Meet Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit that contracts with the city to provide street-level intervention in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, SoMa, and the Mission. Their workers administer Narcan, de-escalate mental health crises, keep sidewalks passable for businesses, and connect people experiencing homelessness with services. As one SF resident put it, they "hang around to help people out, provide information, make sure they're safe, administer Narcan, help make sure they don't get too feisty around businesses, help handle mental health crises" — basically, they do a lot of the work we might expect city agencies to handle.

And that's where it gets interesting.

Urban Alchemy has received tens of millions in city contracts over the past few years. The organization hires many formerly incarcerated individuals — a genuinely admirable workforce model that gives people a second chance while putting boots on the ground in neighborhoods that desperately need them. On the surface, it's one of the more sensible things San Francisco spends money on.

But here's the question taxpayers should be asking: what are the measurable outcomes? San Francisco has a long, expensive history of funding nonprofits to address homelessness and public safety with very little accountability for results. The Tenderloin remains one of the most dangerous and drug-saturated neighborhoods in America despite years of intervention spending that would make a Pentagon auditor blush.

The green vests are a band-aid — arguably a useful one — on a wound that city leadership has failed to close. They exist because SFPD is understaffed, because the mental health system is broken, and because the city prefers to outsource hard problems to nonprofits rather than make tough policy decisions about enforcement, treatment, and shelter mandates.

So yes, the green vests are the good guys. But their very necessity is an indictment of a system that keeps spending more and delivering less. San Francisco doesn't need more vests. It needs results.