think the state legislature should be addressing the ongoing pandemic and those spikes in cases? And then we could talk about recovery. 

David Campos   

Well, I think that there has to be an equitable response. And as someone who played a leading role in the response in Santa Clara County, I can tell you that as much as all of us are hurting from COVID, there are some communities that are being disproportionately hurt. And I think that the response should take into account the disproportionate hit that COVID is having in communities of color, as an example. You know, there was a study that was done by the L.A. Times looking at Latinos in California, in the generation that’s 22 to the mid-50s. In that generation, they’re eight times more likely to die from COVID, and I think that something has to be done about that. So, I do think that there has to be more done to address the infections — the disproportionate number of infections — that are happening in these communities. And I can tell you, in the Latino community as an example, so many members of that community are essential workers here on the frontlines. And I don’t think we’re doing enough to not only help prevent them from being infected, but once they’re infected, to help them and their families not only to keep the infection from spreading, but also helping them recover and helping them have access to health care. And not just access to health care, but once they recover, that they have access to economic opportunity. And that’s really at the core of this campaign for me is that COVID has not created the inequities in our society, but it certainly has highlighted them and exploited them. And it is not surprising that certain groups have been hurt the most because that hurt is directly linked to the inequities in our society. And if there’s ever a time to address those inequities, this is the time.  

I am running to be a champion for the people that have been on the frontlines of the COVID response and who have been forgotten, quite frankly. I think that they need a voice in California, and it’s something that I think that we all should care about. I am lucky to have a law degree and, in that sense, I have the ability to avoid infection in the way that someone who works at a liquor store or who delivers food cannot. But it’s in my interest as someone who doesn’t have to do that, that the person who delivers my food, the person who might clean my house, that they are taken care of — the health of those individuals is connected to our own health, but beyond that it’s the right thing to do. 

Laura Wenus   

And where do you think that the state legislature has fallen short, specifically, on planning for an equitable recovery and addressing this equitably? Because it is a state legislature seat that you’re running for. So how can legislators at the state level address this? 

David Campos   

Well, look, I know that many of the legislators have tried, but I think that more has to be done and let’s begin with the health care system. And that’s why, for me, the first thing that I’m going to do is to address the issue of lack of equitable access to health care, and that’s where single-payer and Medicare for All comes in. The reality is that one of the reasons why these communities were hit so hard is, not only because they were on the frontlines, but because they did not have the same level of access to quality and affordable health care. And so, we need to make that health care accessible. And one way in which the legislature has not done that is that it has failed to pass Medicare for All. And that’s why I think that’s the first thing that has to be done. If we don’t pass Medicare for All — that makes health care accessible and affordable for all Californians — if we don’t pass it after a pandemic that has killed so many Californians, then when do we pass it? And so that’s the first thing that I’m going to do to make sure that we address the inequitable access to health care.  

The second thing that has to be done once you address the issue of health care, is the recovery. We need a more equitable recovery. And I appreciate what is being done at the federal level with Build Back Better, but we need to do more. California needs its own recovery plan. I would call it Build Back Fairer, and “fairer” because I think that there has to be an added focus on those communities that have been hit disproportionately by COVID. I think that we need a Green New Deal as part of this recovery — that California needs its own infrastructure plan. We need to add our own money as the fifth-largest economy in the world to create more job opportunities in these green jobs — move away from fossil fuels. Not only are those renewable energy jobs better for the environment, not only do they save the planet down the road, but they’re cheaper. And so we need to invest in those new industries and I think that the recovery should create more opportunities, prioritizing those communities that were hit the hardest by COVID.  

As I explained to people, I want to be a champion for the people who work with their hands, for the people who can’t shelter in place and work from home. They need to have a focus in this recovery, for this recovery to really include all of us. And then connected to this — and this is more of a long-term strategy, but it’s something that I think has to be a part of addressing the inequities in society — is education. The reason why I, as a formerly undocumented kid from Guatemala who spoke no English, that I got to be where I am today — a graduate of Stanford and Harvard Law School — is because of the public school system. And right now, the public school system in California is severely underfunded. We’re in the bottom 10 among all the states in per-pupil spending. We should be in the top 10. A college education is so expensive. For so many young people, and adults in California, we need to make it more affordable. I personally think that as the wealthiest state in the country, that we could make college free if we wanted to, or at least make a secondary education or vocational training, whatever the person wants to pursue, that we can make it free. It’s an investment that I think is worth making. And if countries like Ireland can do that, we as the fifth-largest economy in the world certainly can afford to do so as well. 

