Marc Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce Inc., said he pushed San Francisco officials to clean up the city before his company's annual conference began in his hometown this week and was pleased with the results.

“We put a lot of pressure on the city this year,” Benioff said during a press event Wednesday. “This looks great. It's very safe at the moment. We're moving in the right direction.”

Benioff caused a stir last month when he said that Dreamforce, San Francisco's largest convention, could leave the city if the event's attendees experienced homelessness and drug use.

“Nobody liked that — I didn’t like saying it,” Benioff said of his threat during a separate event Wednesday on stage with California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“We're coming after you, we want to keep you here,” Newsom said after Benioff noted that the city this week was the cleanest he'd ever seen.

About 43,000 people are expected to participate in Dreamforce, which will generate nearly $90 million for the city, a Salesforce spokesperson said, citing data from the San Francisco Travel Association. The conference is scheduled to end on Thursday.

Moving Salesforce's flagship annual meeting out of the city would be another blow to the region's tourism economy after major events hosted by Oracle Corp. and Google's cloud division were relocated from Alphabet Inc. According to the San Francisco Travel Association, conference spending remains well below pandemic levels — falling to $587 million in 2022 after generating nearly $2 billion in 2019.

The association estimates that convention-related hotel room nights will decline 34% in 2024 compared to this year. Overall visitor spending recovered faster and is expected to reach 88% of pre-pandemic levels this year.

Although Benioff was pleased with how this year went, he did not respond to a press question about whether Dreamforce would be back in San Francisco in 2024, saying city officials still had more work to do. “Homelessness remains a major problem in our city,” Benioff said, adding that more housing is needed and more police officers should be hired.

“It is an ongoing effort to increase the visibility of police and community ambassadors in key tourist areas,” said a spokesperson for Mayor London Breed’s office. “San Francisco is committed to making Dreamforce a world-class event, as we do year after year.”

Salesforce officials said there had been no reports of security incidents related to homelessness or drug use among conference attendees as of Wednesday afternoon. A spokesman for the San Francisco Police Department said there were no such incidents at last year's Dreamforce event.

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First Load Transfer a Success at Troubled Millennium Tower in San Francisco | Engineering News-Record

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San Francisco’s public school staff just started their third school year with a faulty payroll system, and the district is still slogging through a backlog of 3,000 issues. 

Last month, almost 1,000 public school employees received their paychecks days late.

For employees of the San Francisco Unified School District, a mundane-sounding glitch in a payroll system that went live in January 2022 brought real-world consequences, including  canceled insurance benefits during health emergencies, tax-filing nightmares and delayed retirement contributions. Some school district staff even had to borrow money to pay their rent. 

The district has spent more than $40 million on the system—called EMPowerSF, configured using software by SAP America—and says progress has been made. But the leader of the United Educators of San Francisco union wants the district to pull the plug.

“This system’s gotta go,” said the union’s president, Cassondra Curiel. “There’s only so long you can squeeze a round peg in a square hole.”

The district adopted EMPowerSF with high hopes for replacing an antiquated, 17-year-old system that was paper-heavy and tracked its $1 billion budget on Google Sheets. It contracted with SAP America in 2018 and, later, its subsidiary, SAP Public Services.

A U.S. subsidiary of SAP SE, one of Germany’s largest companies, has been linked to numerous payroll snafus in California. | Source: Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images

The school district selected SAP, even though problems linked to the company’s payroll software had made headlines in other jurisdictions. The best-known instance came in 2016 when the software company settled with the California State Controller’s Office for $59 million after an exchange of lawsuits.

So why did San Francisco school officials still choose SAP? And will they pull the plug, too? 

‘I Don’t See It Getting Better’

Although it’s the namesake behind the SAP Center, home to the National Hockey League’s San Jose Sharks, German-founded SAP—originally called System Analysis Program Development—is hardly an instantly recognizable corporation like, say, Oracle or AT&T. In the world of California government, SAP is rather infamous.

The company’s connections to payroll snafus are extensive. In 2005, Los Angeles Community College District officials called a troubled transition to a SAP-powered system “horrific” after reports of missing pay. Two years later, a new $95 million payroll system held up by SAP software left thousands of Los Angeles Unified School District employees without checks. That episode took about a year to stabilize, and SAP remains in use there today. 

In 2010, Marin County stopped a $30 million SAP project, leading to a legal battle with the implementation contractor, Deloitte. The same year, the State Controller’s Office hired SAP for what was then billed as the largest payroll modernization project in the country. In 2013, it ended its $90 million contract with the software company after the project’s pilot stage became overwhelmed with errors. 

The ordeal was so colossal that it was the subject of a 2013 California Legislature report, which highlighted lapses in due diligence and disagreements about contractual responsibilities. The settlement stemming from another legal battle, which granted $59 million to the state with no admission of fault for either party, came one year before San Francisco school officials sought contractors for a new payroll system in 2017. 

“Every time SAP is implemented, it seems to fail,” said Bilal Mahmood, an entrepreneur and 2022 Assembly District 17 candidate who analyzed San Francisco’s implementation errors. “The legacy companies—the SAPs, the Oracles—they know how to navigate the government procurement process.” 

United Educators of San Francisco Executive Vice President Frank Lara has fielded teachers’ payroll complaints for nearly two years. | Source: Jeremy Chen/The Standard

As the 2013 state report shows, the Controller’s Office ordeal led to questions about how well software like SAP’s can work for public entities with numerous departments and labor agreements. But a payroll transition’s success also comes down to preparation and management.

“SAP has a long and successful track record of partnering with thousands of public sector organizations including the San Francisco Unified School District,” the company said in a statement. “We are fully committed to ensuring our customers realize the value of their digital investments, and in this case more specifically, the long term sustainability and success of the SFUSD.”

The decision-making process is somewhat opaque. A public records request conducted by The Standard did not yield any documentation indicating how the district came to pick SAP out of a pile of software companies from the 2017 public contract proposal process. It is unclear how many bids were made, which was the cheapest or whether SAP had addressed recent issues with transitions.

A district spokesperson did not respond to questions regarding EMPowerSF’s origins and future. 

