S.F. mayor watches as homeless break camp for new center

Video: Mayor Ed Lee Talks About Progress Of The Homeless Navigation Center

It was just after sunup Monday when Marco Simonetti crawled out of his tent and found the best news he’s had in years — a small army of police, street cleaners and counselors was heading his way. They were there to clear him and eight of his fellow sidewalk campers away from their haunt in the Mission District.

In other years, a sight like that would have had the 52-year-old Simonetti grumbling or running away. But for once, this small army — with Mayor Ed Lee in tow to observe — had something to offer this homeless band that it actually wanted.

They were getting spots in San Francisco’s new Navigation Center, situated at an old high-school site at 16th and Mission streets. It’s a one-stop complex, the first of its kind in the nation, where campers can sleep while they are routed into housing, rehabilitation, employment and other services crucial to keeping people off the streets.

Funded with an anonymous $3 million donation and largely overseen by the nonprofit Episcopal Community Services and the city's Human Services Agency, the center has been open for three weeks. Although the city’s goal of moving people from the street into housing in 10 days has proved to be too ambitious, everything else seems to be working out so well that word on the street is that it’s the Valhalla of homeless services.

Clearing out camps

Fifty-three people have moved in since the center opened March 30, including everyone from the city’s most notorious encampment, at Fifth Street under Interstate 80. The center has a sense of serenity found in no other homeless shelter in the city, with the residents coming and going at will, sleeping in the five dorms or just hanging out in the airy, plant-studded plaza in between on-site housing and resource counseling appointments. People get to sleep in the same room with their pets and partners, and all their belongings are stowed on site.

It’s all a sharp contrast with shelters, where residents can’t have all their property and dogs with them and have to stick to a schedule of sleeping and eating hours. The center’s campers must be selected for placement by street counselors, and the maximum capacity is 75.

Nurse Gina Limon (right) of the Hot team changed a bandage for Marco who recently suffered a stab wound. A homeless encampment near the corner of 16th Street and Shotwell in San Francisco, Calif. was dismantled and the people moved to the new navigation center a few blocks away. less Nurse Gina Limon (right) of the Hot team changed a bandage for Marco who recently suffered a stab wound. A homeless encampment near the corner of 16th Street and Shotwell in San Francisco, Calif. was dismantled ... more Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 37 Caption Close S.F. mayor watches as homeless break camp for new center 1 / 37 Back to Gallery

“I can’t believe all this might finally end,” Simonetti said, waving a hand at the mounds of bedding and shopping carts all around him at 16th and Shotwell streets as city workers packed him up to move to the center. “About time. That center is the best thing I’ve heard about in years. Everyone out here says that.”

A nurse with the city’s Homeless Outreach Team asked him if he needed anything, and he rolled a sleeve. There, on the underside of his arm, was a foot-long scar with a fresh stitches on it.

“Got robbed last week of $3 and my bike,” Simonetti said. “Guy cut me pretty good.” The nurse bandaged the mess.

Talk with the mayor

Lee waited at the corner until the army of workers had the camp well in hand, then walked over. Simonetti stuck out his hand and the mayor shook it.

“How you doing? You OK?” Lee asked.

“Still alive,” Simonetti answered with a gap-toothed smile. They both laughed.

“That’s my first talk ever with the upper echelon,” Simonetti said as Lee walked away after some small talk about how Simonetti’s parents had installed the venetian blinds in the mayor’s office many years ago. “He’s pretty cool. Seems like he gives a damn.”

So far two people have moved from the center into permanent supportive housing, with counselors on site to help them stay off the street, and one has agreed to go home to his family. Several more will probably move into housing this week, said lead case manager Veronica Forbes.

“I really didn’t believe they could get me inside this fast,” said Rodney O’Neil, 54, who came to the center on its first day and moved into supportive housing Monday. “Last time I was in a shelter I waited eight months for housing they said I could have, and it never came.

“This time — three weeks? That’s unheard of. But then I had a good feeling about it from the start,” O’Neil said. “This is the first homeless-help place I’ve ever been at where they treat you like a real adult. They listen. They help. That’s really different.”

Long-term housing

The mayor conceded that some of the people who move out of the center and into supportive housing units will never leave. Indeed, nationally most of those who move into such housing stay there. That leaves the city in the position of indefinitely providing thousands of units of subsidized housing for society’s most dysfunctional people.

“It’s like reinventing public housing,” Lee said — though the hope is still to get as many homeless on their feet as possible. That’s what the Navigation Center is aiming for, the mayor said.

Everyone involved says that if the model proves inefficient at the end of its nearly yearlong pilot run, it will be abandoned.

“So far, I think the center is meeting its objectives,” Lee said. “We envisioned it as a place where people could make decisions about fairly quickly getting on the next phase of their lives, and I think that’s happening.”

At the very least, he said, “we’re letting people know that we don’t just want to move them around. We want them to know that whatever happened to them — we want to help.”

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kfagan@sfchronicle.com