The post Interview Transcript: David Campos appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Laura Wenus 

I think maybe people are sick of hearing me talk about this, but we are still in a record-breaking spike of coronavirus cases, though at the time of this recording, I think we’ve peaked and we’re starting to come down. I am not convinced this is now over and everything is going to get better from here on out. People are still getting sick and they will continue to get sick even if we’re on a downward slope of infections. You’ve been a vocal advocate of things like vaccine access locally and you’ve been, you know, a local legislator handling this pandemic for a couple of years now. How do you think that the state legislature should be responding and how would you be pushing state policy to respond to the pandemic if you’re elected?  

Matt Haney  

Well, thank you for that question. It’s really been at the forefront for all of us over the last few years, and I hope that we’ve learned how to respond better to this pandemic as well as future ones. I think, you know, first and foremost, we still need help in our public health systems and our hospitals to make sure that they can be adequately staffed to respond. We have, before the pandemic, a crisis within our health care system related to staffing — shortages of nurses — and the support from the state and the investments going to public health departments across the state is critical, so that needs to continue.  

The state also plays a critical role in procuring supplies for us, like tests. We had a situation where we were waiting for tests from the state to get here to make sure that we could test folks who were going back into our public schools, making sure that all of our cities and counties have adequate supplies and support for staffing is critical. We have to go further than that. You know, the state did things during the middle and early parts of the pandemic, like allowing for an eviction moratorium, like sending regular checks to families that were losing funds because of the impact of this virus. Additional sick leave. These are things that the state can do, and only the state can do. And we need them to do it again and continue doing it.  

So, the responses that took place throughout the pandemic really do need to continue, and we need to learn from them. We can’t have folks who are Uber drivers, for example, not have access to sick pay or basic protections. That puts them at risk and puts all of us at risk during the pandemic, certainly, and even after it. So, these are things that I would like to see the state really step up to do to provide support for our local public health departments, our hospitals, but also really extend and expand some of those critical protections that allowed the most vulnerable to be able to protect themselves and those around them.  

Laura Wenus  

Do you see yourself continuing your work on vaccine access advocacy at the state level if you’re elected? Because I mean, I was seeing a lot of pushing from you to make sure that people, especially in your in your supervisor district, had access to this and had easy access to this. And in the Tenderloin, there’s been a lot of roving vaccine outreach where folks on the street can get vaccinated on the spot. And I think you’ve walked along with that team a couple of times.  

Matt Haney 

Well, we have to meet people where they are. And, you know, too often when it comes to health care access, we leave out the people who most need it. And we saw that during the vaccine rollout. Neighborhoods like the Tenderloin and Treasure Island were left out, so I really fought to make sure that vaccines were not only in community health clinics there, but actually out on the streets and having people walk around and meet people where they are. Actually because of that work, the Tenderloin had, ultimately, rates of vaccinations that was comparable to the rest of the city. We need to have similar approaches to that as we think about boosters, as we think about future boosters.  

I’m going to have a very close and proactive eye on equity and making sure that the vaccines are getting to the people who most need them the most vulnerable people in neighborhoods. Because if we don’t do that, the virus will spread and ultimately that affects everyone. So we really, I think, saw that early on where we were seeing large spikes of cases among the Latino community in the Mission, in the Bayview, in the Tenderloin. And so, we were in a race against the clock to get the vaccines to those communities. And I think as we think about the next phase of this and the role of the state, it’s critical that the state gets vaccines to where they’re most needed. And unfortunately, it feels like that’s going to continue to be a need for leadership in the coming years.  

The state actually set a formula to determine where vaccines would go, and there were a lot of problems with that, and I was very involved not only in making sure that vaccines got to neighborhoods where they were most needed, but also that they improved their communications. You know, we had a state system of vaccine access early on, and people probably have tried to forget this, but it didn’t work very well. You couldn’t get answers. You weren’t getting information, they weren’t communicating well. We didn’t use text messages well. So, all of the things that that relate to building systems that are grounded in connecting those with something as critical as a vaccine is something that I have a lot of direct experience with and would bring to Sacramento.  