The district’s Service Employees International Union chapter, whose president has called the new system “the worst thing to come to the district,” is similarly in the dark, despite repeated questions about why the school district chose this particular system. And though union leaders acknowledge that the decision to bring in expensive consultants—now costing over $15 million—has greatly improved the situation, they don’t see a great future for workers when it comes to EMPowerSF.

“I don’t have any faith this program is going to get any better,” said Antonae Robertson, the chapter’s vice president. “I don’t see it getting worse, but I don’t see it getting better.”

Many technical aspects of the contracts were written to the district’s disadvantage, according to a Standard analysis. For example, Infosys, the information technology firm that was hired to put the software into action, did not have a contractual responsibility to remedy issues with the system. The district was also responsible for migrating data between the old system and the new.

Mahmood stressed that he has great empathy for government entities changing payroll systems, as software must be customized to account for all their intricacies. The problem compounds for districts like San Francisco that reported gaps in documentation needed to plug into the payroll system, he added. 

After combing through the district’s contracts, Omid Ghamami, a procurement consulting expert who reviewed the paperwork at the request of The Standard, highlighted another red flag: that the district switched from one major payroll provider to another rather than modernizing the preexisting PeopleSoft system by Oracle. 

“I would suspect they blamed these issues on the system rather than their own procedures,” Ghamami said. “When they switched to another system, they got a rude awakening. The worst thing they could do is let history repeat itself.”

SAP has opened an office on Townsend Street in San Francisco. Its subsidiary SAP SuccessFactors has a campus in South San Francisco. | Source: Sundry Photography/Getty Images

Keep or Ditch? 

Under Superintendent Matt Wayne, who began his post in July 2022, the district has simplified and addressed many issues with district operations identified as the major causes of its payroll misery. Several key vacancies in business services, technology and human resources departments continue to be filled as the caseload is increasingly tamed. 

“We’re in a very different place than we were a year ago,” Wayne said at the Aug. 8 board meeting. “[There’s] a lot of work to do, but there has been progress. You have my continued commitment to make this work for us because we need to focus, as I said, on our [academic] goals—which is what we’re really here for.” 

Since 2018, the district has spent at least $43 million across seven contractors to launch the system and clean up the mess, according to a Standard analysis of related records. Of that, SAP accounted for $5.9 million. 

In addition, the district hired another consultant for $2.6 million to stabilize its business operations, including payroll, through July 2024.

How much longer until EMPowerSF works for the district remains to be seen. The smart move in 2017 would have been to upgrade PeopleSoft, Ghamami said. The smart move now, he added, would probably be to stick with SAP, due to the district’s sunk costs.

Curiel, the educators’ union president, however, has seen enough. The union staged a takeover of district offices in March 2022 to secure agreements for timely replacement checks and interest for delayed payments, but it’s unclear when the district will be in a place to tally all that up. 

Meanwhile, workers still have a tough time understanding their paychecks and what may have gone wrong. An official union complaint is working its way through a state system. 

Frank Lara, the union’s vice president, has fielded complaint after complaint from members. This year, he watched his own help ticket move painfully slowly through the system while he was charged an extra $850 a month for health care his family did not receive. 

“It just gets lost,” Lara told The Standard. “There’s some key system issues that may not be solvable.”

Questions, comments or concerns about this article may be sent to [email protected]

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Marc Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Salesforce Inc. Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff said he pushed San Francisco officials to clean up the city before his company’s annual conference began in its hometown this week and is happy with the results.

“We put a lot of pressure on the city this year,” Benioff said Wednesday during a press event. “It looks great. It’s very safe right now. We’re moving in the right direction.” 

Benioff caused a stir last month when he said that Dreamforce, San Francisco’s largest convention, could leave the city if those attending the event were affected by homelessness and drug use.

“Nobody liked that — I didn’t like to say it,” Benioff said about his threat during a separate event Wednesday on stage with California Governor Gavin Newsom.

“We’re sucking up to you, we want to keep you here,” Newsom said, after Benioff remarked that the city this week is the cleanest he’s ever seen it.

About 43,000 people are expected to attend Dreamforce, which will generate almost $90 million for the city, a Salesforce spokesperson said, citing San Francisco Travel Association data. The conference is scheduled to conclude on Thursday. 

A move away from the city by Salesforce’s most-significant annual meeting would be another blow to the area’s tourism economy, following the relocation of major events run by Oracle Corp. and the cloud division of Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Conference spending remains far below pandemic levels — falling to $587 million in 2022 after generating almost $2 billion in 2019, according to the San Francisco Travel Association. 

The association estimates that convention-related hotel stays will decline 34% in 2024 compared with this year. Overall visitor spending has been quicker to rebound, and is expected to be at 88% of pre-pandemic levels this year.

Despite being happy with how things have gone this year, Benioff didn’t respond to a press question about whether Dreamforce would be back in San Francisco in 2024, saying city officials have more work to do. “Homelessness remains a major issue in our city,” Benioff said, adding that more housing is needed and more police officers should be hired.

“Ramping up police visibility and community ambassadors in key tourist areas has been an ongoing effort,” said a spokesperson for Mayor London Breed’s office. “San Francisco is committed to making Dreamforce a world-class event, as we do year after year.”

Salesforce representatives said there haven’t been any reports of safety incidents around homelessness or drug use affecting conference attendees as of Wednesday afternoon. A San Francisco Police Department spokesman said there were no such incidents during last year’s Dreamforce event either.

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There have been so many reports of deserted downtown San Francisco lately that I almost expected, on my way to Heartwood, a cocktail bar created by the team behind the Treasury and the Beehive, that opened on Commercial Street last week, kicking tumbleweeds.

The streets are undeniably quieter now that around 150,000 workers have left the neighborhood, but in Heartwood it could have been happy hour on the second night of the service around 2019. Almost every table was packed with colleagues sharing bar snacks and sipping craft cocktails amidst exposed brick and murals depicting California poppies and trees, nodding to the neighborhood’s history.

The bar’s name refers to the innermost part of the tree trunk, which produces the toughest wood, and alludes to neighboring Transamerica Redwood Park, which is still closed for renovations. It could also be read as an indication of the core value required to open a new bar in America’s “emptiest inner city” amid a tenuous recovery from the pandemic, mass layoffs and warnings things could be getting worse.

Pedestrians cross Battery Street in San Francisco’s Financial District on April 25, 2023.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

But managing partner and operations manager Tristen Philippart de Foy reminds me that it’s spring, even if it’s been a long time coming this year.

