Advocates for public services cheered San Francisco’s budget compromise earlier this summer. The final tally avoided $28.5 million in proposed cuts to City College and to nonprofits that serve immigrants, the homeless, and more.
But when supervisors ratified the record $16.9 billion two-year budget last month, one longtime homelessness nonprofit still took a hit.
Hospitality House, which turns 60 next year, received a $250,000 cut. What’s more, executive director Joe Wilson says city officials decided that the organization’s drop-in center on one of the city’s most troubled streets must close.
Both the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Public Health confirmed the pending closure of Hospitality House’s Sixth Street Self-Help Center. It’s a daytime community center that aims to connect people to housing, employment, and treatment.
The move comes as the city continues to rethink some laws and policies related to public substance use, drug dealing, and homelessness.
Sixth Street is at the heart of that tension and has become synonymous with the city’s street troubles. Several blocks stretching south from Market Street attract open drug use and markets and log some of the highest numbers of 311 calls in the city.
Mayor Daniel Lurie has targeted the street since the early days of his administration. Three blocks away from the Self-Help Center, the city recently opened a “reset” center where cops bring intoxicated people to sober up and get referrals to care.
Wilson says he heard last month from both the mayor’s chief of health and human services Kunal Modi and Department of Public Health director Daniel Tsai. “The explanation [was] that the overall conditions on Sixth Street need to change, and the Self-Help Center hasn’t done enough to change those conditions,” Wilson told The Frisc.
Some neighbors go much farther, saying the center has made conditions worse. The city seems to have sided with them.
Neither Modi nor Tsai was available for comment. Mayor’s Office spokesperson Shelby Weiss said via email that “we know it’s not enough to manage street conditions — we need a plan to actually revitalize the corridor. We’re currently looking at how to activate the space at 169 6th Street,” the center’s address.
A DPH spokesperson emailed a statement that said in part: “To provide more coordinated services in areas most impacted by the behavioral health crisis, we are working with Hospitality House and the Mayor’s Office … to ensure better outcomes for clients. This includes redirecting services from the Sixth Street Center to Hospitality House’s other sites.”
Hospitality House runs a similar drop-in center and a shelter with 22 overnight beds in the Tenderloin, plus three more sites for art, job training, and community organizing. Even with the cuts, it is slated to receive about $7.4 million in funding from the city over the next two years.
The Self-Help Center must shut down by December 31. When Wilson heard DPH’s comment that the department was “working with Hospitality House,” he made clear that the nonprofit wasn’t a willing partner to the closure: “We do not agree with this decision.”
Neighborhood pressure
Wilson also says pressure from neighborhood groups was a factor, with the SOMA West Neighborhood Association being “the most active and persistent” with “a series of complaints” to various city agencies.
SOMA West members acknowledge that neighborhood residents have peppered DPH with emails about the center, and the group has relayed concerns to City Hall.
But SOMA West board member Shaun Aukland downplays its role in the center’s closure. “Ultimately, this was DPH’s decision,” Aukland told The Frisc. “We were not involved in further decision-making.”
Back in January, DPH began circulating proposed cuts to its nonprofit contractors, $17 million in all. A department memo said that more than half of Hospitality House’s $3.8 million in city funding for the 2026-27 fiscal year would come instead from state sources, saving the city $2 million. “The $2M in savings includes no service reductions,” the memo read.
As budget negotiations wrapped up, many nonprofits on the preliminary list avoided cuts, but Hospitality House received a $250,000 cut over the next two fiscal years.
Around this time, Wilson also got word that his group’s work was under closer review. DPH said its contract renewal was only for six months instead of several years. Soon after, several in-person conversations led to the July 1 decision to close the center, Wilson says. He adds that the closure is not because of the cut.
Staff members will move to Hospitality House’s Tenderloin location, says Wilson, and the budget reduction also means laying off at least one full-time worker.
A DPH spokesperson said the closure was not due to “any specific incident or failure.” The Mayor’s Office said the site was too small and needed more capacity, with people “spilling onto the sidewalk.”
When The Frisc asked for data to back up these assertions, both DPH and the Mayor’s Office did not respond.
SOMA West’s Aukland said he heard that the center is closing because of “operational performance.”
When asked if the Self-Help Center’s closure is due to the RESET Center opening a few blocks away, Wilson said, “that’s certainly reasonable to assume.”
