A San Francisco resident recorded a group of drug users gathered indiscreetly around an open manhole appearing to collect hidden drugs.
In the video one of the four men was hunched over the manhole, with its cover shifted to the side, as another three stood and watched.
Older images of that same stretch of sidewalk show that in recent years it has become a destination for drug-users in the city, which is experiencing escalating issues with a fentanyl epidemic.
Data organized by the San Francisco Chronicle shows that within just one block of the manhole 24 people died from drug overdoses in 2020 and 2021.
Between January and October of this year, 501 people have died in San Francisco, according to the city’s accidental overdose report.
In 2020 fentanyl was involved in 73 percent of overdose deaths in the city.
Google Street View images of the location, at 8th St. and Minna St., from April 2022 show drug-users congregated on the corner.
Another video, recorded by the same person and from the same position as the first, shows a much larger congregation at the same place in October.
In it can be seen a group sitting on the street with dogs, bicycles and a stroller and what appears to be a drug transaction even takes place.
Data from the US Centers for Disease Control shows that in 2010 San Francisco’s overdose death rate was at about 13 per 100,000 people, compared with 49 in 2020.
One part of the city most affected by the fentanyl epidemic is the Tenderloin district, where a center set up by the city was closed earlier this month.
The Tenderloin Center, an addiction services site was opened by Breed in January, ostensibly to get homeless people struggling with addiction into housing and treatment and to cut down on open-air drug dealing.
In December 2021, the mayor London Breed declared a ‘state of emergency’ in the area. Doing so would allow the city to ‘waive certain laws to quickly address the crisis of people dying of drug overdoses on the streets,’ it said at the time.
City leaders, including Breed, now say the site was a ‘temporary solution’ offered as a way to avoid the more than 640 overdose deaths San Francisco saw in 2021.
Despite those efforts, 2022 has been nearly just as deadly as more than 500 people have suffered fatal overdoses throughout the city.
Officials had also hoped the site would offer a place to deal with the homelessness crisis the city was facing.
Breed and others have not announced plans for a similar site at this time.
A survey in September found that two thirds of San Francisco residents think their city is going downhill because of widespread homelessness, crime and rising housing costs – and a third plan to leave the city within three years.
The survey of 1,653 adults found that 65 percent said the city was declining, while 37 percent said they would live elsewhere in three years.
A many as 84 percent of people aged 65 and over said they are planning to leave.
Respondents largely agreed on the city’s main problems: Homelessness took first place, followed by public safety and housing costs.
Nearly 70 percent said they doubted those problems would get better in the coming three years.
One respondent, Dae Echols, 53, told The Chronicle he was ‘fed up with the city’ and rising prices would likely force him to retire elsewhere. The average rent in San Francisco has risen to $3,750 per month.
‘I just remember the hippie generation, and it was all about, take care of your friends, brotherly love. And that is totally gone,’ said Echols.
