SF neighbors on one Mission District street are fed up after influx of drug users, unhoused people

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Mayor Daniel Lurie says there has been some success in cleaning up drug users and unhoused people along San Francisco's 6th street. So we wanted to know, where have they gone?

At the request of neighbors, ABC7 News visited a once-sleepy street in the Mission District which has been now transformed into a drug oasis for many.

That's where we met Joshua. He didn't give us his last name.

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"I don't know, I don't think I want to stop using drugs. That's the problem," he told us.

By refusing to stop using drugs, Joshua's problem now becomes this other man's problem, a resident of Julian Avenue.

"It's not fair to mix these drug addicts who refuse service in with everyone else who is paying a ton of money to live here, who is raising their kids here, who's driving around just trying not to live a stressed out life," said Andres Wiken.

Wiken has reason to be stressed out. He recently posted video of his three-year-old daughter riding a scooter on her block in the Mission as she navigates her way past several drug users who are openly using drugs - likely fentanyl or meth. Some are nodding in and out of consciousness.

It caught Mayor Daniel Lurie's attention. He stopped by Julian Avenue a few days later.

"The mayor said that it was unacceptable and that he was going to try to do more. He didn't promise anything," Wiken said.

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The mayor can't make promises because this man called Joshua has every right to say, "No, thank you," again and again when outreach teams offer a path to recovery.

By the way, he told us he couldn't recall when he last spoke to an outreach worker.

He, like so many others we've reported on through the years, is not from the Bay Area.

"Boston," Joshua told us. But he also made stops in Texas, and Humboldt County. We asked him what brought him to San Francisco. "We came here, ahh, drugs I guess, yeah," he admitted.

He told us he funds his addiction by reselling the products he steals from a Safeway grocery store.

Since taking office, Lurie has been posting mainly about his accomplishments and how the city itself is in recovery mode.

But he also realizes the challenges associated with the fentanyl crisis.

There have been more arrests during both his administration and the previous Breed administration.

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Incident reports from SFPD show from April 2024 to April of this year, there have been 5,163 reported drug-related arrests and citations--an increase of 25 percent from the past three years. But most of those drug-related incidents were misdemeanors.

The SoMa neighborhood had more arrests than anywhere else. That's why the mobile triage center was placed on 6th Street--with the intention of processing drug users and offering treatment. Police told us, that since the mobile triage opened on Feb. 7 of this year, there have been 360 drug-related arrests. That's only about four arrests a day, low when you consider the amount of people admittedly using drugs out in the open.

"We are making arrests. I know you're not there 24 hours a day but we are and there are times when we are making arrests, times when we are in other parts of the city but we're going to be relentless," promised SFPD Assistant Chief David Lazar.

But many have now come to realize that most have simply moved to other neighborhoods, which brings us back to Julian Avenue in the Mission. Neighbors here have seen a dramatic increase in the number of drug users and they claim police are not arresting anyone.

While we were there, people were openly using drugs. We saw no one arrested or cited.

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"Drug users, no. The cops just drove by, I just sent you the video, there were 15 drug users in front of my house and the cop just got on the speaker, 'Please clear out the street.' They clear them out, but people are literally smoking fentanyl bombs all over the place," revealed Wiken.

What stuck out for us, was the decline in the quality of life of these neighbors as we pointed out that there was human feces everywhere.

"Oh yeah. I was walking here earlier and there was actually a couple of junkies in the street. We can go scout them out if you want to," said Andres.

Another neighbor sent photos of nearby Weise Street, where the drug crisis is most prevalent.

They say they have reached a point of compassion fatigue when it comes to drug users and the homeless.

"Everybody has to tell drug addicts, please don't do drug here or go away because they just think that it's OK, that we're OK with it, we're not OK with it, it's disgusting and if you've ever left the country you'd realize that this is an insane society and we have so much money and we're just blowing it," said Andres.