SF mayor's robust moves helped contain the coronavirus. Now she faces another crisis
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"
