Following a 7-4 vote to approve a controversial housing ordinance, San Francisco must now prioritize drug-free permanent supportive housing when it chooses to fully fund supportive housing projects.
The ordinance, authored by Supervisor Matt Dorsey, will ensure that the city departs from its mostly one-track housing model, in which most of the tenants in the city’s 8,500 supportive housing units are protected from being evicted for illicit drug use.
That protection follows the state’s “Housing First” framework, which lowers the barriers to entry into supportive housing for people exiting homelessness, whether or not they use drugs. Any housing project that uses state funding to operate is still held to this standard.
But the new ordinance “bars the city” from wholly funding future permanent supportive housing projects if they allow drug use on site.
Under the bill, residents who use illicit drugs while living in city-funded or privately funded supportive housing could either be evicted or relocated to another housing or shelter option.
Supervisors Shamann Walton, Connie Chan, Chyanne Chen and Jackie Fielder voted against the bill on Tuesday evening.
Fielder led the opposition, pointing to what she called “problematic” terminology in the bill language, and voiced concern that evictions could relocate residents into shelters instead of permanent housing.
“I fear the legislation lacks strong protocols for providing support to residents facing eviction,” Fielder said. “Shelter is not housing. Shelter is a rough place for someone struggling with substance-use disorder to be.”
She requested an amendment to the bill removing shelters as relocation options for residents in permanent supportive housing who use illicit drugs on the premises. That amendment failed.
Few San Francisco permanent supportive housing projects get built without state money. At present, the 42 units at 1174 Folsom St., which opened in early 2025 and was funded entirely by the city, offers the city’s only drug-free housing option.
As a staunch advocate for “recovery-first” addiction policies, Dorsey said the new ordinance would shift away from what he considers “drug-tolerant” city policies and focus on providing stable housing options for those who are chronically homeless and facing substance use disorders.
Dorsey has, in the past, said that if he had been living in supportive housing during his struggles with drugs and was “endangering the sobriety” of others, he would have deserved to be evicted.
“The near universality of drug-tolerant policies in San Francisco’s PSH portfolio fails to serve the needs of many PSH residents seeking to stabilize their lives as they exit homelessness,” Dorsey’s bill reads.
“Drug-related behaviors and associated lawlessness lead to public nuisances that routinely rob law-abiding PSH residents and neighbors of the quiet enjoyment of their own residences and neighborhoods.”
Some housing advocates and medical professionals disagree, saying that it’s not helpful to attack the housing-first model in order to establish sober housing.
Now that the bill has passed, Dorsey said city leaders will work to finalize the specifics.
While there are details to be worked out with the mayor’s office and the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Dorsey said the intent is clear: “We want to give people a chance.”
Doctors and specialists in drug treatment, people who have spend their lives researching this stuff, pretty much all oppose this, but Dorsey used to do crank at his police station office job so I guess he knows better
To be intellectually consistent, the law should extend to ALL, including market rate, housing projects subsidized by the city and county of san francisco. Rich and middle incime people also use and abuse drugs. I understand that we the citizens of this city are distressed and angry and bewildered by the homeless problem. Going after the part of the system that works the best (8,500 folks not sleeping on the streets every single night due to permanent supportive housing), seems counter productive. There are going to be huge legal problems, expenses, valuable time wasted trying to use tenant landlord law to evict tenants from their housing for drug use. And what will supporters of this approach hope to end up with? All the poor drug users (the wealthier ones will be fine, as always) on the streets using up more valuable emergency services. Please point to the major american city where this approach is working or has worked. Permanent Supportive Housing has an extremely good record (all anecdotes aside) Ray Perfectof getting folks off the streets, reducing harms to individuals and the wider community all across the nation. It ain’t perfect by any means but is DPW perfect at fixing potholes? They certainly know how to fix them: how come there are still hundreds of them in this great city? We have to do better with using our resources wisely across all city departments, including homeless services. Why start with a measure guaranteeing wasted resources and no track record of success?
Wish I could upvote this one twenty times. We throw everything we know out the window when it comes to this stuff because politicians think the people want punitive “common sense”.
Welcome back, Jackie Fielder, we missed you.
People need a house to get off of drugs. You ever tried to detox without a bed to sweat it out in, and a toilet to throw up in? It’s fucking hard. We don’t need to make it harder on people. Give them a grace period at least.
Nobody disputes that, the point is that supportive housing is not the place for detox. Fentanyl in particular, which needs monitoring, it’s that rough.
How is supportive housing not the place for detox? Where are you thinking people need to be to detox? In a hospital setting? That’s totally unrealistic, and if that’s what they think will happens a result of this legislation, they and you are living proof of delusional thinking. This legislation will only create more of the problem because most people trying to get off the streets won’t be able to qualify for housing now. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Jessie – you can’t have one person who is still doing drugs corrupt other peoples efforts to stay clean. We finally have some common sense in this city. It’s really sad you can’t understand that.
