by Randy Shaw on March 9, 2026 (BeyondChron.org)
A Roadmap for Revival
San Francisco’s Sixth Street is going through tough times. Many of its sidewalks are filled with substance abusers and its future appears bleak. But appearances can be deceiving. Prior to COVID, Sixth Street bars and restaurants were popping. Sixth Street was increasingly seen as a positive, happening place.
So how does Sixth Street get back on track? Mayor Lurie’s recent expansion of Urban Alchemy’s reach in the area is already making a noticeable difference. I saw much less drug activities last week, though a large open air drug market still thrives on Minna off Sixth.
Others I spoke with confirmed recent progress. Son Vo, Director of Facilities for the Tenderloin Housing Clinic which I head, said he has “personally witnessed drastic improvements on 6th Street. The streets appear cleaner, there are fewer individuals loitering in front of buildings, and I’ve observed less visible drug activity.” Son noted he is not on Sixth Street in the evening.
Sixth Street’s comeback still has a long way to go. But its challenges are not insurmountable. The roadmap to its revival starts with understanding what led to Sixth Street’s rise prior to COVID.
We begin with some very important history.
San Francisco’s Neglect
Sixth Street was the city’s Skid Row from the 1960’s through the 1989 earthquake. The city ignored it’s problems.
In 1980 Reverend Cecil Williams of Glide Church bought an 1800 square foot lot on Sixth Street for the area’s alcoholics to drink. It became known as Wino Park. As an article on Glide’s 1983 decision to sell the site described, “ ‘Wino park,’ built in a church experiment as a haven for the down-and-out in an industrial neighborhood, is being sold because it became a home base for drug dealers and muggers. ‘I didn’t know we were going to have that kind of problem,’ Williams said, speaking of the numbers of drug dealers, street hustlers and muggers who have used the site as a sanctuary.”
Williams’ failure discouraged efforts to improve the area. I spent a lot of time in Sixth Street SRO hotels during the 1980’s. The area was far more rundown than the Tenderloin.
Sixth Street Redevelopment
Sixth Street’s future took an unexpected turn when the 1989 earthquake led to the creation of the Sixth Street Earthquake Redevelopment Area. Formed in 1990, this expansion of the Redevelopment Agency promised millions of dollars for Sixth Street’s revival.
There were two contrasting visions for Sixth Street.
The coalition of SRO tenants and property owners that I helped organize felt Sixth Street should no longer be a ghetto for the poor. We urged the Agency to fund mixed-income housing on Sixth Street while targeting affordable housing outside the street. We sought to strengthen private owners while the Agency wanted to limit money to nonprofits.
We lost that fight. The Agency spent tens of millions of dollars “redeveloping” Sixth Street without meaningfully improving its quality of life. From installing palm trees at $10,000 a plant to million-dollar sidewalk widening projects, the Agency made mind-boggling foolish investments. Worst of all, it failed to understand that concentrating people with very low incomes in a handful of blocks deprived Sixth Street businesses of the customer base they needed.
I issued a report in October 2002, “After $80 million Spent, Sixth Street Clean-Up Has Failed.”
The Plaza Apartments
The Sixth Street Project Area Committee was supposed to guide Agency actions. But Project Area Committees were only advisory. This became clear when the PAC strongly backed housing for working people at the former site of the Plaza Hotel at 6th and Howard.
Newly elected Mayor Gavin Newsom favored a different plan. Newsom “identified the Plaza Apartments as an ideal development for participation in the Direct Access to Housing Program (DAH); the DAH program was developed to combine permanent housing for chronically homeless people with on-site support services.”
The community’s consensus support for housing for working people at Sixth and Howard was ignored. Those who spent hours at meetings about the Plaza felt betrayed. Newsom’s switch contributed to feelings that City Hall saw Sixth Street as designed for homeless services, not retail businesses.
Mid-Market is Key to Sixth Street Revival
Sixth Street lack of a customer base meant its economic future depended on attracting outsiders. Mayor Ed Lee’s Mid-Market/Tenderloin tax credit proved the spark. Tech and WeWork office workers in Mid-Market went to lunch, dinner, and after-work drinks on Sixth Street. New market rate housing in SOMA also brought patrons.
