The Tenderloin is used to broken promises.
Known for decades as a containment zone, it’s where the city has marshaled services for people experiencing homelessness and drug addiction. City leaders have long pledged to spread the burden elsewhere.
Former Mayor London Breed said as much before leaving office. Her staff in 2023 negotiated with Tenderloin business and community groups opposed to the city’s conversion of 822 Geary St., a former Goodwill, into a behavioral health center that could potentially include safe consumption services for drug users.
In exchange for their support, Breed promised to pump the brakes on future citywide drug or homelessness services in the Tenderloin.
Things didn’t quite work out that way.
The Geary site moved forward as a crisis stabilization center, but voters replaced Breed with Mayor Daniel Lurie. Now the city is renewing building-code exemptions that would maintain two Tenderloin hotels, the Adante and the Monarch, as interim housing for homeless people.
Tenderloin groups are furious at the renewals, accusing the city of reneging on the handshake deal.
“We were told not only by Breed but even by other folks in government this wasn’t going to happen,” said Jamie Flanagan, head of the Tenderloin Business Coalition. “If it were good for the neighborhood, they’d be putting them in the Marina, they’d be putting them in Pac Heights. It displaces legitimate activity and keeps the cycle of addiction and homelessness in our neighborhood.”
Lurie made 822 Geary St. the poster child of his new fentanyl emergency powers, which allow him to bypass Board of Supervisors approval of contracts. His administration plans to fast-track the creation of a behavioral health center at the site.
The Adante and Monarch were among 25 hotels sheltering San Francisco’s homeless population during the pandemic. That threat has abated, and Tenderloin groups want the city to evaluate the impact hotel housing has had on local businesses.
The issue came before the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use Committee in early February and is expected to be discussed again at a meeting in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, the Lower Nob Hill neighborhood alliance requested a delay of the renewal of the Adante and Monarch leases. In emails to the Board of Supervisors, which are public, neighbors wrote in opposition, with one noting “general neglect by the city has decimated our neighborhood.”
Pratibha Tekkey, a community organizer with the Central City SRO Collaborative, was in the room when Breed’s office vowed to spread services to other parts of the city if Tenderloin groups agreed not to oppose 822 Geary St. Tekkey thinks Lurie should honor his predecessor’s promise.
“When then-candidate Daniel Lurie was running, he came to talk to some of our residents, and he heard loud and clear from the people of the neighborhood that we were done being a containment zone for everything. And he agreed to that,” she said.
The mayor’s office did not return a request for comment.
Lurie has his own promise to deal with: a campaign pledge to build 1,500 shelter beds in his first six months in office. That plan has already hit a snag with the closure of the Cova Hotel, which sheltered 116 people.
Closing the Adante and the Monarch would hurt Lurie’s shelter bed goal — and without somewhere else to go, more than a hundred homeless people would be back on the streets.
Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, whose district includes the Tenderloin, convened a community meeting two weeks ago with Kunal Modi, the mayor’s policy chief on homelessness; groups like the Tenderloin Community Benefit District and the Salvation Army; and neighborhood advocates.
The mayor’s office offered a compromise, Mahmood said: the five-year extension of the Adante and Monarch hotels will be reduced to one year, allowing the city time to find shelter placements for the people living there.
“I think everyone acknowledges you can’t just shut it down; there has to be a transition path for these people,” Mahmood said. But “promise or no promise, the Tenderloin has borne the brunt of services for the entire city. There needs to be equity.”
Mahmood said the mayor’s office made a “commitment” to provide more public safety and sidewalk cleaning support while the Adante and Monarch operate as shelters.
In other words, the Tenderloin got another promise.