The operator of the Taylor Street Center in the Tenderloin, which provides housing and transitional services for up to 210 formerly incarcerated individuals at a time, is working on plans to convert the shuttered 51 room residential hotel at 139 6th Street into an 80 to 90 bed residential reentry center for previously incarcerated males.
And per San Francisco’s Planning Code, the proposed center would be considered “Group Housing,” which is a principally permitted use for the Sixth Street site.
But should the potential center ever involve “the provision of specialized aid to more than six residents by personnel licensed by the State of California (including, but not limited to, the treatment of addictive, contagious, or other diseases or physiological disorders),” it would then be considered a “Residential Care Facility.” Residential Care Facilities, however, are also a permitted use as outlined in a letter of determination from San Francisco’s Zoning Administrator this week.
Well it certainly cant’ make Sixth Street any *worse*. And an occupied building is better than a shuttered building, any day.
I don’t know if that’s true…
putting people just getting out of jail in such close proximity to this much drugs and alcohol cannot be good.
It will cut down on their commute. Win win!
There’s Walk Score, why not a Score Score?
shocked that Academy of Art did not buy it for an illegal conversion first. the scofflaw bastards.
Insanely bad idea. First, the city is trying to make that area better and this will not help. It should be converted into luxury condos. Second, its a bad idea to place criminals in a old building with no services to re-acclimate them to society not to mention that neighborhood is a hot bed for crime. Its like locking a drug abuser in a room of drugs and wonder why they are still using.
You vacillate between sounding like a troll and a NIMBY there.
This building isn’t in the middle of the desert, how do you know there aren’t services? How can they acclimate themselves if you place them in a secluded area? How do you know why crimes these people have committed? You think if someone has murdered before that putting them in a high crime area will encourage them to murder again?
These guys are basically one step away from being homeless, how it is that luxury condos are more important than keeping people off the streets?
He has a valid concern.
If you think of rehabilitation as climbing a ladder, you’ll see that the problem with SF is after the heavily subsidized rung at the bottom, there’s about 20 rungs missing to get to the self-reliant rung. i.e. What’s the path for an ex-con to get a job that pays enough for a SF mortgage plus living expenses and savings?
No one is saying to put these people in a secluded leper colony, but there are plenty of places in the state with lower costs of living and lower skill jobs available.
It’s your lucky day since I’m highly skilled at typing with my toes.
But your rhetorical skills could be put to better use by explaining to us all exactly why this location would be beneficial to the intended residents.
Only a tiny percentage of the population will ever get to the point of a “San Francisco mortgage”. A recently released felon…probably ain’t gonna make it unless he goes back into it.
I agree. This is not a good location, but will only keep the TL the dangerous, dirty neighborhood it is. This does not respect the many hardworking, but poor families who now live here. There are better locations, quite frankly, outside the downtown that would serve this purpose, with support services as well.
Market rate housing (with some bmr) can only improve this area.
I am very disappointed that people are pursuing this idea here, it’s like the perfect example of how to exacerbate an already terrible and miserable problem. Seems like some folks are completely TONE DEAF to what is going on in the city right now. It is setting everyone up for failure.
Its putting very vulnerable people who have a myriad of issues to deal with in the hot bed of trigger-ville meaning anything and everything could be a trigger for relapsing back into whatever behavior they found in the first place. Its also setting up the community to have even more problem children than they already have.
The area around 6th Street is horrible and no good sensed person would agree with this plan. Its also shocking and disturbing to see how many pawn shops are around that whole area. Its like a joke that society is purposefully building things for failure that perpetuate crime, hardship, collapse, poverty, disparity, disunity and so on.
Instead of working hard to solve very real and terrible problems of quality of life and all the qualms people of this population bring and deal with, this is a poster child of how we lack foresight into how to really solve a problem, unless they want to purposefully make everything worse.
What’s happening here is very analogous to my point about the “entrepreneurs of error”. You’d think that there would be two conflicting points of view here: Those of the potential residents and those of the potential neighbors. But there’s actually another force here, that of the organizations that compete for funding to provide services to the poor and homeless. In theory, they should act on the behalf of those who they provide services for, but they have their own agendas.
As a thought experiment, if you had a loved one trying to transition away from prison or poverty would you advocate for this location? Or even SF in general?
Well, all you nattering nabobs of negativism, where are you going to put a prisoner reentry program if not on Sixth Street, then? Pacific Heights?
A place where the cost of living isn’t insanely high and where crime and drugs aren’t common right outside the door. Maybe a block where the seedy nightclubs aren’t improving the area.
In other words, by locating this place in a city like SF, we are making actual rehabilitation nearly impossible.
So, in other words, your plan is to foist off SF’s problems (recovering criminals) onto the suburbs? And, they will be working class suburbs with their own set of problems, because a reentry center will not be allowed in Danville or Menlo Park.
Forgive me if this “plan” doesn’t sound very workable.
Malibu Colony. If we have to pick expensive real estate, better find a place with fresh air and sunshine aso well as a positive environment.
Bad Bad Bad idea. It would be good to have such a facility outside of San Francisco, some place where there isn’t such easy access to drugs, crime and drug abusers and enablers all around.
This is a fantastic idea if you want those people right back in jail on the taxpayer dime within a few months! Really, what kind of sadist would insert people recently out of prison, with very few resources, into a seething hotbed of drug use and criminal activity? Sigh…I don’t understand this city.
This is the right idea actually. I’m hoping there will be services and social workers in place.