It’s been nearly two months since the RESET Center opened on Sixth Street in SoMa. The facility, pitched as an alternative to jails and hospitals that would allow police to get drug users off the street, has admitted around 600 people since it opened its doors May 4. Now the sheriff’s office is starting to plan similar facilities in other parts of the city.

“We came into this thinking that this would just be the beginning of a long-term plan, where we would have additional resources and centers like this,” Sheriff Paul Miyamoto said. 

Miyamoto said the center — the name is short for Rapid Enforcement, Support, Evaluation, and Triage — has helped people under the influence avoid jail, saved sheriff’s deputies time and paperwork, and reduced the number of people they process through booking. Nearly 30% of those who have passed through the center have accepted referrals to longer-term care, his office said.

“We want to kind of duplicate that success in other areas of the city over time, but again, you know, it’s budget season now, and everything’s under scrutiny,” Miyamoto said. He added that his office has not requested funding for additional locations, but “we’re all of the opinion that we could use another one of these centers.”

The RESET Center represents San Francisco’s latest attempt to get drug users help without the threat of incarceration, but questions remain about whether the approach is connecting people to treatment and care or recycling them back to the streets.

The unlocked Sixth Street center doesn’t have cells or beds, just a collection of leather recliners where clients can sit while they sober up. When they’re ready to leave, they can walk out the front door, a sheriff’s spokesperson said before the center opened. Communications Director Tara Moriarty later clarified that “if someone chooses to leave, they may be subject to rearrest and booked into the county jail.”

Miyamoto said he was not aware of anyone who was brought back to the center within 48 hours of being released, though Moriarty did confirm the department has transferred six people from the RESET Center to jail. Miyamoto added that most people entering the center are not repeat offenders; about 17% of the 767 admissions had been there before. A few dozen others were brought to the center but not admitted because of violent or erratic behavior. 

For a nearby retail business, the outcome has been better than expected. 

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“It’s not as ‘hoopla’ as we thought it would be,” said an employee of the store who asked to remain anonymous. “They come in through the back and leave through the front, refreshed.”

But one episode stayed with the retail workers. After a young woman was released, they saw her a block away, “naked, on the street, crying because she didn’t have any drugs.” 

Justice Dumlao, an advocate with the harm reduction-focused Treatment on Demand Coalition and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, raised questions about the center’s referral stats. “I’m not sure if that referral means handing someone a pamphlet, scheduling someone a meeting, or driving them to the place where that service is being provided,” they said. “In my head, a successful referral is scheduling an appointment for somebody and making sure that the program staff know how to get involved.”

Moriarty said the Sheriff’s Office provides client transportation to other facilities via the taxi service Flywheel.

Dumlao said city funding for homelessness response services can feel like a zero-sum game and worried that dedicating more of the city budget to additional RESET Centers would mean defunding harm-reduction programs, some of which face cuts in the soon-to-be-finalized budget for fiscal 2027.

“I don’t think we need more RESET Centers,” Dumlao said. “These are issues that require a really sensitive approach and take time in order to determine whether they are effective or not.”