by Jordan Wasilewski
A long time ago, when I was on the SRO Task Force, one older commissioner told me after a meeting one day “please don’t push your own agenda.”
The only agenda I ever pushed was the tenant agenda. However, “pushing one’s own agenda” seems to be common in City Hall. One example of this is District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who is pushing legislation to end all funding for new site-based permanent supportive housing unless it is drug-free.
Since the proposal was revived last month, activists have been coming together to promote solutions to turn the legislation into something that could unite people and could help those seeking a sober environment. Advocacy organizations, such as Treatment on Demand, Delivering Innovation in Supportive Housing and the Coalition on Homelessness, coalesced around five points of unity in amending the legislation. These points are:
1) Removing stigmatizing language: specifically renaming “drug-tolerant housing” to “low-barrier housing” and “drug-free housing” to “recovery-based housing,”
2) Instituting two model pilot programs: one for recovery-based transitional housing and another for recovery-based permanent housing,
3) Eliminating the provision that bars new funding of low-barrier permanent supportive housing,
4) Promulgating safeguards against eviction for relapse, and allowing a just transition back to low-barrier housing for those who can no longer be in recovery, and
5) Allowing for medication-assisted treatment and medication for opioid use disorder in all types of housing.
If anything, these are reasonable suggestions that will help to create recovery-based options for those tenants who wish to seek recovery. However, Dorsey is pushing his own agenda and that of recovery grifters who pal around with RFK Jr. in the White House. They claim that progressives aren’t being “pragmatic,” when it is organizations that are associated with progressives that are proposing pragmatic solutions that allow for recovery options to exist alongside low-barrier housing. Dorsey and his ilk are the extremists here.
This process has been triggering for me as a permanent supportive housing tenant. I have seen people get wheeled out of my hotel in body bags, so I want constructive solutions to the issues around overdoses. But I cannot deal with people who have never lived our lives parachuting into them.
On April 23, one month after the legislation was reintroduced, and three days after the Youth Commission desired not to support the bill as written, the legislation was heard in the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee. This was also before there was a chance for the public to weigh in during the monthly meeting of Homelessness Oversight Commission.
Dorsey staged a rally on the steps in front of City Hall before the 10 a.m. committee meeting. Even though the crowd filled up the whole stairwell outside the entrance, less than half of the attendees actually entered the chambers, and fewer of them actually spoke before the committee. In contrast, public comment was mixed, leaning more towards opposition unless it gets amended. There was consensus in the room that there is a need for more recovery housing, but there was a skepticism of the legislation’s necessity, especially among other permanent supportive housing tenants.
But the committee passed the legislation without amendment, though co-sponsor Danny Sauter hinted towards a need to amend. It is scheduled for a vote on May 5 at the full board, where it is likely to be passed. No public comment will be heard that day, but we are hoping against all hope that the Treatment On Demand’s amendments are worked into the legislation, or at the very least, the permanent prohibition on new low-barrier permanent supportive housing is stripped out. When it comes to permanent supportive housing tenants, our success is the City’s success, and we must expand recovery housing without subtracting from low-barrier housing. We must have solutions for all.
Jordan Wasilewski (she/they) is a long-term permanent supportive housing and SRO tenant advocate, former commissioner and affordability activist. You may follow her at @sfpshsro on Instagram.
