San Francisco’s ‘soft-on-crime’ policies and assistance make it ‘easy to be homeless’ says man

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A self-proclaimed’ old-school junkie’ who moved from Texas to San Francisco because ‘it’s f*****g easy’ to be homeless there claims he’s being paid by the city government to live on the streets, getting $620 in cash per month and hundreds of food stamps while he sells Narcan and enjoys Amazon Prime and Netflix on his phone.

‘This right now is literally by choice, literally by choice. If we’re going to be realistic, they pay you to be homeless here,’ James, a homeless man with face tattoos who has been living in San Francisco since June, told Michael Shellenberger, author of ‘San Fransicko,’ a book about how the city’s progressive leaders are worsening homelessness, inequality and crime.

James said it only took one phone call to receive government assistance, including hundreds in cash and food stamps worth approximately $100, and notes that the ‘free money’ is motivation to remain homeless.

‘F*****g phone call bro… Two hundred food stamps and $620 cash a month. Forget about it. Why wouldn’t I do it? You know, it’s f*****g free money dude,’ he explained. ‘Why would I want to pay rent? I’m not doing s**t. I’ve got a f*****g cell phone that I have Amazon Prime and Netflix on.’

The interview comes as the city’s homelessness and drug problems have worsened amid the national opioid crisis that escalated over the course of the pandemic. Both local and federal leaders say they’re working to implement new strategies to combat the drug crisis. San Francisco Mayor London Breed has declared a state of emergency in the city and has vowed to crack down on open-air drug use and drug dealing. Similarly, the Biden administration seeks to limit infections and fatalities among drug users and has created a $30 million grant program to reduce substance abuse to underserved communities. 

James said the drug crisis in San Francisco has become incredibly ‘disgusting,’ with dealers providing impure substances to users who then overdose because they take drugs alone.

He also blamed the cops for failing to arrest foreign-born dealers, alleging the police are ‘getting paid with fentanyl.’

‘I’ve talked to the cops here. “I’m literally 10 feet away from the drug dealers talking to you guys, why don’t you go arrest them right now?” he said. ”And they’re like, “arrest them for what?… San Francisco is a sanctuary city. We arrest the Hondurans and we put them in jail, they’re out two days later.”’

‘If they’re letting the Hondurans deal on the corner every day, somebody getting paid with fentanyl,’ James added.  

A new ‘linkage center’ aimed at connecting homeless street addicts with drug rehab facilities opened in San Francisco last month, but distressing images show an open air illicit drug consumption site that is now littered with needles and crowded with addicts shooting up in broad daylight.

The center, which opened on January 18, is part of the San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s Tenderloin Emergency Intervention plan introduced last year, which aims to crackdown on open air drug use and drug dealing in the crime-ravaged downtown neighborhood. When declaring the state of emergency, Breed also pushed San Francisco officers to get aggressive and ‘less tolerant of all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city.’

James shared firsthand how the drug crisis in San Francisco is worsening amid the fentanyl-fueled opioid epidemic.

‘I can take you to a dead body right now,’ he told Shellenberger.

‘People are stupid out here. They f*****g use alone. They’ll f*****g get a big bag of fentanyl and they’ll get a different batch and they’re by themselves and …. Nobody’s going to fucking find you for days.’ 

He added: ‘I saved six people’s lives last week. We hadn’t even met before.’

The addict explained that he issues to Narcan to people who are overdosing and after he saves their lives, he cleans out the vials and sells them for $65 each.

He also recollected how recently two teens, aged 15 and 16, approached him on the street in search of oxycontin and explained how they wouldn’t find that particular opioid on the streets. 

Because he ‘needed the money,’ he instead sold the teens fentanyl and taught them how to administer Narcan – an emergency treatment that is injected into an overdose victim – ‘in case they died’.

‘These two kids came up and they’re like: “Hey do you guys know where to get any oxycontin?”’ James told Shellenberger. ‘And I’m like, “look dude, I’mma tell you right now, you’re not going to get oxycontin out here on the street.”’

James said the teens had $40 to spend on drugs, which he used to purchase fentanyl for them. 

‘I said: “Ok, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to take your money” and I went and I got them fentanyl,’ he recalled.

‘I f*****g brought it back and I set it down in front of them and I said “This is a gram of fentanyl. It is enough to kill six people who have never used it.”‘

James showed the teens how much fentanyl he takes to get high and then provided a Narcan tutorial, citing how he knew they were going to continue to use drugs regardless of whether or not he helped them get high.

‘I was like “I’m keeping your money and now I’m going to teach you how to save each others’ lives because you’re not gonna f*****g stop. I can’t steer you away from doing it, but the best thing I can do for you now is give you real drugs and show you how to do it properly and show you how to save your friend’s life,”‘ he said.

‘And I showed them how to pull up Narcan and how to inject each other with the Narcan needle in case they died.’

He added: ‘I needed the money. Let’s be honest.’ 

James also explained how the police are no longer acting as authority figures but have instead become more like neighbors.

‘We used to battle with the cops, now it’s like the cops are – it’s like they’re your neighbor, you know?’ he said.

‘The cops told us this morning like: “Oh, it’d be easier if you guys packed up in the morning. We wouldn’t have to come out here.”’

‘And I’m like “What are you talking about?” He’s like “Pack up you’re s**t in the morning” and I’m like “why?” He’s like “oh, ok” and went on.’

