by Randy Shaw on January 5, 2026 (BeyondChron.org)
A Make or Break Year
I have seen a lot of ups and downs in my 46 years working in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. And as my new book on the neighborhood describes, past forecasts for the Tenderloin’s revitalization have gone astray.
Consider the 1986 opening of a Sizzler restaurant at the Cadillac Hotel. It seemed to signal the Tenderloin’s economic revival. It followed six transformative years for a longtime prosperous neighborhood that fell on hard times in the 1960’s.
The Tenderloin’s future looked bright.
But City Hall failed to protect this momentum. After the Sizzler opened City Hall allowed the neighborhood to decline. Economic investment abruptly stopped. Federal money coming to the Tenderloin under the Reagan budgets was slashed. Sidewalk drug activities increased.
Seven years of progress soon stopped. The Tenderloin remained stagnant until 2005, when Elaine Zamora won property owner support for creating the Tenderloin Community Benefit District (TLCBD). The TLCBD brought new resources into the neighborhood. It sent a message that property owners cared about its future.
I began refocusing on reviving the Tenderloin after the TLCBD’s passage. Believing the Tenderloin should play to its strengths, I got city funds from a special historical committee to create the Uptown Tenderloin National Historic District (thanks to the late GG Platt). Finalized in 2009, the District includes 409 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Tenderloin then got lucky when Ed Lee was appointed mayor in 2011 (Gavin Newsom was elected Lieutenant Governor). Lee was a great friend and ally for the Tenderloin. Lee’s Tenderloin/Mid-Market tax break and constant public boosting of the neighborhood brought a flurry of positive new businesses and cultural venues.
The Tenderloin Museum opened in 2015. The Black Cat Jazz Supper Club and Onsen Bath and Restaurant soon followed. Turtle Tower bought a building on Larkin. Little Saigon was booming like never before.
New housing developments would bring the resident customer base that Tenderloin businesses needed. Four large developments bordered Mid-Market, also reviving after decades of neglect. The two neighborhoods long had a shared fortune (See my story for SPUR, “ Linked Fortunes: Mid-Market and the Uptown Tenderloin”)
In January 2020—“A Tenderloin Breakthrough in 2020?”—I listed several new investments that would improve the neighborhood. I did not foresee how COVID’s arrival in March would halt these plans. Nor did I foresee City Hall making a series of destructive policy decisions designed to convert the Tenderloin from a residential neighborhood on the rise to a drug-containment zone.
2026: A Tipping Point
Six years after COVID reversed the Tenderloin’s progress, the neighborhood is at a tipping point. Here’s the good news.
New businesses are starting to take advantage of city subsidy programs. A Falafel restaurant opened on Golden Gate and in January a tea shop and micro cinema will use city support to open at the entry to Little Saigon. New Police Chief Derrick Lew has a record of prioritizing closing drug markets.
The revised Tenderloin Police Station boundaries will begin by June. This will increase police visibility in the Tenderloin neighborhood (the radically expanded 2015 boundaries were predicted to increase Tenderloin crime and they did). Tenderloin Housing Clinic Organizing Director Pratibha Tekkey became the first neighborhood advocate to sit on the Police Commission.
By March 31 the city will end its destructive conversions of the Monarch and Adante tourist hotels to shelters. No City Hall policy did more to wreck Little Saigon than the conversion of four nearby tourist hotels to shelters that allow drug use (the COVA and 685 Ellis are the others). The city spent lavishly to replace tourists who were Little Saigon customers with shelter residents who got free meals.
Shelter residents don’t stay in their rooms all day. Many openly used drugs on Little Saigon sidewalks. I wrote a story in November 2023—-“While City Fiddles, Little Saigon Falls.” Yet City Hall took no action to stop the destruction of Little Saigon until it closed the COVA shelter in February 2025.
The city-promoted drug scene killed many Little Saigon businesses. It is a flat out tragedy.
Reviving Little Saigon
Efforts have emerged to revive Little Saigon.
I’ve been involved with legislation to bring tourists back to Little Saigon. It should be introduced this month. There’s also talk of a public private investment partnership to revitalize Larkin Street. 2026 could prove a comeback year for the once thriving Little Saigon area.
Adding to the good news is the planned expansion of the Tenderloin Museum. It will triple in size! The Museum plays a key role in attracting people to the Tenderloin. Venues that did this pre-COVID—like Piano Fight, Turtle Tower and Exit Theater—are no longer in the neighborhood. The museum’s exhibition space at 398 Eddy and its Compton’s Cafeteria Riot play at 835 Larkin has likely made it the Tenderloin’s leading cultural attraction for tourists and non-residents.
My hope in founding the museum was that, in addition to highlighting the Tenderloin’s remarkable lost history, it would bring people into the Tenderloin to patronize other venues. The expanded space with two new exhibits of national interest—one for neon signs and another tracing the Indian-American hotel industry whose roots are in the neighborhood- will facilitate this.
The Tenderloin Brand
The city’s failure to end the extreme post-COVID sidewalk drug use has badly damaged the Tenderloin’s brand. Restoring the Tenderloin’s reputation requires the public seeing drug-filled sidewalks in the neighborhood as the exception, not the norm.
Can this finally happen in 2026? I think it can for three reasons.
First, in addition to the positive developments mentioned above, Mayor Lurie still believes in the Tenderloin’s future. The mayor does not want the Tenderloin to be a drug containment zone.
Second, David Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention & Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, should soon bring his talents to the Tenderloin (and other neighborhoods with drug markets). Kennedy is known for closing drug markets across the nation. D6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey has spent two years trying to get Kennedy here and the obstacles seem to be gone. The Tenderloin will benefit from his expertise.
Third, San Francisco hosts two major events this year—the Super Bowl and World Cup—that will attract media from across the world. Mayor Lurie wants their stories to focus on the city’s Comeback, not its drug-filled sidewalks.
While there is always a risk that major events push drug users into the Tenderloin, the neighborhood improved around APIC in 2023. These events are far bigger than APIC.
Which Way for Tenderloin?
If the Tenderloin does not improve in 2026 many will give up on the neighborhood. Instead of a working-class neighborhood filled with immigrants and children who deserve a safe quality of life, it will be seen as San Francisco’s dumping ground for those with drug and mental health problems. The “geographic equity” measure that the Board passed in 2025 does not apply to non-city funded programs. If small businesses don’t open in the Tenderloin in 2026, nonprofit service providers will fill retail spaces.
I’m betting on 2026 returning the Tenderloin to its rosy 2019 path. But nobody with experience in the Tenderloin takes anything for granted.
Randy Shaw will be discussing The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco at Glide Church on Sunday, January 11 at 1pm. Join us for the talk and book signing! All proceeds go to support the Tenderloin Museum.
Randy Shaw
<I>Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. </I>
