Code Tenderloin June 23rd, 2023
Good that in a tiny way we're involved in our community by supporting Code Tenderloin through our annual Holiday Toy Drive.
By Natalia Gurevich | Examiner staff writer |
Feb 10, 2025 Updated Feb 12, 2025
Steven Rice, a program manager with Code Tenderloin, a local nonprofit staffing the mobile triage center opened on Friday,
San Francisco’s new “mobile triage center,” where people arrested for doing or dealing drugs are being taken to either accept treatment, leave the city or go to jail, opened Friday at 7 a.m. in SoMa.
The site is part of an aggressive new approach by Mayor Daniel Lurie to address drug-related crime in the area.
While local addiction-medicine physicians and the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office have expressed some concern about using the police to force people into treatment,
Steven Rice, a program manager with Code Tenderloin, a local nonprofit staffing the site, told The Examiner on Friday that the San Francisco Police Department will operate more “behind the scenes” at the center, which police announced as a 30-day pilot earlier that week.
“They were leery about the police presence,” he said of people nearby when the gates first opened on Jessie and 6th streets. “But they’ve been hands off.”
Rice said that while staffers are focusing their efforts on that part of SoMa, their perimeter extends from Market Street to Howard Street. The former parking lot is open for anyone who needs it to access services, and he expects that people will get used to the new site over time.
Trenton Capell, a Code Tenderloin ambassador, confirmed visitors were “skittish” about the new arrangement.
“I was out there ushering people in, and one lady was saying to me, 'This isn’t a setup, is it?'" Capell said he told her no, that he was just trying to get her some coffee, and then she’d have access to the resources being offered.
Rice said as of 11 a.m. Friday that they’d conducted around 45 engagements, from offering snacks and coffee provided by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing to transporting people to treatment facilities like SoMa Rise, or homeless services providers like The Gubbio Project.
No one under arrest had been brought to the site so far, he said, but when they first opened at 7 a.m. there were around 20 San Francisco Police Department officers present. By 11 a.m. that number had winnowed down to a small handful.
Code Tenderloin staffers have been assigned to the front of the entrance to greet people walking in on their own or being brought to the site by street teams from the San Francisco Fire Department, the Department of Public Health, or the Homeless Outreach Team with the department of homelessness. Other staffers manned the snack table and connected people to departments that could assign them a treatment bed or other services.
“We bring them in, welcoming everybody in,” Rice said. “We are directing them to whatever services that they need.”
So far, people who have been arriving have been most interested in finding shelter, particularly after the extreme weather in The City this week, said Capell.
SFPD 'triage center' opens in 'skittish' SoMa
Greg