Community Organizations spearhead the 6th Street crisis after 80 million has been put into the 2 blocks with little improvement.
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On the Street Where You Can’t Live
Despite an investment of more than $80 million, the two blocks of Sixth Street between Market and Howard streets are so dangerous that even homeless people refuse to live there, critics of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency said Tuesday.
When the street is so bad that people would rather sleep in doorways or shelters elsewhere, things have gone much too far, said Randy Shaw, chief of the legal clinic/hotel management company Tenderloin Housing Clinic.
He and a group of about 30 mid-Market tenants, homeowners and hotel owners gathered outside City Hall on Tuesday to talk about the problems before speaking at the agency’s afternoon meeting.
“There really is a crisis on Sixth,” Shaw told redevelopment commissioners. Shaw’s housing clinic manages the Seneca Hotel on Sixth Street through The City’s master lease program, which it wants expanded.
Shaw and several members of the planning advisory committee for the area asked the agency to take the lead on five action points:
- Electrical system upgrades in residential hotels. A tenant member of the South of Market Project Area Committee said four light bulbs pull nearly enough juice to crash his room’s power.
- Hotel leasing instead of acquisition. Some Sixth Street hotel owners expressed distaste that the Redevelopment Agency would rather buy them out than work with them.
- Adopt-a-Block anti-crime program. Shaw and others praised the volunteer program’s effectiveness in cleaning up Tenderloin street crime. Tenants said they favor neighborhood policing rather than law enforcement sweeps.
