1532 Harrison Street Rendering

As part of the approved 1532 Harrison project, which should break ground later this year and rise up to seven stories at Harrison and 12th Streets, the stretch of 12th between Harrison and Bernice will be converted into a “slow street” and public outdoor space dubbed Eagle Plaza, with permanent planters, benches and flex-areas for additional seating, services and various events.

Eagle Plaza Plan 2016

And with refined designs and renderings for the Plaza in hand, this week the team behind the development of 1532 Harrison Street will seek the City’s approval to dedicate $1.5 million of the building’s $1.6 million in impact fees towards the development of the $2 million Eagle Plaza, and with a commitment to open the plaza in 2018.

45 thoughts on “Refined Designs and Timing for Eagle Plaza”
  1. Love the idea of a plaza there; however, I fear that the homeless encampments along Division Street will set up shop in the plaza and there goes the “respite and recreation” for the rest of the tax paying citizens of this expensive city.

    1. The area will be managed and maintained by adjacent property owners, ala Mint Plaza. No way would they let feces, much less campers, overcome an area that they (the adjacent property owners) are responsible for.

  2. I wish I could be more optimistic, but this will likely turn into a sh*thole. Literally. The cops in SF can’t be counted on to help. I’m not sure how you maintain open space like this for the average citizen.

  3. Question: how will the extensive flower beds be maintained–is the City to pay so that people in new building can enjoy their garden?

  4. Does the bike parking shown on the graphic include motorcycles? If not, why not? The Eagle does have cliental that includes motorcycle riders.

  5. The City has such grandiose (park) plans which always is blemished by the homeless and a lack of maintenance funding.

    1. NO. realistic. Have you lived here very long?

      I like this plaza a lot and, yes, keeping out the homeless will be a challenge but it can and should be done.

      1. NO. Unproductively cynical and senselessly contemptuous.

        See below. This seemingly universal attitude towards homelessness is exactly why we have this problem to begin with.

  6. I think I can see the future: Contact Andrea Aiello of the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District and ask her about Jane Warner Park.

    This like so many lovely places in the City will be over-run with the homeless unless a plan THAT DOES NOT INVOLVE SFPD is put in place. The citizens and BOS have neutered the police’s ability to do anything about the homeless taking over public places. And, if a citizen makes an issue of it, they are labeled awful, heartless uncaring etc. All the cynical responses here, unfortunately, are based in fact and experience.

    1. I have lived in the city all my life and the homeless problem has never changed. The BOS and homeless advocacy groups have allowed the homeless to turn civic center, soma, TL and adjacent areas into a giant petri dish of urine and defecation.

        1. and what do you think would be the consequences of not spending the $160M or whatever on “the problem”? maybe we don’t spend enough, maybe we don’t spend wisely, but we, the community, have many people that need help.

          FWIW, the USA used to spend much more on housing programs for the poor ~40 years ago, and we had lower rates of homelessness then.

          It’s not the spending that creates homelessness.

          1. my point is that i dont think the money is spent wisely.

            $160M/yr is roughly $23K/ homeless person per year.

          2. those are just numbers, not analysis. Which expenditures are least wise? How could those moneys be better spent and with what expected effects? Complaining about how much is spent without a realistic alternative or even a recommendation is … complaining.

            It would be cheaper to buy all the complainers oneway bus tickets to Detroit, where they could apply their critical skills to even bigger problems. Might free up enough housing to end homelessness. That’s at least one alternative to ponder.

            BTW, SF FY 2015-16 budget for “homeless services” is ~$240 M, with more than 80% going to medical care and housing (supportive/shelters/transitional). I have no idea how many people are directly helped by these expenses, but I doubt our city or community would be better were we not spending it.

            FWIW, this public open space will be open to everyone: homesufficient and homeinsufficient, caring and careless, even the homesufficient local (unregistered) dogs that poop and pee there day and night.

          3. i agree that im just complaining, but im not sure we would be worse off if we spent less. if we stop offering so many services and we cracked down on sleeping on the street, then we would attract fewer new transients

          4. what are these “so many services” we would be better without? According to a recent news report (namelink):

            “Almost half of the $241 million — $112 million — is spent on supportive housing for the formerly homeless. Nationally, permanent supportive housing that includes social workers and other care is considered the best way to end homelessness. It’s also less expensive than caring for people on the streets — $17,353 a year per person, compared with $87,480 a year for each of the 278 homeless “high users” of the city’s public medical system”

            WRT to attracting fewer new transients, well it is a national problem and most of the money spent in SF should be Federal, not local. Was before Ronald Wilson Reagan gutted the national housing budget.

