Featured in the San Francisco Chronicle:
For years, many Haight-Ashbury residents have yearned to see affordable housing rise on the old McDonald’s site on the corner of Haight and Stanyan streets, right across from Golden Gate Park.
The city bought the troubled site more than three years ago to build affordable housing in an area that has long struggled with homelessness. But with delays in the housing project, the city has a new plan for the site — one that doesn’t get closer to a permanent solution.
City officials now say it will be used as a temporary drop-in center to provide services for homeless people starting in October. Some neighbors — worried about problems on the streets over the past year — are resisting.
Even supporters of the plan to create a drop-in center say the saga highlights the incredible cost and difficulty in building affordable housing. Recently, the city delayed construction at the site, 730 Stanyan St., for a year to expand the project.
“The drop-in center is a needed and important and critical safety net — it is not the sole solution of what we need to do as a city to address the needs of young people experiencing homelessness or our unhoused neighbors in the Haight,” said Sherilyn Adams, executive director of Larkin Street Youth Services, which served nearly 400 homeless youths in the neighborhood last year. “We need housing. We need to be able to build it faster. I worry about all delays related to the creation of housing in our city.”
Despite support at the highest levels, building affordable housing in San Francisco takes years and costs millions, leaving the city to scramble for short-term solutions to homelessness. That was especially true last year when the pandemic closed shelters, leading to a spike in tents on the streets and heightened health risks.
Amid that environment, Haight-Ashbury became a microcosm of citywide debates about how to alleviate homelessness. Hundreds of unhoused people live in supervisorial District Five, according to the city’s last count. While there seems to be a consensus of support for affordable housing at 730 Stanyan, what to do with the empty lot has been a lightning rod in the community.
The proposed drop-in center will include toilets, sinks, showers and referrals to long-term services, run by a nonprofit that hasn’t been chosen yet by the city’s homelessness department. It will fill a gap left by the closure in June of a city-run tent encampment that operated there for a year. The site offered food, hygiene and 40 secure tent spots. The site, always envisioned as temporary, closed once everyone was offered housing.
Supervisor Dean Preston, who funded the drop-in center with $223,000 in city funds, said he’s determined to make sure some services continue at the site.
“We’ve seen far more support than opposition to have these essential services for unhoused folks in the community,” Preston said. “Of course there are certainly some folks who will oppose any services for homeless folks in the Haight.”
Flip Sarrow, who lives at Haight and Clayton streets, said he didn’t have a problem with the safe sleep site. But he described a “sanitary mess” in the neighborhood over the past year with “tents all over the place” and a “big brawl” he recorded on video. He said a “silent majority of people are very wary” of similar problems with the new proposal.
“There’s always a need, but is it a need just for the Haight, or are we inviting people from everywhere to get services, creating a mecca for people who have various problems?” he said. “There’s a need, but the concern is how is it run and will they take care of the surrounding area?”
The main goal is to provide hygiene for homeless individuals and connect them to other services.
Jason McClain, sitting at the corner of Haight and Cole streets Wednesday, said as someone living on the streets, he would welcome more showers and restrooms. The only public toilet in the neighborhood isn’t open 24 hours a day, forcing him to sometimes relieve himself in the park or the neighborhood.
McClain moved from St. Louis to the Bay Area in March to look for a job with his computer science degree. He became homeless when housing with a family connection fell through. Now he spends his days at Kezar Stadium charging his phone to apply for jobs before falling asleep in a parklet at the Alembic bar.
McClain is in the process of getting cash assistance from the county but is skeptical of getting help with a place to live.
“I don’t know how much housing they have right now,” he said. “This can’t be the rest of my life.”
730 Stanyan is supposed to be part of the solution.
The city bought the property, formerly a McDonald’s that was a magnet for crime, in 2018 to build affordable housing. In April, the city told the developers it had more funding to increase the number of units from 120 to 160, raising the cost from $80 million to around $100 million.
Construction will be paid for with a combination of local, state and federal affordable programs. If funding is approved next year, groundbreaking will be in 2023 instead of 2022 as originally planned.
“Even if it does set the project back a little while, it’s still good to add more units while we can,” said Bo Han, a project manager at Chinatown Community Development Center, one of two nonprofits developing the site. “It will be one of the first important large affordable housing projects that’s further west than we have been building.”
The delay frustrated Preston, although he supports more affordable units. It’s also drawn out community debate about what to do with the empty lot, which the city is currently paying security to guard 24/7. The city took ideas for interim uses two years ago, but nothing happened before the pandemic, when the safe sleep site provoked fierce neighborhood debate.
Preston said early critics “had come around,” leading to an “overwhelmingly positive response.” He and advocates called it one of the most successful sites in the city because it was run by two local nonprofits with community relationships.
Some neighbors agreed. Adam Burman, who has lived on Waller Street for two decades, joined regular community meetings and said the organizations in charge did a “terrific job.”
While the site wanted to connect people staying there to housing, the reality was more challenging. Out of the 73 people who stayed during the year, 24 were rehoused and 29 ended up in emergency shelter. Adams said the outcomes were “pretty good” considering constraints in the city’s system for placing people in housing, which moved more slowly than usual during COVID and wasn’t designed to prioritize people living in safe sleep sites.
Preston also said that “fears that there will be all those folks coming from all over to camp outside the Safe Sleeping site did not materialize.”
Some begged to differ. Burman, who didn’t blame problems on the site itself, said he documented a spike in tents — up to 20 at a time — on Waller starting in March 2020. He described an “extremely challenging” and “dangerous” situation with drug paraphernalia, human waste and trash. Problems continued until December, when he said the city swept the tents on Waller while offering housing.
News about the drop-in center, announced at a community meeting in August, was a “complete surprise” to Burman. He was frustrated by the lack of information, but wanted more details about who it would serve and the need before forming an opinion.
“I have tremendous compassion for homeless people,” Burman said. “I want to be part of the solution.”
Sarrow said he wasn’t outright opposed to the new proposal, but feared another “explosion of problems.”
Christin Evans, a business owner, resident and homeless activist in the neighborhood, pegged complaints on groups who “just want the police to simply push people away.”
Adams cautioned against conflating homelessness and illegal activity. She and Preston said tents did increase at the start of the pandemic, but any issues were alleviated — not exacerbated — by the safe sleep site.
They both separately said the pandemic showed the success of some temporary solutions to homelessness for people living in the Haight. Some of them, including a shelter-in-place hotel for youth with vulnerable medical conditions, already closed in June. They hope the drop-in center will be a stop-gap measure until more housing is built.
“We need a lot of it,” Adams said.
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