New data from the nonprofit’s past 12 months roaming Mid-Market and the Tenderloin is encouraging: 134 overdoses reversed, 41,575 trash bags filled, 78,494 needles disposed of safely. Yet there’s evidence that shows the nascent, yet very promising work of the street ambassadors spans far outside that one block. Wayne Gatlin patrols the Tenderloin and Mid-Market neighborhoods as part of his work with Urban Alchemy. The contrast showed the big difference the team can make in its assignment to keep the area’s sidewalks safe and clean, but also that so-called solutions in a city grappling with a twin drug and homelessness crisis too often involve pushing the misery around. Why the stark difference? One side was in Urban Alchemy’s boundary of responsibility, the other was not. In the sunlight, the sidewalk literally sparkled. Yet the east side of the block was clear. On a recent afternoon, the west side of the block, abutting a shuttered Chase Bank, was filled with people, many of them either using drugs or passed out.
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