by Randy Shaw on February 10, 2025 (BeyondChron.org)
City Hall wrecked Little Saigon
City Hall Must Offer Positive Economic Strategy
Mayor Daniel Lurie is aggressively moving to combat fentanyl and end open air drug markets and drug tourism. Success in this effort is essential for revitalizing the Tenderloin economy. While drug activities remain rampant on some Tenderloin blocks, the mayor’s legislative package should soon show results.
But the Tenderloin’s challenges go beyond sidewalk drug use. Six years of the prior administration using the Tenderloin as a drug containment zone caused many businesses to close. Others are on the ropes. Mayor Lurie’s team needs to develop a plan that keeps longtime Tenderloin businesses afloat while attracting new businesses to the neighborhood.
City Hall must go from wrecking the Tenderloin economy to reviving it.
City Hall is spending millions on programs in the Tenderloin that reduce the neighborhood’s core customer base: tourists. In no other neighborhood did City Hall convert tourist hotels to shelters post-COVID—yet four tourist hotels were converted in the Tenderloin.
The Tenderloin’s other core customer base—government workers—has been reduced by work at home policies and years of drug dealing on the blocks in and around Little Saigon. The prior administration’s policies wrecked Little Saigon—the Tenderloin needs Mayor Lurie to work with businesses to revive the once thriving area.
The Tenderloin is not Hayes Valley, whose affluent residents can keep restaurants thriving. The Tenderloin has depended for over a century on people coming from outside the neighborhood to patronize businesses (a point made in my new book updating the Tenderloin’s history to 2025).
Only the Tenderloin had the city purchase an historic grocery store at 822 Geary (its last use was as a Goodwill) so it could be converted to a 24-hour drop in center for those in extreme mental health crisis. No other neighborhood has had facilities with negative business impacts opened without a single community meeting.
The economic impact of replacing tourists with the unhoused in multiple buildings has never been studied. The prior administration refused to undertake such a study. But you don’t need a PhD in economics to know that tourists have money to patronize local restaurants, cafes and entertainment venues and the unhoused typically don’t (they get two free meals a day so are even less likely to patronize nearby restaurants).
The Tenderloin needs tourists. That’s why any economic development strategy for the Tenderloin must stop the conversions to shelters of the Monarch and Adante tourist hotels. And the tourist hotel at 685 Ellis next to Little Saigon that the city purchased should be permanent housing, not continue as a shelter
No other 33 block residentially-zoned neighborhood in San Francisco was turned into a drug containment zone by the prior mayor and current police chief. They cost hard-working Tenderloin businesses hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. City Hall policies are chiefly responsible for the business losses suffered in the neighborhood.
Including Tenderloin in Downtown Plan
Ned Segal, Lurie’s Economic Development Policy Chief, is focused on strategies to revive downtown. Its essential that the Tenderloin be included in these plans.
Is the Tenderloin part of downtown? The SF Chronicle had a story last week about “hundreds of federal workers about to flood downtown.” The accompanying photo showed the Federal Building at 50 UN Plaza, whose backside is in the Tenderloin.
City Hall has long connected the Tenderloin to downtown when it suits its interest. For example, the Tenderloin is the only residentially-zoned district not to have resident permit parking throughout; parking rates for the low-income neighborhood are similar to downtown.
The Tenderloin parallels the traditional downtown area in being extremely connected to BART, MUNI and other mass transit. Nearly all retail in both areas is on the ground floor.
If the mayor’s downtown plan excludes the Tenderloin, what plans does Mayor Lurie have to revive a neighborhood toward which he has expressed fond feelings? The Tenderloin has had among the biggest sales tax declines of any neighborhood; shouldn’t that merit mayoral attention?
Mayors Impact the Tenderloin
As I show in the just-released updated edition of my book, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime, and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco; 2nd Edition, the mayor of San Francisco has an enormous impact on the Tenderloin. Unfortunately, in recent years this impact has been negative. I express hope in the book that Mayor Lurie will follow the model of Mayor Ed Lee, whose commitment to the neighborhood’s economic revitalization stands out from all his predecessors.
I know from walking past closed storefronts in Little Saigon with candidate Lurie that he shares the community’s desire for revitalization. He knows the Tenderloin deserves better.
Now Mayor Lurie must use his power to make a positive difference for the neighborhood.
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 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.
New Book Highlights Challenging Decade for SF and the Tenderloin
by Randy Shaw on February 10, 2025 (BeyondChron.org)
10 Years That Changed San Francisco
In 2015, San Francisco was booming. So was the Tenderloin neighborhood. With strong backing from Mayor Ed Lee it was making great progress toward becoming a safe and healthy community. My book, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco, came out that year. It coincided with the opening of the Tenderloin Museum, which I spent several years working to establish.
San Francisco and the Tenderloin are very different in 2025. COVID and open-air drug markets dramatically impacted both. This, along with the Tenderloin Museum’s 10th Anniversary, led me to update and revise my 2015 book to account for the major changes of the past decade.
These changes include: a shift from Mayors Ed Lee to London Breed, COVID and its impacts, the once unimaginable decline in office workers and tourism, and sharp increases in public camping and drug activities. My book addresses issues that will shape San Francisco for years to come. I discuss when the city’s open air drug crisis actually began and why it continues through today. San Francisco’s failure to end open air drug markets has cost the city dearly. I show how COVID is not primarily to blame.
The book contains many new photos (along with the 118 in the original edition), including the billboards that remind us that activists recognized well before City Hall how badly the drug trade was hurting San Francisco’s citywide economy. Instead of closing drug markets, City Hall focused on using the Tenderloin and nearby areas as a drug “containment zone.”
The book describes how Mayor Lurie adopted this broader understanding of the drug trade’s negative impact and got elected mayor. And in his short time as mayor has prioritized closing open air drug markets and ending drug tourism, two problems his predecessor failed to solve.
The book is now available for purchase from the Tenderloin Museum, which will receive all net sale proceeds. You can learn more and purchase the book through this link.
Check out last week’s great KQED story on the Museum’ Tenth Anniversary and expansion plans.
The Museum will celebrate the new edition with a book release event on February 27 at 5:30pm at the Tenderloin Museum. It’s a great chance to enjoy the museum, hear about my book, and pick up a signed copy. You can register to attend in person or via zoom here.
Readers, don’t give up on the Tenderloin’s future. The neighborhood’s long history of success and my 45 years working in the community tells me that much brighter days are ahead.