“It’s fair to be critical. Yes, we were in a recession and it was a long winter. But whoever is here sees that we are at the beginning of an upswing,” he said.

Hope for downtown San Francisco

Heartwood isn’t the only company moving into the neighborhood. According to Robbie Silver, executive director of the nonprofit Community Benefit District Downtown SF Partnership (DSFP), 14 businesses in the hospitality and retail sectors have opened in the Financial District since 2021. The San Francisco Business Times reports that other hospitality giants such as Wayfare Tavern and House of An are on the horizon. And real estate investor Michael Shvo, who bought the Transamerica Pyramid in 2020, is investing $400 million to redesign the building and surrounding blocks. That’s a big bet for an inner city deemed dead.

Although the Heartwood team has toured many rooms across the city, they landed at the FiDi location in part because of the promising recovery that the Treasury, just a short walk away, has seen over the past year.

Heartwood CEO Tristen Philippart de Foy at his restaurant in San Francisco’s Financial District on April 25, 2023.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

“There was a revival and we’re miles ahead of that a year ago,” Philippart de Foy said. “There are smaller windows in which we’re employed, but those windows are promising.” The same can be said for the acquisitions of companies for conventions, which he says are even stronger than 2019, and the hybrid working models, the lunch and happy hour for Bring employees back at least a few days a week.

Of course, trying to get a business up and running with far fewer hours and customers is unsustainable. And, as the area has learned the hard way, it doesn’t rely on workers in any industry to keep businesses afloat, either.

For this reason, DSFP, Philippart de Foy and many other business owners are working on a public sector action plan aimed at reinventing FiDi as a cultural destination.

Customers enter Heartwood in San Francisco’s Financial District on April 25, 2023.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

A pilot of the program, funded by the city and provided by DSFP and Sitelab, an urban design studio, is slated to launch this summer right outside Heartwood’s doors at the intersection of Leidesdorff and Commercial Streets.

Bring pedestrians back to FiDi

In front of Heartwood, Philippart de Foy leads me around the block as if it were an extension of his bar. Where there are a few parked cars and a boarded-up storefront with someone camping at the entrance, he sees potential and paints a picture of a busy pedestrian street that you would find in most European cities. The projects promise murals and historical plaques here, a coffee cart there, health clubs to lure workers out of their offices, and cultural activities to lure families and visitors.

“The construction of these inner city hotspots of culture will be a crucial part of the recovery,” said Philippart de Foy.

Light displays will be projected onto the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange building as part of the “Let’s Glow SF” art installation on Tuesday, December 8, 2022 in San Francisco.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

There is already evidence that activities like this work in the neighborhood. In December, DSFP hosted Let’s Glow SF, a 10-day holiday celebration where 51,000 visitors and residents saw light shows projected onto four downtown buildings. According to Silver, most of the participants were families, and the project raised $3 million for the region and its businesses.

In addition to cultural activities, DSFP recently launched its first micro-grant program to provide up to $40,000 in funding to eligible restaurants to improve their sidewalk and curbside dining areas.

Peter Quartaroli, owner of the 150-year-old Sam’s Grill and DSFP board member, says beautifying downtown streets is an important part. “If we can make the curb in front of our store, in front of our neighbor’s store, a little better, it’s going to make a big difference,” he said.

Customers exit Sam’s Grill in San Francisco’s Financial District on April 25, 2023.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

Grants like those from DSFP, along with Mayor London Breed’s recently announced plan to change the city’s tax structure to make it easier for businesses, aren’t the only signs of imminent change some businesses are optimistic about the city centre make.

Philippart de Foy said landlords are starting to work with business owners on unconventional deals to weather the slow recovery and inspire long-term leases, such as: B. Profit-sharing, where rents are based on the success of the company.

A “For Rent” sign hangs in a window in San Francisco’s Financial District on April 25, 2023.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

Mason Harrison, a representative of the Transamerica Pyramid, said there is promising leasing activity among creative agencies and design firms in the area. Silver hopes that bringing nightlife to the area will also help diversify the neighborhood’s economic core, noting that incubator programs could allow artists to establish a more permanent presence in the area, which would help Changing perceptions of what the neighborhood has to offer.

The road to recovery

San Francisco’s recovery from the pandemic is slowing compared to other cities, but the Bay Area still ranks among the top 10 fastest-growing metro areas in the United States, according to a study by LinkedIn. And although tourism spending in the city is about 77% of 2019 levels, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, it more than doubled in 2022, giving some hope that a full recovery is now on the horizon. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate editorial offices.)

There is still a long way to go. Heartwood’s closest neighbors are still a boarded-up storefront and construction zones. But in the bar, the focus on natural elements, from the exposed original wooden beams to the tiny pine cone adorning my cocktail, is more than just a gimmick. It’s a reminder that spring always returns.

Customers have lunch at Heartwood in San Francisco’s Financial District on April 25, 2023.

Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE

A less tangible, but perhaps even stronger, element fuels business owners’ hope for downtown. And that’s the spirit of San Francisco itself.

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SAN FRANCISCO — In early 2022, San Francisco mobilized to tackle the problems that had been building over decades in the Tenderloin District: Homelessness, an exploding drug crisis, the growing presence of drug cartels and a sense that things were spinning out of control. Sixteen months later, what has changed? 

What is happening in this neighborhood has drawn attention around the world over the past year. The Tenderloin is a dynamic neighborhood and conditions on any given corner can change abruptly. Exactly how things are changing over time depends a lot on whom you ask and when.

“It’s almost every day,” Jorge said referring to a mound of trash on the street. “Every single day they have a mess over here.”

“It’s been nice,” Azalina Eusope said of recent conditions. “I would say about the last four weeks.”

Every day is a little different here and there are some changes unfolding but lasting change was always going to depend on finding ways to help the people that are struggling here.

“Nobody should have to live like this,” said Mark Mazza with the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management, as he looked over a sidewalk encampment. “No one should have to walk through this. This is a pathway right here kids take to the playground up the street.”

Mazza is taking on a challenge some might think impossible. As the Tenderloin Streets operation manager, he sees a lot of these streets.

“I do a lot of walking,” he said. “Probably about 50 miles a week.”

