Historic Tenderloin is at a crossroads
New developments will challenge neighborhood to retain community and services
San Francisco is filled with onetime working-class communities that are now upscale neighborhoods. The Tenderloin is a notable exception.
Located between high-rent Union Square, pricey SoMa and chic Hayes Valley, the Tenderloin has long resisted predictions of its “imminent” gentrification. Its low-income character is protected through several factors: aggressive nonprofit housing acquisition (as much as 40 percent of its housing stock is off the speculative market), strict land-use protections, the lack of homeownership options, and strong resident activism.
The Tenderloin has made great strides in recent years. In 2009, the neighborhood’s core 31 blocks became the Uptown Tenderloin National Historic District, with 409 buildings included on the National Register of Historic Places. After taking office in 2011, Mayor Ed Lee aggressively promoted the Tenderloin’s economic revitalization. He offered tax benefits and facade- and neon sign-restoration grants for investors in new Tenderloin businesses and secured funding for new streetlights throughout the neighborhood.
The opening of the Tenderloin Museum in 2015 catalyzed the arrival of the nationally acclaimed 826 Valencia Tenderloin Center writing program as well as nearby businesses like the Black Cat jazz club (where Warriors star Steph Curry and his wife, chef Ayesha Curry, have been onstage) and the acclaimed Onsen Bath and Restaurant. PianoFight is a multipurpose entertainment venue, bar and restaurant that brings people from across the city to the Tenderloin on a nightly basis. The San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development provided key city support for all of these new businesses. There has been more private business investment in the Tenderloin in the past five years than in the preceding 40.
The Tenderloin will also see construction begin on four major private housing developments in 2018. The
arrival of new residents and retail spaces in these long-underutilized sites at 950-974 Market, 1028 Market and 1066 Market will be a gamechanger for this critical stretch of Mid-Market and the Tenderloin. Three of the developments have frontage on Market Street in Mid-Market (between Fifth and 10th streets). These projects fill land long occupied by parking lots and vacant buildings. The fourth, a project on a block of Larkin Street in Little Saigon, will increase foot traffic and public safety in that popular restaurant corridor.
Long starved for quality open space, the Tenderloin saw the reopening of Boeddeker Park in December 2014 after a $9.3 million renovation. Macaulay Park and the TurkHyde tot lot will be renovated in the next two years. And Tenderloin kids will soon be a short walk from the new $10 million Civic Center Park playgrounds funded by the Helen Diller Foundation.
As chain stores dominate most urban neighborhoods, the Tenderloin offers historic buildings and independent small businesses. Also attractive is its central location. Residents can walk to jobs in downtown, Civic Center, Union Square and SoMa, and ride bikes or take a short transit ride to Mission Bay or the Mission. The neighborhood’s new property owners appreciate the Tenderloin’s historic, working-class character; they have proved more committed to enhancing the community’s future than longtime absentee owners.
But the Tenderloin still struggles to become a safe, healthy and economically productive neighborhood. A level of street drug dealing occurs in the Tenderloin that the police would not tolerate for a week in other neighborhoods. This open dealing continues year after year in a community of more than 3,000 children and thousands of seniors, disabled and other residents particularly vulnerable to street crime.
In 1985, I led a “March Against Crime” through the streets of the Tenderloin with then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein, the Rev. Cecil Williams, Leroy Looper and other community leaders. Nobody imagined that we would still be dealing with this problem 30 years later.
Why does San Francisco allow open drug dealing and drug use on Tenderloin sidewalks? Many believe the police use the Tenderloin as a “containment zone” for illegal activities they do not want spreading to other neighborhoods. The police deny this. But no chiefs, captains or beat cops keep their jobs by admitting that they allow drug dealing in the Tenderloin to protect more affluent neighborhoods.
In 2015, the San Francisco Police Department expanded the Tenderloin Police Station to include U.N. Plaza, Sixth Street, Market Street, Hallidie Plaza, Macy’s in Union Square and the Westfield San Francisco Centre. All of the worst crime hot spots outside the Tenderloin were shifted to Tenderloin Station. Hundreds of residents told then-Chief Greg Suhr at a community meeting that the new district would divert police resources from the Tenderloin — which is exactly what happened.
Instead of arresting drug dealers on Turk or Hyde streets, police are arresting Union Square shoplifters. Statistics on the city’s website confirm this. The police blame the courts, the district attorney or Tenderloin residents themselves for the drug activity; the buck never stops with the police.
In the 1950s, City Hall caused the Tenderloin to plunge into a long decline. Today, the SFPD’s failure to stop open drug dealing in the neighborhood holds back the community. With a mayoral election in June and Chief Bill Scott new to the Police Department, there is a rare opportunity for a broader discussion of why the SFPD is so ineffective in the Tenderloin.
The Tenderloin is on the verge of returning to its heyday as one of the city’s great neighborhoods. It’s well past time for the police to be held accountable for ensuring its safety.
Randy Shaw is the director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which he co-founded in 1980. He is the author of “The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco.” To comment, submit your letter to the editor at SFChronicle.com/letters.