Laura Wenus  

So, you brought up a couple of things that I want to zoom in on. I think that everybody wants to talk about recovery. This has been and continues to be an exhausting situation. It’s also been really inequitable, just exacerbating the problems that existed before COVID. What role do you see the state legislature playing in paving the way for an equitable economic and social recovery from the pandemic?  

Matt Haney  

You know, the pandemic really did expose so many of the inequities that exist in our state — the fact that we have tens of thousands of people who are living on our streets, that we have child poverty at the level we do, that we have essential workers who really had no option except to go into work and even put themselves at risk because they didn’t have access to sick pay or health care. These are things that, as we move through the pandemic still and hopefully soon out of the pandemic, that we have to both fix, with bold social policies, to make sure that there’s this much stronger social safety net that can protect everyone. And then we also have to recognize that there are people who are still being impacted. There’s, you know, there are hundreds of millions of dollars, likely in the billions of dollars, still, of rent debt. And some people still because of the pandemic are accruing rent debt. We have to make sure that the state fulfills that commitment to make sure that nobody who did the right thing, which was in many cases staying home and protecting themselves and others, is punished for it. And so, the state is going to have to step in in a very robust way, not only for rent debt, but for small business debt, for other types of ways that people really took this burden of confronting this pandemic — often, people who themselves were already very vulnerable, you know — onto their own shoulders. And the state thankfully is at a place where they’re seeing more revenues than ever. We are seeing the largest budget that we’ve ever seen in our state because there are people, particularly big corporations and billionaires who did very well during the pandemic. And, you know, the billionaires exponentially increased their wealth at the same time that most people were struggling. And so, we need to balance that out a bit to make sure that the folks who did take on a lot, shoulder a lot, of the burden of this pandemic economically are lifted up. And then that we create a much broader, robust social safety net where everyone has access to health care, where, in a situation like this, we are sending people monthly checks so they can protect themselves. Sick pay, things that really allowed stability in other places that have it, that we didn’t have that really put everyone at risk.  

Laura Wenus  

I’m glad you brought up health care because that’s where it was going to go next. It is a relevant issue here and you’re not alone in this race and supporting Medicare for All and pretty serious health care reform. What would you say distinguishes your stance and your policy ideas when it comes to health care? 

Matt Haney  

I’m definitely a supporter of Medicare for All. I think we need to take the profit motive out of health care. I think everyone should have guaranteed access to health care as a human right. It’s something I’ve believed for a long time and have fought for and have the support of the author of the Medicare for All bill in California, Ash Kalra, who wants me in Sacramento to help him get the bill passed. But you know, for me, I’ve been very involved in our response here in San Francisco on mental health and behavioral health, addiction. I think these are areas where I really have firsthand leadership experience.  

I was one of the authors of Mental Health SF, making sure that we actually guaranteed true access to treatment for everyone in our city to mental illness or addiction. I’ve seen the gaps in our system and how they can be fixed and how we can hold hospitals and health care providers accountable to actually provide parity for mental health care. Someone comes in and has a mental illness or an addiction, they have to be given the same level of care, whether it’s a private or public provider, as they would if they had to had a broken arm. And too often that is not the case, and that’s going to take not only funding and additional beds and additional support, but it’s going to take accountability for the health care providers that are there now to make sure they’re actually following the law and providing that parity in treatment. So I think I bring, yes, a commitment to Medicare for All, and I think a level of determination and creativity to help us get there. But also, I’m ready to go to work on day one to make sure that when it comes to mental health and it comes when it comes to addiction and the really the epidemic of drug overdoses and fentanyl that I’m able to provide leadership right away and make some changes that hopefully, hopefully help people access care in our current system.  

Laura Wenus  

Can you perhaps give some examples of changes that you would make at the state level legislatively that either hold health care institutions accountable or provide more options for folks who are struggling?  

