Name: Another of the Tenderloin’s lost souls dies on the street as San Francisco dithers
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Another of the Tenderloin’s lost souls dies on the street as San Francisco dithers

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We see them all the time, the same lost souls in the same San Francisco neighborhoods caught in the same sad cycles of homelessness, and mental illness.Ian Carrier was a particularly distinctive fixture of the Tenderloin. He used a wheelchair after getting hit by a car. He sported black facial tattoos. He had puffy hands and abscesses on his skin, telltale signs of drug use.That’s what passersby would see. What they didn’t know was he had family who adored their witty, compassionate son and brother and tried for decades to help him get better. That he had longtime, loyal friends who gave him pastrami sandwiches, pink Snowball snack cakes, copies of Thrasher magazine and constant support. That he had a team of doctors and city outreach workers on his side.And yet none of it was enough — not in a city that refuses to disband its open-air drug market, the one that pulls people like Carrier back again and again and makes it nearly impossible to recover.Despite all the love and friendship and care, Carrier died in his wheelchair on a Tenderloin sidewalk on April 28. He was just 36.Mary Howe got a text that night from another friend of Carrier’s reading, simply, “Ian’s gone.” The had been close friends with Carrier since meeting him many years ago in the Haight.He’d been diagnosed with depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as a teenager and self-medicated with alcohol and drugs, his family said. He left home at 18 to travel the country with friends, eventually settling in the Haight and sleeping in Golden Gate Park. His drug addiction grew worse, and he used heroin and crack cocaine regularly.He suffered from many medical ailments, including numerous skin infections and a bout with diphtheria in 2018. After that hospitalization, he got a space in a single-room-occupancy hotel in the Tenderloin, but he hated it there and spent a lot of time outside.Howe was his touchstone and advocate, and they met religiously every Wednesday morning. After she received that horrifying text, she raced to Eddy and Hyde streets to identify her friend for the medical examiner. She sat sobbing in Carrier’s wheelchair as he was zipped into a body bag. She called his family and broke their hearts.Carrier had been in and out of UCSF for months, his kidneys failing and doctors unable to figure out why. His family wondered whether he had COVID-19, and about people questioning whether they’d contracted the dreaded virus without knowing it. A test eventually came back negative, his sister said, and his cause of death hasn’t been determined.His family and friends hoped this time would be different. He’d been sober in the hospital and talked of wanting to make changes.Howe wanted him released to a vacant hotel room to shelter in place during the pandemic, but said she was told no room was available. His family had pressed for him to recover at Laguna Honda Hospital, the city’s largest nursing home, but that didn’t happen either.Instead, he wound up right back where he always did — the Tenderloin. The place he couldn’t shake. And the place City Hall has refused to clean up for the sake of people like Carrier.Carrier’s family and Howe say he was discharged April 27 without their knowledge and dropped at the crowded tent encampment alongside the Asian Art Museum.Kristen Bole, a spokeswoman for UCSF, said she couldn’t comment on Carrier’s case because of privacy protections. She said discharge protocol includes providing clothing, food, medications and transportation “in alignment with the patient’s wishes.”Apparently a sticking point for qualifying for a vacant hotel room was whether Carrier had his own room and bathroom where he could shelter in place. He had his own sink, but not his own toilet and shower, according to friends who saw his room.But the bigger issue is the Tenderloin itself and the concentration of SRO hotels, services and drug dealers packed in tight.Thomas Wolf, said the key for him was finally getting out of the Tenderloin and into a recovery program miles away in the Mission. He knew Carrier and said leaving him back in the same place as always “was definitely a death sentence.”“In recovery, we learn you need to change your playground,” said Wolf, a member of the city’s Street-Level Drug Dealing Task Force. “If you take an addict and take him away from the environment in which he was using drugs, there might be a better chance of success.”Carrier’s sister, April Slone, said she’s furious he was once again discharged back to the Tenderloin. Their family had remained close and tried many times to ease Carrier into recovery, but it never stuck. Slone lives in France and visited her brother for two days in October. It was two days of bonding, eating doughnuts and hamburgers — and seeing her brother’s neighborhood up close.“That f—ing city allows drug dealers to peddle their poison in the open air with cops standing there watching,” she said. “They clearly have absolutely no control over it. ... It’s an open mental hospital where you can buy whatever you want just off the street.”She’s not wrong. That’s the way it’s been in the Tenderloin for years, and it’s only gotten worse during the COVID-19 pandemic.More by Heather KnightUpdated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.On Wednesday, a visit to Golden Gate Avenue and Hyde Street showed young dealers brazenly hawking their wares as a pathetic line of men stretching down the block sat slumped over on the sidewalk, clearly high out of their minds. in place, no hygiene, nothing.A man who appeared high partied and danced on a utility box. A woman who also appeared high wandered into traffic and refused to budge, inches away from cars.Just another morning in the Tenderloin.Meanwhile, the city’s plan for a Its plan for a has stalled. Its Street-Level Drug Dealing Task Force is on hold after two meetings because of the virus. The pandemic and shutdown have paused a lot in San Francisco, but it can’t continue to send the Tenderloin deeper into despair.by residents and business owners in the neighborhood, seeking to force it to clear sidewalks of packed encampments, and stop brazen drug dealing. to do just that — weeks or decades late, depending on how you slice it — and let’s hope improvements finally arrive.Police Chief Bill Scott said Wednesday his officers would step up arrests of dealers, including those who’ve been seen by police taking bags of drugs into tent camps to prey on vulnerable people.“We’ve arrested these people. We’ve confiscated their money, we’ve confiscated their drugs, and we will continue to do that with a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm,” Scott said.Of course, he’ll need the backup of the district attorney’s office and Superior Court judges to make any real punishment stick, which hasn’t happened in the past. Stay-away orders from the entire Tenderloin and South of Market area — or even San Francisco itself — would make sense seeing as how many dealers come from the East Bay to ply their deadly wares.Whatever changes hopefully arrive will come too late for Carrier, a fact his sister still can’t quite believe. Slone said she knew she might someday get that dreaded call, but she wasn’t ready for it.“It was like getting hit by a truck,” she said through tears.Slone said her brother will be cremated. Howe will keep his ashes until they can gather in San Francisco for a celebration of her brother’s life.“He was kind and he was nice and he was a survivor,” Slone said. “We loved him. We tried so hard.”San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: Twitter: Instagram:Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.

We see them all the time, the same lost souls in the same San Francisco neighborhoods caught in the same sad cycles of homelessness, and mental illness.Ian Carrier was a particularly distinctive fixture of the Tenderloin. He used a wheelchair after getting hit by a car. He sported black facial tattoos. He had puffy hands and abscesses on his skin, telltale signs of drug use.That’s what passersby would see. What they didn’t know was he had family who adored their witty, compassionate son and brother and tried for decades to help him get better. That he had longtime, loyal friends who gave...

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San Francisco bureau chief for the New York Times; former columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and co-host of #TotalSF podcast; proud to call SF home

Heather Knight

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Another of the Tenderloin’s lost souls dies on the street as San Francisco dithers

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