For years, San Francisco deli owner and community advocate Adam Mesnick has been demanding a public debate with Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness. Mesnick’s home and business are located in the city’s beleaguered South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood, and he runs an X account, @bettersoma, to call attention to the city’s humanitarian crisis and document the encampments and sickness, blight and criminal activity, garbage and human waste—and most importantly, the thousands of deaths, overwhelmingly due to drug overdose.
