Opened in 2022, the shelter \u2014 one of the city\u2019s largest, catering to severely mentally ill and addicted clients \u2014 is part of a heavy concentration of services<\/a> for vulnerable people in the neighborhood, which borders the Tenderloin and Nob Hill. There are three shelters within 28 blocks, plus seven other facilities serving current and formerly homeless people, including a behavioral health center and permanent supportive housing sites.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not against the homeless \u2014 we have to do our part,\u201d Swan said. \u201cBut we have done way more than other neighborhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n Her petition (opens in new tab)<\/a> has gathered about 170 signatures, mostly from residents of Post Street. But the city has made no indication that it will close the shelter \u2014 even as the district\u2019s supervisor, Danny Sauter, has called for doing so.<\/p>\n \u201cNo residential neighborhood can survive this level of concentration, and Lower Nob Hill is now in crisis,\u201d the petition says.<\/p>\n During a Monday afternoon tour with Swan, the area around 711 Post appeared fairly calm. Within five blocks of the five-story building that houses the shelter, formerly the Ansonia hotel, The Standard saw only three people who appeared to be homeless. Several needles were discarded on the sidewalk about a block from the shelter, but there was none of the brazen drug use and crowded sidewalks commonly spotted in trouble zones in the Tenderloin and SoMa.<\/p>\n Swan insisted that five people idling on Jones Street near Geary were drug users.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s clean now,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s better during the day, but it gets worse at night.\u201d<\/p>\n During a follow-up visit late Tuesday, Lower Nob Hill\u2019s rain-soaked streets were mostly quiet. Between 10:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m., The Standard met three people holding pipes or foil used to smoke drugs. One said they were staying at the 711 Post shelter. Most activity was on Geary Street, with small clusters of people and a few sleeping on a sidewalk or in a doorway.\u00a0<\/p>\n The areas Swan said transformed into drug markets at night, including Jones between Geary and Post, Shannon Street, Derby and Taylor streets, and Cosmo Place, were all empty around 11 p.m.<\/p>\n Swan cited a video (opens in new tab)<\/a> posted by a controversial street videographer who goes by the moniker JJ Smith<\/a> taken roughly four hours later, showing small groups gathered and sleeping on Pine and Sutter streets, north of Post.<\/p>\n \u201cThey keep moving around,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Police data paints a mixed picture: Drug offenses in Lower Nob Hill have nearly doubled since 2019, while weapons offenses rose 47.4%. There were two homicides in 2019 and five in 2025. However, over that time period, assaults and robberies declined sharply, and total crime fell about 20%, compared with a 50% drop citywide.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, non-emergency calls to the city\u2019s 311 service related to Lower Nob Hill have roughly doubled since 2019, to 29,000 last year. Street-cleaning requests jumped 170% over that period, and noise complaints rose by a similar margin, but reports of encampments fell by about 33%.<\/p>\n Most neighbors who talked to The Standard said they haven\u2019t noticed an uptick in drug use or violent crime nearby, as Swan\u2019s petition alleges. Only one person interviewed said they felt unsafe in the area.<\/p>\n Some residents noted that drug use creeps into the neighborhood at night but disputed that there\u2019s been an increase.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have a problem here,\u201d said Rodger Claxton, who has lived on the same block as the shelter for three years. \u201cI\u2019ve never been hassled.\u201d<\/p>\n Jairen Sylvester, who has lived in Lower Nob Hill for 10 years and has been unhoused and sleeping on the streets for the last three, said drug use hasn\u2019t increased since the pandemic-era hotel shelters opened in 2021.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it\u2019s not that bad up here because of Urban Alchemy,\u201d Sylvester said.<\/p>\n Others said drug use has gotten worse overall, not just near the shelter.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not because of one hotel,\u201d said Tracy Stephens, who lives nearby. \u201cIt\u2019s worse in general everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n Business owners along Post Street largely echoed that sentiment, describing occasional petty theft or loitering but no major disruptions directly tied to the shelter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have problems here from the guys in there,\u201d said Raul Licea, co-owner of Chuy\u2019s Fiestas Taqueria II. \u201cAll the time when I come out, it\u2019s clean.\u201d<\/p>\n Urban Alchemy spokesperson Jess Montejano said the nonprofit chose not to renew its contract to operate the shelter because of tensions between neighborhood residents and staff. In September, an Urban Alchemy worker was fatally shot (opens in new tab)<\/a> in nearby Civic Center after telling a person not to use drugs in public.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re super proud of what we accomplished, helping to place hundreds of guests into permanent housing,\u201d Montejano said.<\/p>\n The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing declined to comment on contract negotiations with a new shelter operator, but Five Keys Schools and Programs CEO Steve Good said his nonprofit has been selected to take over operations April 1. The nonprofit is negotiating with the city to operate the shelter through the rest of 2026 with a possible two-year extension, though a contract has not been finalized, he said.<\/p>\n Staffing and services will remain largely the same, Good said, including street patrols to discourage loitering and public drug use.<\/p>\n \u201cWe plan to offer the same services Urban Alchemy has,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Dispersing facilities for homeless people around the city, rather than concentrating them in particular areas, is now official policy. Last year, supervisors passed a law (opens in new tab)<\/a> barring new shelters in neighborhoods already saturated with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n The extent of the homelessness crisis in the city is in flux. Results of the 2026 homelessness count, which was conducted Jan. 29<\/a>, are not complete. The most recent point-in-time count (opens in new tab)<\/a> with available data, from 2024, found a 7% increase in the total number of homeless people from two years before. Temporary shelter and crisis intervention programs were at or above 90% capacity (opens in new tab)<\/a> between July 2023 and July 2025.<\/p>\n Sauter supports converting 711 Post to a youth hostel but has not outlined a plan for doing so. The supervisor\u2019s office has received complaints about weapons and drug use at the site.<\/p>\n Shelter residents, such as Jonathan Bankes, strongly oppose closing it.<\/p>\n Bankes acknowledged that there is drug use but questioned whether shelter residents are responsible for broader neighborhood issues, saying drug users are likely to stay close to where they live. \u201cIf you go somewhere else, it\u2019s from another shelter,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Another resident, Sierra Heredia, said closing the shelter would push hundreds of people back onto the street. Getting a bed at 711 Post \u201cchanged everything for me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After years of seeing homeless shelters open around her since the pandemic, Lower Nob Hill resident Barbara Swan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[55720,1493,91024,101,103,102,104,106,105,20438],"class_list":{"0":"post-194857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-department-of-homelessness-and-supportive-housing","9":"tag-homelessness","10":"tag-lower-nob-hill","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-sf","15":"tag-sf-headlines","16":"tag-sf-news","17":"tag-urban-alchemy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1772116390_110_-S3840x2880-FPNG.png\"\/)
Jones Street between Geary and Post streets was devoid of drug use or dealing during a visit late Tuesday. | Source: Garrett Leahy\/The Standard<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1772116392_880_-S3840x2880-FPNG.png\"\/)
Shannon Street, another area Swan says is a den of drug use, was also empty. | Source: Garrett Leahy\/The Standard<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1772116394_454_-S3840x2880-FPNG.png\"\/)
Jairen Sylvester says drug use in Lower Nob Hill hasn\u2019t increased. | Source: Garrett Leahy\/The Standard<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1772116396_58_-S3840x2561-FPNG.png\"\/)
Former Mayor London Breed tours a bedroom at the shelter at 711 Post St. in 2022. | Source: Benjamin Fanjoy<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1772116398_596_-S3840x2561-FPNG.png\"\/)
Urban Alchemy will cease to operate the shelter on March 31. | Camille Cohen\/The Standard<\/p>\n