All that walking reflects a shift in city strategy — this one driven by the Dec. 2022 closure of what debuted as the Tenderloin Linkage Center.

“When the Tenderloin Center closed, we had to focus 100 percent on bringing those services to the street,” Mazza explained. “So that’s when we just divided the neighborhood into four areas and every day we work that area, seven days a week. HSH, DPH, DPW — we’ve divided the Tenderloin into four different zones. We come through, we offer to get people to shelter with wellness checks. If someone has somewhere to live already or they’re in a shelter, we try to get them back there.”

It’s a slow, day-by-day, case-by-case process that often means revisiting the same people in the same tents for months with occasional breakthroughs. 

“We had somebody, it was a couple, and we had a couple navigation center beds down in the Bayview,” Mazza said at one stop.

Then there is the scale of the challenge in a city with an unsheltered homeless population of about 4,400.

“We can’t keep up,” Mazza acknowledged. “There’s so much need out here and not enough of us to help and everybody out here doesn’t want to be out here.”

“They just started contacting people when COVID happened,” said Abe, who lives on Tenderloin streets. “Before that, there weren’t any people really offering. Occasionally if the police caught you nodding off, they’d take you to a navigation center.”

Abe has been in San Francisco for 10 years, almost all of it on the street. He says he is seeing more offers for help.

“So they just started going after people, during COVID,” he said.

Why is he still on the street? He says it comes down to the available options and that is something Mazza hears just about every day

“This group, they would go inside if they were eligible for what they want,” Mazza said, talking about another group on the street. “They want hotel rooms and they don’t meet the eligibility requirements so they want to stay out here.”

“It’s totally BS,” Abe added. “They come up and they want you to throw away all your personal property, drop everything and go with them and go to a, like, a dorm where they’re just stacking everybody It’s like a metal house in there. For real.”

“I can’t blame them for not wanting to go into a congregate shelter,” Mazza said.”That’s their decision.”    

And that’s just one example of how resolving any single case can be difficult, under difficult circumstances, for everyone.

“These guys are out here every day, often getting yelled at, working hard,” Mazza said of his team. “People are mad at them. People who are on the streets are mad. People who are housed are mad at them.”

“It’s the people that are actually the hardest workers are the ones that are being shafted in this,” said homeowner Alex Alvarado.

Alvarado may not be yelling at city workers but he is frustrated. He was one of the neighbors KPIX met last year. At the time he was encouraged by the street-cleaning efforts. One year later, he’s disappointed.

“If we didn’t clean here, this place would be a complete disaster,” Alvarado said.

In 2022, Stu Barkouki spoke to KPIX about the struggle to run his deli. One year later, he tells us it was just too much, He sold and moved on.

Others are digging in.

“You know people have been loving and caring for the Tenderloin since probably the beginning of time.” Eusope said, pointing to her restaurant wall collection of Tenderloin photos. “You can see all these little signs and you don’t get that in any other neighborhood in San Francisco.”

Eusope proudly boasts of being a fifth-generation street food vendor. Opening the restaurant means running a gauntlet of city fees, rules and regulations — an stark contrast to the disorder she was seeing just outside. After being spit on by someone camping in her doorway, she joined a group of business owners demanding help from the mayor’s office.

“If you’re placing a regulation or rules or a process that needs to be followed,” Eusope said. “It has to be equally distributed and everybody has to act the same way and I just feel like that’s what is missing here.”

Saving the Tenderloin has meant different things over the years. Now for entrepreneurs like Eusope, that means finding a way to make this neighborhood a viable place to run a business.

“Should I say fight?” Eusope asked. “Maybe that’s not really a positive word but it’s gonna take a lot of loud voices from small people like us.”

When Mayor London Breed announced the Tenderloin emergency initiative, her language around the use of law enforcement drew a lot of attention but significant policing changes haven’t really come until recently.

KPIX observed a typical drug bust made by a six-member undercover team, launched in late November.

“Extra baggies,” said an SFPD officer, going through a bag of evidence seized in a drug bust. “More fentanyl”

Days later, more arrests at the very same corner. There are new rules. A uniformed officer must be on hand but it’s not slowing them down. At the start of April, Tenderloin Station had made 217 arrests, putting it on pace to pass last year’s total by more than 50 percent.

“We have recovered triple the amount of drugs year to date as opposed to last year,” said Tenderloin station Captain Sergio Chin.

“We have charged almost double the amount of cases in the period since I took over compared with the previous year,” explained San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.

Jenkins began her tenure by coming to this neighborhood and promising action against drug dealing. While the busts are really old-fashion police work, they’re hitting challenges. A complaint was filed against one officer alleging that Latinos are being unfairly targeted. Officers say they’re simply targeting fentanyl and problematic corners. As for prosecutors, their drug arrest cases are just now reaching courtrooms. The first two cases ended with hung juries.

“The defense that was offered in both of those cases is that the defendant had been trafficked and that’s why they were selling narcotics,” Jenkins said. “This is a new issue. When I was handling drug dealing cases five years ago, there was no allegation that anyone was being trafficked so it’s something that we are having to adapt to rapidly.”

“We’re not gonna have any more luck arresting our way out of that crisis by arresting street-level dealers than any prior administration of that or that this country has had,” countered District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston, who now covers a portion of the Tenderloin. “If you have an addressed the underlying causes and reasons that folks are out there and dealing if you have an investor in the community you’re just moving people around.”

Out on the street, it’s not hard to find those who say the stepped-up presence alone is long overdue — at least on their corner.

“We’ve tried to call the police many times before,” said Jessica, a travel agency owner. “Sometimes they come, sometimes not. Right now, it’s really better with the police on the streets right now. I prefer to have the police on the streets.”

In the same way Urban Alchemy only patrols some of the neighborhood, police can’t be everywhere at once.

“They’ve moved them all the way up to Post Street,” observed Tony Kushmaul. “So they move them block-to-block or they move them around the block.”

“Even though the sellers may move around and others engage in criminal activity, we’re going to stay on top of them and on top of what they’re doing regardless of where they go,” promised SFPD assistant chief David Lazar

So the police are making more arrests, taking on a wave of drug dealers as residents watch and wait to see what it might accomplish.

