by Randy Shaw on November 12, 2024 (BeyondChron.org)
SF converts Tenderloin tourist hotels to shelters
A Fresh New Opportunity to Revitalize Tenderloin, Lower Polk
Incoming mayor Daniel Lurie, new D5 supervisor Bilal Mahmood and incoming D3 supervisor Danny Sauter have a great opportunity to revive San Francisco’s Tenderloin and Lower Polk neighborhoods.
It’s time for a Tenderloin Comeback. The road to revitalization went off track in 2020. City Hall must return to boosting rather than weakening the neighborhood.
The election of new leadership came at a pivotal time. The Breed Administration is rushing to finalize the longterm conversion of two Tenderloin tourist hotels into homeless shelters. The Monarch at 1015 Geary and Adante at 610 Geary are among four Tenderloin area tourist hotels the city uses as shelters.
These conversions have badly hurt the Tenderloin and lower Polk. Our new mayor and supervisors should hold off this process until they can hear community input. The city also must undertake the economic impact analysis critical to both neighborhood’s future.
City Hall applies different rules in the Tenderloin. These four conversion occurred without any neighborhood input or public debate.
None.
Now the city wants to extend leases without assessing the economic impacts of converting tourist hotels to shelters on the Tenderloin and Lower Polk neighborhoods. That’s a big mistake.
As I previously described—“SF’s Failed Shelter Policies Exposed at Cova Hotel,”July 15, 2024— City Hall’s shelter conversion program has undermined public safety and small businesses in and around Little Saigon. The financially expensive program incentivizes people to remain homeless.
After all, why pay rent for a permanent supportive housing unit lacking a private bathroom when you can stay for years in a room with private bath rent free? And get two meals a day from the city?
This shelter conversion program may be be the city’s single most counterproductive public policy among many bad ones. San Francisco is spending millions of dollars discouraging the unhoused from paying rent.
HSH has set a zoom meeting on the extensions for November 20. Community members want the process to be put off until January, after Lurie, Mahmood and Sauter take office.
No Data, No Policy Discussion
Little Saigon and other Tenderloin-area restaurants need tourist business. Yet the city is removing this customer base.
Chris Schulman of the Lower Polk Community Benefits District wonders why an economic impact analysis has not been made. “The impact of converting tourist hotels to shelters in the Lower Polk neighborhood goes beyond hiring street ambassadors. It has major economic impacts on our small businesses. These impacts should be studied before the city rushes to convert these hotels.”
Amanda Michael, owner of the popular Jane on Larkin, agrees that the process should be put on hold until new elected leadership takes office. “They should definitely wait until January. The city must do an economic analysis of the impact on neighborhood businesses of replacing these tourist hotels with shelters.”
Kevin Miller, who lives near the Monarch, cannot understand the city’s ignoring community input. “This site was originally approved during Covid for emergency shelter. The city was able to bypass all the regular process. No planning department analysis, no public notice etc.”
Jamie Flanagan of the Phoenix Hotel and Tenderloin Business Coalition stated, “Continuing to consolidate public health services in the TL only exacerbates the de facto Containment Zone policy that has beleaguered our district for years. We need a more balanced approach. Too often, these projects get rushed through without considering the broader impacts on our community.”
Danny Ngo, owner of the Bo&Beurre sandwich shop at the entry to Little Saigon at 606 Eddy Street, also questioned why one part of the city gets so many services. “I get the city is in a rough state but condensing every homeless problem into just the area of Tenderloin is not helping anyone or anything.”
Kate Robinson, Executive Director of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District (TLCBD), agreed: “the process for evaluating lease extension should be put on hold until January.”
The Monarch Hotel at 1015 is across the street from the massive multi-service shelter at 1001 Geary. What happens when you put two large shelters across from each other? See the vacant retail businesses on Polk between Geary and Post for your answer. It’s a negative neighborhood impact the current city administration ignores.
City Hall also added two shelters virtually next door to each other on Ellis and Larkin. The drug activities nearby decimated adjacent Little Saigon.
Do San Franciscans believe that putting two large shelters next to each other in a residential neighborhood makes sense? I don’t think so.
The Tenderloin Needs a Caring Mayor
The Tenderloin was soaring toward revival when Mayor Breed took office in 2018. I detail this progress in my book on the neighborhood’s rich history.
But soon after Mayor Breed took office City Hall allowed open air drug markets to freely operate in the neighborhood. After Covid arrived in March 2020 the city allowed ongoing violations of federal and local health laws in the Tenderloin. UC Law SF had to file a federal lawsuit to stop these violations, which a federal court enjoined.
The city then opened the Tenderloin Linkage Center, which encouraged open air drug markets in the area. Tenderloin drug markets continue to this day (check out the 300 block of Hyde).
The conversion of Tenderloin tourist hotels to shelters–a strategy only being used in the Tenderloin—must be understood in this context. It is part of the current administration’s larger plan to convert the Tenderloin from a family neighborhood of small businesses into a permanent drug containment zone. Last March families filed a new federal lawsuit against the city to stop this. The federal judge has rejected the City Attorney’s efforts to dismiss the case.
Many Available Sites in Other Neighborhoods
While HSH unilaterally converted four tourist hotels in the Tenderloin into shelters—1015 Geary, the Adante at 610 Geary, the Cova and the former tourist hotel at 685 Ellis—it stopped using tourist hotels for shelters in other parts of the city.
Many of these tourist hotels on 7th Street, Lombard Street, and other areas outside the Tenderloin wanted to remain shelters. But the city was only interested in continuing these conversions in or next to the Tenderloin.
Many hotels outside the Tenderloin and Lower Polk neighborhoods. have since offered their accommodations to the city for use as shelters. But City Hall prefers to keep saturating the Tenderloin.
Our new mayor and supervisors need to stop this.
A Zoom Meeting for the Tenderloin
HSH has set a zoom meeting on ten-year extensions for the Monarch and Adante Hotels for November 20.
Does anyone believe that zoom is an effective communication method for Tenderloin residents and small businesses? What is HSH doing here?
I’ve had personal experience with Mayor Breed telling me that we need to have door to door notification for a permanent drug free SRO at two different locations in North Beach. Why hasn’t that happened regarding the shelter conversions in the Tenderloin? We do not even have the basic standard mailing to all potential property owners, residents or business owners in the Tenderloin and Lower Polk.
I believe Daniel Lurie, D5’s Bilal Mahmood and D3’s Danny Sauter recognize the problem here. They need to ask the mayor to defer any decision about 1015 Geary and the lease extension of any other Tenderloin area tourist hotel until they take office. They need the opportunity to meet with constituents before the city moves forward approving a ten-year shelter lease.
No shelter resident is at risk of losing their temporary home. Not only do these four hotels want to keep the city money coming, but there are hotels in other neighborhoods whose properties have already been inspected and approved by the city. If new city leadership wants to keep the current program, shelter residents of the current hotels could easily be transferred to other lodgings.
San Francisco just voted for change. The Tenderloin Comeback is part of this. The Comeback starts with our new mayor and D5 and D3 Supervisors re-establishing a City Hall that listens to the Tenderloin.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including 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. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco
