This conversation aired in the March 11, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
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Last month, the San Francisco Standard published an article titled, "The Mission is the New Tenderloin." It examined how the confluence of two of the city's biggest problems — homelessness and the opioid epidemic — is playing out.
The article prominently featured the renewed law enforcement crackdown on drug trafficking in the Tenderloin, and how that has contributed to pushing addicts and dealers across Market Street and into The Mission.
But the article’s headline, set off a firestorm of debate.
Some critics claim that the placement and timing of the article are prompted more by concerns over the safety of relatively wealthy white residents, who are gentrifying the Mission — not the long-ignored Latino residents, who have lived in the neighborhood for decades.
San Francisco Standard reporter Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez spoke on what he saw and learned reporting the story, the response to it, and what may lay ahead for the Tenderloin and The Mission.
