With the support of Supervisor Peskin, the formal application to convert the top two floors of the shuttered House of Fans building at 888 Post Street, at the corner of Hyde, which sits on the border of Peskin’s Supervisorial District Three and Supervisor Haney’s District Six (which is right across the street), has been submitted to Planning.

As proposed, the 76-bed facility would provide on-site services and shelter for homeless youth aged 18 to 24 while the ground floor of the building would be occupied by Goodwill Industries which plans to operate a drive-up donation center, warehouse and job training facility, including a new computer lab and classrooms, on site.

The estimated budget to renovate the building for use by Goodwill and the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing is currently running around $1 million.  And the renovation could be completed in around 7 months if approved.

37 thoughts on “Proposed Navigation Center on Post Closer to Reality”
  1. This will be a coup for Supervisor Peskin when approved. The site couldn’t be any farther away from his core constituency but would provide cover for his District’s neighbors to claim they’re doing their part to help shoulder the city’s homelessness burden.

  2. Im all for this but I do think its a bit convenient for Peskin to find a place the border of his district and make it restricted to youth. He gets to say he is doing his part without really bearing the burden. Also I have a strange feeling that this project never happens due to lengthy permitting, construction screw ups, and historical preservation. Why not build another tent nav center on one of the many north beach parking lots?

  3. This is so crappy. Paying 4 k for a one bedroom and now have to live near this. Making this city even worse, Rewarding this crap sucks while i work 14 hours a day for a living, No wonder 50% of the city wants to leave. Put a Nav center in 181 Fremont. I wonder if any politicians live near one. I bet not! This city is a joke now a days.

    1. It seems like a much better situation to have the sort of people willing/able to get access to a bed and sanitation than the alternative individuals who roam the streets at night looking for places to shoot-up, sh*t, or shank, no?

      1. They now will do this and roam and ruin this neighborhood, scream all night and deal drugs. Look at tthe place on Polk and Geary. its sad and scary. its a total free for all. sad sad sad

    2. Lol there is a nav center 3 blocks away from 181 fremont. Also, don’t you already live with ‘crappy’ stuff if you live near this?

      1. its a big 3-4 blocks! 🙂 i mean, put it IN 181. Lets give all the homeless and junkies multi million dollar housing!! that sound sooo SF. while the hard working people cant even afford to eat out anymore. or feel safe going out.

        1. Imagine being so utterly delusional that you think living at a nav center while trying to get your life back on track constitutes luxury living.

          1. I have seen no statistics on how many “homeless” parked in NavCenters have actually gotten their “lives on track“ as a result of the taxpayer-provided wrap-around largesse and storage services. It is delusional to assume they magically do a 180 and stop their shoplifting, drugs, drinking and drug delivery activities and other nuisance activities just because they have a temporary free place to sleep at night and personalized tutorials on how to acquire more services at taxpayer expense. There is no accountability. And any stats manufactured by the Homeless Inc. industry will no doubt be self-serving to any pedestrian in this city with two functions eyeballs.

          2. It’s always fascinating to watch someone repeatedly out themselves as classist, without offering a single shred of evidence to support their terrible points… Great work, champ.

      2. Is it open yet? They certainly have done what they could to stop its opening. You won’t find that kind of opposition to this one because the neighbors don’t have that kind of money for lawyers. But fair is fair. The next one should go in the Marina or Telegraph Hill or the heart of Noe Valley.

        1. Why should the next one go in those neighborhoods? They don’t have nearly as much of a homeless problem so why would that even remotely be a good idea?

    3. You should feel free to get out. We’re not exactly in need of anymore people that reflexively hate the poor.

      1. You dont know me and what I have been through to get what i have and work long and hard everyday for. Im just saying dont reward poor life choices and ruin more neighborrhoods. Its just a shuffly, push out of tenderloin into others, then report how great the tenderloin is doing, its just a shift, this isnt actually solving anything, Its very sad. With such ‘Smart’ people in this city, im still surprised the dumb plans this city picks or try to move foreward with. Just build a super high rise in the bayview and keep them all in one area like most other major cities. Its sad. very sad.

        1. You are 100% correct. I’ve lived here my entire life and worked full time for 30 years, yet I’m the person whose liberties are constantly violated by so-called victims. Enough already.

        2. Don’t ruin more neighborhoods? And yet you suggest moving the entire homeless crisis to the Bayview, a neighborhood historically marginalized by city leadership and most recently impacted by exploding housing prices? Talk about dumb plans. Are you going to suggest bringing back redlining too? You sound like a sad person. Very sad. I don’t know you and feel sorry for the people who do.

        3. build a high rise and keep “them all” in one area.

          conner, i don’t know you. i don’t know what you’ve been through, but your comments and complaining make it hard to empathize with you. if you’re paying $4k a month to live in a crappy apartment in SF, look in the mirror. you have choices.

        4. As soon as I hear “poor life choices” I immediately tune out because [I know] exactly what kind of person I’m dealing with.

        5. Spare us of your self-righteous nonsense. You showed exactly who you are, and now you’re mad that people are pointing out that holding those ignorant beliefs make you bad person.

