View the San Francisco for Thursday, January 16, 2025
Michael Sims, 49, a former basketball player who is undergoing treatment for opioid-use disorder in San Francisco: “I’m proud of what I went through, and I’m proud that I survived it.”A recent scoliosis diagnosis and several rough years of living on San Francisco’s streets have left the 49-year-old with a hunched posture, almost bowing forward in chairs as if hiding within himself.
But that wasn’t always the case. Sims said he was already more than 5 feet tall as a 7-year-old, towering over his high-school classmates as a 6-foot-5 14-year-old. He was listed at 6-foot-8 when he played college basketball in the late 1990s and when he played professionally in Finland soon after. “Basketball ended up saving me a lot, because I got to find real comfort in being valued in basketball when I wasn’t valued in society,” Sims said. Sims said his professional basketball career ended after just a year due to his battle with his desire to be a good father to his young daughters. He arrived in San Francisco in 2017, becoming one of many unhoused people in The City struggling with opioid addiction. San Francisco’s twin crises of homelessness and fentanyl use have flummoxed city leaders throughout Sims’ years in The City, withboth issues through legislative and executive action. Sims is a participant in programs predating Lurie’s administration that public-health officials have pointed to as A resident of permanent supportive housing, Sims was also one of The City’s initial patients to receive medication from the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Now, his recovery is ongoing, and he says he is looking forward, rather than behind. He said he no longer feels burdened by a traumatic childhood, an undiagnosed condition related to his height and substance-abuse issues that amounted to him living “like being in a coma or something” when he first arrived in San Francisco. Sims credits his daughters, Savannah and Maliah, for getting him “on the road to recovering,” unlike what he called his “half-a--ed” efforts to do so previously.Sims said he was born in 1976 in North Carolina. He said the seven siblings he shared with his mother all had different fathers. Sims said the story of his own father proved inaccurate, and he didn’t meet his extended family on his dad’s side until 2011. Sims said his half-siblings were ultimately adopted, while he stayed with his mother as they moved from Atlanta to California, and finally to Waikiki, Hawaii, before Sims was 5 years old. Sims describes his time in Hawaii as a child’s daydream, during which he would wander into hotels and swim in their hot tubs and pools, grab juices from local shops, and wakeboard at the beach. But like most things in his life, it didn’t last. When Sims was 9, he said, his mom sent him to Washington state to live with what he referred to as a “United Nations” family. A pair of white parents, with a multicultural array of adopted siblings in tow, picked him up from the airport in a yellow school bus and ferried him over to his new home on Whidbey Island. Sims said he had “no contact” with his mother for a year, only seeing her intermittently during his adolescence after she moved to the state. “That was the beginning of the hardened heart of the child, of the abandonment issues, of those things brewing inside me,” Sims said. His adopted family, Sims said, swelled to 28 children on a 5-acre compound as they raised livestock. Sims said his adoptive father, Roger Tornga, abused him and his siblings, especially his sisters, amid a “cultish Christian” upbringing.as having been discharged from parole or mandatory supervision in 1991 after committing an incest offense against a 7-year-old girl in Washington state. Sims said he ultimately ran away from his adopted family when he was 14 and reunited with his mother. But the pair struggled to reconnect, he said, and he also had trouble connecting with his peers. “I was so green to the world that I was so socially behind my own peer groups,” he said. “I didn’t know about music; I didn’t know about commercials. I knew about nothing, so I had to become a great liar.” Dr. Ayesha Appa, an addiction medicine expert with UCSF, told The Examiner that Sims’ upbringing presents several factors, or adverse childhood experiences, that when added together can contribute to an increased risk of addiction. Such stressful events in adolescence can range from physical, emotional or sexual abuse, having substance-use disorders in the household, parental separation, or incarceration of a household member, she said. According to a 2003 study published in the journal Pediatrics, a person who has lived through five or more of these events is seven to 10 times“The greater number of adverse childhood experiences that someone lives through growing up, the greater the risk of developing a substance use disorder and adulthood,” Appa said. “Certainly, those may have contributed to his opioid-use disorder.”Amid the turbulence of his childhood, Sims said basketball kept him grounded. He said the sport was one of the few things he was allowed to watch on television while living with his adoptive family, and he started playing when he was 10. Sims ultimately played Division I basketball at Eastern Washington University before transferring to Division II Western Washington for his final year of eligibility in the 1998-99 season. He averaged 12.7 points and 7.0 rebounds per game as a senior, leading the team in the latter category. Starting at Eastern Washington in Cheney, Wash., Sims said, allowed him to play at a “top-notch level.” There, Sims said, he met the mother of his daughters. The Sims siblings were born in quick succession before their father graduated. After ending his career at Western Washington, Sims