San Francisco, CA

With a vest and a voice, helpers escort kids through San Francisco’s broken Tenderloin streets

Published

2 years ago

May 5, 2024

With a vest and a voice, helpers escort kids through San Francisco’s broken Tenderloin streets

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Wearing a bright safety vest with the words “Safe Passage” on the back, Tatiana Alabsi strides through San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood to its only public elementary school, navigating broken bottles and stained sleeping bags along tired streets that occasionally reek of urine.

Along the way in one of America’s most notorious neighborhoods, she calls out to politely alert people huddled on sidewalks, some holding strips of tin foil topped with illicit drugs.

“Good afternoon, happy Monday!” Alabsi says to two men, one slumped forward in a wheelchair and wearing soft hospital socks and one slipper. Her voice is cheerful, a soothing contrast to the misery on display in the 50-block neighborhood that’s well-known for its crime, squalor and reckless abandon. “School time. Kids will be coming soon.”

Further along, Alabsi passes a man dancing in the middle of the street with his arms in the air as a squealing firetruck races by. She stops to gently touch the shoulder of a man curled up in the fetal position on the sidewalk, his head inches from the tires of a parked car.

“Are you OK?” she asks, before suggesting he move to a spot out of the sun. “Kids will be coming soon.”

Minutes later, Alabsi arrives at the Tenderloin Community Elementary School, where she is among several adults who escort dozens of children to after-school programs. The students hitch up backpacks emblazoned with Spider Man and the sisters of “Frozen,” then form two rambunctious lines that follow Alabsi like ducklings through broken streets.

The smallest ones hold hands with trusted volunteers.

Long known for its brazen open-air drug markets, chronic addiction, mental illness and homelessness, the Tenderloin neighborhood is also home to the highest concentration of kids in San Francisco, an estimated 3,000 children largely from immigrant families.

The neighborhood is rich with social services and low-income housing but the San Francisco Police Department also has seized nearly 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of narcotics in the area since last May. Of a record 806 overdose fatalities last year, about 20% were in the Tenderloin.

But amid the chaos is a vibrant community stitched together by differing languages that has found ways to protect its most vulnerable and deliver hope, something many say the city has failed to do. Officials have sent in toilets, declared a mayoral emergency and vowed to crack down on drugs, but change is glacial.

A group of mothers fed up with drug dealers started the efforts in 2008 after a child temporarily went missing. The Safe Passage program is now part of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, a nonprofit funded in part by Tenderloin property owners who also cleans sidewalks, staffs parks and hosts community events.

Alabsi started as a volunteer after the Russian native moved to the United States from Yemen with her husband and sought asylum a decade ago. They joined her husband’s mother and his siblings, who had settled in the Tenderloin.

Life was not easy in their new homeland. Alabsi, 54, and her husband Jalal, both medical doctors, had to start over years into their careers. The mother of two despaired when her younger son began to count poop piles he spotted from his stroller on their walks home from daycare.

Then she learned of Safe Passage. At her husband’s urging, she signed up to volunteer to help spare the children the worst sights on their walk after school.

Many people, Alabsi says, respond politely or tuck away their drugs or scoot their belongings out of the way when she reminds them that school time is over. But others ignore the request. Some even get angry.

“It’s better to give nice smile and say good afternoon or good morning, to show people I am friendly,” said a laughing Alabsi, who is fluent in Arabic and Russian and speaks English with an accent. “I am not monster.”

The program’s safety stewards guide the students along the cleanest and calmest routes, redirecting them to avoid people acting erratically or overdosing. Sometimes stewards use their bodies to block the children from seeing things they shouldn’t, like a woman crouched between two cars, no longer able to control her bowels.

On a recent afternoon, two girls with ponytails sashayed across an intersection, talking about becoming TikTok stars one day, seemingly oblivious to a couple hunched over at a bus stop across the street, struggling to light up. As they walked, Alabsi blocked their view of smeared feces.

The girls, one in first grade and the other in second, were headed to the Cross Cultural Family Center, one of some half-dozen nonprofits that provide after-school programs for the K-5 kids.

