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Passerbys walk outside of Hospitality House on August 11, 2026. Photo by Zoe Malen.<\/p>\nDepending on who you talk to, the Sixth Street Self-Help Center is a lifeline to the residents of the SRO hotels around it, or an anchor dragging the local quality of life down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What is clear: Daniel Lurie\u2019s administration quietly terminated its contract with the center at 169 Sixth St., demanding the hub close by Dec. 31 and relocate its staff back to the Tenderloin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The city has given little insight into why the center has to close. Its budget, services and staff,\u00a0the city says, will move eight blocks across Market Street to the Hospitality House at 146 Leavenworth St. in the Tenderloin. <\/p>\n
The center at the corner of Sixth and Natoma streets sees about 4,200 people a year, and has connected hundreds to permanent housing in the neighborhood, said Joe Wilson, the executive director of Hospitality House.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are doing the things the city claims it wants done,\u201d he said. \u201cNow the mayor\u2019s office has said that they want to reimagine Sixth Street so, well, what does that mean? It\u2019s anybody\u2019s guess.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hospitality House leaders say its closure underscores the city\u2019s punitive approach to homelessness while city leaders say they are trying to \u201crevitalize\u201d the Sixth Street corridor and have plans for the soon-to-be-vacant space.\u00a0Hospitality House staffers are holding a rally on Wednesday, Aug. 19, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., to fight for the center to stay open.<\/p>\n
While city leaders will not give a clear reasoning for the site\u2019s closure, it also appears to follow\u00a0months of pushback from community and business groups who say the presence of the center is, in part, responsible for what they say are unsafe and unclean street conditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to get Sixth Street cleaned up,\u201d said Henry Karnilowicz, president of the SoMa Business Association, which works to advocate for businesses in the area. <\/p>\n
The fewer than a dozen small restaurants on Sixth Street, including pizza shops and bodegas, face more dire circumstances than other businesses in SoMa, Karnilowicz said, and the presence of the center draws in a crowd that keeps paying customers away.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople say it\u2019s gentrification. It\u2019s a revitalization, that\u2019s how I look at it. We have to make it so that locals and non-locals feel comfortable, not that they\u2019re going to be threatened or see people defecating right in front of them. And I think that\u2019s a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karnilowicz said his organization has met with the mayor\u2019s office over the last year to express their concerns, especially \u201cwhat\u2019s going on right outside of Hospitality House,\u201d the Sixth Street Center.<\/p>\n
Passerbys walk outside of Hospitality House on August 11, 2026. Photo by Zoe Malen.<\/p>\n
The Self-Help Center is located at the corner of Natoma and Sixth streets. Natoma, which is more of an alley than a street, dead-ends at Fifth Street, and the low level of pedestrian and car traffic makes it an easy place for people to congregate. <\/p>\n
Hospitality House staff say they frequently step into the alley to encourage the groups of people who are often hanging out on the sidewalks and doorsteps of Natoma into the center and off the street.<\/p>\n
On a recent morning in mid-August, a man walking down Sixth Street used a metal pole to drag a plastic container, likely filled with his belongings, toward Market Street.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Around him, on Sixth Street alone, there were at least four other service organizations besides the Self-Help Center that were open to serve low-income residents and the nearby homeless population. Those services are varied; one exclusively serves families, another offers food and hygiene services and a third has services catered to drug users.<\/p>\n
To some, that is too many services with too little city presence helping to address the problem.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The South of Market West Neighborhood Association filed a formal complaint<\/a> to the state of California on April 3, alleging that San Francisco has violated state-housing law by concentrating poverty and disadvantage in SoMa, and by failing to provide basic city services on the same level as other neighborhoods.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing it everyday,\u201d said Shaun Aukland, a board member of the neighborhood association. \u201cWho was the responsible [party] to report those people, help those people, get them into shelters and treatment? When we asked the Department of Public Health, we were seeing a lot of finger-pointing.\u201d<\/p>\n That said, added Aukland, they did not push for the center to be closed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a win for us that Hospitality House is closing.\u201d<\/p>\n What Aukland and other association members did do, he added, was file complaints about\u00a0 unclean and unsafe conditions along the Sixth Street corridor, including the area where the Self-Help center operated;\u00a0reports of things like people loitering, using substances, throwing trash and sleeping on sidewalks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018We need a plan\u2019<\/p>\n The mayor\u2019s response in the wake of those complaints has been to call for a \u201crevitalization\u201d of the corridor, though it is unclear what that will entail.\u00a0<\/p>\n The city says it is in active conversations about what will fill the space vacated by Hospitality House\u2019s center, but had no specific plans to share at the time of publication. The property directly above the drop-in center, The Alder Hotel, is up for sale,<\/a> according to a listing online. The hotel is currently used for single room occupancy housing.<\/p>\n \u201cHospitality House remains a valued [partner] providing critical behavioral health services to San Franciscans, and we will continue to work with them to ensure continuity of care for clients as our top priority during this change,\u201d wrote the Department of Public Health in an emailed statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n A separate statement from Lurie\u2019s office highlighted the absence of a plan for the future of Sixth Street. <\/p>\n \u201cWe need a plan to actually revitalize the corridor. We\u2019re currently looking at how to activate the space at 169 Sixth St. and bring in resources and amenities that serve and energize the whole community.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Who is responsible for street conditions?\u00a0<\/p>\n Wilson, from Hospitality House, said his organization is not responsible for what happens outside of its facility.<\/p>\n \u201cWe feel we\u2019re being punished because of the external conditions \u2014 the visibility of homelessness and poverty,\u201d said Wilson. Both, he said, have \u201cnot been eliminated to the degree that anyone is satisfied with.\u201d<\/p>\n Legally, though, the city does assign some responsibility to local businesses and nonprofits that operate in any neighborhood for what happens outside their doors. San Francisco\u2019s Good Neighbor policy, created in 2024<\/a> by former Mayor London Breed, makes the city \u201cprimarily responsible\u201d for street conditions, but stresses that service organizations funded by city departments or agencies should \u201cactively\u201d work with the city to address concerns surrounding their sites.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Good Neighbor policy is in the process of being updated to make the role of those service organizations clearer, by requiring organizations to \u201cmake reasonable efforts to resolve routine concerns,\u201d conduct and document at least three perimeter checks per day, keep entrances and sidewalks \u201creasonably\u201d clear and \u201cappropriately\u201d discourage \u201cdisruptive behavior\u201d near sites. That policy will likely go into effect in September or October<\/a> of this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n