San Francisco’s newest homeless Navigation Center could come with one of the best views in the city. City officials are hoping to persuade the Port Commission to bring what would be San Francisco’s largest Navigation Center to the Embarcadero, just south of the Bay Bridge. Mayor London Breed has signed off on a plan to erect a 24-hour, 200-bed Navigation Center on Seawall Lot 330 — a 2.3-acre parcel across from Piers 30-32. It’s been a target for development for years. Unlike traditional homeless shelters, Navigation Centers provide more intensive health and housing services, allow round-the-clock stays, and permit people to bring their pets and partners with them. The parcel, which is now a parking lot, is port property, which means the Port Commission will have to sign off on the idea. The commissioners are expected to discuss the proposal and take suggestions from the community at their next meeting March 12. A vote to allow the city to build the center on the lot would probably come in April. If the Port Commission signs off, the mayor wants to have the shelter open by the summer. Like most Navigation Centers, the facility will be temporary: Officials expect it to operate for four years. The hope is that by then the city will have gotten a handle on some of the systemic causes of homelessness in San Francisco. The proposal at Seawall Lot 330 is largely designed to address the needs of the growing homeless population in waterfront neighborhoods such as Rincon Hill and South Beach. “We all want to see homelessness addressed, and the only way we’re going to be able to address it is if we have places for people to go,” Breed said. “Here, we identified a viable location, and we need to move quickly. That means that every part of San Francisco has to share in really making sure that we are providing these spaces in places that make the most sense.” Breed has set a goal of creating 1,000 new shelter beds by 2020. To help meet that objective, she introduced legislation in January that would allow the city to shave months off the time it takes to open a shelter. Two ordinances, which the Board of Supervisors could vote on this month, would exempt shelters and Navigation Centers from the building permitting process and expedite the hiring of contractors to manage the facilities. It’s not the first time the Port Commission has considered a proposal to locate homeless services on its land. The commission voted in 2016 to lease a parcel on 25th Street to build the Dogpatch Navigation Center, which is widely considered to be a success. At the time, the commission received considerable resistance from some waterfront residents. Elaine Forbes, the port’s executive director, said the Seawall Lot 330 Navigation Center plan would inspire another round of intense public discussion. “The commission is likely to support the mayor’s proposal, but has a strong track record of engaging with the community,” she said. “We’ve seen more homeless folks on the waterfront, sleeping inside of pier sheds that are vacant. More people are showing signs of needing care and shelter. We, like the rest of the city, have been experiencing more homelessness issues, and we want to find real solutions to address this humanitarian crisis.” Leah Millis / The Chronicle 2014 Forbes said the lot was physically ready for a Navigation Center, apart from water and sewer hookups. The center would reside within District Six, which is represented by Supervisor Matt Haney. He supports it but emphasized the need for other districts to host homeless shelters. To date, most homelessness services are clustered in Districts Six, Nine and 10, all in the southeastern quadrant of the city. “This neighborhood needs this,” Haney said. “There’s an urgent and growing homeless challenge there, and I will work with the mayor and with neighbors to make this happen. “But I really want to see other neighborhoods building shelters as well. What about the west side? What about the Castro and the Marina? If this is the most urgent priority our city is facing, we should see the entire city being part of the solution,” he said. Breed’s proposal comes days after a bruising supervisors’ committee hearing Thursday that turned into a heated discussion on the city’s work around homelessness. Several supervisors condemned what they saw as a chronic lack of progress in combatting the crisis. Supervisor Aaron Peskin said after the hearing that Jeff Kositsky, director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, should step down. Peskin has no direct authority to force a department head to resign. The derision for her staff rankled Breed, who said the city’s homelessness problem “is too important to play politics. There’s real work that needs to be done. These people are sleeping on the streets and suffering. They’re the ones we need to be focused on, not playing politics.” Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa<doc-sep>A online fundraiser pooling money to support Mayor London Breed’s proposal to bring a 200-bed Navigation Center to the Embarcadero brought in over $82,000 in just over 24 hours. William Fitzgerald of San Francisco launched the fundraiser Thursday morning in response to a rival campaign on the GoFundMe website that’s raising money to hire attorneys to help block the Navigation Center. That campaign, called “Safe Embarcadero for All,” was started nine days ago by Neel Lilani, a resident of the Watermark, a condominium building across the Embarcadero from where the center would be built. The money Lilani raises would be used to hire the Zacks, Freedman & Patterson law firm. “We are worried that the rushed process puts the political goal of building a large Navigation Center ahead of legitimate concerns about public safety, drug use, and other problems that a large shelter may bring to the community,” the group says on its GoFundMe page. By Friday afternoon, after nine days of fundraising, the opposition campaign brought in just over $70,000 from 174 donors. The pro-center page eclipsed that amount in just over a day, with over $75,000 raised from almost 1,000 people. On Friday, tech CEOs Marc Benioff of Salesforce and Jeff Lawson from Twilio each donated $10,000 to the Navigation Center campaign. GoFundMe itself donated $5,000 on Thursday. The response has been “crazy,” Fitzgerald said. “There are a lot of good people in this city who believe that people deserve housing” and the resources they need to get off the streets. The money raised will be donated to the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, which supports the Navigation Center. The next public meeting on the Navigation Center is scheduled for 6 p.m. on April 3 at the Delancey Street Foundation, 600 the Embarcadero. — Dominic Fracassa Email: cityinsider@sfchronicle.com, dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfcityinsider @dominicfracassa<doc-sep>SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — Neighbors who live along the Embarcadero got their first look of what the city’s proposed new Navigation Center might look like on Wednesday evening. At a contentious meeting sponsored by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, various department heads, managers and the mayor detailed plans for the center, which would house 175 to 225 beds in parking lot across from Piers 30 and 32. The land is currently owned by the Port of San Francisco, and the center would occupy up 44,000 square feet in the northwest corner of the 100,000 square foot lot. The lease is planned for four years. Staffers showed the standing room only crowd artist’s renderings of the large tent-like temporary structure, and amenities used at previous Navigation Centers. Features like vaulted ceilings, large skylights, and an outdoor living space, all designed to minimize loitering, and impacts to the neighborhood, according to the city. Flexible eating and sleeping schedules are designed to spread out daily activities and reduce the noise and commotion of large group activities. Options for fencing including horizontal wood planks with downlight and metal fencing with floral patterns. Colors ranged from beige, to brick orange, to dark blue. In addition to 24 hour security on the premises, San Francisco Police committed to four dedicated patrols a day in and around the site: two in the morning hours and two more in the evening, 7 days a week, specifically to look for loitering, drug use, and tents. In October 2018, Mayor London Breed announced a plan to create 1000 new shelter beds within two years. The city has added 212 so far. Mayor Breed took the podium to loud jeers and cheers, but eventually resigned sitting and listening, after repeated booing from the audience. During one exchange, someone in the crowd told the mayor to “Go home!” Breed responded by saying, “I am home! Born and raised in San Francisco!” “This was an opportunity to explain what we’re proposing, and as you can see, there’s a lot to tension. But there’s still a process,” said Breed, “Homelessness is the number one issue facing the city. Proposing a shelter, regardless of the neighborhood it’s in, is necessary to address it.” • ALSO READ: San Francisco Embarcadero Homeless Center Backers Outraise Opponents Opponents of the shelter took issue with the meeting’s format, which allowed only for written questions answered by the panelists, and no public comment. Many of the opponents walked out near the end of the meeting. “Today was a sales pitch. It was not a community meeting, as evidenced by them focusing on colors and lighting and the exterior look and feel of the facility, and not about what’s happening to the people on the inside,” said Chris, who declined to give his last name. “This forum tonight was completely biased. We have no idea how the questions for the panelists were even selected. They didn’t answer the questions and hear the concerns of our community,” said neighbor Alice Tseng. The next meeting is set for April 23, a Port Commission meeting with “unlimited public comment”, according to tonight’s meeting facilitator.<doc-sep>SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – Mayor London Breed’s proposal to open a navigation center for the homeless along San Francisco’s Embarcadero has prompted opponents to raise tens of thousands of dollars to potentially fight the project in court. Calling themselves “Safe Embarcadero for All,” the group launched a GoFundMe page last week, with the goal of raising $100,000 for legal counsel. As of Thursday morning, $44,610 had been raised from at least 90 donors, with the largest contribution from an anonymous donor putting up $10,000. