And similar to the San Francisco's six other navigation centers, the Embarcadero site is designed to be temporary: The city is leasing the primely located lot from the San Francisco Port Commission for two years, with the option to extend for another two if things go smoothly before the site is permanently developed.

Navigation centers are just one of the many strategies the city has deployed — including supportive housing programs and its extensive conventional shelter network — to tackle a seemingly intractable homeless crisis. But despite spending upward of $300 million a year on the issue, the homeless population has continued to grow, topping 8,000 at last count, nearly 5,200 of whom live in unsheltered conditions.

San Francisco unveiled its inaugural navigation center — the first of its kind in the country — in March 2015, shutting it down, as planned, three years later. Of the more than 5,000 homeless residents that have passed through the city's navigation centers, nearly half have been placed in permanent housing or reunified with family or friends, according to the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, which oversees most of the sites.

"We want to have them come in and meet them where they are, help them figure out what their pathway is [to] housing, what their solution to homelessness is and then work with them so that they can stay here while they exit homelessness," said Abigail Stewart-Kahn, director of strategy and external affairs with DHSH. "It's not always perfect, but that is the intent."

When Womack arrived at the Embarcadero center nearly two weeks ago, he, like all guests, was scanned with a wand for weapons before being interviewed by a caseworker to determine his specific needs.

At 70, getting back on his feet after a decade on the street means essentially re-enrolling in society, a formidable task that he says case managers here are working to guide him through.

"I don't got no Social Security, I don't have no [public] assistance, I don't even have my ID," Womack said. "I have two meetings today where they're going to take me to get some of these things."

The standard length of stay here is 30 days, but staff insist that residents won't be pushed out unless another shelter bed or housing option is available. The goal, however ambitious, is for these centers to be a springboard out of homelessness.

"We don't want to put people back on the street," said center director Tony Chase of Five Keys, a nonprofit charter school operator contracted by the city to operate the site. "So we always work to have another place for a person to go if they can't stay here."

The campus is spare but cheerful, with scattered plantings and an outdoor patio space. That morning, residents wandered freely around the facility, some resting in one of the two sprawling dormitories or lounging in front of a large flat-screen TV in the dining area. A few used the handful of desktop computers available: one writing what appeared to be computer code.

The calmness of the space belies the heated community battle that preceded it, and the political capital Mayor London Breed has invested in ensuring its success.

Tensions flared immediately after Breed first proposed the center last March as part of her goal of creating 1,000 new shelter beds by the end of 2020. A group of neighbors, calling themselves Safe Embarcadero for All, quickly mobilized against the project, claiming it would bring blight and crime to a neighborhood that it said didn't have much of a homeless problem to begin with.

Following a monthslong succession of rancorous community meetings that pitted neighbors against homeless advocates and the mayor, the group appealed to the city's Board of Supervisors to block the project. In a last-ditch effort to halt construction, the group then unsuccessfully sued the city, alleging it had failed to get the necessary permissions from the state or conduct appropriate public outreach and environmental review.

As a concession, the city agreed to initially fill only about 50 beds, leaving more than three-quarters of the facility empty, and gradually ramp up to full capacity by June. It also pledged to patrol the surrounding area to keep it clean and free of encampments, and give longtime homeless residents in the vicinity first access to the center.

Stewart-Kahn stressed that nearly all the center's current occupants had been found living on the streets in the surrounding neighborhood, (although that was apparently not the case for Womack), and said concerns that the center would attract homeless people from other areas were unfounded.

“Our experience is that [navigation centers] don't become magnets," Stewart-Kahn said. "You're not allowed to kind of be around the perimeter here. If you're camping outside, it's not going to get you access to the navigation center. And people who are homeless know that."