SoMa and Tenderloin Residents Back Plan To Spread Homeless Services Across San Francisco | KQED

“There was such an obsession with just pushing housing at all costs without thinking about the incredible damage it has to our sidewalks, to our children, to our small business owners, to elderly,” said Eggen, a SoMa West Community Benefit District board member. “There is no meaningful investment back in the community to offset the impact.”

The pandemic worsened conditions as startups left, followed by their employees.”All the vices became much more visible,” Eggen said. He and his nine and five-year-olds now regularly have to navigate feces, syringes and people doubled over in a fentanyl-induced stupor.

He said he’s spent years trying to negotiate with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, often with little success, so he welcomes the new proposal and calls the city’s new leadership, especially Mayor Daniel Lurie, “a beacon in a sea of historical indifference.”

In the Tenderloin, Rev. Paul Trudeau runs a supportive housing program and cafe through his nonprofit City Hope SF and sees how the city’s strategy has frayed the fabric of the neighborhood around him.

“When we’re not really caring for the Tenderloin and we’re containing drug activity in open air markets, that’s horrible. That’s just so unfair,” he said. “The things you can get away with in the Tenderloin are ridiculous compared to if somebody did this in Pac Heights. Why does one neighborhood get health and accountability and the other doesn’t?”

For Trudeau, the burden is personal. He’s been physically attacked by one of his own customers — a man split his head open with a metal rod after he announced the cafe wouldn’t be able to feed everyone waiting in line.

Still, he believes in the work, and in his neighborhood. And while he’s encouraged by the spirit of the proposed ordinance, which would require each district to approve at least one facility by next summer and bar new sites from opening within 1,000 feet of an existing one, he’s torn on the specifics.

“You’re kind of handcuffing yourself,” he said of the 1000-foot limitation, explaining that he’s been trying to purchase an abandoned hotel next door City Hope SF’s facilities. “That’s an opportunity,” he said. “No, we don’t want all services to be in the Tenderloin. But I don’t think we should only be thinking outward.”