With the hotly contested Embarcadero Navigation Center having recently opened its doors and at least five Supervisors now pushing for new Navigation Centers to be built in every Supervisorial District, a proposed ballot measure to strictly limit the operation of existing centers and restrict the opening of any new centers in the city has been drafted.

As championed by Richie Greenberg and Larry Marso and filed with San Francisco’s Department of Elections on Monday, the proposed “Limitations on Navigation Centers” measure would restrict the operation of any Navigation Center to a maximum of two years without voter approval to extend.

In addition, the measure would institute a “strict location rule,” forcing any new centers to either be opened “in the census tract in the City with the largest number of unsheltered homeless” or a directly adjacent tract, or the census tract with the next largest number of unsheltered homeless if there’s already an operating center in the aforementioned tract, with a statutory limit of 100 beds per center and 60 day stays (“renewable if [an individual is] hospitalized, completing rehab, or out of a navigation center for 120 days”).

Keep in mind there are 197 census tracts in San Francisco versus 11 Supervisorial Districts.

The measure would also explicitly prohibit the possession or use of any alcohol, controlled substances, knives or guns within a Navigation Center; disallow centers from distributing clean syringes/needles or becoming a designated safe injection/consumption site; and shutter centers that fail to enforce said rules.

We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.