We all have a draw or closet that we helter shelter thrown things in. In the old days it would be called Fibber McGee’s closet. Umbrellas, coats, fishing gear, suitcases, anything that would fit. In government, in San Fran, this is what City Hall has done to the Tenderloin section of town.
“On March 19, the Budget & Finance Committee of the Board of Supervisors decides whether to spend $14 million a year to continue converting two Tenderloin tourist hotels to shelters. Such a plan—imposed since 2020 without a community meeting– would be unimaginable in other San Francisco neighborhoods.
But anti-business, anti-family policies are common in the Tenderloin. When the city closed its COVID-spawned SIP hotels for the unhoused across the city, it kept four tourist hotels as shelters—all in the Tenderloin. Two bordered Little Saigon. To nobody’s surprise, the drug users staying in these shelters deterred customers from dining in the Tenderloin’s chief restaurant district.
City Hall killed most of Little Saigon’s restaurant business. As well as the ongoing tourist hotel business nearby.
Will this continue, or will the city clean up this portion of the community? We all need a throw away draw—and San Fran needs a place to sell drugs, have streets gangs, the homeless and prostitutes. The Tenderloin has become the dump closet for San Fran.
The Tenderloin Fights for Its Life
by Randy Shaw, Beyon Chron, 3/10/25
City Hall has taken a virtual wrecking ball to San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Now Supervisors face a choice: boost its revival or extend its use as a drug containment zone. Which side are they on?
On March 19, the Budget & Finance Committee of the Board of Supervisors decides whether to spend $14 million a year to continue converting two Tenderloin tourist hotels to shelters. Such a plan—imposed since 2020 without a community meeting– would be unimaginable in other San Francisco neighborhoods.
But anti-business, anti-family policies are common in the Tenderloin. When the city closed its COVID-spawned SIP hotels for the unhoused across the city, it kept four tourist hotels as shelters—all in the Tenderloin. Two bordered Little Saigon. To nobody’s surprise, the drug users staying in these shelters deterred customers from dining in the Tenderloin’s chief restaurant district.
City Hall killed most of Little Saigon’s restaurant business. As well as the ongoing tourist hotel business nearby.
That’s what it means to be a containment zone.
The city’s Tenderloin containment policy also left a trail of vacant retail along the 600-1000 blocks of Geary Street. The city wants to keep using tourist hotels as shelters on the 600 and 1000 blocks of Geary along with opening its citywide urgent behavioral crisis center next month at 822 Geary.
No San Francisco neighborhood has this concentration of services. The mayor and Board must stop extending two leases that promote sidewalk drug use, drug tourism, and negative economic impacts in the Tenderloin, lower Polk and lower Nob Hill.
A Lengthening Business Casualty List
“The historic Vietnamese businesses in Little Saigon have made every effort to sustain themselves, but they face relentless obstacles, including open drug dealing, uncontrolled garbage accumulation, and frequent disruptions from individuals soliciting food or money in front of customers. Theft, vandalism, and break-ins have become a daily struggle, and these issues prevent business owners from focusing on growth and excellence. Frustration is mounting because no meaningful action is being taken to support those who are working hard to contribute to the city’s economy.”—Tenderloin Small Business Owner, email to Tenderloin Business Coalition, Feb 20, 2025
If City Hall’s goal were to reverse the Tenderloin’s great progress under Mayor Ed Lee, it could not have done a better job.
The long-awaited La Cocina Municipal Marketplace at Golden Gate and Hyde? City Hall allowed drug dealers on the block to kill evening business. It closed in September 2023. Its beautiful, now graffiti-filled, mural reflects the city’s failure to protect a key neighborhood asset on a site the city owns.
Beloved Turtle Tower, once the heart of Little Saigon, moved downtown. It could not survive the city-funded drug activities on the street.
Some closures, like PianoFight, were driven by a combination of outside drug activities and the massive shift to working at home. Jonell’s Cocktail Lounge, a subject of two bestselling novels in its long history at Ellis and Jones, could not overcome the massive drug activities outside its doors.
Businesses pleaded with Mayor Breed and Chief Scott to stop the drug activities. But City Hall failed to do so while also draining the Tenderloin of tourist revenue.
If City Hall does not quickly end its war on Tenderloin businesses and residents, there could soon be no positive neighborhood businesses left.
No Economic Strategy
Tenderloin businesses need a sign that the new City Hall team cares about them.
They don’t see it. The city has offered businesses around Little Saigon no special financial help to compensate for this damage
D3 Supervisor Danny Sauter (who represents the north side of Geary) claims to be “pro-business.” But he supports a five year extension converting the Adante Hotel at 610 Geary to a shelter. Sauter says he likes the medical program operating at the site–but why does another citywide medical program have to be located only two blocks from the new 24 hour medical program at 822 Geary?
We are talking two citywide urgent care facilities placed in within two blocks of each other in a residential-zoned neighborhood. Sauter’s constituents, including the Lower Nob Hill Neighborhood Alliance, Jane on Larkin, Lower Polk CBD, and Lower Polk Neighbors, have signed a letter urging him to oppose extending the Adante lease. The Tenderloin CBD, UNITE HERE Local 2, and the Tenderloin Housing Clinic were among the other signatories.
The letter concludes:
We have been put in an untenable position. For the past five years, we have been dealing with an intolerable level of street crime, filth, drugs, ambulances, and the extensive economic gutting of our neighborhoods that have been brought about by these shelters, with minimal concern, oversight or intervention from the city. Our community members have spoken and they have had enough.
D5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood supports extending the Monarch lease for a year. HSH has told him that they can’t relocate occupants any quicker. This despite HSH vacating the larger Cova Hotel in a little over two months.
After six to nine month average stays at the Monarch the city really needs to give occupants another full year of free rent in a tourist hotel to “transition” into housing? This can be done in a week.
The Board must demands answers on why it takes more than a year of free rent in a tourist hotel before taxpayers paying $211 per client per night at the Monarch get off the hook.
Only 14 the last 116 occupants at the Cova Hotel (also a tourist hotel converted to shelter) accepted housing. The city should not throw more money at this policy failure. This money can be better spent averting program cuts and layoffs due to the city’s budget crisis.
Ending Drug Activity is Not Enough
Clearing Tenderloin sidewalks of drug users is a prerequisite for economic revival. But new businesses also need a customer base.
Tourists are that base. They support restaurants, bars and entertainment venues. Tourist hotels should not become shelters anywhere in San Francisco but this was a particularly disastrous move for the Tenderloin.
The Tenderloin’s retail life is in crisis. The mayor and Board can address this crisis by opposing the extension of leases at the Monarch and Adante hotels.
Incredibly tragic, given the effects upon the most vulnerable members of the community, as well as the small businesses trying to make a living there.
Unfortunately, this isn’t just a San Francisco issue; this issue replicates itself in every large city in the United States and in Europe and Asia.
There are sketchy parts of town where poverty and criminality reign relatively freely, under the watchful eyes of local law enforcement officials. ‘Containment’ is a very common, thread worn strategy which protects the majority of the city’s residents from crime and the depredations of those types of activities.
I recall how both Sacramento and Placer counties, as well as the city of Roseville tried to do this very thing to a middle class neighborhood in Antelope, California.
Multiple emails and phone calls to the various elected officials, law enforcement agencies, etc., over the better part of two years, resulted in no action from these entities.
Finally, the combination of contacts with local television media outlets, as well as an upcoming election cycle combined to wipe away the scourge of corruption and government inaction.
Stand and Fight.