With luxury housing developments in the works, including a $1.4 billion, 815-unit tower, the district is “neck deep” in gentrification and facing “hyper-development,” said Tomie Arai, an activist and a co-founder of the Chinatown Art Brigade. She added that the area now had more than 100 art galleries, which have displaced mom-and-pop businesses.

“You can picture how devastating this development is on the lives of the people who live there,” Ms. Arai said. “An increasingly white population is threatening to replace the cultural identity of the neighborhood.”

In San Francisco, more than 14,000 residents, mostly Chinese, live in densely packed quarters in Chinatown’s 20-block core, according to the Chinatown Community Development Center. Many of them are low-income and elderly people renting single rooms in buildings with health and safety violations that are twice the city’s average, according to the center’s 2017 report.

Despite these challenges, civic improvements are helping enhance the neighborhood, including mural art, cleaner alleys and better affordable housing. A much-anticipated Chinatown Station subway hub is expected to open in 2019. Recently enacted laws curb short-term vacation rentals, keeping out companies like Airbnb and VRBO, and a legacy business program offers financial incentives to landlords who sign long-term commercial leases with qualifying Chinatown enterprises.