Matt Haney  

I’ve been very involved in the city and community paramedics and our street crisis response teams, you know, making sure that we have public health officials and professionals who are responding to people who have to have behavioral health needs and then entering them into a system of care within Mental Health SF that’s called the Office of Coordinated Care. The state — and you know, frankly, this is a broader problem — can make it hard for us to get people the care they need in some cases. That’s true on the street when there are barriers to allow[ing] paramedics and pharmacists to prescribe buprenorphine, which is the most effective treatment to opioids. There’s still far too many barriers to that, and they actually prohibit some folks from being able to prescribe that.  That’s a state law that needs to change that would allow us to get the treatments and care that people most need and increase access to it.  

We also have situations where the lack of accountability and oversight and real consequences for private providers or nonprofit providers who are supposed to be providing mental health care but are failing to do so. I think we need stronger forms of accountability and state laws so that we can track when they’re actually providing care for people with mental health needs or addiction needs, and then hold them accountable. You know, they get tremendous benefits from the state tax benefits to operate the way they do. And part of that comes with responsibility for when somebody walks in with an addiction or a mental illness, that they don’t just say, well, go to the county for that. Mental illness and an addiction, if you go to Sutter or Kaiser, they need to treat you and provide the same level of care that they would for a physical ailment or the same level of care that a public provider like the Department of Public Health or SF General would. And too often that’s not happening, and it’s on the state to provide that level of oversight, tracking and accountability to make sure that that care gets delivered.  

Laura Wenus  

I’m gonna pivot here a little bit and ask you something totally different. It’s my understanding that the resolution to rename certain schools, which has gotten quite a bit of attention during the pandemic, that happened while you were president of the school board and those issues really jumped into the spotlight. What do you make of how that whole controversy unfolded, given that these were things that you were working on long before they became so controversial?  

Matt Haney  

Well, it’s sad to see how it’s happened, and you know, there is obviously a need [for a] serious collaborative conversation about our school names and to make sure that they’re reflective of the diversity of our city and that they uplift all of our kids. I supported putting together a committee to do that because that was the kind of collaborative conversation with students and educators and families about how to go about doing that, and to do it with a lot of care and a lot of responsibility. We did that in a couple of cases. We renamed Fairmont Elementary to Dolores Huerta Elementary, and it’s a largely Latino school and there was a huge amount of support for that. We renamed Chinese Immersion School to Ed and Anita Lee. These are things that I think had broad consensus and support. I think that what the school board did — in appointing a committee who really did the opposite of that, was dismissive of input and evidence, and did it right in the middle of the pandemic, when obviously everything in that regard should have been paused — I think really was the worst way for them to go about it. And I think during a pandemic, when many of these schools weren’t even open, they should not have been talking about renaming the schools. They should have put all of that on pause.  

I think any conversation about renaming a school has to be done with a lot of care and a lot of consensus building. And that did not happen. So, I still support, you know, having a conversation at some point about how we can make sure our schools are named after more of our city’s heroes and leaders and and reflect the full diversity of our city and our kids. We should do that, but not in the way that they did at the time they did it. No way. And so, I think it’s really disappointing to see what has happened. And you know, our schools have huge challenges right now because they’ve been closed, because our students are still dealing with this pandemic. That has to be the overwhelming focus.  

Laura Wenus  

And are there any priorities that you have for how you would support schools if you become a state legislator?  

Matt Haney  

Absolutely. You know, I have served on the school board for six years. I’ve spent much of my career in schools. I have a master’s in education. I want to go up immediately and provide that level of leadership for our schools to do a few things: One is, they’re still at a very rocky time financially. They lost a lot of enrollment. We have to make sure that our schools are held harmless for the enrollment challenges they’ve had over the last few years so that they don’t lose funding because their average daily attendance has gone down. We do believe that in the coming years, we can bring that that back up, but right now they need to be able to have the support and stability so that they can get through this.  

The other thing that we need a much more robust pipeline and support for educators. It should be entirely free, debt-free, to go and become a teacher. We have to professionalize it. We have to fund our higher education institutions so that they can build out these programs. And then we have to make sure that we give our schools enough funding so that they can pay their teachers and educators enough to be able to live in the cities where they work. None of that is happening right now. And we increased teacher salaries pretty significantly while I was on the school board, twice. But it’s not enough. And especially, you know, with each year that goes by, you really need significant increases to get educators up to a place where they can survive here. You know, we’re going to have a conversation about larger affordable housing bonds, social housing. I think that the state can play a role in really deep investments in educator housing and teacher housing to make sure that we’re not only paying teachers more, but that we’re dealing with one of the biggest issues they have, which is where they can live.  