“The police, they need to make more walking routes, you know,” a man named Gordon said of what he’d like to see from SFPD. “Walking around — at least scare these guys.”

Another part of this story that has stretched on for decades is neighbors trying to find their own ways to push back against problems. Lately more of them are doing that by making some noise.

“Before I started doing this, all these people that’s over there, that’s using drugs,” said resident JJ Smith of his sidewalk-clearing. “They all were using their drugs, right here.”

For Smith, it started with things like clearing paths for school kids, checking on neighbors, building relationships with those on the street. After a while, he too hit something of a breaking point.

“It’s not normal,” he said of the neighborhood’s condition. “But it is normal.”

He set out to change that “normal” by showing it to everyone. He turned his Twitter account into a raw, no-apologies chronicle of life and death in this neighborhood. The suffering on the street, the violence, the drugs and the casualties.

“I just want my voice to be heard,” Smith said. “I want people to be able to see what I see. Understand what I deal with every day when I walk out my door.”

“I felt I had to use the tools that I had to do something,” said another resident who chose not to be identified for obvious reasons. “To sort of fight back”

Turning several lenses on a problem: a now-growing collection of neighbors who are connecting via closed-circuit security cameras.

“Been in San Francisco for 30 years and I’ve been a resident of the Tenderloin for 29 years,” they explained. “Basically, shock that what I saw was going on. Nothing was really being done about it.”
   
So they turned the focus on the blatant, open-air drug trade that had consumed their blocks and put it online.

“There’s a regular. He’s out there all the time and there he is using a mule,” they explained, pointing to some of the videos they had collected. “It was something that people would just deny — that’s not going on — but there it is, you know? Just look at it. You can see the drugs. You can see what’s happening.”

They say the dealers eventually saw what was happening as well and a funny thing happened.

“They are well aware of it,” they said of the dealers. “They have moved their operations up a block.”

The cameras shuffled the problem down the street so now more neighbors are building similar systems.

“So it does give me hope that you know how to make change.” they said of the camera deployment. “I would not recommend anyone just do this. It’s a very dangerous activity.”

But, for a lot of people, the current situation has created a sense that, even if risky or unpopular, they have to say something.

“I can place myself in everybody’s shoes because I’ve been there,” Smith said. I can put myself in the tenants’ shoes because I am a tenant. I can put myself in the business people’s shoes because I was once a business owner and I can place myself in the homeless — or addicts’ — shoes because my family has been like that. My brother was like that so I understand what everybody’s going through. I can see it. I can feel it.”

A centerpiece of the initial emergency effort was the Tenderloin Linkage Center, which closed in December.

“People were — initially — they were directed to services to some capacity but you know that wasn’t always happening,” Mayor London Breed said of her decision to close it. “We had all of the different services at one location and that wasn’t completely translating to help and other locations.”

“I mean, this Tenderloin center was not perfect,” countered Supervisor Preston. “There were many things, if I were running it, that I would’ve done very differently but we should’ve — when we closed it — had two more opening in the community.”

The Tenderloin linkage center opened and closed with controversy. It was the city’s first de facto, safe-use site and the discussion over how or where to open another one continues. The drug crisis isn’t just complicating the effort to get people off the streets — it’s driving it in many cases. 

“Urban Alchemy is on the lower TL so that’s moved a lot of things up,” Mazza said of the shifting neighborhood. “So now, Ellis, O’Farrell — we’re seeing a lot more people. You know, people go where the drugs are.”

In the day-after-day, camp-by-camp effort to connect people on the streets with some kind of shelter, there is the one element that looms over just about everything.

“There’s complicated pieces and there’s some that are pretty obvious,” Mazza said. “And people out here will be clear with us. They are addicted to drugs that they need to be using constantly.”

“Like, I’m surprised that I’m not dead yet and I’m 40 years old.” said Phillip who lives in a tent by Polk Street.

Phillip arrived in the city from Puerto Rico with his mother when he was two years old.

“Ever since then I’ve been out here in San Francisco,” he said. 

He ended up homeless when he was 11. Twenty-nine years later, he says, the street is all he knows and when he’s been placed in shelter or housing, he has struggled..

“It is very weird because it’s like I’m not used to this inside environment they’re trying to give me,” Phillip said. “I wanna be somewhere where I’m comfortable.”

Part of being comfortable, he says, means staying alive.

“The drugs that I do, because I do heavy drugs — I do opiates and, for people who do these types of drugs, they can end up living and dying on the street, you know. It’s really easy,” he explained.

“That’s why they’re out here,” Mazza said. “And that’s why we keep coming back to try to catch them at the right time, when they’re ready to do something different.”

There are, of course, other challenges to keeping people in housing.

“Hoarding and cluttering disorders are a real thing,” Mazza said of the challenges.

That’s exactly the kind of case the team had been struggling with recently and an individual they were trying to help agreed to go into housing. Only the man came right back to the same corner and familiar ways, collecting an entire sidewalk full of items pulled from garbage cans and recycle bins. So the team asked if he’d like to go back home.

“He agreed.” Mazza said. “He said he didn’t need any of this stuff. He had gone through it. He didn’t want to take any of it with him. He gets walked home by outreach. He’s somewhere warm now. The street is clean. People can pass through.”

So there are a lot of steps forward and backward for any number of reasons.

“What happens out on the street and what keeps people safe out here get them kicked out of the housing,” Mazza explained. “If you want to stay out here, you need to be scary. You need to be able to yell at people. You need to be loud to keep people away from you. So, unless we’re working on that out here on the street before people go indoors, the same things that kept them safe out here get them right back out on the street.”

As hard as it can be to find housing and get someone placed in it, the city is having a much harder time with something else: Getting people into successful drug treatment or recovery.

Phillip was asked if he was interested in any kind of drug treatment

“That’s funny because it was asked to me a couple times and I gave a blank answer to that,” he answered. “Because it’s hard. The opiates that I do, the detox and withdrawal, it’s not a good feeling. So I would  probably leave that as an unanswered question.”

“If we’re ever going to make a dent in this, we need some type of quality treatment that people are interested in going into,” Mazza said of the drug challenge. “People are out here because they’re on drugs. There’s places for people to go when they’re ready. There’s housing, there’s money for people that aren’t eligible for housing. We’re trying to get people off the streets but the drugs are keeping them out here. “

“It’s a wonderful community,” said Tenderloin worker Andre Harris. “I love my city. Don’t get it wrong, I was born right here. I love San Francisco but it’s complicated sometimes.”

