Death, Disease, and Despair: Tragedy in San Francisco’s Tenderloin

A homeless man sits passed out in San Francisco on Feb. 23, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

SAN FRANCISCO—As JJ Smith stands in the infamous Tenderloin district on a cold, windy day in late February, he recounts the last time he saw his older brother, Rodney, alive.

That day, in early October, Rodney rode up on his bicycle and asked him for $20, he said.

“I didn’t ask him what it was for,” Smith said. “He was homeless.”

Moments later, Rodney handed the money to a drug dealer, “a Honduran with a red backpack,” he said.

“I was standing right here. I saw the whole transaction,” he said, pointing up the sidewalk on Ellis Street.

“Two hours later, I got a phone call,” Smith said. “My brother died. He OD’d.”

Rodney was 55.

Smith said he knows his brother would have likely obtained the drugs whether he had given him money that day or not. But, it haunts him.

“I watched him buy the drugs,” he said. “I could have helped out my brother, but he didn’t want the help.”

JJ Smith on the streets of the Tenderloin district in San Francisco on Feb. 23, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Harm Reduction and Housing

Harm reduction kits—clean needles, pipes and other paraphernalia that churches and non-profit agencies hand out—are only enabling addicts, and the homeless and drug crises to fester, Smith said.

He calls them assisted “suicide kits.”

Smith, 52, who lives in the Tenderloin, wakes before dawn every day to walk the tent-covered sidewalks—strewn with needles, crack pipes and dirty clothing. Since retiring as a private chef two years ago, he has made it his mission to check in on the homeless, he said.

He doesn’t believe subsidized housing, single-room occupancy hotel rooms known as SROs, are helping either.

“My brother stayed in a tent for a long time, but as soon as they placed him in an SRO by himself, they gave him a harm reduction kit. He went inside the room by himself. He shot the dope and killed himself,” he said.

At least on the streets, even when he was sleeping in a tent, his brother had other people around watching when he was doing drugs, Smith said.

A drug user displays a fentanyl hit in San Francisco on Feb. 23, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

SROs are also known as “residential hotels,” typically featuring 8-by-10-ft. rooms with shared toilets and showers down the hallway.

Despite efforts to house San Francisco’s homeless, according to city data from 2022, nearly 7,800 remain living on the streets, hundreds of them concentrated in the Tenderloin, a gritty downtown district spanning about 50 blocks between Union Square and the Civic Center.

Housing the homeless in SROs alone won’t solve the homeless crisis, he said.

“Giving them housing ain’t helping them get off the drugs. You have to attack the situation that led them to be unhoused, that led them to be on drugs. Giving them a room is not going to cure them,” he said.

Smith also said some in the Tenderloin aren’t down on their luck. Some with wives, children, and parents, have chosen to live on the street, just so they can use drugs.

“They know this behavior is not acceptable anywhere else, but it’s acceptable here in San Francisco, and you will get paid for being here,” he said.

Policing and Injustice

Citing high-profile cases where drug dealers were arrested in fentanyl overdose deaths, Smith said he is disappointed police won’t investigate his brother’s death.

“I can actually tell them who he got it from, and I can go to court and testify. But it’s not going to do no good when they’re not going to prosecute,” he said.

He blames the system for ignoring such overdose cases in poor communities, like the Tenderloin.

JJ Smith points to the area he last saw his brother alive on the streets of the Tenderloin District in San Francisco on Feb. 23, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

“Once you get to these upper-class communities, they’ll do an investigation,” he said. “It has to be some rich person. When it’s in the poor community, they don’t care.”

Last summer, Smith was attacked by Honduran dealers—one wielding a machete—after asking them not to sell drugs near a youth recreation center, he said.

He was hospitalized for a day, and treated for machete wounds on his head, back, and arm. The gash on his head was deep and wide, requiring eight large staples.

His Mission

During his walks in the Tenderloin, which usually start around 4:30 a.m., he films what he sees and posts the videos on Twitter.

Those on the street know he’s there to help if they need him.

“They don’t mind me filming them or speaking with them. They keep it real with me. I keep it real with them. I respect them. They respect me,” he said. “I treat them like my brothers, my sisters.”

Smith believes the videos and commentary he shares in online posts will help dissuade young people from doing drugs, and encourage those who are addicted to get clean.

He wants to “tell the world” how drugs destroy people’s lives and devastate families, and show the death, disease, and despair he sees daily, he said.

A homeless man lies passed out on the streets of the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, Calif., on Feb. 23, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

“Everybody knows drugs kill and drugs hurt, but a lot of people have never seen someone that died on drugs. I show that,” he said.

Even though he has been accused by some of shaming homeless drug addicts, Smith said many want to be filmed and talk openly about their plight and addictions.

“I’m not shaming anyone. ... It’s therapeutic for them to talk about their situation,” he said. “Maybe they'll see the light in what they’re doing by speaking about it. It might help them to make a change. You never know.”

Smith said his greatest detractors are activists and politicians who claim to be working to solve the homeless crisis—but aren’t.

“My biggest threat is some of these political people who say I shouldn’t feel what I feel—that I shouldn’t have conversations with people on the streets, and I shouldn’t interview people. ... Those are the people I’m really afraid of,” he said. “My brother is gone. I can tell his story, but there’s a lot of other stories that need to be told.”

