by Jordan Davis
At the September 24 Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Matt Dorsey pulled yet another policy out of his rear end that sounds reasonable on the surface, but in reality further stigmatizes permanent supportive housing (PSH) residents.
Hot off the heels of his proposed legislation to stifle PSH development unless a certain percentage is dedicated to drug recovery housing, Dorsey announced that he was requesting that legislation be drafted that would require that PSH disclose so-called “drug-tolerant” policies around drugs at their specific permanent supportive housing sites. As of publication time, I have not been able to locate the legislation on the Legistar, indicating that it hadn’t been drafted yet.
Terms like “drug-tolerant housing” are stigmatizing to PSH tenants, insomuch as all housing that is not specifically “recovery housing” gets labeled as drug-tolerant housing. This is just another example of our society’s tendency to punish the poor for things that rich people get away with. I’m not buying it, and neither are my fellow tenants.
The rhetoric around drug use among poor and working class people, and among unhoused and marginally housed individuals, reminds me of the saga around conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh’s oxycontin addiction in 2003, which was around the time I was in college and forming my political opinions. Many remember how he spoke against drugs on his radio show and called for the imprisonment of drug users, but when his addiction came into the spotlight, conservatives just didn’t care. It was yet another example of the “do as I say, not as I do” ethos of conservatism that has prevented me from ever going Republican—that and my family being working class Democrats who always had FM radio on instead of AM.
Rush Limbaugh is dead now, but in his lifetime, he attracted followers even in “liberal San Francisco.” However, Dorsey, a registered Democrat has embraced the same hypocrisy even admitting that he relapsed in 2020 while he was working as the police department’s communications director. Today, Dorsey lives in a luxury market rate development where I am sure there is plenty of drug use, yet he wants to stigmatize us, his neighbors? It makes no sense.
Wealthy people do drugs too. For example, the murder trial of Nima Momeni has put a spotlight on the drug use habits of the victim, Cash App founder Bob Lee, who was definitely not a permanent supportive housing tenant. And there has been a culture of cocaine use in San Francisco’s upper crust since the 1980s. However, when unhoused and marginally housed individuals do drugs, they are punished, jailed and stigmatized. Standards for their behavior are higher than for anyone else’s.
So, why don’t we have drug-tolerant disclosures for all housing, including luxury condos in South of Market and Mission Bay, as well as mansions in Seacliff and Pacific Heights? Better yet, let’s go beyond housing, and put up a giant sign in front of the Board of Supervisors chambers with a disclaimer that affords no guarantees that any policymaker is chemical-free? The drug use habits of the rich and powerful should become fair game when they start carping on us poor people.
Full disclosure: I have done coke, ketamine, molly, shrooms, whip-its, nitrous, LSD and a combination of LSD and ecstasy before, but I have never paid for them. I’ve done them with friends outside my home—often in a car, a venue bathroom, or some punk house—if you know the right people, you can get it for free. I also did drugs long after I was housed, so this subverts the narrative. I also only really do it to feel like an outlaw and to cope with being neurodivergent in an often unfriendly world.
If you think about it, my housing is recovery housing, as long as I do not allow alcohol in my unit. Also, no permanent supportive housing site would allow open alcohol or drug use in common areas.
This type of fear mongering just shames poor people. We need real solutions to the overdose crisis, not stigma.