Harris was sharing a thought many San Franciscan have said to themselves at some point and “complicated” is something this neighborhood has been for a long time.

“My overall goal is to see the Tenderloin be a place where people can live in peace and safety,” Mayor  Dianne Feinsten said shortly after taking office in 1978.

Not just peace and safety. Neighbors and the city have been trying to corral trash and litter on the streets here for generations.

“But it is still the same,” Jorge said. “No changes. It’s still the same, you see? You see the broken glass? A lot of mess every day.”

The Tenderloin is where fixing problems can feel like turning back the tide and measuring progress can be difficult..

“Business owners come to my officers on a daily basis and they thank them,” Captain Chin said. “You probably say ‘you guys are pretty successful at this location and why not at this location?'”

“We can’t keep up,” Mazza said of his work. “There’s so much need out here and not enough of us to help. 

The city has been placing as many as 200 to 300 people, sometimes more, into some type of housing every month and those numbers are a bit higher than in years past.

“I think we’re starting to see some visible differences on the streets,” said Jennifer Friedenbach with the Coalition on Homelessness. “We can’t qualify that until the count but it’s — certainly if you look at the numbers — they’re doing a lot of placements.”

Then there is how to take some control of the drug crisis. Discussions on that topic now pack community meetings with residents increasingly frustrated by the lack of better outcomes for those on the sidewalks.

“The people who are on the sidewalk should know that there’s people out here trying to help them get indoors,” Mazza said. “And when they get that opportunity, whether it’s to go into housing or go into treatment, whatever it is, they deserve something that’s high quality and they deserve people that will be there to help them get back on track. I just want people to see how much work is going on out here and how hard people are trying. The Tenderloin is going to be the Tenderloin but this is unacceptable.”  

That is one thing that has not changed since last year — the sense of urgency. The feeling that more people are paying attention and looking for ways to push the neighborhood forward

.”I know it’s a long shot but I feel like it’s a change that’s happening.” Eusope said. “If we all have that, we might get this balance. We don’t need to wait another 60 years.”

“I think we need to fix this matter in the Tenderloin,” Jorge added. “That’s all I can say.”

Wilson Walker

Wilson Walker joined KPIX 5 in July 2007. After 10 years producing newscasts, Wilson became a Multimedia Journalist (MMJ) in 2012, meaning he shoots, writes and edits all of his own stories.

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An uncertain economic outlook has brought San Francisco’s real estate investment market to a near halt, but the sale of a luxury car dealership has been a source of much-needed optimism as the city begins to recover.

IndiGo Auto Group, a Houston-based network of high-end car brands, bought the former Mercedes-Benz showroom 500 Eighth Street in San Francisco for $60.2 million, marking one of the largest deals closed in the past year and earning it a 2023 CoStar Impact Award, as judged by real estate professionals familiar with the market.

The property, which was built in 2006 and is ready to move into, will soon be reopened as a Porsche dealership.

San Francisco’s retail market — particularly outside of its main Union Square shopping district — has long faced challenges that were exacerbated by the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. The city’s bureaucracy and rising and high crime rate have turned investors away – high-profile tenants like Gap Inc. and Walgreens have closed more locations than opened.

Defying poor investor sentiment, the purchase of IndiGo meant an otherwise vacant retail lot would reopen as a new luxury auto dealership to revitalize the San Francisco street corner.

About the project: The nearly 91,200-square-foot building previously housed a Mercedes-Benz dealership until the location closed in mid-2021 and the luxury car brand moved to a new location in South San Francisco. The space is located in the Showplace Square neighborhood, which is home to numerous tech offices, including Airbnb, Asana, Zynga, Stripe, and Volta.

What the judges said: “The sale of the Mercedes-Benz dealership to another auto dealership is a positive development and will help preserve jobs and economic activity in San Francisco at a time when the local economy is struggling to bounce back to recover from the effects of the pandemic,” said CoStar Impact Award judge Mary Alam, also executive vice president at NAI Northern California. “Had Mercedes-Benz moved out and left the building empty, it would have been a disgrace to the region and would have also led to a decline in employment, economic activity and growth.”

You made it possible: Zach Haupert, Michael Sanberg and Trevor Gudim from Touchstone Commercial Partners represented the seller Rialto Capital Management in the transaction. Jeff Badstubner with JLL brokered it on behalf of the IndiGo Auto Group.

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OAKLAND (KPIX) — Police in Oakland are investigating a fatal early morning stabbing Sunday in a Lake Merritt neighborhood that has seen multiple homicides in recent months.

Police said a man was stabbed multiple times just after 3 am near 1200 Lakeshore Avenue.

That makes four homicides on the same lakeside street in less than six months.

“I heard a big commotion and I came outside on the balcony and I saw, like, about five people beating up this guy,” said a woman who declined to provide her name for fear of retaliation.

She said the attackers were two women and three men.

“They just were really beating him up, beating him up and, all of a sudden, the women said ‘Oh, let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!’ So they all jumped into a car. The (victim) got up, then he stumbled, then he fell,” she said.

She said the victim had blood all over his chest and that there were other people standing nearby, including a security guard for her condo building. Those witnesses tried to help the victim after the attackers left.

Oakland police said it’s the fourth homicide on this long dead-end street since Nov. 2021. It is unclear what motivated the stabbing. Police said the previous homicides, involving guns, were over robberies.

“Unfortunately, not surprised because there’s been so much of it,” said Michael Ziolkowski, who lives on the block.

“It’s really discouraging sometimes. I still love the neighborhood but I don’t think I would be comfortable sitting on a bench here after dark, honestly,” said neighbor Krista Sumida.

Area residents said they are fearful to leave their home at night. In addition to the four homicides, the East Bay Times reported there have been seven non-fatal shootings in the cul-de-sac since May 2021.

“We need a greater police presence on this cul-de-sac,” Sumida said.

“If (the police) drive through with their lights flashing, that kind of makes a lot of the cars move and get out,” Ziolkowski said.

One neighbor was seen with a large moving truck on the block moving out. He said he was tired of the violence and shootings.

“We’ve had three neighbors just moved out of this building in the last eight months,” Sumida said.