          1. get off your high horse anon… people like you who cater left and right to the homeless in this town are the reason the problem has gotten this bad

  4. It is time the city put one of these things and all other new services for its poor, addicted, addled and criminal in some neighborhood other than the Tenderloin, SOMA or Mission. Those neighborhoods have done their part. The rest of the city wants to be able to ignore the city’s problems. It shouldn’t be allowed to.

    1. No they haven’t. Shelters and nav centers locations and #s should correlate with where homeless currently are. Mission and soma need about 4 more and haight/panhandle need 1 and Castro needs one and bayview needs one. This is where homeless are concentrated

  5. I am really hoping my Supervisor in District 4, Mar, pushes for a Navigation Center or two in the Parkside and Sunset District. I am not being sarcastic, I would support it 100%

  6. I live nearby and most of the grief and degradation I see every day centers around drugs. Not just poor folks down on their luck like during the Great Depression, but dozens of folks that like to sit around daily shooting up god knows what out on the sidewalk: and or smoke crack. The TL’s actually gotten worse.

    I’ve lived here 20 years. My block used to be just tacky and dreadful. Now it’s tacky, dreadful, and filthy. When do the civil rights of all the people have any weight? I really don’t feel like the city owes drug users the sidewalks. It’s almost like city hall receives monthly stipends from all the drug dealers.

    1. Zugamenzio Farnsworth wrote: “My block used to be just tacky and dreadful. Now it’s tacky, dreadful, and filthy. When do the civil rights of all the people have any weight? I really don’t feel like the city owes drug users the sidewalks.”

      Easy. When non-drug-using citizens get tired enough of this behavior to donate significant funds to a candidate who campaigns on a platform of cracking down on public drug use and that candidate actually gets elected. Until that time, either nothing will change or things will get actively worse, because that is what is in the pecuniary interests of drug dealers.

  7. The problem needs to be redefined. A large portion of the core problem is not homelessness, but rather drug addiction and mental illness. This fact is well known, but not emphasized enough.

    We should build a mental health and a rehab facility or two or three. I would pick Treasure Island or an industrial district, where large buildings already exist and there’s less of an issue with home owners. While they would not be run as jails, those with issues would not be free to leave until they were sober or able to operate with medication.

    I believe there are already many services for those that are sober and mentally stable, but lower cost housing could be provided in the same areas, with dedicated services to help them get back on their feet.

    1. Even assuming that S.F. has the budgetary support for new rehab facilities, we’d still have to staff it. The City doesn’t have full staff for some facilities it already has. From last Sep, SF counts 4,000 homeless, addicted and mentally ill, but timeline for help still unclear:

      …increasing the number of care coordinators and hours of the access center will require hiring many more mental health professionals, which has already proved difficult for the department.As the cost of living soars and salaries remain stagnant, San Francisco has struggled to recruit and maintain enough mental health care workers, including case managers and caregivers. Such staff shortages also make it difficult for some care facilities to operate at full capacity.

      And of course this is under the current state of affairs where the majority of The City’s programs are voluntary.

      Even under the ordinance that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed last summer
      implementing SB 1045 (see the 7th section)
      empowering city health officials to force chronic drug addicts off city streets and into treatment, such people must refuse voluntary treatment and housing assistance before they can be compelled into treatment. The city’s Department of Public Health estimates it will affect 50 to 100 people who were detained at least six or seven times over 12 months. The involuntary residential treatment can last up to a year.

      What the local media won’t tell you is that the statistics indicate that the majority of those folks will go right back to using shortly after they leave treatment.

      1. I hear and agree with everything you say, but we need to start somewhere and do something. We can’t leave drug addicts and the mentally ill roaming and sleeping on the streets. If relapse happens, then they would just go back into rehab as many times as is necessary. Hiring more care coordinators is difficult, but what isn’t hard. These are tough problems to solve, but all doable.

  8. One of my neighbors is a counselor for street folks with addiction issues. He says that most never get better once they start-up with really hard drugs, like heroine. So in other words, many of these folks are never going to get better: never going to be functional. It doesn’t matter how many rehabs they go through, or how many case managers they have, or how much the Homeless Coalition bemoans on their behalf, it’s all pointless really.

    I would guess the severely mentally ill, and heroine addicted rather need to be institutionalized. And if that’s too harsh I’d give them all a room, and enforce the vagrancy/loitering laws as needed. It’s what happens in virtually every other city around the world. Or just keep the hard drugs out of the city, and or make it possible to convict, say, 3rd time folks who deal hard drugs, of involuntary manslaughter. Because right now the city is virtually aiding and abetting involuntary manslaughter: and the people have to watch.

    1. We have never been serious about “the war on drugs”. Why do I stay that? Because there has been no attack on the people who finance the whole sordid industry. Money laundering and under the table financing of the drug (and weapons trade) industry is largely let go with a wink and a nod.

      Look at HSBC…one of the biggest banks in the world. It was FOUNDED to promote and finance the opium trade in China. When badly caught for money laundering, both the American and British governments decided to let them go free because…they were too big to fail.

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