Support Mayor Lurie's Fentanyl Emergency

Sign this petition to show your support for Mayor Lurie's fentanyl emergency declaration, and demand that the Board of Supervisors approve it.

This emergency declaration will allow the city to move fast and fix things. It's not just about increasing resources to arrest dealers and ensure safe streets, it's also about quickly building out detox and medical care facilities to help the people addicted to fentanyl break out of their addiction.

Without an emergency declaration, it could take a year to open a single treatment facility with just a few beds. But with the emergency, we can do it in just a matter of weeks. The faster we can get addicts into treatment, the faster we can clean up our sidewalks and break the cycle of addiction.

Here's what would change under the emergency declaration:

DMACC (Drug Market Agency Coordination Center) will become permanent

The DMACC was originally created as a temporary initiative with a limited scope, focusing on a few key problem areas in the city. Due to its temporary status, it was difficult to allocate sufficient funding and made long-term planning difficult.

If this emergency declaration is enacted, the Lurie administration will make the DMACC permanent. Lurie will also instruct SFPD to create and execute a plan to make it 24/7 in order to stop nighttime drug dealing, and expand operations of DMACC to include the 6th Street corridor.

Create an SF Hospitality Zone Task Force

There is currently no dedicated force for the parts of downtown that are most vital to our economy, but this emergency declaration would instruct the Chief of Police to create one. It will work across a hundred blocks and a dozen neighborhoods to create a safer environment. And it will report to a single commander, regardless of the current police district boundaries.

The Hospitality Zone Task Force would make downtown safe for tourists, our small businesses, our neighbors, and our workers. Only by providing safe and clean streets can we encourage tourism to return to Union Square, employees to come back to the office, and people to rent or buy homes downtown.

Create a 24/7 drop-off Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU)

Right now, there's only three options for helping someone undergoing a mental health crisis: jail, the ER, or leave them on the street. Jail and the emergency room are both expensive and ill-suited to help these people, and leaving them on the street is neither compassionate nor effective.

This emergency declaration will create a 24/7 facility where police and first responders can take someone who doesn't need emergency care and who needs mental health care not available in prison. It will be licensed under the State's Medi-Cal program and will provide care for people in crisis. The facility is expected to serve approximately 9,000 people per year.

Grant emergency powers for procurement, contracting, funding, and hiring

As it stands now, the standard process for City Hall to procure resources or write contracts for services takes anywhere between 3 and 9 months, plus additional time for unexpected changes that need approval from the Board of Supervisors. Funds must be appropriated from existing City budgets, and any donations from outside philanthropies are given intense and overbearing scrutiny. Hiring must endure a many-months-long process, slowing the implementation of any new initiatives.

This emergency declaration would grant temporary and specific exemptions to these slow and burdensome processes in service of ending the drug dealing and mental health crises on our streets. To ensure accountability, the City Administrator and City Controller will be given new authority to establish rules and regulations over these new ordinances, and to conduct audits to ensure effective and corruption-free spending.