good evening. welcome to the whole story. conclusion i m anderson cooper. tonight brings us to one of the most beautiful and progressive cities in america. a city known for its social activism as well as it wealth, particularly in the tech world. it s home to the highest number of billionaires per captain in the country. but it s san francisco, in steep decline because of homelessness and drug use. more people died from drug overdoses in this city during the covid pandemic than from the virus itself. cnn s sara sidner heads to the bay area, a place she once called her home to show us what it looks like now and find out what happened to san francisco. so when i first laid eyes on san francisco, i was enchanted. from where i am right now, driving over the bay bridge, and it looked like someone had taken an enormous vat of fog and just continuously poured it over the hills, like dry ice being poured over a perfectly sculpted city on a stage. and then you get down into the cit
and soon, she says, got hooked on drugs. i ve been offered a room a couple of times, and each time i end up like slipping up, just because i don t make the curfews. back in 2020 and 2021, when the covid crisis shut down homeless shelters, the city turned to alternatives, like hotel rooms, trailers and tent sites like these where residents could isolate and quarantine. the city opened up some tenten campments that were kind of organized spaces, and that was very expensive. they were spending $70,000 per tent, per year. they have to bring in all the electricity. they have to bring in the bathrooms. they have to bring in the showers. most of those sites have closed down now. in the encampment, each tent costs anywhere between $60,000 and $80,000. if the city was just to give
experiencing homelessness in the city? it varies over the year, but at any one time it s about 8,000 people. and most of them are living unsheltered. there s a lot of criticism. you all face criticism, the city faces criticism. what do you say to people who are like, i don t want to see any of this, i don t want to see a part of the city. throw them out. sweep the streets and don t let people live like this. it s understandable, especially for the amount of money people pay to live here. here s the thing. this is kaylee s second time staying at this sleeping site. last year, she took the housing that was offered but wound up
you $60,000 and say here s this, what would you do with it? for myself, probably i d probably go and buy more tents for folks and sleeping bags. but what about your ?owtion could you not afford something in the city for that? here s the thing. first, last, and deposit is crazy. and there s nothing like affordable in this city right now. coming up, more on those $60,000 tents for the homeless. all the things i feel inside when i see my mother s eyes love is always in her smile there is no home like a mom celebrate the mom in your life. choose from our collection of gift sets starting at $99.
the that has happen thiepped city. what did you mean by that? people who were selling drugs all over a particular neighborhood in broad daylight and people who were shooting up in broad daylight and nothing was really being done. at one point, there were far more deaths due to drug everydoses than there were covid deaths. yes. in this city. yes. why is it that drug problems being treated like the epidemic that it is? the emergency that it is, similar to covid. i pushed to declare a state of emergency in san francisco. looking at the data of what was happening as relates to the number of people who were dying from overdoses, and, in fact, the emergency declaration was really about trying to not only staff up aggressively, but more importantly, to set up the kinds of structures that we need in order to make sure we re there to provide