San Francisco’s newest Navigation Center shelter opens Wednesday, not a moment too soon for the thousands of hard-core homeless people sleeping outside and enduring this week’s drenching storms.

The new, 84-bed center at the corner of Fifth and Bryant streets, like the four others already operating in the city, is intended to fast-track people into housing and drug rehabilitation, or whatever other services are needed to get them permanently under a roof.

Its location at first blush seems odd, being right across the street from Multi-Service Center South, the biggest conventional — and much less service-intensive — homeless shelter in the city. But it actually makes plenty of sense.

The new Navigation Center is on land owned by the California Department of Transportation, which means under state law the city gets to lease it for a $1 a month because it’s being used for a shelter. Also, it’s across from busy Interstate 80, under which homeless people have camped for decades because it shelters them from the rain. It also has a reputation as a stopping point for hard-core drifters coming to town or those panhandling freeway ramp traffic.

Few people in those camps actually want to be there, and on Tuesday as they watched preparations for the opening, several said they’d love to score a bed inside.

“I’ve been living outside for more than three years, and I’d give it another try if I could get into that nav center,” 49-year-old Niev Khabeiry said, sitting alongside the rolling cart he calls home and gazing at the new shelter. “I’ve got some friends who are already in there, and I’d like to join them.”

Episcopal Community Services, an experienced shelter and services nonprofit, will run the new center and had already taken in a few residents before the official opening date. Google.org, the tech giant’s charitable arm, donated $3 million toward the center’s construction. Occupants can get in only if referred by city street counselors.

The new beds, which include 20 set aside for women, will bring to about 200 the number of shelter beds Mayor London Breed has created so far in her plan to open 1,000 new beds by next year. Those beds, she said, “will make a real difference in our neighborhoods and in the lives of the people on our streets who need help.”

— Kevin Fagan

Email: cityinsider@sfchronicle.com, kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfcityinsider @KevinChron