Alabsi and her immediate family moved out of the Tenderloin but are still an integral part of it. Their son is in the elementary school’s fourth grade and Alabsi now manages the Safe Passage program.

She loves the mix of Latin, Asian, Arab and American cultures in the Tenderloin. The big hearts of residents who are striving for a better life is what “makes it special,” she said.

One recent Saturday, Alabsi worked at an Eid celebration at the neighborhood’s recreation center. She helped monitor the block that was closed to traffic for the day while greeting her sisters-in-laws, who had joined the festivities with their children.

When the celebration ended at 4 p.m., she left with her soccer-loving son, Sami, to drop off her vest and radio at the office. They chatted in Russian as they passed tents, sleeping bags and blankets, an abandoned microwave and lawn chair and a human-shaped lump under a blanket, shoes peeking out.

From loud speakers, the doo-wop of The Moonglows singing “Sincerely” soared prettily over gritty streets. On a pole was a flyer with photos of a missing daughter: “Mimi please call home,” read the April notice. “You are so loved.”

“We can change world in better way by our presence, by our examples, by our positive attitude,” Alabsi said. “Every year it’s little bit better and better and better.”

___

Associated Press journalist Terry Chea contributed to this report.

Source link

Click to comment

San Francisco, CA

San Francisco celebrates drop in traffic deaths

Published

10 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

San Francisco celebrates drop in traffic deaths

San Francisco says traffic deaths plunged 42% last year.

While the city celebrates the numbers, leaders say there’s still a lot more work to do.

“We are so glad to see fewer of these tragedies on our streets last year, and I hope this is a turning point for this city,” said Marta Lindsey with Walk San Francisco.

Marta is cautiously optimistic as the city looks to build on its street safety efforts.

“The city has been doing more of the things we need on our streets, whether its speed cameras or daylighting or speed humps,” she said.

Viktorya Wise with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said there are many things the agency has been doing to ensure street safety is the focus, including adding speed cameras at 33 locations, and it’s paying off.

“Besides the visible speed cameras, we’re doing a lot of basic bread and butter work on our streets,” Wise said. “For example, we’re really data driven and focused on the high injury network.”

Late last year, Mayor Daniel Lurie announced the city’s street safety initiative.

“Bringing together all of the departments, all of the city family to collectively tackle the problem of street safety,” Wise said. “And all of us working together into the future, I’m very hopeful that we will continue this trend.”

Source link

San Francisco, CA

Year 1 of the Lurie era is done. Here’s how he kept — or whiffed — his biggest promises

Published

22 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Year 1 of the Lurie era is done. Here’s how he kept — or whiffed — his biggest promises

On Jan. 8 of last year, San Francisco tried on its new mayor like a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans.

So far, it has liked the fit.

For 365 days, Mayor Daniel Lurie has taken swings at solving the city’s ills: scrambling to scrap the fentanyl scourge, working to house the homeless, and shaking his proverbial pompoms with enough vigor to cheerlead downtown back to life.

So is San Francisco all fixed now?

The eye test tells one story. The data tell another. But politics is more than paper gains and policy battles. It’s also a popularity contest — and Lurie has categorically been winning his, riding high on a stratospheric 71% approval rating.

Lurie’s rainbow-filled Instagram posts have gone a long way toward soothing locals’ doom-loop fears, but the political fortress he’s built over the past year could easily crumble.

After all, his predecessors as mayor, London Breed and the late Ed Lee, each enjoyed positive approval ratings (opens in new tab) in their first year in office. But the honeymoons lasted only about that long before voters gradually soured on their performance. Should San Franciscans’ adulation for Lurie similarly ebb, his policies might meet more resistance.

Still, if there’s one pattern with Lurie’s efforts in his freshman year, it’s this: While he hasn’t achieved all of his lofty goals, he has fundamentally changed how the city approaches many of its problems, potentially setting up success for future years.

As we enter Lurie: Year 2, here’s a rundown of where the mayor has delivered on his campaign promises, where he’s been stymied, and why voters may continue to give him the benefit of the doubt. At least, for now.