            “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter,” Dick Cheney. He also proved even liberals would complain about spending too much on a problem created by spending too little, if you just frustrated them enough living with it.

          5. How about not spending ANY money on the homeless?

            F ’em. They add nothing to the city and only make our lives (yes, us law-abiding tax-paying citizens) unpleasant or downright disgusting?

            Use that $160M on enforcement of law, cleaning, and making the city a better place for the rest of us to live.

            The bums wouldn’t be here if we didn’t make it easy for them. Stop their easy life and instill one of law and order; they’ll leave.

          6. 150 years ago San Francisco built an almshouse to care for those too poor or sick to care for themselves. Now known as Laguna Honda, it is still on the SF budget within the Department of Public Health (DPH). With a $2+ billion annual budget, DPH has the largest budget of any dept of SF and it also takes the most from the general fund. Your methods of civic improvement are lifetimes out-of-touch with the values of SF taxpayers.

          7. The idea that homeless people wouldn’t be here if it weren’t so cushy is something that sounds intuitively reasonable, but turns out to be utter nonsense. Please stop spreading this zombie lie.

            If SF were actually some magical place that all the homeless loved to flock to because it was so great for them, you’d expect to see lots of homeless immigration to SF, and little emigration.

            But you don’t. You can read plenty of facts about the homeless in the city’s census report.

            Among them, you’ll note that 70% of SF’s current homeless population became homeless IN SF. 20% became homeless in California, and 10% out of state. The homeless are probably comprised of a significantly greater proportion of SF natives than the currently housed population (I admit that’s just a guess, and I’m also don’t have other city’s #s to compare to, but this is my reading of the data).

            This is a tractable problem, but it takes great will. Salt Lake City successfully addressed homelessness by offering safe, reliable, clean housing to every single homeless person. Google [salt lake city homeless]. Last I checked, the entire nation’s homeless haven’t moved to Utah.

            Generally, a homeless person requires three things to start “fixing” themselves: (a) safe, clean housing, (b) intense casework with a social worker, and (c) a purpose—job, volunteerism, a pet .. anything. There have been successful programs out there in the world, and these are the pillars.

            So, yeah, we will need to spend more. Maybe a lot more. And we will need to do it in the right way. Finding housing for 7,000 people in SF sure wouldn’t be easy. But we could also rehabilitate thousands of people and make them contributing members of society again. We need a leader who will put forward a real plan. We’ll still be having this conversation 10 years from now unless someone does.

            [UPDATE: San Francisco’s Homeless Crisis is Homegrown and a Catch-22.]

          8. @Gus, I guess that explains why San Jose and San Rafael have such huge homeless populations, as compared to San Francisco and Berkeley… oh, wait, no they don’t. Seems they don’t create a welcoming environment for the homeless, and as a result they don’t have a huge homeless problem. (See also: Santa Monica, versus Malibu, Marina Del Rey and Huntington Beach – there’s a reason the Santa Monica Promenade and Ocean Ave. park are overrun with homeless and shite, and the latter cities are not.)

          9. @Sierrajeff What are you talking about SJ doesn’t have a “homeless problem”? There is a significant population superficially “hidden” by square mileage and the campgrounds afforded by Guadalupe Creek. You’re evidently not familiar with San Rafael’s Canal District.

            Comparing Santa Monica with the affluent beach communities listed is ridiculous. Might as well compare Berkeley with Orinda, Piedmont and Sausalito as “explaining” their different realities.

          10. And from the last “homeless census,” it appears that the homeless population of San Rafael is a little higher than that of San Francisco on a per capita basis. Maybe San Rafael also just needs to roll up the homeless welcome mat . . . or perhaps the homeless issue is not so simple.

          11. “How about not spending ANY money on the homeless?

            F ’em. They add nothing to the city and only make our lives (yes, us law-abiding tax-paying citizens) unpleasant or downright disgusting?”

            You are thinking too small. Instead of not spending anything to help the homeless we should be MAKING money off of them. We can use the Warriors new stadium for gladiator style fights to the death when the Warriors aren’t playing. Use the admission fees to round up any homeless seen out in public.

          12. @Orland – setting aside the fact that San Jose and San Rafael have nowhere near the problem we do – I don’t see residents of those cities complaining daily about stepping over excrement, as just one example – OK, let’s make the comparison you suggest. Why *don’t* Orinda or Sausalito have a homeless problem, while San Francisco does? It ain’t the climate or the views.

