Hospitality House is continuing the fight to stay in SoMa

Scroll down for a video report on the rally by community contributor Zoey Laird.

If Hospitality House’s Sixth Street Self-Help Center is forced out of SoMa, that community won’t just be losing services, it’ll be losing a hub of human connection and dignity. That was the message nearby residents, Self-Help Center visitors, and the center’s workers had for the public and the mayor last week.

Since city leaders in the Mayor’s Office told Hospitality House it would have to close its location on 6th Street by the end of the year, supporters have been advocating to keep the center somewhere nearby — otherwise they’ll have to squeeze it into a different Hospitality House site in the Tenderloin. At a rally on the steps of City Hall on Wednesday, they explained why that is so important to them, and made it clear they aren’t giving up.

Darnell Boyd, who lives on the 6th Street corridor and has been connected with Hospitality House for a long time, brought an infectious grin and optimistic wry humor to the rally’s podium as he listed some of the Self-Help Center’s accolades.   

It’s the only place locals can spend time or get a cup of coffee after dark, he said. “Better quality than Starbucks, and it’s at a better price: it’s free,” he quipped.

The center is a gathering place where people can relax and connect, including through music and games, to escape their claustrophobia-inducing rooms in single-resident occupancy hotels. 

“Those rooms are small! On a hot day like this, we have to come outside,” he said. “I don’t want to hear myself think all day.” 

And the center’s staff keep a watchful eye on people who might be at risk of overdose — “By the time the paramedics get there, Hospitality House has already revived them!” 

“Keep your head up,” Boyd told the crowd. “We gon’ keep moving forward.”

David Elliott Lewis, co-founder of the resident advocacy group Tenderloin People’s Congress, took the mic and shared that he had once stayed at a Hospitality House shelter, a stay he said saved his life. People’s Congress members have voted in support of keeping the 6th Street site open, he added.

Tenderloin community member Cheryl Block Shanks — who this year aims to open Soul Station, a soul food restaurant and community gathering space on Jones Street — also credited Hospitality House with pulling her out of homelessness and severe mental and physical illness. 

“My story is of coming into this community having nowhere to go, sick as a dog, suicidal. Someone said, ‘Go to Hospitality House, they’ll help you,’” she recalled. She did go. They got her into a shelter and counseling, and got her a phone so she could call her family. 

But more crucially, “I started to get my self-esteem back. People actually cared for me,” Shanks said.    

The center on 6th Street also fills an important practical niche in the city’s homelessness services system, said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness.

“The thing about drop-in centers is they are incredibly effective at helping the most disenfranchised, disconnected people,” Friedenbach said, adding that those people can struggle to find and access what they need within the city’s complex network of services. “Let’s be real: Most of the system is really hard to penetrate.”

At a drop-in site, especially one that’s open late like the Self-Help Center, someone can come in to use the bathroom and end up on a pathway to shelter or long-term housing. They can arrive in crisis, and staff will work to orient them and improve their situation. 

“When other doors close, our door is open,” said Cherie Davis, the center’s program manager. “When you walk through that door, that is always the right door.”

Davis told the story of a 75-year-old woman who had lost her job and place to live and came to the Self-Help Center because it was the only place open after 6 p.m. Davis’ team started working on getting her housed, and succeeded, she said. 

Often, when Hospitality House works to solve someone’s urgent problem, deeper and more complex needs come to the surface.

When a local resident started feeling unwell but didn’t want to go to the hospital, Davis said staff talked him into getting care — and a good thing, too, because he turned out to have an infection in his brain. The prognosis wasn’t good, but he had unfinished business. He asked Hospitality House staff to help him reconnect with his mother, from whom he was estranged.

“He was looking at death. He wanted his mother. We found her,” Davis said. After seven years without contact, mother and son reconnected at the end of his life.

Joe Wilson, executive director of Hospitality House, himself once spent nights on a mat on the floor at the organization’s shelter — nights when he hoped the morning wouldn’t come, he said. But the organization saw him through those times, and his late mother lived long enough to see the light return to her son’s eyes.

“We agree that it is not compassionate to stand by and watch others suffer,” he said. “That’s why we’re on that block.”

Hospitality House has launched a postcard-writing campaign, encouraging supporters to send their thoughts to the Mayor’s Office. Pre-addressed postcards are available at the organization’s administrative office at 290 Turk St. and at the Self-Help Center.