Supervisor pushes S.F. to speed building of homeless shelters

Jonathan Payne sweeps rain into a drain in the courtyard of the Navigation Center on Monday, March 7, 2016 in San Francisco, California. Jonathan Payne sweeps rain into a drain in the courtyard of the Navigation Center on Monday, March 7, 2016 in San Francisco, California. Photo: Gabrielle Lurie Gabrielle Lurie, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Gabrielle Lurie Gabrielle Lurie, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Supervisor pushes S.F. to speed building of homeless shelters 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

In what could prompt a dramatic shake-up in the way San Francisco handles its persistent homeless problem, Supervisor David Campos on Tuesday will ask the Board of Supervisors to declare a shelter crisis to make it easier to turn city land into homeless shelters.

Within a few weeks, Campos said, he will offer up a second piece of legislation requiring Mayor Ed Lee to open six additional Navigation Centers in the next year.

The first, highly praised center opened in the Mission, in Campos’ district, a year ago and allows entire encampments of homeless people to move inside with their pets, belongings and partners. More than 250 people have resided there. Lee said in September he was looking for new sites, but he has not publicly identified any.

Perhaps most controversially, Campos’ legislation would require that one of the six new Navigation Centers be a “wet house” — or a shelter that allows homeless alcoholics to keep drinking inside. Another one of the six would be required to include a safe injection site where intravenous drug users could shoot up legally. Both of those ideas have been discussed in the city for years, but never acted upon.

A demand for speed

Campos said the slow pace of Lee’s administration in dealing with the homeless problem does not match the immediate and growing crisis on the streets.

“What I’ve seen over the past year is a lot of talk, and I’ve had enough,” Campos said. “We’ve been waiting so long. I feel we’ve reached a breaking point.”

Campos has the support of Supervisors John Avalos, Jane Kim and Eric Mar. He needs two more votes for passage.

Under a California law dating to the late 1980s, a municipality may declare a shelter crisis if “a significant number” of people in the community are unable to find shelter, resulting in “a threat to the health and safety of those persons.”

Declaring a crisis allows the city to turn public land into shelter sites far more quickly than under the traditional regulatory process and to expose itself to less liability than normal.

Campos acknowledged he doesn’t know what public land could be used for his six new centers and doesn’t know where the money would come from.

“I don’t have the power to tell any of these agencies what to do,” he said. “The power I have as a member of the Board of Supervisors is to hold the administration accountable.”

The Navigation Center opened on Mission Street near 16th Street last March with Campos’ backing. In September, Lee announced he had set aside $3 million for additional Navigation Centers and that a second one and possibly a third would be open within six to eight months.

Lee also announced the creation of the Navigation Partnership Fund and said he wanted local businesses and the philanthropic community to at least match the city’s $3 million pledge. Nobody donated any money, however.

The mayor’s staff has looked at about a dozen sites and has zeroed in on a few promising options. It has also prioritized a big expansion of its winter shelter beds for the El Niño storm season.

“Six months is too long to open a new center, and the mayor has been exploring a number of ways to speed this up,” said Christine Falvey, the mayor’s spokeswoman. She added that new sites should be finalized “in the coming weeks.”

Asked whether the mayor would support Campos’ legislation, Falvey said, “We need to see how this fits into existing and ongoing efforts to build more Navigation Centers.”

Campos’ proposals come a week after the city cleared a growing homeless camp on Division Street, directing many of its 250 inhabitants to a new shelter on Pier 80. The Division Street camp — which included more than 100 tents and even wooden structures — had been declared a health hazard because of used needles, rats and piles of trash.

Complaints on the rise

A tally in January 2015 found 6,686 homeless people living in San Francisco, a number that hasn’t budged much in years. Residents’ complaints, though, have soared as homeless people have become more visible, pushed out of hidden-away areas by construction and gentrification.

“The city is paralyzed,” Campos said, noting that the Division Street camp took far too long to clear and additional Navigation Center sites are proving far too hard to find. “I feel horrible for the people on the street, and I feel horrible for people in neighborhoods like Bernal Heights, where I live.”

Campos shared many emails from constituents complaining about camps, used needles and filth.

One resident of Bernal Heights wrote, “Over the last year I have seen an increase in crime, unbelievable amounts of dumping, drugs, naked cracked-out people and homelessness.”

Another email read, “This morning I caught a homeless man (defecating) on my sidewalk. Last night I phoned in a homeless person leaving a shopping cart and throwing trash all over the street.”

Similar crisis calls

San Francisco certainly wouldn’t be the first city to declare a shelter crisis. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and City Council members announced in September they would declare a state of emergency around homelessness, though local press there has dinged the administration for not actually following through.

The state of Hawaii, as well as Portland, Ore., and Seattle have declared similar crises around homelessness.

“It’s a trend that’s happening in cities across the country,” said Paul Boden, who has worked on homeless issues in San Francisco since 1983 and is the director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, a nonprofit that advocates for the homeless.

He said Navigation Centers “beat the hell out of sleeping on the sidewalk in the rain,” but that cities, in addition to providing shelter, need to do a better job of fighting for more state and federal money for affordable housing.

“I find it hard after 33 years to say, ‘Oh, isn’t it great we’re declaring a crisis’,” he said. “We are in a crisis, and we’ve been in a crisis for a while.”

Heather Knight is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com, Twitter: @hknightsf