Misery on the streets

Jason Henry for The Standard

Headwinds: While Candidate Lurie promised to declare a fentanyl “state of emergency” on his first day in office, he quickly found it wasn’t legal to do so. (Per the city’s administrative codes, an emergency needs to be sudden and unforeseen; the fentanyl epidemic was neither.) Instead, the mayor asked the Board of Supervisors to grant him similar powers that an emergency declaration would have afforded him, and they agreed. But as Lurie touted his efforts to curb drug use on Sixth Street, all those drug dealers just moseyed on down to the Mission. The mayor’s first year in office ended with 588 drug overdose deaths, according to the office of the medical examiner (opens in new tab). That’s an improvement from the 635 in 2024, but it’s still an appalling body count — and December 2025 isn’t even part of the official tally yet.

Silver linings: The mayor employed his newfound powers to speed up approvals of initiatives, notching well-publicized wins, like fast-tracking the 822 Geary stabilization center, where police can place mentally ill folks instead of arresting them. It’s got a 25% better success rate at connecting patients to treatment than previous facilities, according to city data, part of a noted change for the better in the Tenderloin. And while some of the police’s high-profile drug busts didn’t net, you know, actual drug dealers, law-and-order-hungry San Franciscans were just happy to see batons fly.

Shelter-bed shuffle

Source: Manuel Orbegozo for The Standard

Headwinds: On the campaign trail, Lurie talked a big game about his nonprofit experience, which he claimed had allowed him to cinch deals to create shelter that seasoned politicians had been too slow to enact. He even promised 1,500 treatment and recovery beds built for homeless folks in just six months. By midyear, he had backed off that promise. The real number of beds Lurie created in 2025 is about 500, and that’s after 12 months — twice the amount of time he gave himself.

Silver linings: Housed San Franciscans gauge success on homelessness with their eyeballs, not bureaucrats’ spreadsheets. By that measure, Lurie is succeeding. As of December, the city counted (opens in new tab) just 162 tents and similar structures, almost half as many as the previous year. (And as a stark counter to what some would call an achievement, for people on the streets, that can mean danger — without a thin layer of nylon to hide in, homeless women say they are experiencing more sexual assaults.) And drug markets haven’t vanished; they just moved to later hours. But are folks really getting help? Rudy Bakta, a man living on San Francisco’s streets, would tell you no, as he’s stuck in systemic limbo seeking a home. He’s just one of thousands.

Reviving the economy

Headwinds: Lurie asked for (opens in new tab) “18 to 24 months” to see downtown booming again, so we shouldn’t ding him for Market Street’s continued slow recovery. Foot traffic downtown has generally risen, reaching 80% of pre-pandemic levels by midyear, but slumped to roughly 70% as of November. While it doesn’t sound like much, that’s a reversal of the rising trend the city controller had projected. Office attendance is also slipping. It had risen past 45% of pre-pandemic occupancy in January 2025 but by the fall had slid below 40%.

Other economic indicators are wobbly too. Hotel occupancy “lost steam” in November, the controller wrote, nearing pre-pandemic levels in the summer but dipping below 2019 levels in the fall. The poster child for downtown’s troubles is undoubtedly the San Francisco Centre, the cavernous, and soon tenantless, shell of its former self. And while public employee unions are undoubtedly happy that promised layoffs were avoided, Lurie’s light hand in his first-ever budget pushed some even harder decisions to 2026’s budget season.

Silver linings: There’s a brighter story to tell outside the Financial District: Neighborhoods are where the action is nowadays. Just ask anyone dining at one of Stonestown Galleria’s 27 restaurants. This is where Lurie’s Instagram account (opens in new tab) truly has generated its own reality, crafting an image of a retail and restaurant renaissance. While that neighborhood vibrancy may lead some to shrug their shoulders concerning downtown’s continuing malaise, it’s worth noting that San Francisco’s coffers depend on taxes generated by the businesses nestled in those skyscrapers. There’s a reason we had a nearly $800 million budget deficit last year.

