George Smyth lay dead in a blue planter when staff from his homeless shelter found him.
His hand clutched a plastic straw he’d used to smoke drugs. A small bag filled with the meth and fentanyl that killed him was within reach. Even four doses of Narcan, an overdose antidote, weren’t enough to save him, the death report states.
Smyth’s death in January 2024 was one of the first in a continuing wave of overdoses near the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center, a type of homeless shelter that opened in 2019. The block around the center now sees more ODs than almost any other part of the city, The Standard’s analysis of Fire Department data found.
Paramedics have responded to at least 63 overdoses on the shelter’s block since January 2024, the data show. That’s more than anywhere in the city except Sixth Street between Market and Mission, a corridor known for drug dealing and use, and Eddy Street between Leavenworth and Hyde.
Shelter staff counted 15 overdoses inside the Embarcadero facility at 555 Beale St. in 2023, 17 in 2024, and nine in the first three months of this year, more than doubling last year’s pace. Fire Department data says overdoses began spiking in the general area in March of last year.
Between 2018 and 2023, United Nations Plaza was the most frequent location for overdose calls. But after police increased their presence in the plaza, the crisis escalated around Sixth Street and the Embarcadero, data show. Residents around the 16th Street BART plaza have also noted an increase of drug activity.
It’s unclear what’s causing the surge of overdoses on the waterfront. But the Embarcadero shelter is just one of many homeless facilities that are in crisis as officials attempt to expand the city’s bed capacity. Frontline staff say conditions inside are harrowing. And clients say the chaotic environment makes it more difficult to escape homelessness and addiction.
Gary Hardeman said he was fired last week from Five Keys, which runs the Embarcadero shelter, for subduing a volatile client at a Tenderloin shelter. Having worked at multiple sites, Hardeman said the Embarcadero center stands out because a large share of its clients suffer from mental illness.
“It was becoming more of an insane asylum,” he said. “Every time I was there, I came across someone who was off the wall.”
The homelessness department maintains that increasing crisis levels inside the shelters don’t necessarily correspond with an uptick in crime around the buildings. It previously provided data showing reported crime has decreased around the Embarcadero site since it opened in 2019.
However, Hardeman said he and his fellow staff members were unequipped to handle mental health cases inside the facility, noting that workers don’t always feel empowered to confiscate drugs.
Hardeman reversed more than a dozen overdoses over four years, he said. His first attempt — which occurred while he was working at the Hotel Whitcomb during the pandemic — resulted in a man’s death.
“It tore me apart,” he recalled. “I knew this man; I had been working with him on a daily basis.”
Of the overdoses at the Embarcadero site, Smyth was the only death, according to medical examiner data. Another homeless man named Matias Riojas died just outside the shelter in January 2023. Attempts to reach relatives of Smyth and Riojas for comment were unsuccessful.
Steve Good, CEO of Five Keys, said the surge of overdoses in and around the facility is likely tied to an influx of clients transferred there in 2023. The site, which had 88 clients in 2020, now has 200, according to the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. The number of yearly overdose calls around the site multiplied by 11 between 2022 and 2024.
When The Standard visited in March, a group of seven shelter clients were using drugs and drinking across the street from the facility. They said staff had allowed drug use inside the shelter’s courtyard until just a few weeks earlier.
The clients say they’re now required to store their drug paraphernalia with staff upon entering the shelter; because of this, they roam the neighborhood to use.
“It’s going to be even worse,” said Mike Bartels, who’d been staying at the shelter for roughly five months. “Before, we had a safe place to do it.”
Good denied that drug use was ever allowed in the facility.
The homelessness department said that Five Keys employees have started conducting hourly checks of the shelter’s perimeter and outreach teams are partnering with the Department of Public Health to distribute Narcan. The health department said it aims to soon expand ongoing mental health services in shelters through its teams of mobile nurses.
Jonathan Butler, who sits on the Homelessness Oversight Commission, said he’s encouraged by a recent increase in collaboration between city departments. Still, he said, San Francisco needs to further invest in around-the-clock mental healthcare for homeless people.
“Shelters weren’t built to handle these crises,” Butler said. “Especially all at once.”