‘Tough love’
The RESET Center — short for Rapid Enforcement, Support, Evaluation, and Triage — opened in May. In the official announcement, Sheriff Paul Miyamoto said the center “represents a tough-love approach.”
Touted as a 24/7 alternative to jail and emergency rooms, police and sheriff deputies drop people there that they’ve arrested for public intoxication. People can stay up to 23 hours to sober up and then are free to leave, according to the sheriff’s site. It offers reclining leather chairs, clean clothes, food, and over-the-counter meds. A private contractor is supposed to help connect people to treatment and other services. The sheriff’s dashboard says as of Aug. 10, 1,231 people have been admitted to the center, and 64 percent have declined a referral to services.
The mayor’s chief of public safety recently said the city hopes to open more of these centers.
The center is the latest piece in Lurie’s “Breaking the Cycle” initiative. Reacting to years of record overdose deaths fueled by fentanyl, Lurie campaigned in 2024 to address SF street conditions, drug use, and crime. His first major bill, dubbed the Fentanyl State of Emergency, got near-unanimous approval from supervisors.
Within a few months, his promise to open 1,500 more shelter beds seemed in jeopardy. Modi acknowledged as much in July, saying the number was less important than providing “the right beds.”
The administration and allies such as Sup. Matt Dorsey, whose South of Market district includes Sixth Street, continue to shift away from a once-staunch adherence to harm reduction. The shift began under London Breed, who began rolling back what she saw as permissive and ineffective policies.
Harm reduction is a set of principles that aim to primarily keep drug users alive rather than abstinent through easy availability of overdose reversal drugs (Narcan), medically-assisted treatments (MAT) like methadone, and clean drug-use supplies. Harm reduction extends to rules around housing and social spaces, like Hospitality House’s Self-Help Center, that aim to first get people off the street without stigmatizing their drug or alcohol use and then connect them to treatment.
Maintaining that the fentanyl era requires new policies, Lurie and allies continue to make room for recovery that requires abstinence. Lurie also limited distribution of free drug paraphernalia. The board last month approved Dorsey’s bill to allow evictions for drug use in new permanent supportive housing if it’s funded entirely by local dollars.
Dorsey and others have underscored that the city should keep funding some harm reduction tools, like Narcan and MAT, but also fund alternatives, such as sober recovery homes. Some harm reduction proponents see any funding shift as a threat to evidence-based services.
‘Containment strategy’
Some objections to San Francisco’s drug, street, and homelessness policies are about geography. Many feel the city has used the Tenderloin and parts of SoMa such as Sixth Street as containment zones with high concentrations of low-income housing, including SROs, and services such as the Hospitality House center.
Before the pandemic, former Sup. Matt Haney, who represented both neighborhoods, wrote a bill requiring SF to spread shelters and services across the city. It failed. A similar bill from Sup. Bilal Mahmood last year was scaled back; it makes new sites in the Tenderloin and SoMa harder to open but doesn’t require an equitable share of services across the city.
We do not agree with this decision.
hospitality house executive director joe wilson
The SOMA West Neighborhood Association this spring filed a formal complaint with the state alleging SF violates state law with a “deliberate … containment strategy” to create “a segregated disparate impact zone” in SoMa.
Hospitality House gets a mention, but SOMA West’s Aukland says it’s only because the Self-Help Center was just one example of the over-concentration.
In addition to the formal complaint, SOMA West has relayed neighbors’ concerns about the center to City Hall, Aukland says — an acknowledgement of Wilson’s claim that SOMA West has been involved in neighborhood complaints.
Auckland and fellow board member Leah Edwards say neighbors have cited violations of the center’s Good Neighbor agreement, which every city-funded provider must sign to accept responsibility for street conditions outside their facilities. SF is in the process of updating the citywide policy.
Aukland says the center’s upcoming closure isn’t a win: “True progress … would mean relocating many of these hyper-concentrated services to well-resourced neighborhoods.”
SOMA West’s formal complaint also names the city’s RESET Center. While it has “potential,” says Aukland, it’s still adding to the neighborhood’s concentration of services.
The Mayor’s Office told The Frisc that once the Self-Help Center is closed, the city will find a way to fill the space with “resources and amenities that serve and energize the whole community.”
Beyond that, however, there are no specific plans.
