SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – In an abrupt turnaround, San Francisco will not be creating a number of long planned wellness hubs across the city, where drug addicts can safely use narcotics.
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The decision has brought both condemnation and calls for action from the Board of Supervisors and community groups that work with addicts and the homeless.
Activists gathered on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday denouncing Mayor London Breed and the city's health leaders for scrubbing the wellness hubs.
Supervisor Hillary Ronan said people need to be brought in from the streets.
"We have open-air drug use happening next to elementary schools where kids and families pass by every day and we want to fix that problem, we don’t want our streets to be a place where people are using drugs," she stated.
"In my work I've seen people die in tents and in SROs, on heating vents above the subway and in dark alleyways, in porta-potties and outside of major hospitals," said Reverend Kevin Deal with the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist. "There are too many dying and there is too little being done about it."
The city planned to create several wellness hubs where addicts could use safely and be monitored. One would replace the recently closed Tenderloin center.
Ronan and fellow board members plan to find a way independent of the mayor's office to create the hubs.
Mayor Breed is expected to speak before the board this afternoon.
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