SF supervisors vote to OK Breed’s Tenderloin emergency declaration

This story first appeared on ebar.com Dec. 24, 2021:

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted early Thursday 8-2 to allow Mayor London Breed’s state of emergency in the Tenderloin to continue.

By law, the board had to convene a special meeting to continue the mayor’s emergency declaration within seven days of December 18, when it was announced. The meeting started at 2 p.m. December 23 and went past midnight as more than 100 people provided their one-minute each of public comment. The supervisors also debated the issue for several hours.

The emergency declaration allows the Breed administration to waive rules around contract procurement, as well as zoning and planning codes, to open a site where people with substance abuse issues can be linked to behavioral health services.

“The Tenderloin needs change, and that requires us to do things different,” Breed said in a statement shortly after the vote. Supervisor Aaron Peskin was absent, but sent a letter stating he would support the declaration. The supervisors are expected to discuss the matter again January 4.

Board President Shamann Walton and Supervisor Dean Preston voted against the measure.

Breed issued the emergency declaration last week.

“The situation in the Tenderloin is an emergency and it calls for an emergency response,” Breed stated at the time. “We showed during COVID that when we’re able to use an emergency declaration to cut through the bureaucracy and barriers that get in the way of decisive action, we can get things done and make real, tangible progress.”

The emergency declaration came in the days after Breed pledged to crack down on the “bullshit that has destroyed our city” by flooding the downtown neighborhood with police officers, which itself came on the heels of high-profile robberies of Union Square boutiques, heightened anxiety about public safety, and an ongoing overdose crisis that last year killed twice as many San Franciscans as died of COVID-19. Many of these overdose deaths are concentrated in the Tenderloin.

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