UPDATE: The 6th Street Debate Reaches The Board of Supes

Live SoMa | Mar 21, 2011 | Comments 18

Update from March 21st:

If you follow the local Political scene, you’ve probably caught wind of the SF Bulldog, H. Brown. He is what I would call a Political Gadfly, making his presence known everywhere from closed-door public forums to the floor of the Board of Supervisors.

This past week, while we were discussing the serious problems over on Sixth Street, and an overall lack of enforcement by the SFPD and pretty much everyone else, H. Brown coincidentally stood before the Board of Supervisors and unleashed his opinion of why this area is under so much distress. His reason? A lack of accountability for SRO Owners (and specifically, Randy Shaw). Special thanks to friend of LiveSOMA, and king of Rincon Hill, Jamie Whitaker for pointing this video out to us…

“When I moved in, Mid-Market was booming,” he says, because there were “hard working people” living in these SRO’s. The reason they moved out, according to H. Brown, is because Randy Shaw “filled these buildings full of drunks, drug addicts and crazy people.”

Brown then goes on to mention that both the Presidio and Treasure Island were given to the City as places that were supposed to be used to house the homeless. Instead, the Ghost of Board of Supervisors past have decided to turn them into amusement parks for the wealthy. I don’t know much about that, so I’m not gonna get involved.

Though his surprisingly poignant rant more than likely fell on deaf ears over at City Hall, it rings pretty true to me. How has the City allowed the (SOME OF THESE) SRO owners to run their hotel’s into the ground and profit off of forcing these folks to live in less than suitable conditions?

I’ve heard from a number of residents along Sixth Street, some of whom live in Mr. Shaw’s buildings, and almost all of them have the same complaints about how they are forced to endure these problems because they can’t afford to move to a better spot. The people who are just down on their luck, recovering from addiction or otherwise working to improve their lives have to walk down these streets paved with human feces and empty bottles while the owners of the buildings are likely sitting in a mansion built off of Government-assisted Slum Dollars, with nary a care in the world because nobody holds them accountable.

Yet LiveSOMA is referred to as an “idiot” by one local resident in the comments below for raising concern of this issue? I just don’t understand. Perhaps they don’t want any help on Sixth Street? Are they all sipping the Randy Shaw Kool-Aid like the Board of Supervisors?

Update From March 16th:

There’s no real “epiphany” here, but it’s just an interesting observation that landed in my Inbox yesterday evening, courtesy of one of the owners of a Sixth Street restaurant.

I went to a meeting… this morning, and parked at the corner of 3rd and Howard, while I was on the phone and sitting there, there was a vagrant sitting against a building, shortly police arrived and arrested him after he refused to get up and leave, maybe they drove him to Sixth St. (I have seen this fellow on Sixth Street and I’ve never seen him bothered by the police while there. There is ZERO tolerance for the Financial District, ZERO.

But, the worse behavior is allowed to exist on Sixth Street. This incident bespeaks to everything we’ve been talking about. I had to leave the meeting a half hour after it started, because I got a call that a fight broke out in front of [my restaurant], between two street people.

I noticed that Supervisor Kim was also CC’ed on this email, but it’s just funny to me how the same old problem is constantly recycled without anything ever changing.

This photo is an example of how Sixth Street is an undocumented containment zone where the law is barely enforced. So long as the criminal behavior occurs along that corridor, nobody cares. The second it leaves Sixth Street and wanders into other parts of the neighborhood, it becomes a crime, and the person is apprehended.

This business owner was joking when he suggested that this person was dropped off on Sixth Street, but there is some truth to that statement. In fact, at that meeting last week, one of the men from the SFPD even said that many of the criminals who are processed at the Southern Station are eventually dropped off in the Sixth Street Corridor.

Aside from the obvious- Financial District has Zero Tolerance- how can they justify knowing about the issue and not applying said Zero Tolerance to the entire City?

Original Post from March 15th:

It’s no secret that South of Market is one of the most diverse communities in the City, and quite possibly the United States. When you consider the difference between the SRO’s on Sixth Street and the Luxury Condos in South Beach, what a difference a few blocks can make.

I bring this up because I’ve had the opportunity to attend two different meetings involving the SFPD and our new Supervisor, Jane Kim, this year.

Back in January, I sat at a meeting with the South Beach Rincon Mission Bay Neighborhood Association, where concerned residents spoke of issues like double parking on Townsend Street and rogue skateboarders along the Embarcadero.

Last week, I attended a meeting between the SFPD, Ms. Kim and about 20-25 concerned business owners along Sixth Street and Mid-Market. While I’d argue their issues seemed a little more, um, urgent (I’ll get to them in a second), one thing that stood out to me was how engaged the SFPD AND Jane Kim were with each respective group. Something tells me meetings like this would not have happened had Chris Daly not succumbed to those darned term limits.

The meeting itself lasted for about an hour and a half, but it appeared that everyone left with a sense of hope that they hadn’t felt since Obama tarnished the word. After all, here were the Interim Chief of Police, Jeff Godown, Commander Greg McEachern and Supervisor, Jane Kim in one room, promising to “do the best that they can” to alleviate local concerns. Here are some highlights:

No Offense To Our Neighbors in South Beach…

I don’t mean to disregard the concerns of residents in South Beach/Mission Bay, but there are some rather serious issues along the Sixth Street Corridor that need to be addressed; and they are far more severe than lowering the speed limit on King Street.

