Mission Local is publishing campaign dispatches for each of the major contenders in the mayor’s race, alternating among candidates weekly until November. This week: Mark Farrell. Read earlier dispatches here.
In the early days of the election season, the mayoral candidates appeared to be more focused on campaigning in their own stomping grounds. For Mark Farrell, that meant setting up his headquarters in West Portal, going to the Clement Street farmer’s market or attending an anniversary celebration in Francisco Park in the Marina, all places filled with likely supporters.
Now, with just six weeks to go until Election Day, Farrell seems eager to branch out.
On Sunday, the mayoral candidate paid a visit to St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in the Mission, a place that has long espoused a progressive ethos and served as a sanctuary for immigrants and homeless people. In the past, its pastor has rallied with Mission residents against police shootings, evictions and deportations.
In the meet-and-greet with the Rev. Kevin Deal and some 15 members of the congregation, Farrell brought up his usual campaign priorities: Public safety, clean streets, increasing housing downtown. He also focused on his upbringing, family and his ties with labor unions, but in several answers emphasized forcibly moving people off the streets and reversing course on “harm reduction” approaches to drug addiction.
His platform stood out in stark contrast to the church’s 167-year history of taking on social-justice issues. St. John’s supported the LGBTQ community early on during the AIDS crisis at a time when most were fearful of the virus and those afflicted; the church buried dozens of victims in its garden. More recently, it has been an advocate for immigrants, homeless residents and residents caught up in the drug crisis.
Deal’s first question got to the heart of the matter, asking the mayoral candidate about the city’s ongoing fentanyl crisis: “What would you do, as mayor, to continue to help those who are in need and address it?”
Farrell, who sat in a wooden chair next to the reverend in the middle of a semi-circle surrounded by audience members, said he does not agree with the city’s current approach of “harm reduction,” which refers to the idea of keeping people who are using drugs safer instead of requiring abstinence for services.
“The fact that right now, City Hall funds nonprofit workers every day in the Tenderloin with shopping carts, handing out free packets of tin foil and straws to those suffering from drug addiction, to me, is simply the wrong approach,” said Farrell.
Members of the church have pushed for harm-reduction programs; the church was slated to house a safe-drug-consumption site until Mayor London Breed pulled the plug on the project in 2022. It hosts the Gubbio project, a nonprofit that functions as a day shelter where up to 100 people come and go daily to rest or access resources, such as healthcare services provided in liaison with the city.
“How do you plan on managing people who are addicted?” asked an audience member.
“As soon as I come into office, we’ll declare a fentanyl state of emergency here in San Francisco,” said Farrell. He explained that doing so would allow the city to access more state and federal funding, and additional law enforcement, such as the California Highway Patrol or National Guard. (Breed has already called in outside support, and has touted her work with the feds in cracking down on drug users and dealers.)
Farrell did specify that he believes in arresting drug dealers and not users — which is happening now — but he did promote mandated treatment-focused detention for individuals who are revived with Narcan on the streets. “Everybody I’ve talked to that is in recovery from fentanyl had a short period of time in incarceration.”
Farrell also brought up the idea of using city property well outside city limits for recovery programs, such as Log Cabin Ranch, a former juvenile detention center some 50 miles south of the city that was closed in 2018 after a flurry of runaways left the camp.
These plans go hand in hand with Farrell’s vision to shift from a housing-first approach to a shelter-first approach; his website details his plans to clear encampments and expand the Journey Home program, one of the city’s programs that puts homeless people onto buses to send them elsewhere.
“You need to get them off the streets,” said Farrell. “And I don’t I don’t mind using the legal means at our disposal to get people off the streets involuntarily.”
One attendant spoke out against this kind of approach, instead suggesting that creating more affordable housing would be more effective in addressing homelessness.
“Shelter is not a good place,” the man said, likening shelter to jail. On a tour of homeless shelters, Mission Local spoke to several people who cited a dearth of food, lack of privacy, violence, open drug use, and other reasons for preferring a street tent to a shelter bed.
The only good thing about shelter, the man added, is “that you can walk out.”
Farrell was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has no understanding of reality.
I don’t know what he was doing there. That guy is Mr. “More Cops Fixes All”.
I know one lady who waited a long time to get actual “housing” and she couldn’t bring any of her stuff with her, so she kept it under my friends porch (after asking his permission) and then she was back in her tent in Bernal, he asked what happened and she said that her “room” was just a temp thing and she couldn’t have her stuff and if she left for more than 48hrs, she would lose the room. So, she decided that she’d be better off in her tent with her stuff, living on her terms.
Obviously, there are problems there, but the biggest one is the fact that the city provided “solution” was worse than being homeless. And you can’t argue it, it’s just a fact that people don’t stay and go back on the street. It’s not debatable.
So, we can choose to make life on the street even harder (by clearing tents and RVs, making those people all hunt for a new place to sleet that night) or we can offer them a solution that is better than being on the street. (and not better because you debated it, but because people on the street *choose* it)
In the end, housing people permanently, while quite expensive, is cheaper than having tent cities. It reminds me of environmentalism, where it’s cheaper to dump toxic waste in the river than treat it, but the long term negative affects downriver far far outweigh it.
What’s the down-river cost of random homeless encampments in SF? Do people not live her because of it? Do businesses not come here because of it? Do people not go to shops in those areas because of it? Do costs of hospitals and medical services go up because these people don’t have any kind of regular care or home? Does the cost of crime go up? Do prison costs and judicial costs go up?
The “cost” of housing someone isn’t remotely as expensive as leaving them on the street, but the idea of *giving* someone a place to live permanently is so abhorrent to people that they prefer the more costly route. They prefer just throwing cops at the problem. And that’s what Farrell does.
The obvious problem with giving people places to live permanently is that there are millions of people in America who need housing, way more than SF can possibly house, and many of them will definitely move here if there is free housing available.
So the only practical solution is to make a lot of hoops to jump through for people to gain access to housing, and even then there will always be a long waitlist.
MAGA Mark? Hell, no!