San Francisco faces obstacles to 'Recovery First' housing

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is a big supporter of the "Recovery First" concept, which aims to help people get into treatment for drug and alcohol abuse rather than allowing them to manage their drug use with a harm reduction approach. But many don't realize that after treatment, San Francisco does not have a permanent place for people to go if they want to continue being sober.

There are those that are temporary like the Drake Hotel in the Tenderloin which offers free housing to those transitioning out of prison. The program comes with a condition.

"When the person comes for the intake, we do an intake screening and we let them know that it's required that you stay clean and sober and it's one year, you get free housing and also you are required to go to two group meetings as well and it's an 11 o'clock curfew," explained Richard Beal, director of Recovery Services at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic.

The city is slowly transforming a few old hotels into temporary recovery housing, like this one: the Civic Center Motor Inn will be converted into a sober living transitional housing site.

The Marina Inn will be a two-year recovery housing facility located on Octavia Street in the Marina District.

Both have a common denominator. Both are temporary housing. The city now likes to call them interim housing.

MORE: California bill sparks debate over drug-free supportive housing and harm reduction in SF

"And interim implies that it's actually leading to something but it actually isn't. When people are done with their two-year stays, they have to move to a place with drug users or leave the city," insisted Randy Shaw, director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic.

The reality is that San Francisco has nothing for those people who want to live in a permanent abstinence environment.

"I truly believe that people should have a choice but there's no choice for people to live in drug-free because we don't have none. We don't have any drug-free housing," added Beal.

San Francisco nearly got there. In early 2024, then Mayor London Breed was about to open California's first permanent alcohol-free supportive housing facility located between Chinatown and North Beach.

"It was the best economic deal San Francisco has even seen. We got a lower rent than we can ever get. We got free commercial space, we had 150 units. The city walked away from the best deal. It will ever see a deal like that and they took the money and put it into temporary housing at a much more expensive rate," detailed Shaw.

What happened? The Chinatown community was not properly informed and protested. Feeling pressure during an election year, Breed backed away.

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Today, the North Beach Hotel remains just another SRO.

The city also faces other economic challenges coming from the state that stand in the way of treatment.

Under the Obama administration, the "Housing First" concept was an approach to end homelessness, followed by connecting people to treatment and recovery programs. That was the federal version. But California took a different approach. In 2016, the state told cities like San Francisco, if you require that a person be drug or alcohol-free in order to get any kind of supportive housing you will get no funding, nothing from the state. This means that currently the city has to fund its own interim recovery facilities.

"We have to get people inside but we also have to get people off of drugs," expressed Assemblymember Matt Haney, who has introduced legislation that would allow California cities to support their own sober living programs by using up to 25% of what the state gives them in funding for homeless housing.

"For some folks, they are ready for sobriety and they're ready to be held accountable and we should help them in that journey, not shut them down and get in their way. We should stand with them rather than stand in their way," said Haney.

But some are concerned about the implications of the word permanent and the astronomical cost of supporting people for what could be the rest of their lives.

"Taxpayers are footing that bill for the rest of their lives and that's not teaching people how to be free, that's not teaching people how to stand on their own and keeps them complaisant and keeps them in the same place where they were when they started," said Cedric Akbar of the nonprofit Positive Directions Equal Change. He has been sober for 32 years.