And then, you know, another thing that’s been very important to me and I’ve worked on a lot, is how we make sure our curriculum is reflective of the needs of the 21st century. We’re still teaching young people a lot of things that don’t necessarily line them up for the careers and jobs, the job market that they’re going to enter. And a universal A-G curriculum standard around computer science, which is something I’ve done here in San Francisco — every young person should take computer science and coding as they go through their school education. So, these are things that I think that I can also play a role in helping to advocate for higher standards and more relevant and connected educational curriculum for young people.  

The post Interview Transcript: Matt Haney appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Laura Wenus  

I’d like to start by getting a little bit of your background first because there’s a lot — you trained as a neuroscientist, you worked for Stanford, you started at least one company. You’ve also worked as a political analyst. Could you just briefly describe each of those roles, your educational background, your role at Stanford, what your companies did and the kinds of policies you were working on in the Obama administration?  

Bilal Mahmood  

Sure. I mean, thanks again for having me. And I think a lot of the reason we’re running for State Assembly in this election is I feel that our type of background that mixes science and technology and policy is what’s necessary to reform our government. And I’ve worked, as you mentioned, across each of those sectors. And the reason that’s important is the issues that matter to us right now, from climate change to health care to pandemics, they require a mix of science, technology and policy. At Stanford, I was a neuroscientist by training, worked on — actually, my thesis was on — the psychology of political terrorism, of all things.  

Laura Wenus  

Whoa.  

Bilal Mahmood  

Yeah, fascinating research. But my bench work was actually on regenerative medicine and how to heal, wound healing responses, for burn victims. So, we did that for several years in Stanford Medical School. It was fascinating research. I transitioned to government and policy actually out of — my graduate thesis at Cambridge was on health reform. This was back in Obamacare, obviously. And just realizing that I didn’t want to just build one small molecule drug or one therapeutic treatment. The entire system was struggling. It takes like 10 years and a billion dollars to make one therapy. The entire system was fragmented. So, I felt that Obamacare had — one of the strongest ways to represent the policy is the way that you make an impact on, holistically, the entire science industry. So, when I went into the Obama administration, you don’t necessarily get a choice of which department you go to, but thankfully they placed me actually in the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Which was an amazing kind of like interdisciplinary department between White House OSTP, Treasury, Commerce, SBA — and we were working on a mix of different policies. It was recommending things to Secretary Locke who would take it to President Obama around: How do we expedite research grants, SBIR grants, to research foundations and universities so they could accelerate the development of much needed technology a lot faster? It would — took years to get those grants. How do we expedite that? How to get more funding for small businesses and economic development agencies, how to re-change how we do crowdfunding legislation that went into the Jobs Act the subsequent year? So, it’s really focusing on how do we help small businesses? How do we have high-growth businesses as the source of recovering our previous financial crisis and looking at it from the lens of innovative policies? And it was that foundation that kind of taught me from a very early inception of that point, that like there are innovative approaches to approaching government when you think outside the box, when you merge people from public and private sectors across multiple agencies. In a very quick, creative time, we got amazing things done. And that was the kind of on the foundations of my kind of integration into the political system.  

I came back here into the Bay Area, where I was born and raised — I’m the child of immigrants. My parents came here 35 years ago and my mom was a librarian. My dad worked in technology, starting his research was NASA’s simulators, and he worked for Cisco and Google. And I saw the benefit of social justice, combined with technology, to bring up the middle class here in the Bay Area, and in the 2010s came back to try to have that same impact from a social entrepreneurial lens.  