The dead end stretch of Lakeshore Avenue is a popular hang-out spot for young people to park their cars and party at night. Neighbors said that makes those people easy targets for robbers and some of those parties have led to fights and shootings.

“My message to our mayor is to please step up, pull your leaders together and come up with a viable way where we can be safe,” said neighbor Colette McPherson.

Oakland police did not release the stabbing victim’s name. He was in his 30s.

Police were still looking for the suspects.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the OPD Homicide Section at (510) 238-3821 or the TIP LINE at 238-7950.

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Homeless on the streets of the Tenderloin district in San Francisco, Calif. on Oct. 30, 2021.

Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

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Homeless on the streets of the Tenderloin district in San Francisco, Calif. on Oct. 30, 2021.

Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, whose early and robust moves to contain the coronavirus made the city something of a national model, is now urgently trying to confront another public health crisis – drug overdoses and disorder in a long-challenged neighborhood in the city known as the Tenderloin.

Over the past two years the city has seen more than 1,360 drug overdose fatalities – more than double the total COVID-19 death toll there. The majority of those deaths were in the Tenderloin and neighboring SOMA district, city data show.

“What’s so important is that we have solutions and we don’t just say, ‘We don’t like it, we don’t want to see it,’ ” Mayor Breed tells NPR. “This is about trying to help people, and that’s exactly what we’re going to keep fighting for.”

Breed announced an “emergency declaration” for the area last month saying drug deaths, open-air drug dealing, street chaos and violence there had gotten “totally out of control.” She vowed “tough love” for those who break the law and expanded access to help for those with alcohol and substance use disorders.

The declaration allowed the city to fast-track creation of a “linkage center” that recently opened. It’s a walk-in one-stop shop for expanded city services – access to drug, alcohol mental health services, as well as homeless support that includes possibly a shelter bed and eventually permanent housing. At least, that’s the hope.

Breed says she has no illusions that the new linkage center will quickly transform the Tenderloin. But she hopes it offers a new lifeline that meets people where they are.

“The fact is people who struggle with addiction, it’s not as easy as they’re just going to walk through the door and ask for help or we can’t force them into treatment,” she says. “Part of the goal is to make sure that they know that there’s a place where they won’t be judged and when they’re ready for help or assistance they can get help or assistance.”

Inequality and other social challenges in the Tenderloin are tough to fix

The Tenderloin’s problems – homelessness, poverty, substance abuse and crime – have plagued the area for decades. And it’s become even more a kind of containment zone for those challenges amid the steady rise of Bay Area tech wealth and its staggering inequality.

But the pandemic’s dislocation mixed with the spread of a dangerously powerful synthetic opioid have recently made things here even worse.

Supervisor Matt Haney during a press conference at City Hall in San Francisco, Calif. He says the ripple effect from Fentanyl has been devastating.

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Supervisor Matt Haney during a press conference at City Hall in San Francisco, Calif. He says the ripple effect from Fentanyl has been devastating.

San Francisco Chronicle via Getty

Fentanyl creates a state of emergency in the Tenderloin, where it accounts for about three quarters of all overdose deaths

“What is new here is fentanyl, that’s the state of emergency,” says city supervisor Matt Haney of the drug that can be up to 50-times stronger than heroin.

Haney lives in and represents the Tenderloin. He points out the city is averaging nearly two overdose deaths a day. Almost three quarters of all the overdose deaths in the city involved fentanyl in some form, often mixed with other drugs.

“If you’re smoking or shooting a fentanyl, that’s like Russian roulette. People are dying within minutes or seconds of buying drugs on a corner, and it has ripple effects throughout the entire neighborhood that are devastating,” Haney says.

He says San Francisco’s agile handling of the pandemic shows the city can do better in the Tenderloin. Government moved fast and forcefully to confront a health crisis. “Coordination, resources, urgency, staffing, facilities,” Haney says. “Now we need all of that now if we are going to stop this drug epidemic.”

The emergency order signals City Hall’s potentially sharp break from a reliance on a system of nonprofits that have long aided the vulnerable in the Tenderloin but what some critics say has become a kind of homeless services industrial complex: agencies that provide important short-term help – food, showers and other support services – but don’t really move needle on the larger systemic issues of substance use disorder, mental health or housing.

“Let’s be clear, this city spends more money on social services in the Tenderloin community than any other community in San Francisco,” the mayor said. “So just pouring money into this or just doing the same thing is not going to give us a change.”

Residents and business owners say change will need everyone’s involvement

So far, residents and businesses in the neighborhood – and across much of the city – are backing the mayor’s moves to “take back our Tenderloin.”

“They’re tired of open-air drug dealing, seeing other people suffer and die on the street from drug overdoses and they’re tired of crime in the Tenderloin,” says Rene Colorado of the Tenderloin Merchants Association.

Aref Elgaali, right, and a customer talk outside his restaurant, Z Zoul Cafe.

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Aref Elgaali, right, and a customer talk outside his restaurant, Z Zoul Cafe.

Eric Westervelt/NPR

So far he says early fears the city’s declaration would lead to harassment of the unhoused or sweeps homeless tent camps have not materialized. He’s hopeful this is the start of ending what he calls a sense of anarchy and unsafety afflicting too many of the neighborhood’s streets.

“That’s what success would look like to me,” Colorado says. “It’s tough because to do that you need police; you need to make arrests. And that’s something that for some reason or another people who don’t live in the Tenderloin are uncomfortable with. But residents here don’t want drug dealing here.”

The mayor’s order certainly risks undermining San Francisco’s reputation for compassion and free-wheeling tolerance, an impression that’s more myth than reality.

“Despite the view from the outside world the governance of San Francisco today is not the Haight-Ashbury liberal ’60s version that I think people imagine,” says criminal defense attorney John Hamasaki. He’s a member of the San Francisco Police Commission, a police oversight and policy watch group appointed by the mayor and Board of Supervisors.

Hamasaki remains only cautiously optimistic the emergency plan will prove successful and mark a bigger shift toward non-police responses to the problems of the Tenderloin and throughout the city.

“Historically, and this has never been fair to police, we have said, ‘You are in charge of cleaning up all of society’s problems,’ ” he says, “so you don’t have to say defund the police to believe that we can address society’s problems by employing the proper professionals. Ultimately, there are better trained responders to deal with a lot of the low-level police calls,” he says, especially those that include mental health and substance abuse.