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the firm mentioned by the group in its GoFundMe plea has apparently asked for “all documents and records” pertaining to the proposed navigation center. • ALSO READ: Oakland Church Program Providing Overnight Parking For Homeless Set To Launch Breed is proposing to open the navigation center on a Port of San Francisco-owned parking lot by the waterfront. The navigation center would feature 200 beds, provide health and housing services, round the clock stays and allow pets and partners. “Parking lots are important, but places for people to live where they’re inside, in shelter, I think are that much more important, particularly on city-owned land,” Supervisor Matt Haney, who represents the district, told KPIX 5 earlier this month. “We have a lot of city-owned parking lots, I think this is a piece of land that can be used to address our most urgent problem as a city.” According to Haney, half of the city’s 3,500 homeless people are in his district. Breed tweeted about opposition to the proposal Wednesday, saying “we can’t afford unnecessary delays” to address the homelessness crisis in the city. The center, which Breed hopes to open by summer, is expected to be considered by the Port Commission in April. But the Chronicle reported that officials may extend the deadline for additional input by the public.<doc-sep>
An unexpected appearance from San Francisco Mayor London Breed incited an already tense crowd that packed a community meeting Wednesday night to hear city officials detail a plan to bring a 200-bed Navigation Center to the Embarcadero. Breed addressed the hundreds of people who filled the Delancey Street Foundation’s auditorium to capacity after a mostly subdued presentation from officials representing the city’s homelessness, public works and police departments about how the center would operate and what it might look like. Her surprise arrival was met with cheers and jeers and she was repeatedly shouted down by some attendees opposing her proposal to build the Navigation Center on a site controlled by the Port Commission and currently used as a parking lot. The Navigation Center, she said, is a critical part of her administration’s effort to address “what we know is the biggest challenge we have,” referring to homelessness. “I’m sorry this issue has divided this community. My role is to hear all of you today.” She told the crowd it made little sense to lament the city’s homelessness crisis, but protest a viable proposal to house unsheltered people. Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle She would not get to finish her address, with some in the crowd shouting, “Take it somewhere else!” and “Build it at City Hall!” Their remarks were rebuffed in equal measure by the center’s supporters, many of whom waved signs reading, “Being homeless doesn’t mean you matter less” and “Hate has no home here.” “Either you let me speak, or you leave,” she responded, to little effect. After a few moments, she stepped back, saying, “I can’t continue, but I will stay and listen to the comments. The least we could do is show respect for one another.” The exchange was emblematic of the intense opposition that Breed’s proposal has stirred among a contingent of waterfront residents. Last month, she unveiled a plan to build what would be the city’s largest Navigation Center on Seawall Lot 330, a 2.3-acre parcel across from Piers 30-32. Breed envisions operating the site for up to four years, but said she remains open to negotiations over the length of the lease and, to an extent, the overall size of the center. In recent weeks, rival online fundraisers have sprung up to support and oppose the Navigation Center. As of Wednesday night, critics had raised just over $90,000 to hire Andrew Zacks, an aggressive land use attorney, to oppose the center should it move forward. Zacks’ firm bills itself as “the voice of Bay Area property owners.” A counter-fundraiser, however, has raised nearly $162,000 in a fraction of the time — and from a broader set of donors — to support the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, which supports the Navigation Center and similar initiatives. Navigation Centers are homeless shelters where intensive, round-the-clock services guide unsheltered people toward stable living situations. They’re also more permissive, allowing people to come and go at will and to bring their pets, partners and belongings. Many opponents say they’re sympathetic to the plight of the homeless, but deeply disagree that the center should be placed on the Embarcadero and doubt that the city would be able to effectively manage the site. Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle Others were convinced that any large population of homeless people would turn the neighborhood into a dirty, dangerous place. They have asked city officials to put the Navigation Center elsewhere, believing that District Six has shouldered more than its fair share of homelessness services. Jeff Kositsky, director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said officials were scouring the city for other locations for homeless shelters, including a Navigation Center for at-risk youth in District Five. He also said that data indicates most people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco do not have mental health problems or drug addiction, and were more likely to be the victims of crimes, rather than the perpetrators of them. “I’m not convinced that Navigation Centers are a good idea in any dense, residential neighborhood,” said John Pachtner, who lives in South Beach, near the proposed site for the center. He said he worried about the “deleterious impacts” on his neighborhood, specifically the risks of needles, and an increased police presence. “They all have mental health issues and drug and alcohol abuse,” said South Beach resident Shadan Golkar, who said she’d support low-income housing at the site, but rejected the idea of a homeless shelter.