Rachel Swan
San Francisco Chronicle
(TNS)
Oct. 18—A homeless man in San Francisco’s Richmond District has placed two signs outside his improvised dwelling, seemingly designed to infuriate the neighbors.
“Free fentanyl 4 new users,” one placard reads. “Meth for stolen items!” exclaims the other.
“It’s not a joke,” Joseph Adam Moore said on Tuesday afternoon while boiling hot dogs on a camp stove that he had rigged on the sidewalk. His home crammed a kitchen and bedroom onto about 12 feet of concrete, piled with air mattresses, coffee tins, a butane tank, a stereo blaring classical music and a sagging tarp roof where he affixed the incendiary signs this week.
He insisted that the messages are sincere, and that if anyone came seeking the deadly opioid fentanyl, or wanting to trade stolen goods for methamphetamine, he would honor the deal. Moore identified himself as a registered sex offender — court records from Santa Cruz County show he was convicted of unlawful sex with a minor in 1997 — and declined to say whether he carries illicit drugs.
But he acknowledged delight in provoking residents and city officials.
“I’m like Bugs Bunny, when Elmer Fudd shows up to shoot him in the face with a shotgun,” Moore said with a smirk.
Residents are not amused.
“It’s horrible,” said Nathaniel Weiner, who lives near the spot on Ninth Avenue where Moore settled several months ago, across the street from a Catholic school and next to a public library. Weiner passes the encampment several times a day, walking his kids to school, visiting the library and its tiny playground, or shopping at the Boudin bakery a block away.
Moore’s tent — which at one point was much larger — became an anchor for up to a half dozen other people who “made the curb their home,” Weiner said.
Some of these people brought barbecues, a beach umbrella, and even a dune buggy that sat on the pavement, Weiner said, creating a Burning Man-style party “in a quiet residential neighborhood where people are just trying to live their lives.”
While the free drug signs are new, Weiner remembers numerous others, including one with an expletive directed at the Police Department. Administrators at Star of the Sea Church had at one point implored Moore to take his signs down but were unsuccessful, said Peter Marlow, executive director for communications and media relations at the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Marlow attends mass at Star of the Sea on Geary Boulevard, feet from Moore’s makeshift hut.
“When I heard about it, I drove around the corner and I thought, ‘This has to be a social experiment,'” Marlow said. “It can’t be real.”
Alexandra Jansen said she avoids Moore’s block of Ninth Avenue when taking her kids to the library, noting that one of her neighbors feels inhibited from visiting the library at all.
Supervisor Connie Chan, who represents the Richmond, said her office has communicated with district police Capt. Chris Canning “about the situation which indicat(es) possible drug sales.” Chan is simultaneously working with the city’s homeless outreach team to offer services for people on Ninth Avenue.
Frustrated by run-ins with law enforcement who confiscated his belongings, Moore became increasingly confrontational. He has refused to move from the space he occupies on Ninth Avenue and characterized his interactions with city officials and police as skirmishes in an ongoing war. At least one of those encounters led to Moore’s arrest.
The advertisements for free fentanyl and meth marked an escalation. Residents snapped photos and posted them on social media, accusing Moore of bringing downtown street conditions to a quieter part of the city.
According to Moore, that was the point.
“It’s happening, right? Why can’t I do it?” he asked, referring to the narcotics trade. “Is this sacred ground?”
Marlow is exasperated.
“We want to have compassion,” he said, drawing a breath. “We want to pray for these homeless people and do what we can. But this is ridiculous. The parents are complaining. The students are seeing this. It’s outrageous.”
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