San Francisco’s experiment with a new approach to public drug use and addiction starts Monday as the RESET (Rapid Enforcement Support Evaluation and Triage) Center opens on 6th Street in the city’s South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood.
Under this pilot program, people found publicly using drugs or intoxicated in the neighborhood will be arrested and brought there until they sober up, then they will be offered the option to connect with treatment upon release. Lots of anticipation and questions are swirling in the city ahead of the opening of this center.
The RESET center will be run by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office in conjunction with the city’s Department of Public Health, as well as the company Connections Health Solutions.
A spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office said the RESET Center will open at 10 a.m. on Monday.
The site will have 25 reclining chairs for people being held there. City leaders said at a press conference last week that there will be 24/7 access at the site to nursing care, social workers, and peer support. Treatment won’t be required for people there, but they will be given the option to quickly connect with treatment when they leave, city leaders said.
As San Francisco continues to struggle with the rise of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, the RESET center aims to try something new.
Its proponents include San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose district includes the SoMa neighborhood.
“I think the RESET Center represents a new approach that I think is long overdue,” Dorsey said on Sunday.
Dorsey has been open about his own recovery from drug addiction, and he shared that his own experience has led him to advocate for what he calls “more coercive interventions.”
“The RESET center is a coercive intervention that’s involuntary, it means that people are going to be arrested for public drug use, their drugs and paraphernalia will be confiscated, and then they will be put into the sheriff’s custody,” Dorsey said.
“But they will also be put into an environment where they will have access to medical treatment, including medications that can help people who are struggling with opioid use disorder, to get on the other side of their addiction,” he continued.
Dorsey explained that people going to the RESET Center will be arrested under California Penal Code statutes that make it illegal to be incapacitated or intoxicated in public.
He said of the RESET Center, “Technically, an arrest is more of just a protective custody, we think people will be in there for up to 8 hours. I think it can be as long as 23 hours, but it’s not necessarily something that is gonna be on your record, it’s more of a protective custody engagement.”
Dorsey added, however, that people can choose to leave the RESET Center before they are cleared, but if they do, they would be arrested, brought to jail, and charged with a crime.
The RESET Center has received pushback from some of the advocates for the unhoused in San Francisco, including Jennifer Friedenbach with the Coalition on Homelessness.
“This is basically another detention center,” Friedenbach said. (The Sheriff’s Office maintains that the RESET Center is not a detention facility.)
Friedenbach is concerned about the approach slated for the RESET Center and believes the money would be better invested in behavioral health treatment programs, including programs that address the trauma that may lead people to substance abuse in the first place.
“People are gonna be in lounge chairs, and they’re supposed to magically get into treatment, and if they leave, they’re gonna get arrested, so we’re not really thinking this is going to help at all move the dial on reducing overdoses and getting folks the care they need,” she said.
Neighborhood groups have also voiced worry about adding this center to an area they say already has a hyperconcentration of resources for the homeless.
“We hope that it’s successful,” said Shaun Aukland, a board member with the SOMA West Neighborhood Association.
“There are a lot of concerns,” he added. “There are already two sobering centers in the neighborhood.”
The neighborhood association has filed a complaint against the city, alleging that the “hyper-concentration of poverty” in the neighborhood and the disproportionate amount of homeless resources there breaks the law.
Aukland added that he and his neighbors are worried that when people exit the RESET Center, they will be a short walk away from one of the city’s major open-air drug markets.
But Supervisor Dorsey argues that the Center will help improve overall enforcement in the neighborhood.
“The value proposition of the RESET Center is that it will reduce from hours to 15 minutes the amount of time a police officer needs to make an arrest and get somebody into custody,” he said.