said, he made the difficult decision to go abroad and play professionally. Sims played a single season for a second-tier team in the city of Oulu, Finland, during which time he missed his daughters too much, he said. After barely a year, he was back stateside, and Maliah Sims said he had given up one of the bright spots in his turbulent young life.Michael Sims, speaks with The Examiner while receiving treatment for opioid-use disorder in San Francisco Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024. “I think basketball was supposed to be like his way out of this life and something that he can do to provide for his family,” Maliah Sims said. “Having that get taken away from him, and having to make that choice to leave, and when to give up the dream that he had, I think probably was really difficult for him.” The next several years were marked by transition as Michael Sims tried to get his footing. He dabbled in the entertainment industry and car sales, and he wound up divorcing his daughters’ mother. All the while, they said, he was a good father, but they didn’t know how challenging his childhood was. “He would always tell us little snippets of it, but not the really bad things when we were really young,” Savannah Sims said. It wasn’t until the girls were older that they understood the extent of what he went through, they said, after he shared that he’d finally tracked down the identity of his real father. In 2011, Michael Sims said, he found his real father and flew out to meet all his newfound extended family in Chicago. “My whole life, I’ve never had a birthday or Christmas or anything that was mine, my own family — I never even knew what that was like,” he said. “And for a moment, I had an auntie, I had cousins, nieces, nephews.” But while all of that was incredibly overwhelming, he said he found himself surprisingly let down when meeting his dad. “He wasn’t what I wanted him to be,” he said. “I was very disappointed in who he was, not in the family aspect, but just him as a dad.”Michael Sims said the experience prompted a few years of soul-searching as he tried to figure out who he was. While working as a salesperson at an automotive dealership in 2014, he said, his demons caught up with him. “Something was coming at me, and I couldn’t figure it out,” he said. “My relationship was going downhill, and I had severe back pains at the time, and I got hooked on oxycodone.” Maliah Sims said she was 15 years old around then, and remembered getting a call from him threatening to asphyxiate himself in a car in his garage. “That’s not my dad,” she said, adding this was the first indication she’d had that something wasn’t right with Sims. “This is a completely different person than I’m used to.” What followed was a descent into homelessness and drug addiction that led Michael Sims to San Francisco. He said that beginning in 2017, he spent years at the corner of 6th and Market streets, selling items he found lying around on sidewalks to feed what had become an opioid addiction. His daughters said they didn’t see him for those years, although they’d hear from him off and on when he’d get a new phone. At one point in 2019, they said they filed a missing persons report. Three years later, Michael Sims said, he decided to enter treatment for his addiction. Although he’d tried before, he said that his desire to reconnect with his daughters ultimately made him want to give it a real effort. “My girls back home, they’re like my only family,” he said of his daughters. He said his mother died in 2015. “I don’t think he wants to miss out on us getting married or having children, and that may not be like his biggest reason, but I think in the back of his head — we’re not children anymore, we’re not kids, and things are going to progress,” Maliah Sims said.Above: Maliah Sims, left, Michael Sims and Savannah Sims share a meal together. Left: An undated photo shows Savannah Sims, top, and Maliah Sims lying with their father, Michael Sims, as small children.Michael Sims now lives in permanent supportive housing at the Gotham Hotel at 835 Turk St. and receives a monthly injection of buprenorphine from Damian Peterson, a San Francisco Department of Public Health psychiatric clinical pharmacist who has worked with him since that fateful decision in 2022. Peterson’s role, in which he delivers medications to patients at their homes, was a first for the department. Public-health officials hired a second pharmacist in September. Michael Sims was one of Peterson’s first patients, and the pharmacist said he has learned a lot from Sims about how to treat people struggling with substance abuse. Sims’ daughters said they initially weren’t sure they could believe their father was finally receiving treatment. “I was like, ‘Give my information, and I can reach out to him’ — which he did, and I did talk to him, and he was telling me the truth,” Savannah Sims said. Since then, Peterson has offered himself as a sounding board for Sims’ daughters, keeping them in the loop about their father’s care. “It’s been like a wonderful experience for me, to make me feel like I’m making a huge difference in ways that I haven’t had before, being able to keep his family up to date on things,” Peterson said. Peterson said Michael Sims has made great progress in recent years and has developed a much more positive outlook on life.A.J. Anello, a friend of Michael Sims who has also struggled with substance abuse and homelessness, said he has also noticed improvement. “I’ve seen his mood change, his personality change — he’s happier,” Anello said. “He started to accumulate things that I wanted, not just physical things, but stuff in his demeanor.” Anello said he moved to the Bay Area 13 years ago from the East Coast, and he initially sold drugs to Michael Sims. But, he said, his