Clinic workers, labor leaders, and their allies will be heading to City Hall Monday to advocate for the preservation of the Tenderloin’s Michael Baxter Clinic within local organization Larkin Street Youth Services, as well as two other San Francisco clinics that also appear to be facing closure soon. The loss would be a blow to a particularly vulnerable population, they say, making it harder for them to get essential services.
Shutting down the Michael Baxter Clinic, in particular, would be “devastating … for the youth in the Tenderloin,” said Lisa Cadillo, a medical evaluation assistant who works there, in a letter outlining her concerns. To clients, the clinic is a refuge and vital resource for medical and mental health care. Cadillo shared the letter with community members and media, including the Tenderloin Voice. We’re publishing the full letter later in this story.
If members of the public want to express their opinions about the impending closures, they should attend the April 20 meeting of the Public Health Commission and comment on the record to city officials. The meeting starts at 3 p.m. in room 408 of City Hall. The commission moved its start time from 4 p.m. to handle other business before what is expected to be a high volume of public comment on the health department’s proposed budget. Issues like clinic closures will be considered during the budget discussion, which is Item 4 on the agenda.
Remote public comment is available, but only to those who have requested and been granted accommodations by noon on the day of the meeting. Written public comment can be emailed to the commission before the hearing; written comments of 150 words or fewer can be included in the meeting minutes.
Details of the meeting and how to comment are available here.
Reporting from Mission Local and the Bay Area Reporter indicates that the closures are in response to $40 million in budget cuts over the next two years at the Department of Public Health, requested last month by Mayor Daniel Lurie, who is trying to zero out a citywide budget deficit in the hundreds of millions.
Cadillo wrote the letter after she and others were blindsided by the prospect of the closures. In it, she suggested the city restore funding for the clinic by using money that had been set aside in case San Francisco lost a lawsuit against vacation rental giant Airbnb. The company, which sought to recover $120 million in taxes that it claimed to have overpaid, dropped its lawsuit on the matter in March.
The closure “abandons a group of young people who already fall through every crack,” Cadillo wrote in her letter. The Michael Baxter Clinic offers walk-in services like wound care and sexual health services, along with harm-reduction and mental health support, to unhoused and marginally housed people between the ages of 12 and 24.
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The health department told Mission Local that the closures will not cause gaps in care, but Cadillo seemed skeptical. “There is no guarantee — and in many cases, little likelihood — that they will successfully transfer to other clinics or hospital systems, especially those that are already overburdened and not built with their specific needs in mind,” she wrote. At the Michael Baxter Clinic, she wrote, young people can expect to be treated with respect, and without judgment. They know the staff, who have built trust with them over time.
Her letter urges the health department to come up with a plan to make sure patient care is not interrupted or abruptly ended.
The Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents many government workers, including some staff who would be reassigned from the clinics slated to shutter, has joined the effort to stave off the closures. Representatives have said they will be present at the Monday meeting.
Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, who represents the Tenderloin, emailed a statement to Gazetteer indicating he also had concerns about the closure of the clinic and had shared these with Lurie’s office.
I'm a journalist who has covered San Francisco and the Bay Area in writing, audio and video for about a decade; started and hosted a few podcasts; and co-founded News Relay Network, publisher of the Tenderloin Voice. Reach me at laura@tlvoice.org.