Some erroneously claim that the concentration of SRO hotels on Sixth Street prevents businesses from succeeding. They ignore that Sixth Street became a happening place prior to COVID.
As Lara Hashimoto, a longtime SOMA resident active with the SOMA West Neighborhood Association, recalls, “Sixth Street was indeed on the rise. The commercial spaces were filled and places like Dottie’s True Blue Cafe, Montesacro and Bini’s attracted techie foot traffic to 6th which generally kept loiterers, drugs and crime suppressed around these areas.”
Miss Saigon, Tu Lan, and the Showdown Bar were also booming. As was a Kosher bakery, Frena. Another Kosher restaurant opened soon after COVID. As J Weekly described on July 16, 2020, “For Rabbi Yosef Langer, the opening of a new kosher restaurant along San Francisco’s Sixth Street corridor is another step toward creating his long-envisioned “Jewish thoroughfare,” complete with a synagogue and kosher eateries to draw people in. For the rest of us, it’s just damn good shwarma and falafel.”
So what happened to this progress?
Sixth Street’s Dramatic Decline
COVID had two major impacts on Sixth Street.
First, the vacation of Mid-Market office buildings devastated Sixth Street’s customer base. For example, the 100% WeWork-occupied sixteen story highrise at Sixth and Market became completely vacant. Mid-Market tech workers worked from home and firms left the area.
Sixth Street was also badly hurt by City Hall’s destructive decision to convert Seventh Street tourist hotels as well as four in the Tenderloin to Shelter in Place (SIP) hotels. This decision turned Mid-Market, Sixth Street, and Little Saigon into giant open-air drug markets.
These two COVID-spawned factors devastated Sixth Street.
Dottie’s, which had consistent long lines for its breakfast prior to COVID, did not survive.. Mission Local recently reported on Bini’s struggle to survive at 6th and Howard: “’It used to be hustling and bustling. There were lines, so many people around.’ Then the pandemic hit. Foot traffic dwindled. Poverty became more visible. Vandalism followed. In January, there were days the sisters didn’t open at all, because staff were afraid to come to work and the front entrance was so heavily soiled.”
Before COVID Miss Saigon restaurant at Sixth and Mission always had lines. Until Urban Alchemy arrived on the scene the entrance to Miss Saigon was surrounded by drug users.
Mid-Market’s Revival is Key
Sixth Street remains in decline because Mid-Market remains in decline. Filling Mid-Market offices spaces will revive both neighborhoods and also help Tenderloin businesses.
The 16-story building at Sixth and Howard is finally occupied. Last week’s purchase of the former Westfield Centre site by Presidio Bay Ventures and the Prado Group bodes well for the site’s future.
Remember the 5M project at Fifth and Mission? It was supposed to “transition the site from its current mix of office buildings and surface parking lots to a balance of residential, office, retail, cultural, and open space uses that provide a unique opportunity to connect surrounding neighborhoods.” (Emphasis added)
Unfortunately, much of 5M’s new office space remains vacant.
The city had a great chance to help Sixth Street in 2021 when a developer planned a 27-story housing tower at Stevenson and Sixth. But the Board of Supervisors rejected the project. It was re-approved in 2024 but, as JK Dineen put it “the infamous former Nordstrom valet parking lot at 469 Stevenson St. — which became a symbol of San Francisco dysfunction in 2021 when the Board of Supervisors temporarily rejected 494 units of housing there — will remain a parking lot.”
Sixth Street’s dependence on Mid-Market and SOMA office workers is why City Hall must stop the San Francisco Employees Retirement System from leaving Mid-Market. The city should be relocating workers to Mid-Market offices, not moving them away.
Fortunately, D6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey is going all out to stop the Retirement System’s departure. The total compensation package for the Chief Executive of the System is a whopping $856,000. The lowest compensation among their top fifteen workers is $433,000. I get why these highly paid officials prefer working in the Financial District. But the city needs the System in Mid-Market.
Please ask your supervisor and the mayor to join Dorsey’s opposition. This potential departure from Mid-Market has broadly negative impacts not only for Sixth Street but for Mid-Market and the adjacent Tenderloin.
Let’s ramp up the process of making Sixth Street an asset rather than a liability for SOMA and all of San Francisco.
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.
