Golden Gate Park Sweep - Can City Make It Stick?

'MARCH OF JUNKIES': HAIGHT'S RESIDENTS FUME OVER NEEDLES

Finding the needle exchange in the Haight isn't easy. Walk west on
Haight Street, take a right at Cole, and turn in the first doorway.
There's no identification, just a blue sign that says, "entrance."

Walk up the hall, which smells of urine, and then knock on the
scratched and battered wooden door. After two or three tries, someone
might open the door a crack to see what you want.

Welcome to a city drug needle exchange and HIV prevention facility.

When then-Mayor Frank Jordan signed legislation endorsing needle
exchanges in 1992, it was a high-minded, civically progressive
program to slow the spread of HIV and hepatitis C. Drug users would
get a needle, use it, then return it for a clean one. That's still
the idea - and it is a good one - but somewhere along the line the
concept went low-rent.

Today the Haight facility looks more like a hole in the wall. The
neighbors, many of whom say they have never been told what's going on
up the street, find syringes in their gardens. And the original idea
- - a one-for-one exchange - is largely ignored.

The exchange is run by the Homeless Youth Alliance, which gets a
yearly budget of $275,000 from the city Department of Public Health.
As the alliance's program director, Mary Howe, admits, they make no
more than a rough count of the incoming needles. If someone says he
returned 40, they hand over 40 new ones. And, if he doesn't have any,
they give him 20 as a startup stash.

"The point for a needle exchange is not to get every needle back,"
says Howe. "The majority of users dispose of needles in a respectful manner."

And those who don't?

"That's not my responsibility," Howe said. "I can't hold everyone's
hand and make everyone put them in a bio bucket. If someone has a
liquor store, and they sell liquor to someone who gets into an
accident, is it the store's fault?"

But this is a little different. Even Tracey Packer, interim director
of the Health Department's HIV Prevention Program, thinks that's too strong.

"It is our responsibility," she says. "We all have to participate to
make sure everyone is safe."

The public health danger posed by used syringes got my attention
during a visit to nearby Golden Gate Park last month to check out
homeless campsites. I found so many discarded and new needles it
raised the question of where they all came from. To the neighbors on
Cole, it is obvious - they are being given out by the double-handful
at the needle exchange.

Howe, a true believer who is a recovering addict herself, feels the
debris is an unfortunate byproduct of a necessary initiative. To her,
the single, most-important issue is stopping the spread of infectious
disease. If that means giving out a double-handful of needles to
someone who might leave them scattered in Golden Gate Park, so be it.

But Les Silverman, who has lived on Cole Street since 1973, feels the
fact that there are plenty of needles available increases his chances
of finding used needles in his garden. He doesn't think that's a coincidence.

"Why, especially, would our block have needles in our gardens?" he
says. "Like my neighbors, we believe in the concept of needle
exchange. What we take issue with is location, transparency and oversight."

Silverman and other Cole Street residents have become familiar with
"The March of the Junkies." In the early afternoon they trudge up the
street to the corner, then turn and hike back down to the Panhandle
portion of Golden Gate Park. Somewhere along the line, needles and
condoms can be tossed in the bushes, and the homeless people turn
their gardens into rest rooms.

"To me," says Grace Hersh, who lives across the street from
Silverman, "it is just this stream of (a) dreadful element. It's disturbing."

Howe admits that there hasn't been much outreach to the neighbors.
Newcomers like Jeff Goldsmith, who has two children - Ariane, 6, and
Simon, 9 - says he just recently learned about the needle exchange up
the street. He's found only a few needles in the last few months, and
when your kids are involved, that's too many.

"I'm actually in favor of needle exchange," he says. "But if you are
finding needles, they are not being exchanged."

Packer, at the city Health Department, strongly disagrees that the
availability of needles is what is contributing to dirty discards in
nearby Golden Gate Park. But doesn't that seem logical? If needles
can be acquired by the handful, why bother to keep track of the one
you just used?

A lot of people say this is a homelessness problem or an addiction
problem. But for those who are trying to make a life for their
families in San Francisco homes, it is simpler than that.

Consider the case of Ken Stevens, a lifelong resident of the city.
Three years ago he took his 5-year-old son, Michael, to the
playground at Corona Heights - a park we visited earlier this week.

Michael climbed up on the play structure, then turned to his dad and
said, "Ouch." He'd been poked by a needle left on the slide.

"You talk about a parent's worst nightmare," Stevens says today. "I
think I went out of my mind for a couple of hours."

Michael turned out to be fine, but it took three months of blood
panels to establish that. By then, Stevens had reached a decision.

"As soon as that happened, it was pretty much an instant disconnect," he says.

In a matter of months, Stevens had moved his family to Los Altos.