My first company was actually a nonprofit. We worked on microlending services for small businesses. We distributed over a thousand micro loans to mostly female entrepreneurs across the globe to help them get access to capital that most lending institutions that are too predatory, wouldn’t give them. And that was kind of my first foray as entrepreneurship — was really from a social entrepreneurship lens. After that, I worked predominantly in data, and I think that really brought to light that a lot of, as we’re emerging into a new economy, a lot of the problems that we face are the mix of software and data. If you look at the EDD system right now, our unemployment system has been down for years, you know, over the course of the pandemic. And it’s a software failure. It’s an organizational failure. It’s innocuous vendor procurement failures. And I think people who haven’t worked in the private sector and haven’t worked in software, wouldn’t know how to actually solve that problem. They don’t even talk about it. But if you talk to most constituents and most residents today, that’s one of the primary failures that they face. They can’t get those, access to those services. And having built a data company that predominantly provided those services, our company provided services for free, we gave a kind of analytics and data services that Amazon and Facebook had, we gave them for free to small businesses so that they could compete against the Amazons of the world. Saw the power that technology can provide when it’s given from a social entrepreneur lens. And so, across my career, I focused from science and technology and policy and seeing the intersection of how impactful that can be.  

I think that’s what’s really unique about our campaign is we’re not riding off of celebrity or trying to kind of like, say, the things we have done in city government, because the outcomes of our city government have been a failure and no one’s really presenting a vision for the future. No one’s presenting a vision. They’re kind of saying, like, well, if you elect us again, then we will just keep trying the same thing over and over and over again, which hasn’t worked, and we’re actually presenting a detailed vision of the future. What’s different? How do we actually solve these problems from climate change to health care to homelessness? These things, surprisingly, or not surprisingly, require science, technology and policy together.  

We’re the only candidate in the race that actually has a detailed policy platform, we’re the only candidate who had one from day one. And it’s because we’re presenting a vision for the future that’s really resonating with so many people in San Francisco, that’s why we’re catching so much fire in terms of like campaign momentum and hundreds of volunteers and endorsements because people want a vision for the future that is innovative, that is courageous, that’s based on principle. And that’s a lot of how my background has informed the campaign that we’re driving forward today.  

Laura Wenus  

I’m glad that you brought up specifics because I would like to talk about specifics. We’re recovering right now from a record breaking spike in COVID cases and hopefully on the road to a less dangerous time, pandemic wise. But people are still getting sick and they will continue to get sick for a while. Yet the pandemic policy has been very multi-tier. There’s local, there’s federal, there’s state regulations and resources, and they’re all kind of layering on top of one another, superseding one another. How do you think that the state legislature should be responding to the ongoing fluctuations in coronavirus cases? What policies would you be pushing if you were elected?  

Bilal Mahmood  

Yeah. So, I think, I mean, the first thing we recognize is that, I mean, thankfully, omicron is hopefully dying down. But we’re really entering into an endemic situation where we need to be prepared for the next outbreak. Coronavirus is going to continue to mutate, and I think it’s damning that we’re two years into the pandemic, we’re still operating like it’s day one. We don’t have a stockpile of PPE, we don’t have 24-hour testing. We don’t have backward and forward contact tracing. We don’t have 7-1-7 systems like they have in Seoul and Taiwan to control outbreaks as they occur. I think that’s what we need to prioritize. We need to be prepared for the next outbreak so that we don’t have to shut down the economy every time there is another outbreak. And so, what we can do in the state is, A, boost up the infrastructure to ensure that we have 24-hour free universal testing. We have that in New York. We should be able to do it in California as well. Second, we need backward and forward contact tracing, and we only have one of them. And contact tracing doesn’t work if you don’t have 24-hour testing either. On average, still in California is about 72 hours. And so, we at that point, it’s too late as we need to have background for contact tracing. We need to boost having those types of testing in place for free in schools so that schools don’t shut down due to incidents happening. And then more broadly, we need to create a pandemic emergency response agency, focused on COVID in the state. We still don’t have one, and that agency needs to focus on developing a 7-1-7 system, which is the gold standard internationally — that you identify the source of outbreaks in seven days, you identify the actual pinpoint what caused it in one day, and then you control it in seven days. That is the standard for how you identify, control and abate pandemic outbreaks going forward. And we don’t have that in California or, frankly, I think, anywhere nationally in the country. And so those are the three things that we need to ensure is being prepared for the next outbreak to ensure that we don’t have future incidents going forward because we are going to have more outbreaks going forward.  

Laura Wenus  

Yeah, thank you for saying that. The pandemic has also raised a question of equity going forward. It’s exacerbated all of the inequalities that existed before COVID. What role do you see the state legislature playing in paving the way for an equitable economic and social recovery from the pandemic? Assuming that we get there.  