friend’s journey inspired him to ultimately enter treatment last year and begin receiving daily methadone doses. Anello said he was placed into housing just down the street from his clinic, the Bay Area Addiction Research and Treatment Program at 1111 Market St. “We just don’t have the drugs that sidetracked us from doing what we wanted to do,” Anello said of his friendship with Michael Sims. “I think, if anything, it’s made us stronger. We went through the worst of it before. Now, it’s time for the best of it.”Michael Sims goes through treatment for opioid-use disorder at the Gotham Hotel in San Francisco on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024.He’s in the process of getting his teeth pulled and having dentures put in. He also must decide soon if he’s going to undergo back surgery to address some of his scoliosis-related complications. He said he has also been diagnosed with a degenerative joint disease.“It can be a pretty destabilizing time for people, especially with that pain, which can be a trigger to use,” Peterson said. “So it’s just really about providing a lot of support and a closer follow-up around that time.” Peterson said this means more closely monitoring Michael Sims — involving other case managers if needed — and ensuring he has all the resources he needs to recover successfully. Beyond his physical well-being, Michael Sims said he hopes to open up a business, maybe a store to continue selling his found objects. He said he also aspires to write music and lyrics about his past, or even work as a life coach to inspire others with his life journey.San Francisco’s new mayor wants broad power to combat open-air drug markets and the twin crises of fentanyl overdose and behavioral health. As expected, Mayor Daniel Lurie introduced a legislative proposal Tuesday that would grant his administration greater flexibility — with reduced oversight — in its efforts to ramp up enforcement and expand social services in an effort toIn order to carry out his plan, Lurie will need the support of the Board of Supervisors, which would effectively be waiving its own oversight powers. Five of its members — They include Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose district includes the hard-hit SoMa neighborhood. Dorsey has pushed for an aggressive response to fentanyl and called it a “public-health calamity.”Despite early signs of support, some legislators have expressed skepticism. Supervisor Shamann Walton said at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting that legislators have yet to be shown a detailed plan for how Lurie plans to take advantage of his additional authority. “Supporting the proposed legislation now, in my opinion, would be premature without the presence of a plan that demonstrates exactly what the mayor and The City plans to do,” Walton said. As written, the legislation would allow Lurie’s administration to waive competitive-bidding requirements, sign leases without board approval, and ink new contracts worth less than $50 million without board sign-off if the board doesn’t act on a proposal within 45 days. The bill would also give Lurie a green light to solicit donations from private companies and people to help fund The City’s efforts. It applies to any projects related to mental health, homelessness, addiction and overdoses, services for people at risk of becoming homeless, and public-safety hiring. The controller’s office would be tasked with ensuring “increased transparency and accountability, and additional public reporting of activities” carried out by city officials under the powers granted by the bill. Lurie contends that such a shedding of regulatory norms will allow The City to more rapidly expand shelter and other services by hastening hiring, quickening contracting and facilitating funds from private donors to boost city efforts. The powers would expire in 2029. The length is an issue for Supervisor Connie Chan, who is pushing Lurie to agree to a rolling six-month deadline. “I think that San Franciscans want to see results much sooner than five years,” Chan told The Examiner. “Is there some way that we could see some results in six months?” Lurie has repeatedly claimed, both during last year’s mayoral campaign and in his early days as mayor, that public safety will be his top priority. He pledged toemergency under the City Charter. Thus, what Lurie has proposed is not an actual state-of-emergency declaration, but a legislative proposal that he is calling a state-of-emergency ordinance.Lurie has outlined, broadly, his desire to extend the work of the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center, which launched in 2023 and brought together state and local law-enforcement agencies to better coordinate the response to the fentanyl crisis.“This is what I ran on,” Lurie said. “I got a mandate to deliver. The first thing we talked about was public safety, the second thing was the fentanyl state of emergency, and I really honored that I have five co-sponsors already. We are going to get this passed.”Mayor Daniel Lurie speaking at his Inauguration Day banquet celebration at the Far East Cafe in Chinatown, San Francisco on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025. On Wednesday, he told reporters that the locations of new facilities have yet to be determined, but he promised to work with neighborhood groups in siting them. He also stressed there is room for expansion of services in existing facilities, specifically citing San Francisco General Hospital. Regardless of whether it’s a declaration or an ordinance, the effort attempts to address a top concern of voters, who decisively elected Lurie to lead on that issue. The proposal is an early test of the relationship between Lurie and the Board of Supervisors. The former has never held public office