          13. Sierrajeff, San Rafael residents complain about the homeless in their downtown. There is even a political effort by some to drive out the service providers there (article about 2015 town meeting at namelink). You claim to know facts, but you clearly don’t. However imperfect or inaccurate the surveys of homeless are, the fact is they show San Rafael has about the same or possibly more homeless per capita as SF, as “Bob” mentioned above. FWIW, SF and SR also have similar poverty rates, per the US Census.

            On average, residents of much lower density cities don’t see or interact with each other as often, be they homeless or not. In San Jose, nearly 90% of the people commute to work by car and only ~6% walk or take transit. San Rafael is only a little less isolated. A 10 minute lunchtime stroll in downtown SF is likely to bring you in close proximity to more people than you would in an hour walking through downtown San Rafael or a half an hour walking thorough what passes as a downtown for SJ.

          14. Jeff In its most elementary sense, the disparities between in the experience of places like Orinda with SF insofar as homeless populations is much the same as to why you do not encounter (for the most part) bobcats in Downtown SF — it’s not their natural range. Like it or not, it is a function of the inner cores of cities to absorb these elements of Society. It speaks to Society’s response as much as to the “problem” how problemsome they prove to be. I’m getting the impression you seem to believe the “solution” is to somehow just simply sweep them out. That or the Soylvent Green option.

  7. Complaints about homeless service providers are everywhere…even in outer suburbs in Solano County. As are “urban campers”/the feral population.

    They are just generally more hidden

  8. I would also note that more and more of “us” will be surplus in the Brave New World that the technology created and amplified by the privileged in San Francisco Bay Area. No need for The Owners to spend “their” money on the peons anymore. Even the most esoteric and high skilled services can be off shored or Task Rabbited.

    As cynical as I am about many of our deranged and addicted homeless, there will be more and more of them as the economy continues to automate, off-shore, and move to piecework that will not support any but a tiny elite. Should a society work only for a tiny percentage of the best?

    1. Should not all of society enjoy the fruits of the forces that would seemingly marginalize more and more individuals as a matter of right and without regard to their direct contributions to them?

  9. Homelessness and the Magnet Myth

    It is a common misconception that a majority of individuals and families experiencing homelessness have chosen to move to San Francisco from other cities in order to access San Francisco-based social services.

    The narrative is that San Francisco (a bastion of liberal ideals) offers social services that act as a magnet to people in a homeless crisis.
    It’s called the Magnet Myth and it’s simply inaccurate.

    …and we have the data to prove it.

    In 2009 President Obama signed into law the HEARTH Act, which reauthorized the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.
    HEARTH requires the establishment and maintenance of a Homeless Management Information System. For several years local communities have been collecting data on homelessness.

    San Francisco Human Services Agency and Local Homeless Coordinating Board work with a company called Applied Survey Research (ASR) to compile data collected by homeless service providers. One data point collected is the zip code of the last residence before becoming homeless.

    San Francisco reported that in 2015 “seventy-one percent (71%) of respondents reported they were living in San Francisco at the time they most recently became homeless, an increase from 61% in 2013. Of those, nearly half (49%) had lived in San Francisco for 10 years or more. Eleven percent (11%) had lived in San Francisco for less than one year.”

    71% of homeless respondents were living in a home within San Francisco before they became homeless. Less than one in three individuals experiencing homelessness in San Francisco — only 29% — moved to San Francisco after becoming homeless.

    In fact, 49% of those people who were already living in San Francisco before they become homeless had lived in San Francisco for at least ten years!
    Families and individuals experiencing homelessness are not flocking to San Francisco to benefit from our network of social services. San Franciscans are becoming homeless, and that number is on the rise.

    Between 2013 and 2015 the percentage of people living in San Francisco before entering homelessness increased from 61% to 71%. This statistic is alarming and it reflects San Francisco’s affordable housing crisis.

    At a time when an increasing number of San Franciscans are becoming homeless or facing imminent homelessness, it is more important than ever to recognize the value of social services in San Francisco.

    The Magnet Myth is not only false, it is harmful because it suggests that the existence of social service programs creates a perverse incentive for interests outside of San Francisco and a strain on the city’s resources. That argument is dangerous because it can be used to defund social service providers.

    Individuals and families experiencing homelessness are not outsiders. They are people. And the vast majority of them in San Francisco lived here, in a home, before experiencing their homeless crisis.

    San Francisco’s network of social services is not a magnet, it is a life line for our neighbors in need.

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