San Francisco has entered a new phase in Mayor Daniel Lurie’s efforts to reduce disorder along two commercial corridors in the South of Market and Mission districts.
The Lurie administration this month began dispatching community ambassadors to a section of Sixth Street as well as the area around 16th and Mission streets — both locations where the mayor has been trying to curb unpermitted vending, open-air drug use and homelessness. The ambassadors function as unarmed security guards for San Francisco’s most chaotic streets, cleaning trash and asking people camping or using drugs to stay away from areas where residents and businesses have objected to their presence. Ambassadors also reverse overdoses when needed.
In SoMa, ambassadors from the nonprofit Urban Alchemy are making daily patrols of Sixth Street and staffing a parking lot that the city is converting into a park-like “oasis” where community members can congregate instead of loitering on the sidewalk. In the Mission, a team from a limited-liability company, Ahsing Solutions, is roving the streets and alleys around the 16th and Mission BART plaza where people selling stolen goods and using drugs have drawn complaints from neighbors and merchants throughout Lurie’s tenure — and long before.
The ambassadors are supplementing the police crackdowns Lurie has pursued in SoMa and the Mission as he looks to deliver on his promises to restore order and improve public safety in San Francisco. Lurie is betting that the combination of traditional law enforcement and police alternatives, deployed to targeted hot spots, will deliver sustained improvements to some of the city’s troubled public spaces…