The recent crackdown on vending and drug use along SoMa’s Sixth Street may be getting some results, but those results appear to be just moving the unsavoriness to major plazas in the Mission District.
New SF Mayor Daniel Lurie has very publicly made it one of his goals to clear up the blight on South of Market’s Sixth Street, which seems to have gotten worse, perhaps because a crackdown at UN Plaza and Civic Center simply managed to push the drug trade and illegal vending to a new destination on Sixth Street. Though now with enforcement efforts ramping up on that corridor, the Chronicle has an analysis making it pretty clear that the drug sales, illegal vending, and general chaos have now just migrated to the Mission District.
If you frequent either the 16th Street Mission BART station or 24th Street Mission BART station intersections, you’re familiar with how this plays out on a daily basis. The years-old crackdown on street vendors seems to work effectively during daylight hours, with the presence of police cruisers, on-duty officers, and a smattering of bright-vested Public Works employees.
But once dark falls, the mayhem breaks out, with illegal vendors, drug dealers, and drug users pretty much taking control of both plazas.
“It’s clear that enforcement in the Tenderloin and SoMa and Sixth Street is just pushing people down here,” the district’s supervisor Jackie Fielder told the Chronicle. “I have serious concerns about the efficacy of that strategy.”
Fielder says that strategy needs to implement more drug treatment, shelter services, and mental health focus. “It can’t just be the police,” she added.
The most stunning finding in the Chronicle’s report is that Public Works has handed out some 100 fines and citations for illegal vending in the last two years, but only 11 of these have been handed out in the Mission District. That’s where most of the illegal vending is happening!
A Public Works spokesperson tells the Chron that illegal vendors simply flee when the see enforcement coming around. The only people being cited are those who give their names and cooperate with being busted, which indicates we might need more of a law enforcement approach than a Public Works approach.
For their part, the SFPD says they’re setting up some sort of “Mission Command Center,” similar to the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center in South of Market and Tenderloin.
And Lurie joined with state Senator Scott Wiener earlier this month to announce Wiener’s proposed new state law that would bring more police involvement into illegal street vending enforcement.
But in a very metaphoric representation of what this effort is up against, just minutes after Lurie and Wiener wrapped that press conference, gunshots were being fired on Mission Street not even a block away.
Related: Is Sixth Street Worse Than It's Ever Been? [SFist]
Image: Joe Kukura, SFist
