![]() Mayor London Breed, along with many residents, businesses and community leaders in the Tenderloin and Mid-Market neighborhoods, praise Urban Alchemy for making streets cleaner and safer. It was along the lines of the right answer - don’t be confrontational. “I’ll say, ‘Have a good day, sir,’” the trainee responded. “What are you going to say,” Hammonds asked, “when someone comes at you like this and calls you a snitch-ass motherf-ing police?” He put his face within a foot of one of the 16 new hires. ![]() In a Market street building, Louie Hammonds - a former gang member who served 21 years in prison for attempted murder and is now Urban Alchemy’s chief of training - role-played scenarios on the streets. That goal was the focus of a recent training for new employees that The Chronicle attended. “What we’re trying to do,” co-founder and CEO Lena Miller said in an interview, “is just make spaces safe and clean and raise the vibration, so to speak, in areas that in the past have been dirty and scary, particularly for people who are vulnerable.” The nonprofit’s unusual slogan is “No fuckery.” The group sells its service as partly spiritual, with a goal of “transforming the energy of traumatized urban spaces.” Employees are known inside the organization as practitioners. The city’s homeless services department said shelters run by Urban Alchemy have had few issues and that the organization has met the terms of its contracts. The city has also signed $53 million in contracts with Urban Alchemy to run eight homeless shelters and help staff the city’s new Tenderloin Linkage Center near City Hall, where people can connect to services. In San Francisco, the organization is being paid $11.8 million over two years to work in the Tenderloin - including $3 million from UC Hastings College of the Law, which is located in the neighborhood. The nonprofit sees its mission as partly spiritual, with a goal of “transforming the energy of traumatized urban spaces.” Stephen Lam/The Chronicle Louie Hammonds, chief of training for Urban Alchemy, instructs new employees on the outreach program. Since 2018, Urban Alchemy has grown to 1,100 employees in five cities, with projected revenue of $55 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, records show. So far, cities are willing to take the risks. And outsourcing government functions to nonprofits can make it more difficult for the public to evaluate whether spending is achieving results. Some critics accuse the workers - who are not state-licensed as private security guards - of improperly policing public spaces. ![]() Two employees have been shot on the job in San Francisco since February, illustrating that they can be thrown into dangerous situations. Starting salaries are less than half those of sworn police officers.īut the group’s rapid growth has brought challenges. A majority of employees are people of color, and some have been homeless. The organization represents a test of new models of public safety that San Francisco and other cities across the country are embracing.Ĭities have hired Urban Alchemy because they see unique potential in its strategy, simultaneously employing people who typically struggle to get hired while reducing the role of armed officers amid a movement for police reform.
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