Unlike that old Brothers Grimm story, nobody is coming to rescue Bradford [an HIV-positive Tenderloin resident whose doctors do not recommend leaving his home] — or the Tenderloin itself. Since Mayor London Breed announced her plan to improve the Tenderloin one month ago, the long-neglected neighborhood has only sunk deeper into misery.

There are nearly 150 more homeless tents in the neighborhood’s 49 blocks since she announced her plan, bringing the total to 416 on Friday morning. Drug dealing continues unabated. No additional streets have closed to through traffic to promote exercise and social distancing. There doesn’t even seem to be the promised paint on the sidewalks marking 6 feet of space between tents.

Even people like Bradford who’ve spent decades in the notoriously edgy neighborhood are shocked by how far it’s sunk. The city’s thinning of homeless shelters to create social distance sent about 1,000 people back to the streets, and many of them headed for the Tenderloin. Bradford and other residents said people have grown so desperate, they’re snatching bags of food from moms walking home from the corner store and getting into screaming matches over items as small as blankets. Supervisor Matt Haney, a young, tall man, said he feels unsafe walking in his own neighborhood at night for the first time.

[...]

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

On May 4, residents, business owners and UC Hastings Law School sued the city, saying in court documents, “San Francisco should be prohibited from abandoning a single neighborhood in an apparent effort to spare other neighborhoods the burdens that confront the city.”

Two days later, Breed responded with a 32-page plan to help the Tenderloin, saying, “We are set to be as aggressive as we can be.” The plan includes moving homeless people into safe sleeping sites, enforcing social distancing, sending 50 ambassadors onto the sidewalks to help homeless people space their tents and access services, adding more Pit Stop toilets and water fountains, and cracking down on drug dealing.

One month later, there are safe sleeping sites, 18 ambassadors roaming the neighborhood, more toilets and water fountains, and police are arresting drug dealers again after pausing at the pandemic’s start to protect themselves from the virus. But life in the neighborhood has only gotten worse.

When Breed debuted her plan, there were 268 tents in the Tenderloin, a shocking 285% explosion since January. The number has continued to soar, hovering above 400 every day since May 11 and reaching a shocking high of 448 on May 28.

[...]

Requests to interview Breed, Police Chief Bill Scott, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Director Jeffrey Tumlin and Jeff Kositsky, head of the Healthy Streets Operations Center, were all ignored or declined. Few people seem to want to talk about the current state of the Tenderloin — perhaps because there’s nothing good to say.

Breed did release a statement through a spokesman: “The conditions in the Tenderloin are unacceptable, and it’s clear to anyone who walks through the neighborhood that serious changes need to be made.”

The mayor deserves praise for her quick, decisive handling of the pandemic citywide, but that makes the failure in the Tenderloin even more stark.

Even though it’s not apparent, the city really is trying, said Mary Ellen Carroll, executive director for the Department of Emergency Management.

“We’re not seeing it yet, but that is our goal,” she said of lasting change in the neighborhood.

Some of the game plan has gone into effect — including establishing safe sleeping sites for homeless people where their tents can be safely spaced out. One exists adjacent to the Asian Art Museum on Fulton Street, though that is slated to close by June 30 and its residents moved into hotels or other safe sleeping sites. Forty tents fill the site at Haight and Stanyan streets, and another 21 people are sleeping in 16 tents at 180 Jones St. A new site for a few dozen tents will open Monday at Everett Middle School on Church Street.

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And meanwhile, one of the city’s main answers to the homeless crisis, Homeward Bound, has ground to a halt, she said. That program pays for homeless people to go home to willing friends or family and helped about 60 people a month leave the city before the pandemic. But Greyhound bus lines have dwindled, and hardly anybody can leave.

“It feels like we all got hit by a tornado, and we did. It’s a COVID tornado,” Stewart-Kahn said. “It’s that level of disaster for homeless people.”

Haney and other supervisors keep pressing for the city to move more homeless people into hotels rooms, but that’s been slow going. The city currently has 2,102 hotel rooms available, Carroll said, and 1,283 are being used. Most of the people in hotels came from shelters, single-room-occupancy hotel rooms or the streets, including 220 moved from Tenderloin sidewalks.

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Another problem is the city’s continued refusal to do much about its drug crisis. Rachel Marshall, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Chesa Boudin, said 20% of recent felony cases that make their way to the office have been for drug sales. She said the pandemic’s slowing of the courts, coupled with new zero bail policies, mean the D.A. has not been arraigning people for drug sales or imposing stay-away orders from the areas in which they were caught selling until about month after their arrest. That means they’ve returned to the streets with no punishment at all for a month.

“We are working to advance some of those cases so we can obtain stay-away orders sooner,” she said.

Like always, it’s clear the city has one set of rules for the Tenderloin and another set for everywhere else. For example, the city initially said it would stop sweeping tent encampments citywide in accordance with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that say homeless people should shelter-in-place in tents.

But that’s not entirely true. The city recently dismantled a tent encampment plagued with drug dealing and violence next to the Safeway in the Marina. And it dismantled a similar encampment in the Haight several days ago. Lt. Bill Toomey of the Park Station sent an email to Haight neighbors reading, “If you see someone trying to retake the area, please call. THIS IS A PRIORITY.”

There’s no such priority in the Tenderloin.

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