Homeless to pitch tents and protest near S.F.’s Super Bowl City

Dolores Mays, homeless client, carries her belongings as she selects a bed at the St. Anthony's emergency winter shelter as it opens in the evening for clients on Tuesday, January 19, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. May said she had been sleeping in cubby's and places on the street and that she would still be sleeping there if it hadn't been for the getting the bed at St. Anthony's emergency winter shelter. less Dolores Mays, homeless client, carries her belongings as she selects a bed at the St. Anthony's emergency winter shelter as it opens in the evening for clients on Tuesday, January 19, 2016 in San Francisco, ... more Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Homeless to pitch tents and protest near S.F.’s Super Bowl City 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Activists upset with the NFL hoopla sweeping San Francisco plan to set up a homeless tent camp near the carnival-like Super Bowl City along the Embarcadero Wednesday afternoon and warned that hundreds of protesters are expected to participate.

Meanwhile across town, San Francisco authorities are putting the finishing touches on a different encampment of their own —the huge Pier 80 winter shelter.

The convergence of the official shelter with the protest tent shelter spotlights the debate that has built for weeks over how the city’s chronic homeless problem should be handled as Super Bowl 50 and all its ts high-rolling spectacle comes to the Bay Area.

On one hand are homeless advocates who say police and street cleaners are shoving the homeless out of view so the moneyed tourists pouring into town won’t have to see them. On the other side of the issue are city officials who say the only moving they’re doing of the homeless is into winter shelters to get out of pounding El Niño rains.

Organizers of the protest tent city say they expect hundreds of participants to set up camp near Super Bowl City at the foot of Market Street. Social media postings ask protesters to show up at 4:30 p.m. near the Ferry Building with their belongings.

“Our goal is to give homeless people an opportunity to speak, because they are feeling really disempowered and attacked,” said Lisa Marie Alatorre, an organizer of the protest with the Coalition on Homelessness.

There’s no timeline for how long the tent city will stay, though the adjacent Super Bowl City attraction will be dismantled not long after the football game on Sunday.

“We will stay at the tent city as long as we can hold it,” Alatorre said.

Meanwhile, city officials hope to open the Pier 80 shelter on Thursday. It is in the former Oracle warehouse for the America’s Cup race, and it can hold 150 people.

Homeless people will be able to move into the shelter with all their belongings, pets and partners, and can stay around the clock until the end of March. Case managers will be on hand to help them with permanent housing or counseling.

“Our only goal is to help people in out of the rain, and it has nothing to do with the Super Bowl,” said Trent Rhorer, head of the Human Services Agency, which is organizing the shelter.

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