Over the past two years, San Francisco has seen more than 1,360 drug overdose fatalities—more than double the number of Covid-19 deaths over roughly the same period. Open drug use and escalating violence in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood forced Mayor London Breed to make an “emergency declaration” last December, resulting in the opening of a “Linkage Center” intended to connect the mentally ill or addicted homeless to basic services. The city selected Urban Alchemy—the 800-pound gorilla in the world of private, nonprofit social-services contractors—as the site’s operator. Mere days after opening, news emerged that the Linkage Center was also operating as a drug-consumption site, in apparent violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act.
Supervised and “safe” consumption sites are part of a long list of troubling ideas to come out of progressive-run cities. In my neighborhood of Venice—a three-and-a-half-mile-long seaside community in Los Angeles with more than 2,000 homeless people living on its streets—residents have grown concerned by rumors that the city has approved a consumption site. Over the past few weeks, Urban Alchemy has moved into our Senior Center, adjacent to an elementary school—though the city recently put on hold plans to open a “decompression center” at the site for people suffering drug-related or mental-health crises.
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