After meth lab found in San Francisco hotel for homeless and those in COVID-19 quarantine, journalist decries 'chaotic, horrible mess'

After woke San Francisco officials thought it would be a good idea to use hotels to house the homeless along with those in COVID-19 quarantine, a meth lab recently was discovered in one of the hotels — and a journalist covering the issue told Fox News' Tucker Carlson on Wednesday that it's turned into a "chaotic, horrible mess."

What's the background?

The city contracted with hotels to provide rooms and meals under its Shelter in Place program for those at risk for COVID-19, who need to be quarantined, or who have no home, KTVU-TV reported.

Problem is, a strong chemical odor was coming from a room at the Civic Center Motor Inn about 2:30 p.m. Saturday, the station said, after which police arrested two registered guests of the hotel who were suspected of operating a low-level meth lab there.

City Journal contributor Erica Sandberg has been covering the issue for a while, writing back in June that the city's plan to put homeless people in hotels was "not going well."

So, on the heels of the meth lab discovery, Sandberg appeared on Carlson's Wednesday show and decried San Francisco's "complete disaster" of a program.

"People were given rooms," she told Carlson. "Unfortunately, they were also given a tremendous amount of drug paraphernalia."

Sandberg noted that homeless were given "everything from needles, to meth pipes, crack pipes, [and] foil to smoke fentanyl with," it wasn't long before it all became a "chaotic, horrible mess."

"It didn't have to be that way," Sandberg added to Carlson. "In fact, what we could have done is use these hotels as sober places. They could have been places for recovery, [to address] mental health issues, but instead it was the opposite. So it turned out to be a complete disaster."

Anything else?

When the meth lab was busted, a hotel guest named Samantha told KTVU a police officer knocked on her hotel room door: "I was just like shocked. He's like, 'There's a meth lab right above your room so we need you to evacuate cause it could explode at any time.'"

A man who wanted to be identified only as Sami who works at a nearby business added to the station that he "would like for the government to have a bit more of monitoring of the space. I do see that a place like this can be abused to be used for those kind of activities."

Quite a few headline-grabbing issues have found their way of late to the City by the Bay:

• Last month a San Francisco supervisor introduced the "CAREN Act" — an ordinance that would criminalize racially motivated 911 calls.
• Also in July, the city's police department said it would no longer release mug shots of arrested individuals — unless they pose a threat to public safety — over concerns of perpetuating racial bias.
• In May, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott banned officers from wearing "thin blue line" face masks since the symbol — typically seen on flags — is associated with Blue Lives Matter, which was created in reaction to Black Lives Matter.
• And in January, the city's new district attorney Chesa Boudin — an unabashed socialist — after just two days on the job fired seven prosecutors, many of them seasoned veterans who have worked to get violent criminals off the streets.