That’s such a thoughtless, literally without thought, BS throw away comment on your part it’s mind numbingly disheartening that there are people who believe what you believe and can legally vote. First, absolutely no one is responsible for someone else’s’ “sobriety”, “recovery” or “abstinence” other than the person who chooses that route, and that includes Cartels and low level street dealers. And no one “corrupts” another’s efforts to stay clean. That claim makes absolutely no logical or empirical sense. It also lacks both a sense of proportion and humanity. I like many other adults, got “clean” from a daily crack cocaine habit here in the tenderloin with my dealers just across the street from me. Often times I could hear them laughing and having a good time. There were people in my building that I knew were using but I never once felt “triggered” by that knowledge or compelled to have them evicted because it “corrupted” my “recovery.” Furthermore, the same people who press for such empirically vacuous policies are the same people who whine about personal accountability. Well, people who are on an abstinence only track need to take responsibility for the their own damn recovery and quit blaming others for somehow “corrupting” their efforts. To throw someone out onto the streets because they use, relapse or struggle with use at the urging some misinformed policy based upon recovery rookies false assumption that others are the problem and not themselves is the height of selfishness and inhumanity. Housing is a right, recovery is not. I have a friend that struggles with drug use who has just been diagnosed with Dementia. Dorsey’s cowardly policy would now have him evicted and thrown out on the street. And make no mistake this will happen if not to my friend then to some other person under similar circumstances because a few loud whiney, ideologically bent abstinence only activist got their petty way. I’m disgusted to no end with our current billionaire mommy’s boy Mayor, the Supervisors who supported this change in policy, especially Dorsey, who has taken hypocrisy to a whole different stratosphere and the incredibly uninformed people advocating for and supporting this travesty of a decision. There is a bar, liquor store, restaurant or grocery store that sales liquor in San Francisco on every corner why aren’t you calling for them to be permanently shut down? Surely they are a corrupting influence for every alcoholic trying to get “clean” or who has gotten clean but hasn’t taken responsibility for their efforts in SF. My apologies to Mission Local for possibly not meeting the civility requirement’s for commenting. In my mind civility is sometimes the exact opposite of what is called for in certain discussions and this is one of them. I say that intending no disrespect towards ML or it’s rules of engagement.
There needs to be a lot more clean and sober housing. Placing someone who is trying to recover from substance abuse into an active drug use building is actually abusive!
Good.
Matt Dorsey’s politics of internalized hatred of the poor and people suffering from addiction is pathetically transparent. Look at his smirk, he seems to derive some sadistic enjoyment from punishing his most vulnerable constituents. The most generous thing I can say about Matt Dorsey is, while he may be clean and sober, his recovery is clearly ongoing.
Just another example of Supervisor Dorsey working on making his constituents lose their housing and jobs.
What are they doing? This is stupid. You watch, there will now be even more open air drug use, more encampments, more tents. Supervisors, you’re showing everyone how little you understand the problem. Instead of forcing an audit of current tenancies in supportive housing buildings, which would get 100s of legacy tenants – tenants that should have been put on the housing ladder when it was created in 2018 – that qualify for more independent living, there trying to exclude more people. It costs thousands more every year to keep these legacy tenants in supportive housing even though they are not using the extra services provided and paid for by the city to all tenants in any building that has psh units in it. Instead, they ignored the tenants that they could have given subsidies to, the ones who had been paying their rent and were good tenants for decades before the coordinated entry system was created, and now have these tenants trapped in PSH, with no avenue to stop costing the city money that doesn’t need to be spent on them. This will greatly and quickly create housing instability, because the people who need to be in PSH won’t be able to qualify, which will leave them where? C’mon, say it with me. HOMELESS, ON THE STREETS. It will not reduce drug use, it will increase the very problem they’re trying to solve. Meanwhile, the property management companies that administrate PSH are being given carte blanche to do whatever they want in running these buildings, no oversight, no one to rein them in when they break the law, no one demanding they account for all the funds they’re misappropriating and misusing. Good job. You’re policing the wrong end of the equation, it’s the very height of stupidity and mark my words, this will accomplish the exact opposite of what they’re hoping. They get an A+ for uselessness, morons.
Good job Mr. Dorsey!
-Q
TY Supervisor Dorsey for being the sane adult in the room. The model of housing first has had little success of transitioning them out of public assistance permanently. There has been countless OD almost daily in supportive housing. If there is no incentive to get off drugs since you’re already housed the party will continue until they or their party mates OD. Forced treatment along with housing is Key. Also the city needs to go hard and sustained effort to arrest dealers every day all day and eliminate the source of the addiction too for holistic approach
Many questions left unanswered, hopefully before implementation they’ll be answered. Good intentions, without very specific details for very specific violations means absolutely nothing. Individual contracts that spell out the consequences for any violation? Who is tasked with the responsibility for testing? Who will be responsible for enforcing the rules? Retesting in case of a false-positive result?
“That protection follows the state’s “Housing First” framework, which lowers the barriers to entry into supportive housing for people using homelessness, whether or not they use drugs.”
Who exactly are the people “using homelessness” and how are they using it?