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The warring groups of Sixth Street can be divided, then, into two general camps: those who favor the construction of new low-income apartment buildings in the area, as the redevelopment agency does, and those who support preservation and/or renovation of the current stock of old, run-down hotels.
If Sixth Street south of Market is a kingdom, its quarreling dukes, earls, and lords are the people who work for charities. They are the nonprofit developers, indigent tenant advocates, community organizers, health clinics, homeowners' associations, tenants' associations, small business proponents, minority services providers, and employment agencies that seem to populate every block, every neighborhood planning meeting, and every discreet argument whispered in this island of blight in the otherwise booming SOMA area.
The Fiefs
Well-dressed and well-spoken, the feuding charity directors of Sixth Street come from a different culture than the Indian immigrant slumlords, the destitute hotel residents, and retired shut-ins who populate the strip. The charity types have, however, learned to blend with the strip's urban landscape; one must know where to look to spot them.
A visitor descending into this flophouse-liquor store-pawnshop corridor from the Highway 280 exit onto Sixth Street quickly spots the eight-story Knox Hotel, a tan-and-turquoise monument to the notion that poorhouses can look smart. Its builder, John Elberling, directs the nonprofit development firm known as Tenants and Owners Develop-ment Corporation, or TODCO; he won't hesitate to tell you he would like to erect more such buildings, perhaps with aid from the city's redevelopment agency.
Walking north for 20 yards, the visitor passes the Jesus Cares Gospel Mission, the Yerba Buena Market, which is a liquor store, and the wrought-iron screen gates of the Sunnyside Hotel.
The Sunnyside's foyer serves as the Sixth Street branch office of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which is run by prominent political activist Randy Shaw. The clinic has developed an odd, symbiotic relationship with downtown slumlords; it is technically the slumlords' greatest enemy, yet depends upon the continued existence of slums for its survival.
Much of the clinic's city funding supports its main function as a sort of middleman who receives government benefit checks on behalf of slum tenants. The clinic then pays rent to landlords, giving residents the remainder of the money. This arrangement was designed to keep corrupt hotel owners from misusing residents' benefit checks, and to keep the residents, more than a few of whom have drug, alcohol, or mental problems, from squandering their rent money. Clinic lawyers also sustain themselves by suing owners of substandard hotels on behalf of residents.
The Housing Clinic considers the indigent hotels of the Sixth Street area an important city housing resource, and is suspicious of those who would tear them down. At the same time, it is no friend to Elberling, whose nonprofit firm supports many redevelopment agency initiatives and who owns buildings with managers who collect their own rent, and do not want or need Shaw's rent brokerage services.
From the clinic's Sunnyside foyer, a visitor steps out onto Minna Street -- one of the "alleys," as they're called here, the enclaves of spiffy houses, upscale live-work warehouses, and well-appointed du-, tri-, and four-plexes. Half a block south from Minna on Natoma Street is the live-work video sound production studio of Jeff Roth, president of his self-styled Natoma/SOMA Neighborhood Association.
Roth also opposes plans by the redevelopment agency to erect more low-income hotels in the Sixth Street area; he believes more single occupancy units would further blight the neighborhood. A regular and outspoken participant at agency-sponsored community meetings, Roth is not just an opponent of the redevelopment agency. He reviles, and is in turn despised by, the agency and its charity allies.
Upon leaving Roth's environs and crossing the street to Gina's Cocktail Lounge, a visitor might turn right at Mission Street and encounter a brick building with the fading words "S.F. Loan Association" on its west side. No longer a pawnbrokerage, the building is home to the South of Market Merchants and Residents Association (SSMRA), a catchall charity run by Henry Perez, an out-of-business pawnbroker who commutes from his home in San Jose. The primary activity of Perez's group involves the recruitment of area business and hotel owners to participate in neighborhood improvement projects. The association also lends its space to an AIDS-prevention needle exchange and a part-time health clinic.
Perez says he would like to open another pawnshop someday. Right now, though, he is living off a $19,900 grant the redevelopment agency gave him to drum up support for a program known as Property Management and Livability Standards. If it is ever implemented, this program would provide hotel owners with more than $100,000 of agency help to spruce up their hotels. Elberling also supports the program; a final contract to implement the plan awaits approval from the redevelopment agency commission.
As part of his efforts to gain support for the plan, Perez has set up tenant associations in several hotels and claims to have garnered the cooperation of at least 10 hotel owners.
The Housing Clinic and Jeff Roth hate him for these efforts. The Housing Clinic hates Perez because the tenant groups he has formed impinge on turf the clinic has long claimed as its own.
Roth hates Perez because he believes the former pawnshop owner is in cahoots with SOMA slumlords. As a result, Roth spends much of his free time trying to stop the redevelopment agency from funding Perez.
Roth has been so tireless in this quest that Perez, whose banter is usually as smooth as a used car salesman's, as well as officials at the redevelopment agency, no longer mince words when they speak with him.
