Haight location tapped for tent camp
The former site of a long troublesome McDonald’s restaurant across from Golden Gate Park will be the location of San Francisco’s second “safe sleeping site,” a sanctioned tent camp meant to provide homeless people with basic services and enough space to practice social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic.
The cityowned lot, which is destined to become affordable housing, will provide enough space for 40 tents, said Mary Ellen Carroll, executive director of the city’s Department of Emergency Management. Carroll oversees the Emergency Operations Center, which led the site
selection process in conjunction with other city departments and Supervisor Dean Preston, who represents the Haight.
The city’s first sanctioned tent site opened Thursday on Fulton Street between the Asian Art Museum and the Main Library. It has enough space for 50 tents. The new site, at the corner of Haight and Stanyan streets, should be open in the next two weeks, Carroll said.
In addition to already being owned by the city, the site was selected based on its access to electrical services, its ability to be effectively secured and the fact that it was empty. The old restaurant was razed and the lot has been vacant.
Mayor London Breed said on Twitter that the sanctioned sites are key to the city’s COVID19 emergency response for unhoused people, given the limitations placed on San Francisco’s usual homeless facilities.
The pandemic and the risks facing those living clustered together have forced the city to limit its shelter populations to accomplish physical distancing and slowed programs like Homeward Bound, which connects homeless people with relatives or loved ones.
“So while in normal times I would say that we should focus on bringing people inside and not sanctioning tent encampments, we frankly do not have many other options right now,” Breed said. “Having places with resources serving people in the neighborhood is better than unsanctioned encampments.”
Preston and other supervisors have slammed Breed’s administration for what they claim is its intransigence in getting the homeless into vacant, cityleased hotel rooms. Barring that, Preston said, the safe sleeping sites were an effective, speedy alternative. Preston said his office had other places in mind, but in the midst of a pandemic, getting a site set to open quickly was of the top priority.
“We made it clear (to the Emergency Operations Center) that there were a number of sites we wanted, and we made clear there were sites we would have preferred,” he said. “But we’re not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good here.”
For some nearby residents, the decision was met with dismay and frustration and a feeling of futility after they had spent weeks pleading with Preston’s office to find an alternative, like parking lots owned by the school district or City College and even Recreation and Park Department property.
“There are all of these large parking lots not being used that would be so much better than plopping this down in the middle of a residential area — an area we’ve struggled for decades to get control of on this end of Haight Street,” said Ted Loewenberg, president of the HaightAshbury Improvement Association.
Carroll said the nearby parking lot at Kezar Stadium was also considered, but ultimately rejected in part because it is being used as a parking lot for UCSF medical workers, an arrangement that’s also generating money for the city.
Michelle Leighton, who lives near Buena Vista Park, said residents like her are chiefly concerned about perceived health risks. Having a porous encampment site so close to a highly trafficked area — where lines at the Whole Foods across Haight Street can stretch around the block — needlessly exacerbated the risk of spreading the novel coronavirus, she said.
“It’s like this perfect storm of mixing of crowds of people, which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid,” she said.
Carroll said the site would provide a controlled environment with easy access to services that would help limit the spread of the virus.
“We’ll be providing access to health care and testing and overall monitoring that I think will be beneficial to the participants and the community,” she said.
But beyond concerns tied to the pandemic, Leighton despaired what she described as Preston’s indifference to the concerns of many in his district, lamenting what she saw as his selective attention to an echo chamber of supporters.
“I am so fatigued fighting this,” she said. “I’m baffled by the fact that the city and our supervisor refuse to listen to anyone in the community other than a group of old hippies.”
The issue in part reflects a longsimmering tension in the neighborhood, Leighton said, between what she sees as advocates of an overly permissive attitude toward the homeless and those like herself, who feel their concerns about qualityoflife issues go unheeded.
Preston was unmoved. “There is a very vocal minority of residents who have simultaneously demanded that we clear tents off the street and yet oppose every effort to solve the problem by finding a safe sleeping site in the neighborhood,” Preston said.
“We’ve been in constant communication with stakeholders and community groups,” he said. “We’ve gone above and beyond in pursuing every lead. I understand some of these folks want to ship everyone who’s homeless to another city, but that’s not going to happen. And I think it’s an irresponsible approach, especially in a pandemic.”
The McDonald’s was long a sore spot for the neighborhood, drawing frequent police visits for loitering, drug dealing and violent crime. It sits directly across Stanyan Street from the eastern entrance to Golden Gate Park, where transients and dealers gathered despite sporadic city attempts to disperse them. Renovation of the area began last summer and is about 75% complete, according to the Recreation and Park Department.
Residents and businesses complained for years about the illegal activity near the park entrance and the former McDonald’s. The restaurant was the locus of hundreds of police calls each year — 640 alone from January 2014 to April 2015. The situation deteriorated to the point that City Attorney Dennis Herrera declared the restaurant a public nuisance and issued its operators a cleanup order in 2015.
The city bought the restaurant in 2017 with plans to convert the site into affordable housing, though that plan was long delayed, even before the onset of the pandemic. Construction is scheduled to start in 2022.
“We frankly do not have many other options right now.”
London Breed, San Francisco mayor