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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Wearing a bright safety vest with the words “Safe Passage” on the back, Tatiana Alabsi strides through San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood to its only public elementary school, navigating broken bottles and stained sleeping bags along tired streets that occasionally reek of urine. Along the way in one of America’s most notorious neighborhoods, she calls out to politely alert people huddled on sidewalks, some holding strips of tin foil topped with illicit drugs. “Good afternoon, happy Monday!” Alabsi says to two men, one slumped forward in a wheelchair and wearing soft hospital socks and one slipper. Her...

San Francisco leaders on Friday approved an emergency plan to combat drug use in the city's much-troubled Tenderloin neighborhood after Mayor London Breed made a proposal earlier this month that some fear will criminalize addicts and the homeless. The 8-2 vote by the Board of Supervisors came after a lengthy meeting that ended just after midnight Friday. Board President Shamann Walton and Supervisor Dean Preston dissented, arguing that potential over-policing could impact African Americans, among other issues. "I know that this is an incredibly painful, traumatic and emotional conversation," said Matt Haney, the supervisor who represents the neighborhood, before the...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s top prosecutor on Monday pushed back on the mayor’s call for increased policing to battle rampant drug dealing in one of the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods, urging her instead to put more money into housing and treatment that get at the root causes of crime. The politically embattled District Attorney Chesa Boudin was joined by public defender Mano Raju and addiction specialists at a news conference announced after Mayor London Breed last week declared a state of emergency in the long-troubled Tenderloin. Open drug dealing and shootings in the neighborhood have made children and...

Mayor London Breed launched an emergency police intervention in San Francisco’s crime-ridden Tenderloin neighborhood Tuesday, targeting a pipeline of illegal drugs that has been fueling a surge in gun violence and deadly fentanyl overdoses. Breed’s anger and frustration over the crime surge in the city were on full display at her noon news conference.

Failure to enforce basic standards of public behavior has made one of America’s great cities increasingly unlivable. Everyone’s on drugs here and stealing,” an ex-felon named Shaku explains as he rips open a blue Popsicle wrapper with his teeth. Shaku is standing in an encampment of tents, trash, and bicycles, across from San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church. Another encampment-dweller lights a green crack pipe and passes it around. A few paces down the street, a gaunt man swipes a credit card through a series of parking meters to see if it has been reported stolen yet.

SFist brings our attention to an open letter that PETA wrote to Mayor Lee (that you can read in full over at SFist), calling for a meatless name for the Tenderloin. In addition to asking for a name-change, the animal rights group also suggested an alternative name, the "Tempeh District," but is totally open to other meatless names! No word yet on how or if Mayor Lee responded, or if Tenderloin Supervisor Jane Kim would like to comment on the matter.

The battle over gentrification in the Tenderloin was fought in the 1980s. The Tenderloin lost. Today, looking at the shuttered restaurants and store fronts, wondering why there is no supermarket in the neighborhood and watching stores struggle, you wonder why it was so important to keep the place from changing. Now the area - particularly the blighted strip of graffiti and plywood in Mid-Market - is getting a second chance. A vote by the Board of Supervisors could approve a deal to give the microblogging company Twitter and other companies that move to the area a six-year suspension of the...

Newsom expects layoffs due to city's $90 million deficit Mayor Gavin Newsom said city layoffs could start in the next few weeks as his office grapples with a budget deficit that could exceed $90 million."I can't defer bad choices," Newsom said.The mayor asked city departments to cut $75 million, but Newsom said new projections from the controller's office will lead to bigger cuts. It's too soon to say how many people will lose their jobs, the mayor said.The Public Health Department faces the biggest cuts because it's the largest department. Health officials revealed $10 million worth of proposed cuts this...

San Franciscans famously fought back against Bill O'Reilly - the conservative Fox news anchor who really, really hates our city - when he said back in 2005 that the U.S. military shouldn't defend San Francisco in case of a terrorist attack. "You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead," he said. Everybody from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Supervisor Chris Daly railed at O'Reilly, calling his comments outrageous. Not content to leave well enough alone, O'Reilly has now sent an underling to the city to make a documentary to show where, supposedly, the politics of President-elect Barack Obama...

The San Francisco Chronicle's four-part series on sex trafficking exposes the harsh reality that trafficking in human beings is a lucrative and ruthlessly exploitative enterprise. Reporter Meredith May describes in haunting detail the story of You Mi, a Korean college girl whose attempts to settle her credit card debt land her in the middle of a sex slavery ring in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. May's reporting shines the harsh light of truth on the reprehensible sex trade and the morally outrageous behavior of the pimps, johns and criminal networks that are getting rich by exploiting girls like You Mi....

Washington -- Republican charges of a San Francisco "homosexual agenda'' and allegations that a liberal "San Francisco majority'' in Congress would endanger the nation have emerged as themes in the final two weeks of the Nov. 7 midterm election campaign. The latest salvos are variations on a constant GOP refrain this year, tied to the prospect that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a "San Francisco liberal,'' would become speaker if Democrats make at least a 15-seat gain in the midterm elections. "You know, they use me all over the country, my radical homosexual agenda,'' said Pelosi, in San Francisco Friday...

Steve Williams returned to his Golden Gate Park campsite just in time Saturday morning to retrieve all his belongings from the back of a Department of Public Works pickup truck. New to San Francisco, he hadn't heard about the push to clear the park of homeless encampments until someone at the Haight Street McDonald's advised him to check on his stuff. "I only slept there one night," said Williams, 33, who arrived last week in San Francisco from Baltimore by bus. "This wasn't what I was expecting." Within minutes, workers from the San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team had made arrangements...

SAN FRANCISCO -- When Carolyn Abst moved into this city's harsh Tenderloin district several years ago, she thought she would be welcomed. As owner of an architecture firm, she was bringing in jobs and ideas to revitalize the area. Instead, some of her neighbors called for her head. "Wanted" posters went up around the Tenderloin last year, featuring Ms. Abst's photo. Someone circulated pamphlets disparaging her. Residents yelled at her in the street. Ms. Abst's offense: trying to plant 400 trees in the area. "I had no idea that cleanliness, beauty and safety could get people so riled up," the...

Friday December 08, 2006 By JUSTIN M. NORTON Associated Press Writer SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- An effort to clean up some of the city's seedier neighborhoods and rid the streets of junkies, hookers and runaways has run headlong into San Francisco's free-to-be-who-you-are ethos. Nearly four decades after the Summer of Love, residents and merchants frustrated with what they regard as blight are turning to the city for help or taking revitalization into their own hands. But other residents of the Tenderloin district and Haight-Ashbury contend a crackdown would rob their neighborhoods of their identity and violate everything San Francisco stands...

Surreal but true, there is a gated community in San Francisco's drug- , alcohol- and sex-shop-filled Tenderloin. In the city's great housing squeeze, a handful of homeowners who moved into a neighborhood known for drunks and drug deals has taken an unusual step to make urban living more livable. Borrowing a page from suburbia, they gated off a tiny cul-de-sac where their front doors open to the elements. Meacham Place off Post Street is protected by a classy, black, wrought- iron gate and shields residents, some in houses worth more than $800,000, from homeless encampments, used heroin needles, human excrement...