On the Streets

Recently, Smith tried to help a meth addict with a festering open wound on the back of her leg. Smith and a community supervisor asked the woman to move her scattered belongings away from the entrance to a park where children were playing. But she refused unless Smith could get her medical treatment.

Drug users are prone to skin and soft tissue infections, a significant cause of injury and death, that have escalated nationally in recent years, according to the National Institute of Health.

Smith called authorities, and she was eventually taken to a shelter.

John Howard, 39, a friend of hers—who has lived at the Drake Hotel across from the park for nearly two months—told The Epoch Times he has used drugs since he was a child.

John Howard stands on the sidewalk of the Tenderloin District in San Francisco, Calif., on Feb. 23, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Howard said he has been to several rehab facilities over the years, but nothing has worked.

“When you’ve been doing drugs since you were five years old and that’s all you really know is drugs, it’s not easy to give up,“ he said. ”Just like, it’s life.”

Howard said he overdosed on fentanyl once, but was revived by police with two cans of Narcan, and has stayed away from it since.

“After that, I said I’d never touch it again, and I haven’t,” he said.

But, he said, he still uses methamphetamines, even though he is on probation.

“They test me all the time, but they know I’m gonna fail,” he said.

Originally from Odessa, Tex., Howard said he has lived in the San Francisco Bay area for about the last 20 years and is now taking computer information and networking classes in college.

“San Francisco has changed a lot in the last 20 years—a whole lot,” he said. “When I first came here, there were no tents ... on the street. Now it’s full of tents. There’s more tents than there are apartments.”

Another man who goes by the name “Alabama,” told the Epoch Times he normally uses crystal meth.

But one time, when he was smoking crack, somebody put fentanyl in his pipe, he said.

“Once I hit it, whoa!—straight to the head. I was out. I was gone,” he said. “It took seven cans of Narcan and they had to hit me with paddles. All I remember was waking up at the hospital with my brand new polo shirt cut open.”

And another man, who goes by the name “Sevi,” and lives in an SRO, said Honduran drug dealers control the fentanyl trade in the Tenderloin.

Men stand on the sidewalk in San Francisco, Calif., on Feb. 23, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

“They’ll sell to anybody as long as you’re not wearing a cop uniform,” he said.

Fentanyl is known to often enter the U.S. through Mexico from China as counterfeit M30, or 30 mg pharmaceutical pills, sometimes called “Mexican blues,” according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

“They’re disguising [fentanyl] as blue M30 pills—the more pure form of it,” Sevi said.

Most of the fentanyl sold in the Tenderloin is cut to less than 20 percent pure to make it cheap, Sevi said.

“It’s such a strong drug that if they’re selling it for $10 a gram, you’re not going to get [pure] fetty, which would most likely cost at least $100 a gram, and kill most people the first time they use it,” he said. “They take one little hit, and they’re on the [expletive] ground ... even if they’ve been using for 10 years.”

And the penalties for selling it are lax, Sevi said.

“For an ounce of fentanyl, you’re going to get charged. You’re going to have to go to trial, but you’re getting out the next day,” he said.

Sevi, too, overdosed on fentanyl, once mistaking it for his drug of choice: crack cocaine.

“The first 10 seconds of fentanyl high is the best crack that I ever took,” he said. But, he said, within minutes he realized he had taken fentanyl.

When people are that high on fentanyl, they’re incapable of asking for help, he said. Some people noticed Sevi was overdosing, they called an ambulance, and he was revived with Narcan.

He has a 13-month-old daughter who lives with “my baby mama” in the Mission district.

“She got clean when she got pregnant,” he said.

He knows the Tenderloin isn’t the best place for his daughter.

“Ideally, I would like to get the [expletive] out of here because I don’t want to bring my kid to the Tenderloin every time I want to hang out with her or have to watch her,” he said.

Spencer, a homeless person, in San Francisco on Feb. 23, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Tenderloin Tragedy

Spencer, 37, another homeless man living in a tent in the Tenderloin, recently told The Epoch Times he was 19 when he started doing drugs. He said he started with marijuana, and then moved on to cocaine and ecstasy.

But, by his early 20s, he was hooked on OxyContin.

Wearing an oversized jacket a security guard had given him, Spencer crawled out of his tent to smoke fentanyl blended with tobacco.

Originally from Tacoma, Wash., Spencer said he had lived in San Francisco for about a decade. He had been homeless for more than three years.

“I had a partner for a while, quite a few years ago. I was staying with somebody, and things didn’t work out. One day I came home after work and the locks were changed,” he said. “I was living on the street with a little cart and a couple of bags.”

Over the years, Spencer moved on to harder drugs, like heroin, and eventually fentanyl. While there is still heroin on the street, fentanyl is cheaper and more plentiful, he said.

Spencer fatally overdosed on March 2.

Smith said “Spence” was his friend for about two years. He was permanently hunched over with a back condition caused by heavy drug use. Everybody on the street respected him and looked out for him like he was their little brother, he said.

“Spencer had that effect on everybody,” he said. “He was a lovable guy. He was a sweet guy.”

About 20 people gathered on the street near Spencer’s tent the morning after he passed.

“People are sad. They’re down and depressed,” Smith said. “He will be missed.”

But, death is part of everyday life in the Tenderloin and the homeless are soon forgotten, he said.

“A certain situation might come up when people will say, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember Spencer used do that’ ... but eventually … he’ll be forgotten,” Smith said. “It don’t take long.”