Business owner Aref Elgaali says more than a month into the city’s emergency order he’s already seeing modest, yet positive, changes. He runs a Sudanese restaurant in the Tenderloin and is active in the local business community.

“We want to see secure families,” he says pointing to a group of Pre-K children and their teachers crossing the street near his restaurant.

“Asking for police, more enforcement, is to keep those (kids) safe, to tell them that, yeah, the Tenderloin is a still a place that we can raise our kids on,” Elgaali says.

But many of the homeless and street dwellers you talk to in area, those most affected by the policy shift, say so far nothing’s really changed.

“Hell no!” says Shy Brown when asked if she’s seen changes or even heard about new options. Brown says she’s lived in the Tenderloin – mostly on the streets – for about a decade. She’s sitting half in, half out of a small sidewalk tent as pigeons busily pick at remnants of a hand-out dinner. “I wanna know what the strategy plan is and how we gonna execute it, you see what I’m saying?” Brown says. “And I don’t see that happening. I just don’t. No, it’s not gonna work.”

Shy Brown, outside her encampment, is skeptical about the city’s proposals to help people who struggle with drug abuse.

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Shy Brown, outside her encampment, is skeptical about the city’s proposals to help people who struggle with drug abuse.

Eric Westervelt/NPR

Longer-term programs already in place have brought slow progress

The city has boosted its program of “community safety ambassadors” in partnership with a nonprofit, people who hit streets to clean up garbage and deter drug dealing. And the city has greatly expanded distribution of Narcan, the life-saving opioid reversal drug, in easy to use nasal spray kits.

But in the biggest development the mayor and city leaders during the pandemic launched new Street Crisis Response and specialized Overdose Response teams comprised of specially trained and organized paramedics and clinicians from the fire and health departments.

There are some modest signs that the city’s overall efforts on overdoses are paying off. Preliminary data for 2021 show that accidental overdose deaths in 2021 were down about 7%, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. That follows years of an upward trend; 2021 marks the first overdose death decline in the city since 2018.

But a seamless coordination between the city’s new response teams and the police, so far, appears more aspirational than real. In a recent encounter police arrive to check on a homeless man in serious distress.

“I’m sure there might be some mental health issues,” says police Sgt. J Emanuel as he and fellow officers check on the man. But there’s really only so much they can do, he says. “I mean, we’ll do our evaluation but if he doesn’t fit the criteria for anything then that’s about all we can do: Check on him, offer some resources. That’s about it.”

The pandemic greatly worsened the longstanding problems here. “It really increased homelessness and decreased economic activity,” says Katie Conry executive director of the Tenderloin Museum, which is trying tell a more nuanced story about the area’s colorful history, she says, including playing a pioneering role in the early fight for LGBTQ rights.

The area “is starting to bounce back (from the pandemic)” she says, “but we’ve got some ways to go to make it and keep it a vibrant, safe neighborhood for everyone.”

On a recent day a man power washes the street after a free lunch giveaway near Glide, a non- profit that provides daily meals other services to the homeless and poor in the Tenderloin.

Jean Cooper, chief impact and strategy officer with Glide, hopes the emergency plan – and new linkage center- result in real change. But she also worries it’s just another patch addressing only surface symptoms.

“The reality is that the drivers to what we see on the streets here are deep-seeded systemic issues that not only San Francisco struggles with, but major cities across the united states are struggling with right now,” Cooper says, “and it’s around a lack of affordable housing, a lack of access to affordable, quality health care and that includes mental health and substance use treatment.”

A homeless man stumbles down middle of a street.

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A homeless man stumbles down middle of a street.

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To underscore the challenges, as if on cue, a homeless man stumbles down middle of the street in a daze. He’s mumbling. He’s not wearing a shirt or shoes and his pants are filthy and falling down. He’s unresponsive when people approach him.

“Our staff will get him a pair of shoes and a shirt, you know, give him something to eat,” Cooper says watching the man teeter nearby.

But could her agency or the other nonprofits on the street get the shirtless and nearly passed out man into a treatment bed or temporary housing?

“We don’t have access to beds,” Cooper says. “You know, so it’s not like we can actually get someone into a bed directly.”

And maybe that’s really the challenge: how does the city turn its “emergency” order and linkage center into a viable strategy for long-term solutions to long standing problems, ones that are more expensive and more complicated than the daily wave of triage in the Tenderloin?

“The measure of success is the number of people that we’re able to help get off the streets into housing,” Mayor Breed says, “the number of people we’re able to help get into treatment and get off of drugs. My hope is that we will really change and save lives here.”

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San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s (D) Initiatives targeting an area of ​​the city known for homelessness and drug overdose were criticized by some officials on Monday.

The mayor’s specific plans for the neighborhood known as Tenderloin included more overtime payments for the police and the allocation of more resources, from social workers to public toilets, in the area. Breed also said the city will continue to provide services and housing, but tougher its stance on those who refuse to help. The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

But prosecutor Chesa Boudin, board chairman Shamann Walton and public defender Mano Raju criticized the plan on Monday, saying it was based on guidelines that have already failed.

Speaking at the press conference on Monday, Boudin said he was “outraged” by the suffering in the area, but added that the city “cannot arrest and prosecute our way out of the troubles plaguing the tenderloin,” the newspaper said .

“Arresting drug addicts, imprisoning people with mental health problems, caging people who sell hot dogs or other food on the street, will not solve those problems, and they are certainly not the only means available,” he said.

Last week, Breed declared a state of emergency in the tenderloin. “The situation in the tenderloin is an emergency and requires an emergency response,” she said in a Explanation on Friday.

The mayor added that the city “will use this focus and coordination to stop the illegal activity in the neighborhood, provide people with the treatment and support they need, and make the tenderloin a safer and more liveable place.” to make for the families and children who call “. the neighboring house. “

Early last week, Breed announced She would be change the policies of San Francisco to counter the recent increase in crime the city has seen.

“It is time to end the rule of the criminals who are destroying our city,” said the mayor. “And it ends when we take steps to make law enforcement more aggressive with changes in our policies and less tolerant of all the cop – who destroyed our town.”

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