Fully staffing the SFPD

Headwinds: At first glance, Lurie appears on track to meet his campaign promise to staff up the city’s police force. “I’ve talked with current command staff and former command staff. We can recruit 425 officers in my first three years. We will get that done,” he said at a 2024 League of Women Voters forum. True to his word, the SFPD hired and rehired roughly 144 officers last year. There’s just one problem: The department recalculated the number of officers it needs in order to be fully staffed, raising the number to 691. And the police academy, which already struggled with graduating officers, might be hampered in the aftermath of a cadet’s death, after which top brass reassigned the academy’s leadership.

Silver linings: Crime is trending down, and that’s what voters care about, full stop. The reduction is part of a national trend (opens in new tab), yes, but San Francisco’s rates are experiencing an exceptional drop. Really, Lurie really should be sending Breed a thank-you card. Her March 2024 ballot measure Proposition E (opens in new tab) gave the SFPD carte blanche to unleash a bevy of technological tools to enable arrests, including drones and license plate readers, which have seen noted success. “Soon as you slide past that motherf—er with stolen plates, they’re gonna issue a warning to every SFPD station in that area, if not the entire city … and they start dispatching to that area,” rapper Dreamlife Rizzy said in a recent podcast, as reported by the New York Post (opens in new tab). That is music to any crime-fighting mayor’s ears.

Source link

San Francisco, CA

Downtown San Francisco Immigration Court Set to Close In a Year

Published

1 day ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Downtown San Francisco Immigration Court Set to Close In a Year

The federal immigration court in downtown San Francisco that started 2025 with 21 judges and will soon be down to just four, thanks to Trump administration mass-firings, will close by January 2027.

News arrived Wednesday that federal officials are planning to shut down the immigration court at 100 Montgomery Street in San Francisco by the end of the year, and transfer all or most immigration court activity to the court in Concord. Mission Local reported the news via a source close to the situation, and KTVU subsequently confirmed the move.

Jeremiah Johnson, one of the SF judges who was fired this past year, serves as vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, and confirmed the news to KTVU.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration court operations, has yet to comment.

As Mission Local reports, a smaller set of courtrooms at the other SF immigration facility and ICE headquarters at 630 Sansome Street will remain open for business.

The Concord immigration court saw five judge fired last year, though two had not yet begun hearing any cases. Seven judges remain at that court, and four remaining judges based at 100 Montgomery are expected to be transferred there by this summer.

Mission Local previously reported that out of 21 judges serving at the courthouse last spring, 13 have been fired in recent months, and four others are scheduled for retirement by the end of this month.

This is happening as the court has a backlog of some 120,000 pending cases.

As Politico reported last month, the Trump administration has fired around 98 immigration judges out of the 700 who had been serving as of early last year.

Olivia Cassin, a fired judge based in New York, said this was by design, and, “It’s about destroying a system where cases are carefully considered by people with knowledge of the subject matter.”

This is all perfectly legal, as Politico explained, because immigration judges serve in administrative courts as at-will employees, under the purview of the Department of Justice — and do not have the same protections as the federal judiciary bench.

A spokesperson for the DOJ has said that the department is “restoring integrity to our immigration system and encourages talented legal professionals to join in our mission to protect national security and public safety,” following “four years of the Biden Administration forcing Immigration Courts to implement a de facto amnesty for hundreds of thousands of aliens.”

Johnson also spoke to Politico suggesting that this recruitment language by the DOJ is disingenuous, and that the real intention is just to cripple the entire court system and prevent most legal immigration cases from being heard.

“During Trump One, when I was appointed, there was a policy that got some pushback called ‘No Dark Courtrooms.’ We were to hear cases every day, use all the [available] space,” Johnson said, speaking to Politico. “Now, there’s vacant courtrooms that are not being utilized. And any attempts by the administration saying they’re replacing judges — the math just doesn’t work if you look at the numbers.”

Two Democrats in the House, Reps. Dan Goldman of New York and Zoe Lofgren of California, have recently introduced legislation that would move immigration courts out of the Executive branch, but that seems likely to go nowhere until Democrats regain control in Congress.

Source link