In Opinion: There’s a quiet overdose statistic we need to say out loud. And a path to addressing it that San Francisco should implement.
People are dying. Overdose-related deaths have skyrocketed across the nation, and San Francisco has had one of the highest mortality rates of any major city in the country. Its victims are disproportionately Black, people of color and vulnerable individuals who have lived through trauma, struggle with mental health conditions or are experiencing housing instability.
We need more programs like the Tenderloin Center, and while we applaud the coalition of supervisors wholeheartedly advocating for the implementation of supervised consumption sites, both of these interventions are primarily targeted toward people using drugs in public. If we want to get serious about overdose prevention, we have to say the quiet part out loud: the vast majority of overdoses and overdose deaths take place inside people’s homes.
As nonprofit leaders in the housing and substance use disorder treatment spaces, we know firsthand that we need to do a better job of preventing overdoses for all people, housed and unhoused, because dead people cannot recover.
Next, we should pilot overdose prevention rooms within supportive housing sites. We talk a lot about meeting people where they are at and that shouldn’t stop just because someone becomes housed. In the past year, almost 60% of people who are referred to ECS’ supportive housing self-identified as struggling with their drug use.
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