before and promised a new way of governance, while the latter has several new members and has drifted politically toward the center. Both have pledged to work together.is not among the legislation’s early sponsors, but he told The Examiner he’s been briefed by administration officials and is inclined to support it pending a more thorough read of the final bill. “I think for the administration to succeed, we are all going to have to kind of hold hands and try to set aside some of the checks and balances and let them try to act, but the risk of that always is going to be if we end up not liking the action we take, that’s going to be problematic,” Mandelman said. Ultimately, Mandelman said, supervisors have to weigh whether they’re more concerned about “action or inaction.” “The harder we make action, the more difficult it is to respond nimbly to challenges like fentanyl and others,” he said. Though he might ultimately not need her support, Lurie and Chan continue to discuss the issue, including on Wednesday morning. Chan, who lauded Lurie for his communication, pointed to remarks Lurie made to the supervisors after he was sworn in last week. “The very first day he said, ‘It’s OK, we can disagree,’” Chan said. “And I agree with him that we can disagree.”San Francisco’s housing growth remained sluggish in 2024, with the number of newly completed homes likely the lowest of any year in at least the past 10 years, according to preliminary figures from city housing officials.of declining housing construction that has persisted despite a furious effort to reform San Francisco’s housing rules and make The City — infamous for its marathon permitting processes that can leave developments in limbo for years — a more hospitable place to build homes. In the face of continued anemic housing growth, city housing officials, developers and advocates say that they will continue to push for further measures to support new construction. As for when those efforts will spur the long-hoped for development boom, they acknowledged, it remains impossible to say. “I think I’m going to be cautiously pessimistic” of what 2025 might bring, said Corey Smith, executive director of the San Francisco-based Housing Action Coalition. It’s one of many pro-development groups that have been making the case that The City must dramatically ramp up its home building efforts if it ever hopes to turn the corner on its affordability crisis. That measured pessimism is a stark turnaround from Smith’s outlook at the start of 2024, when he said he had hoped new streamlining laws would be enough to help San Francisco’s flagging housing sector overcome the economic disruptions unleashed by the pandemic, including spiraling construction costs and stubbornly high interest rates.Corey Smith, Executive Director of the Housing Action Coalition, speaking at the 21st Annual Housing Heroes Awards at Salesforce Park Amphitheater in San Francisco on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023. Perhaps the most dramatic of those measures was California Senate Bill 423, which allows developers hoping to entitle projects in San Francisco to use a streamlined process thatBut since the measure took effect in July, only a handful of developers have applied for permits under the new process. The three projects that are currently under review would add just 25 homes to The City’s housing stock,And the overall housing picture for last year was similarly grim. In 2024, builders managed to complete projects that collectively added just more than 1,700 units to The City’s supply of housing, according to the Planning Department. Officials say those figures have not yet been finalized and will likely shift as they are further reviewed in the coming months. Nevertheless, wherever the final numbers land, they seem likely to mark a continued decline from the 2020 peak, which saw The City’s housing projects deliver well over 5,000 completed homes. The slow housing growth is also the latest sign that San Francisco is falling further behind on state-mandated housing targets that require it to plan for 82,000 new homes by 2031, roughly half of which must be Since the current housing cycle began in 2023, The City has added less than half the new homes it would have needed for it to be on track with that goal, according to city figures.For now, they’re holding onto hope that when it does, the past several years of housing reforms will help pave the way for a rapid housing turn around.— has included measures that have cut down on public review hearings, jettisoned parking requirements for new developments, reduced the fees that developers must pay for new projects and helped to streamline the permitting process. Planning Department officials say that by 2023 the streamlining effort had cut down the approval time for building entitlements from nearly two-and-a-half years — which had been the longest approval time of any city in California — to just seven months.