San Francisco delays 250-bed homeless shelter in Decrease Nob Hill amid neighborhood backlash

San Francisco leaders have delayed the potential opening of a new 250-bed homeless shelter in Lower Nob Hill after local residents and businesses objected to the plans.
City officials had proposed entering into a two-year, $18.7 million contract with the nonprofit Urban Alchemy to rent and operate the shelter at 711 Post St., a currently vacant hostel building just north of the Tenderloin and a few blocks west of Union Square.
The shelter would have opened in early February if the Board of Supervisors approved the contract next week. But a board committee voted unanimously Wednesday to have the city spend another month vetting the issue amid outcry from residents near the building who said they were not adequately consulted and had serious reservations about how the project would impact their neighborhood.
The Post Street site has yet become another flash point in San Francisco’s fraught debate over how to make meaningful improvements to its homeless crisis with more than 8,000 people lacking permanent housing. The delay Wednesday comes on the heels of the collapse of a city plan to turn 131-room hotel in Japantown into permanent housing for homeless people after months of community backlash.
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who represents the area, asked the board’s budget and finance committee to revisit the proposal on Feb. 2. Peskin said that the city’s community engagement efforts had been so far “abysmal” and that he wants the neighborhood to have more time to evaluate the plans.
“Meaningful and real involvement with the community has been all but absent,” Peskin said, who doesn’t sit on the budget committee. “It has been box-checking government at its worst.”
Supervisors have in recent weeks decried the insufficient shelter, housing and treatment options to get people off the streets in the wake of Mayor London Breed declaring a state of emergency in the Tenderloin. Supervisor Hillary Ronen criticized her colleagues for delaying the shelter in the wake of the emergency declaration.
“I do not understand how the members of the Budget Committee voted to declare a state of emergency in the Tenderloin & then a day later delayed the leasing of a 250 bed non-congregate shelter to serve that neighborhood. Is this a crisis or not? It is & we need to act accordingly,” she wrote on Twitter.
With the state of emergency, Breed hopes to address street conditions, overdoses and crime in the hard-hit neighborhood. The declaration has been controversial because Breed has signaled an intent to expand policing, but her administration is also trying to connect more homeless tenderloin residents with shelter and other services.
Breed’s office views the Post Street shelter as a crucial step in the city’s plans to address homelessness this year. Her administration wants the shelter system’s capacity to reach 2,100 beds by the end of June through a mix of adding new beds and reopening beds closed due to the pandemic. The city is about halfway toward meeting the goal. Breed is also working to create 1,500 units of permanent supportive housing for the homeless.
“Every day we delay this shelter is one where 250 people sleep on the street,” Breed tweeted after the committee delayed the Post Street contract. “We can’t let obstruction and process arguments stop us from helping people in need.”
Breed said city leaders and the public “all agree that the conditions in the tenderloin are an emergency” and “we need to act like it.”
Formerly operated as a youth hostel called the Ansonia Hotel, the Post Street building includes 123 rooms that range from singles to quads. Each floor has bathrooms and showers, and the building also includes community lounges, a commercial kitchen and a dining space.
City officials were drawn to the building’s configuration, which, if used to serve homeless people, would place it somewhere between a single-room occupancy hotel and a traditional congregate shelter.
“This is not a building type or opportunity that we often have,” said Emily Cohen, a deputy director at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
But a vocal group of people who live or work near the site have said San Francisco leaders did not provide enough notice about the building’s potential transformation. At the committee meeting, several residents also said they thought the area had already shouldered its fair share of facilities that serve San Francisco’s unhoused population.
Still, some spoke strongly in favor of the potential shelter, viewing it as an urgently needed facility to quickly get 250 people off the streets in the middle of winter.
Supervisor Matt Haney, who chairs the committee, said he understood the range of viewpoints expressed by the community.
“I do believe that these type of facilities are ones that we absolutely need,” he said. “I also understand the need to effectively consult with the neighborhood and the absolute need to consider geographic equity as well.”
Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, another committee member, supported spending more time discussing the project with the community.
Though he said he’d heard from numerous people opposed to the shelter, Safaí didn’t think the city would repeat the scenario that unfolded in Japantown last year.
Safaí also questioned why the city hadn’t moved to buy the site instead of contracting with Urban Alchemy to rent the facility from its owner. He said he’d been in contact with the owner, who he said is willing to sell.
“It seems to me like there’s room here to purchase the building,” Safaí said.
It’s not clear how exactly the city will proceed with the potential Post Street shelter. Cohen urged supervisors to make the delay as short as possible, warning them that a month was “a really long time” to postpone advancing the contract. But Safaí, Haney and Supervisor Gordon Mar voted in favor of Peskin’s proposal to continue the item to Feb. 2.
Peskin said he would work with city staff over the next month and “see what we can come up with.”
JD Morris is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thejdmorris