Government Enabling

“On a cold, sunny day not too long ago, I went to see the city’s [San Francisco] new Tenderloin Center for drug addicts on Market Street. It was downtown, an open-air chain-link enclosure in what used to be a public plaza. On the sidewalks all around it, people were lying on the ground, twitching. There was a free mobile shower, laundry, and bathroom station emblazoned with the words DIGNITY ON WHEELS. A young man was lying next to it, stoned, his shirt riding up, his face puffy and sunburned. Inside the enclosure, services were doled out: food, medical care, clean syringes, referrals for housing. It was basically a safe space to shoot up. The city government said it was trying to help. But from the outside, what it looked like was young people being eased into death on the sidewalk, surrounded by half-eaten boxed lunches.” – Nellie Bowles