Bilal Mahmood  

Yeah, I think, I mean — the pandemic, I think, at a higher level was a powder keg for underlying systemic inequality in our city and our state and our country. The issues that got exacerbated — from the opioid epidemic to income inequality to unemployment to housing unaffordability, and small businesses, even, closing — those things were happening for years over the course of San Francisco’s history. But the pandemic was a powder keg, and I think it showed that the role of the state is it’s supposed to be providing a social safety net for people who are not being provided for. I saw that in the example of, I’ve been — I run a foundation called 13 Fund, simultaneously, which over the course of the pandemic we set up a grant to support workers who were struggling during the pandemic, [16.7s] either because they couldn’t qualify for PPP loans or they just couldn’t get access to them, often because they were undocumented. And I saw how impactful giving them a guaranteed income was. So, we have several hundred bucks a month to several hundred workers over the course of the pandemic. And so how helpful and impactful it was to help them get access to health care, help them pay for rent and stay in the Bay Area because they couldn’t afford to live here? And that’s an example of where the state can play a role in providing guaranteed income, providing universal health care, providing affordable housing, guaranteed shelter, guaranteed from by-right development of supportive housing, you know, and affordable housing. That’s the role of the state is to ensure that when we have these shocks to our system, that we take care of those who are in most need, and we’re not doing that. And I’ve seen through the nonprofit sector what’s possible to actually do this, in the work I’ve done. And I’m running for State Assembly because I think the onus should not be on nonprofits to take care of our of our most vulnerable. It should be on the state. And nonprofits do amazing work. But bad policy is keeping a ceiling of support on what we can do in the nonprofit and the private sector, but also in the government. And that’s why I think the state play a role in better supporting those who are most vulnerable, as we’re going to have more shocks to our system.  

And another example of that is that climate change is going to have the same impact, if not worse, on underlying systemic inequalities. We’re going to have refugees coming in from all over the world, or even our own country, coming to San Francisco because of our perfect temperate climate, it’s going to further exacerbate housing inequality pollution. The same way the pandemic was a powder keg on these underlying systemic inequalities. Climate change is going to be even worse, and that’s why we need to act with urgency to address inequality. Because the ticking time bomb — we have a five to eight years, according to IPCC reports, before we have to move from climate mitigation to adaptation. It’s the same time bomb I would give to, actually, inequality. And so, we have a very limited time to actually affect these causes, and we need bold solutions to address them. Otherwise, we’re going to reach the point of no return in our country.  

Laura Wenus  

So much to talk about on all of these topics. And I know all of the candidates in this race have a lot of strong perspectives on each of the items that you just mentioned. But I want to talk specifically about housing because you’ve recently earned the YIMBY endorsement — that’s the pro-housing policy advocacy group Yes In My Back Yard — despite having no legislative experience, just based on your observation that political outsiders have made significant change once elected to office and because of all the proposals that you’ve put forward. Since you’ve already put all that out there, I’ll ask you to get specific. What is an example of one state-level policy you would propose and try to get enacted that, to your mind, would improve housing availability and affordability?  

Bilal Mahmood  

Yeah. So, I think the most, most concrete example of the difference of why did YIMBY endorse our candidacy, why have so many people supported our candidacy, is because we provide concrete, innovative, evidence-based solutions to problems that people have been struggling with for years. And people are tired of the status quo. And that’s largely — a lot of it’s not just they’re tired of the status quo, but no one’s presenting a vision for how to solve this problem. They keep presenting the same solutions.  

