Read Mission Local often?

Help grow our newsroom , joining the hundreds of San Franciscans who support us by giving below. Donate today!

Mayor Daniel Lurie said in April that “hiring caseworkers and clinicians” to staff San Francisco’s shelter and treatment beds is a priority . Filling the ranks of those front-line city workers is crucial to Lurie’s repeated promises to clean up the streets.

But at the city’s only free, in-person addiction and recovery counseling certification program, housed at City College, there are waitlists for nearly every class. Graduates of the program can take an exam to become state-certified substance use disorder counselors — the exact people Lurie says San Francisco needs — but City College isn’t pumping out a battalion of counselors.

Why not? Money,

See Full Page