In fact, after attending last week’s meeting, my biggest question is why haven’t the Police focused more on the problems in this area? (Answer(s)… where’s the money? Sixth Street has been a wasteland for decades, why fix it now? Problems on Sixth Street don’t effect me… better there than in my back yard! We must protect the Giants!)

We’ve all seen video/heard horror stories from Sixth Street, but when you hear the business owners describe their day-to-day lives, it’s rather startling to say the least. From badgering customers and mugging workers to prostitution and defecation in business windows during a normal lunch hour, you have to wonder the question that Chief Godown uttered (seemingly without thinking): if there’s such a huge problem along Sixth Street, why do we have 12 patrol cars stationed at Macy’s in Union Square? (Note: after one business owner replied, “I’d love to hear an answer to that,” Godown mumbled something about having to go back to the station to look at actual numbers.)

You can easily argue that these business owners knew what they were getting into when they opened. That’s fine, and I get it. However, after meeting with a bunch of them, I believe they set out to make a positive difference in that part of the community, and none of them seem to be hiding under any rocks.

The New Sixth Street Substation Gets a Green Light… Sort of.

It’s been the talk of SOMA for quite some time, but the Sixth Street SFPD Substation appears to be close to moving ahead. According to Chief Godown and Mike Grisso from the SF Redevelopment Agency, there’s already “money set aside” to BUILD a Police Substation at 72 Sixth Street, next to the Balmoral Hotel.

Chief Godown did emphasize that while the Substation has been in the works for over a year, and the plans are about 80% complete, once the station is built, there is no money in the cash-strapped City budget to staff it. In other words, it will serve as a satellite office for beat patrol officers in the neighborhood so that they don’t have to head back to 850 Bryant every time they apprehend someone for smoking crack or pooping on the side wall of Passion Cafe (28 Sixth Street).

This was not a problem for the local business owners who complained of an overall lack in Police presence throughout the Sixth Street Corridor. After all, what good is an officer sitting behind a desk in some Substation? They should be out on the streets, making their presence known.They just want a place for Officers to go without having to leave. They just want Officers stationed in the area.

Profiling The Problem on Sixth Street…

According to Chief Godown, there are ten Police Districts in San Francisco. Of the ten, the Southern District is home to 20% of the crime in the City. With that statistic alone, it’s a fair question to ask why we don’t have 20% of the Police force working to make our streets safer.

There are crimes committed every day, in broad daylight. But when is it at its absolute worst?

According to the businesses along Sixth Street, the first ten days of every month (coincidentally, the same time welfare checks are given handed out) and nice, sunny days are like “complete anarchy out there.”

Chief Godown and Commander McEachern were quick to point out that the reasons that this area (and the Tenderloin) are such a draw to so much crime is because of Negligent SRO Owners, an over abundance of liquor stores in the area and the fact that most of the Social Service Offices are centered around the Sixth Street Corridor and the Tenderloin.

So What Can Be Done To Fix Sixth Street?

That’s not a very simple question to answer, but after this meeting it seems we may be moving in the right direction.

“There has to be a fundamental change in the City,” said Commander McEachern, speaking of the upcoming San Francisco budget discussions.

Chief Godown added that, as a City, we “have to decide what is more important. Do you want swimming pools and sidewalks that aren’t cracked?” Or do we want to focus on crime and public safety?

Unfortunately, I can’t see people who live in other, safer parts of the City showing concern about fixing the Sixth Street Corridor; even though it’s one of the main entrances to San Francisco, and thereby one of the first things people encounter when they come to visit the best City in the world (in my humble opinion).

So I doubt that “better budget allocation” would ever play a role in fixing this problem. Unfortunately, it’s going to have to involve members of the immediate Community, taking on a volunteer role in an effort to pave the future.

While it would make more sense to move the money, and thereby allocate more officers to the area, that’s just not what the greater San Francisco cares about. It seems a no-brainer to me that perhaps SRO Owners should be held accountable for the residents they allow in their buildings, but who cares about logic? Let the SRO Owners run wild, just like their residents (NOTE: Not ALL SRO’s run wild like their residents, only some).

The idea of creating a Community Police Advisory Board specifically for Sixth Street came to the table, and I think that wouldn’t hurt the situation. After all, nobody knows what’s happening over there more than the people who live and work along Sixth Street.

The most effective change would be the addition of more officer’s patrolling the area, and frankly, I don’t feel they explained why there aren’t. Chief Godown even mentioned that he is well aware of the problems on Sixth Street, both from reports and from personally passing through the neighborhood. If that’s not enough to prove to him that perhaps he should re-allocate some officers, what is? What’s the underlying secret that nobody is speaking of?

Ultimately, it is going to take a Twitter, or a City Place to move some money into the area before the City officials start to seriously approach this problem. Unfortunately with that comes the inevitable “gentrification” debate.

The good news is that Jane Kim is looking past her Progressive roots to at least consider wooing businesses into the area. I LOVE when Politicians look past their own opinion to do what is right versus what they think should be done. Perhaps there is still some un-tarnished hope left in this City after all.

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