So let’s take homelessness, for instance. We keep trying the same thing over and over again, and we pretend that the solution is just to spend more money on it. We’re going to spend a billion dollars over the next two years on the same solutions in San Francisco. And so, one of the things we’ve proposed is a model based on the Built for Zero system to solve chronic homelessness. This is a model that has eliminated, to functional zero, chronic homelessness in 14 U.S. cities across the country, using an evidence-based approach, and it works in four components in our plan in California: The first is you set up an integrated interagency department, which we’re calling HEMA, or the Homeless Emergency Management Agency, which would have the authority to integrate between public-private partnerships to get different agencies to collaborate. But also, it would have the authority to set targets on the number of shelters, a number of permanent supportive housing units, a number of navigation centers. And if we don’t meet those targets in specific periods of time, it would have the emergency authority to enforce by-right development, to streamline permitting or any laws that are prohibiting the development of those housing projects, to ensure that we meet the right ratio of individuals who are unhoused to housed in that context. Because one of the largest problems is that our laws, like CEQA, are continuously used to block housing. And so, we want to give emergency power to this agency, that if we’re not meeting housing targets — we’re in a housing emergency — that it has the authority to obviate them to get the housing that we need to get built. The second is using real time data collection on unhoused individuals. If we don’t know where people are, if we don’t know what health status they have, if we don’t know what they’re struggling with, how can we personalize treatment to every individual? So, what this does is it combines a by names list methodology and real time census data style collection to just know: What are the number of unhoused in each city in each location? What is their health status? All done with consent, so that we can then personalize treatment to every individual. And then the third is that we actually then personalize treatment. So, we develop, each HEMA agency within each city will have the authority to develop kind of interconnected case management teams integrated case management teams. Right now, people are homeless for many different reasons — family conflict, eviction, mental illness, addiction, a job loss. And so, the integrated case management teams will have the authority to collaborate on a weekly basis to personalize treatment to every individual to see what is this person struggling with today, what we need to do to help them get on track in the next week. And this model of integrated case management teams, integrated departments, real time data collection, is called the Built for Zero model, that has been highly effective at solving chronic homelessness to functional zero in 14 U.S. cities. In Rockford, Illinois, a city that struggled with chronic homelessness for 13 years, they implemented this program and in one and a half years, eliminated chronic veteran homelessness. And then in two subsequent years eliminated complete homelessness to functional zero. And so, if it works in Rockford, Illinois, it should work in San Francisco and should work across California. It’s an evidence-based approach that has been working. And so that’s kind of one example of why so many groups, from YIMBY action to others, have endorsed us, is that we’re presenting a vision for the future based on science, based on data, based on evidence, and we have the courage to actually act on it.  

Why doesn’t housing legislation pass in California? It’s because of so many special interests, but also they just don’t have the actual kind of special interest, from developers to housing units to other organizations, or lobbyist groups. We are not tied to any special interests, and we haven’t taken any money from corporations, from any corporate PACs, from law enforcement, from fossil fuel. And so that gives us the flexibility and the ability to remain independent and be able to say the things that are necessary. And that’s why I think more broadly, outsiders are effective at bringing systemic change from AOC at the national level to Alex Lee in the State Assembly here in California, because we don’t we don’t have any special interest that we respond to. We can operate on courage or conviction, but also, we have the courage to present bold new ideas because anywhere to go here is up. And the stakes are way too high, I think, to rely on politics as usual, and we’re presenting a strong vision for the future that is resonating with so many people based on evidence.  

Laura Wenus  

Real quick, what’s functional zero as opposed to zero?  

Bilal Mahmood  

Yeah, so functional zero just means that, people will obviously still go in and out of homelessness. Right? Because people still lose their job, they’ll still sometimes get evicted. But it means that within a couple of months’ buffer, people will still be able to get rapidly housed and basically you don’t get into chronic homelessness. But you keep functional zero in that context.  

Laura Wenus  

Mm-Hmm. Okay. And then last question for you, because you did bring up finances, you’re the only candidate in this race, to my knowledge, to not agree to voluntary spending limits. Can you talk a little bit about why?  

Bilal Mahmood  

Yeah, so as a first-time candidate, we want to get our name out there and communicate to as many voters as possible in a very short period of time. And to do that, we need to raise capital. We’ve raised close to $400,000 in individual donations across the city and the Bay Area, which is quadruple when one of the other candidates and commensurate to another candidate, both 20-year veterans, in the entire industry. But we also, we’re going up against opponents who have over $680,000 and independent expenditures spending on their behalf. And so, if we want to remain competitive, we don’t have those types of IE spending on our behalf. We need to be competitive and we’re in this to win.  

Laura Wenus  

And so, you have contributed, you know, on your own behalf as well. Just to be clear, yes?  

Bilal Mahmood  

Exactly. And that enables us to be competitive with the total amount of money that’s being spent by our opposition and the people that support them. And so, to remain competitive, that’s why we didn’t subscribe to expenditures, could — so we can get our message out to as many people as possible in the short election and communicate our values and proposition.  

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