“They're amazing,” said Marc Babsin, a principal and president of the San Francisco-based development firm Emerald Fund — but, he said, “they're not enough right now” to overcome the fundamental problem facing housing developers.Those costs shot up after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as supply chain snarls made it more difficult to acquire building materials. At the same time, builders faced a double squeeze as the Federal Reserve responded to climbing inflation by raising interest rates, a move that has added significantly to the cost of borrowing. Finally, with the rental prices for San Francisco apartments still not quite recovered from their massive pandemic-era lows, the expected financial rewards for constructing rental housing — largely determined by how much residents will pay for their new homes — have been too modest to secure the necessary financing for projects. Over the course of 2024, the development math somewhat improved as construction costs levelled off and interest rates came down, Smith said, but most projects are still a long way from penciling out. Barring a sudden economic surge for San Francisco, close market observers told The Examiner they do not expect the housing fundamentals to change dramatically in the coming year.Developers also seem less eager to begin new projects, with just more than 1,000 permits approved by the Planning Department last year, according to the agency’s preliminary figures. Compared to the decade that preceded the pandemic in San Francisco, an era that saw a relative building boom for The City, last year’s figure represents only a fraction of the number of buildings that had been making it through the entitlement phase of the production process. The housing slowdown means that tens of thousands of potentially viable homes are stuck in The City’s production pipeline, in many cases unable to secure sufficient financing to move forward. City officials, though, say they have been devoting considerable energy over the past two years toward clearing the housing logjam, and they are not yet out of levers to pull in their effort to make more projects financially sound. “We've really seen a shift in how we do this now,” said Anne Taupier, director of development for The City’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. “We need to get The City cost reduced, and we need to make sure that we're not the ones causing the problem.” Those costs from The City include the impact fees that developers must pay to help fund things like public transportation. In 2023, city lawmakers voted to The same 2023 package also temporarily reduced so-called inclusionary zoning standards, which require developers to offer some number of affordable homes along with the project’s market-rate units. These requirements can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of large projects, Taupier said.— expected to add 2,600 new homes to The City’s central waterfront — as well as the Treasure Island development, which is now preparing for a second round of housing development that could create 1,000 additional units. Both projects have benefited from public financing secured under novel mechanisms worked out with The City.Treasure Island — where the Tidal House apartment complex is seen under construction in 2023 — is preparing to add 1,000 new homes in a second round of development. The drive to cut down on permitting red tape seems likely to continue under the leadership of newly-inaugurated Mayor Daniel Lurie, who campaigned on a housing platform that included a long list of measures intended to speed up development. “I think we've made changes to permitting, but I think it's not perfect,” said Rich Hillis, director of The City’s Planning Department. “The permitting world could still be improved.” Lurie has already carried out one reform: The introduction of a new policy chief to oversee his administration’s efforts to boost housing and economic development. Hillis said he hopes the added layer of oversight will help The City better coordinate the wide-ranging agencies and groups that play a role in housing construction, which include utilities and state planners in addition to city officials. But as housing developers and their supporters continue to call on the city government to provide additional financing breaks, some in The City’s progressive bloc say they worry that the drive to create market-rate homes will come at the expense of affordable housing.for building projects to convert empty downtown office buildings into new housing. Backers say such conversions could unlock a large reserve of new housing in underused properties while also helping to revitalize downtown neighborhoods — but, they argue, such conversions will only be feasible if The City can bring down cost barriers. Last year, voters passed a ballot measure that got rid of a tax for certain downtown conversion projects, cutting into another revenue source for affordable housing. John Avalos — who heads the Council of Community Housing Organizations — pushed back against the notion that slashing fees for private developers will yield the housing that many residents hope for. He contends such reforms are intended, rather, to help real estate interests “make a profit.” “The question is who's more important to serve,” said Avalos, “the people who develop market-rate housing or the people who live with great housing insecurity?”Mayor Daniel Lurie has committed much of his professional life to reducing homelessness, but the issue is too big for one person or administration to solve, writes Alex Tourk.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely!Create a password that only you will remember. If you forget it, you'll be able to recover it using your email address.Forgot Password An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the email address listed on your account.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Page A1View the San Francisco for Thursday, December 19, 2024
Read more »
Page A1View the San Francisco for Sunday, December 22, 2024
Read more »
Page A1View the San Francisco for Sunday, January 5, 2025
Read more »
The View Expands with Weekend Streaming Series 'The Weekend View'The View's Friday panel hosts a new weekend streaming series called 'The Weekend View,' focusing on trending entertainment and social media news. The show will feature 'Hot Topics' segments and 'Behind The Table' discussions, premiering January 11th on ABC News Live.
Read more »
Page A1View the San Francisco for Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Read more »
Page A1View the San Francisco for Thursday, January 9, 2025
Read more »