San Francisco is grappling with lawlessness that has seen the city overrun with crime over the past two years. Across the entire city last November, there were 3,375 reports of larceny theft, the majority being car break-ins, with SFPD’s Central District seeing the most car smash-and-grabs, at a total of 876. 

Throughout January, there was a 50 percent increase in homicides with three reported between January 1 and January 23, compared to only two during the same time frame last year, but overall crime has decreased by 21.8 percent, according to crime statistics released by the San Francisco Police Department.

Assault in the city has decreased by more than 10 percent from 151 cases last year at this time to 135.  

Larceny theft cases have also decreased about 15 percent with cases so far this month at 1,282, which are down from 1,517 from the same time last year.   

Robbery cases decreased about 24 percent and rape cases decreased 22 percent. 

A high percentage of an estimated 8,000 homeless people in San Francisco – many of whom pitch tents in the Tenderloin – are struggling with chronic addiction or severe mental illness, often both. Some people rant in the streets, nude and in need of medical help. Last year, 712 people died of drug overdoses, compared with 257 people who died of COVID-19.  

Homelessness in the Bay Area has become such a problem people are being urged to give their spare rooms over to the homeless.

Some charities have urged local families – who are sick of seeing the homeless crisis on their doorsteps – to do something about it personally by taking unhoused people into their own homes and spare rooms – and some schemes have little to no compensation.  

Since 2017, nonprofit Safe Time has made more than 60 placements. There are an estimated 30,000 homeless in the five-county Bay Area – which are comprised of the East Bay, North Bay, South Bay, Peninsula and the city of San Francisco regions.  

The mayor of the Richmond, located in the East Bay county of Contra Costa about 20 miles from downtown San Francisco, has set up a program to match homeless people with local landlords who have empty apartments. 

Funded by private donations, it will pay the landlords a year’s rent up front to encourage them to forgo the usual credit, employment and background checks for tenants. 

In another move to combat to help those living on the streets, San Francisco opened a center for homeless addicts last month. The supervised drug consumption area is an outdoor fenced section of the linkage center – just blocks away from the city’s court house, San Francisco City Hall and the Civic Center. 

However, disturbing images taken by DailyMail.com last month highlight how little significant the addiction crisis is in the city.

Photos show a woman slumped over in a wheelchair, her pants down around her ankles, preparing to inject a needle into her thigh. The woman sitting on the ground next to her has a needle to her neck.  

Many others are sitting on the ground among trash, empty food containers and dirty blankets, as they fumble in with drug paraphernalia in the cold weather.  

Meanwhile, President Biden’s Health and Human Services department (HHS) is finalizing funding to dole out crack pipes to drug addicts as part of its ‘Harm Reduction Plan.’

The $30 million grant program, which accepted applications until Monday and will begin doling out money in May, intends to provide funds to nonprofits and local governments to make drug use safer, to advance ‘racial equity.’

Fox News host Tucker Carlson slammed the administration over the program, claiming the government would be giving out ‘free crack pipes to black people.’ 

Although the administration has clarified that they’re distributing safe smoking kits, not crack pipes, Carlson doubled down on his claims Tuesday night. 

‘The Biden administration is promoting drug addiction,’ he said. ‘They’ve been caught doing it and now they’re denying it.’   

A spokesperson for Health and Human Services told the Washington Free Beacon that included in these kits could be pipes for users to smoke substances like crack cocaine and crystal methamphetamine, or ‘any illicit substance.’ 

HHS said that the kits will serve to limit the risk of infection – typically users smoke out of glass pipes which can lead to cuts and sores that become infected with diseases like Hepatitis-C. 

The kits include a rubber mouthpiece to prevent cuts and burns, brass screens to filter contaminants and disinfectant wipes. 

Applicants for the program get priority if they serve ‘underserved communities,’ such as African Americans or Native Americans, or LGBTQ people.

The grant program lasts three years and includes 25 awards of up to $400,000.  

U.S. Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday that the Beacon’s story was inaccurate and that crack pipes were never involved in the government’s kits. 

It came after Carlson mocked the idea on Tuesday night.  

‘You may recall that on his first day in office more than a year ago, the new president explained that equity will require determination and creativity,’ Carlson told his viewers.

‘This week he proved that is true. Joe Biden’s latest idea is to pay black people to smoke more crack.’

The Fox News host said that progressive groups, many of them funded by George Soros’s institutions, were encouraging Biden’s plan, and joked that the president’s 52-year-old son – who had a highly-publicized crack addiction – exemplified the ‘crack gap’. 

Carlson also took aim at San Francisco’s open heroin market on Tuesday, bashing the Democratic city for facilitating an area where addicts could openly buy and use drugs in a safe location. 

He interviewed local mother Jacqui Berlinn, of Mothers Against Drug Deaths, who told him that such a facility would only keep addicts liker son ‘chained to addiction.’ 

‘[Mayor London] Breed’s policies and the policies in San Francisco give him everything that he needs to stay addicted,’ she told Carlson. 

‘They give him the plastic needles and give him the foil…'[M]y hopes were dashed and even talking to my son, he said it just looks like more of the same, kind of makes him feel hopeless.’

There were an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the 12-month period ending in April 2021, according to the CDC, a 28.5 per cent increase from just the year prior. Three-quarters of those deaths involved opioids, many of them being synthetic opioids, such as methamphetamine or fentanyl.