Locals sometimes call San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood “Hamsterdam.” The name comes from the third season of HBO’s The Wire, in which a Baltimore police commander unilaterally designates an area of his district where his officers would turn a blind eye to the selling and using of drugs. The fictional depiction of Hamsterdam is horrifying—“a village of pain,” one character calls it. For Tenderloin residents, that portrayal is a reality. And now it’s not just happening on the streets: San Francisco is operating a rogue and unlawful drug-consumption site. In January 2021, the Third Circuit ruled that such supervised consumption rooms are illegal under federal law, as per the Controlled Substances Act.
The site, called the Linkage Center, opened on January 18. It’s a key element of Mayor London Breed’s emergency plan to clean up the Tenderloin. City officials billed it as a one-stop site for addicts, many of them homeless, to obtain necessary assistance without having to pass through a bureaucratic thicket. Addicts receive food, water, and hygiene services, and workers also connect them to housing options and essential health services, including detox and substance-abuse treatment.
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