SQUALOR IN THE STREETS

Alcohol And Drug Abuse S.F. Turning Blind Eye To Homeless Addicts

In the Tenderloin, men stood on the sidewalks calling out "cheeva" or
"solids," slang terms for heroin or rock cocaine.

In Halladie Plaza, with tourists lined up nearby for the cable car, and
BART and Muni commuters constantly rushing by, young men openly sold
marijuana. Within a block of the Federal Building that houses the FBI on
Golden Gate Avenue, homeless men and women fired up crack-cocaine pipes and
injected cocktails of heroin, speed and cocaine.

All of these scenes and more were observed by The Chronicle during a recent
study of homelessness in San Francisco.

The city is awash in cheap alcohol and drugs. The mayor and the police
blame the district attorney. The district attorney blames Proposition 36.
The city can't provide treatment for those who want it. Many homeless
people say the availability of drugs and alcohol makes them hard to resist.
Substance abuse was the leading underlying cause of death among San
Francisco's homeless in 1997, the latest year for which such data are
available from the medical examiner's office. At Mission and 15th streets,
The Chronicle found a somnolent man sticking a needle into his arm, in
plain view of pedestrians and motorists. Sylvia Moreno, a social worker at
the nearby Mission Neighborhood Health Clinic, said prostitution and drug
use by homeless people has grown more blatant. "They just shoot up right
there, and you know we have children coming here, " said Moreno.

Police officers, businesspeople and, lately, Mayor Willie Brown and his
staff have expressed anger with District Attorney Terence Hallinan's office
for what they see as leniency on substance abuse cases. George Smith, head
of the Mayor's Office on Homelessness, said Hallinan is missing an
opportunity to coerce people into drug and alcohol treatment. When Officers
John Lagios and Scott Huey-Custock found Charles Hood smoking crack cocaine
in a doorway on Natoma Street near Fifth Street shortly after midnight on
June 2, they did not bother arresting him, but instead issued him a stern
warning.

Hood, who said he had been homeless for 15 years, was not impressed. "They
ain't got nothing better to do than hassle some crackhead smoking? I'd be
out in a few hours anyway. They ought to get the guy who sold it to me."
Lagios pointed to the human feces, the garbage and broken glass from auto
burglaries and shook his head.

"It scares me what's going on around us and how everyone has accepted it,"
the officer said.

Hallinan, in office since 1995, says he does prosecute drug cases where
possible. Proposition 36 is clogging courts with cases where defendants are
refusing to plead guilty and accept treatment, Hallinan said. Passed by
voters last November, the new law gives first- and second-time drug
offenders the opportunity to receive probation and treatment rather than
jail sentences, but requires a conviction - usually a felony.

But San Francisco's treatment programs for alcoholism and drug addiction
have lengthy waiting lists, particularly for the more effective programs,
such as those with residential components, or long-term provision of
methadone, an addictive drug that can replace heroin. Program slots for
people with both mental illness and addiction - a large proportion of the
city's chronically homeless - are extremely few in number. A draft city
application this year for federal homeless funds said that 10, 000 people
annually are on waiting lists for substance abuse treatment in San
Francisco, and 23,000 don't seek treatment because of insufficient
capacity. Chris Young, a onetime San Francisco Conservatory of Music
student, harpsichord-maker and prostitute, was a heroin addict living
outside for almost two years, nine months in a tarp-covered shanty in an
alley near Eighth and Harrison streets.

Young, 45, told The Chronicle he wanted to stop using heroin, but he had no
health insurance and couldn't coordinate his fund raising with the
schedules of the methadone clinics. He eventually qualified for Medi-Cal,
got on methadone and moved in with his sister in Modesto. For a time, Young
was able to support his habit playing baroque music in the Civic Center
BART station for donations, but then he had to pawn his keyboard. Young
resorted to begging from drivers in traffic. He would beg from inbound
motorists at Eighth and Division streets from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., when the
stoplight rhythm changed and vehicles no longer backed up at the signals.
Young would buy heroin, shoot up and nap until about 4 p.m., then beg from
outbound commuters on Bryant Street near the entrance to Highway 80. Then
he would go buy more heroin and hope he had enough left over for a shot in
the morning.

"I can't wait to get off this mindless merry-go-around and get back on
methadone," Young said.

Community Substance Abuse Services Director Phyllis Harding said the city
is making progress against addiction, and pointed to a 12 percent drop in
drug-related emergency room visits last year - the first such drop ever
documented here.

Harding attributed the improvement to $14 million the city has added to its
drug treatment budget, now at $51 million, since 1997, when Mayor Brown
announced that San Francisco intended to provide addicts with "treatment on
demand" - a goal it is nowhere close to meeting. The number of people
receiving treatment services grew from 12,263 in 1996- 97 to nearly 15,000
last year, about one-third of them homeless, said Alice Gleghorn, a
Community Substance Abuse Services researcher.