San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, September 30, 2007
C.W. Nevius

While the problems of homeless encampments and cast-off hypodermic needles have decreased in the east end of Golden Gate Park, the quality-of-life struggle continues for residents of surrounding neighborhoods.

But there is hope. It comes in the form of an energized, activist public, ready to step up, speak out and defend their turf. Exhibit A is a pocket of the residential upper Haight neighborhood, two blocks from the bustle, grit and panhandling on Haight Street below.

Citing a need for more room and better facilities, the Homeless Youth Alliance - which runs a needle exchange center at Haight and Cole streets and has been sharply criticized for handing out clean needles without bothering to monitor what happens to them - proposed a move. The proposed new home: Hamilton United Methodist Church at Belvedere and Waller streets.

And all hell broke loose.

Wednesday night some 200 neighbors crowded into the chapel at Hamilton - a classic, if battered, church built in 1908 - to express their views. In a session that everyone agrees became very heated, it was quickly clear that few of the residents supported relocating the needle exchange into their neighborhood.

"I sense that my neighbors and I, we've kind of drawn the line," says Erin Pashelinsky, who has lived across the street from the church for over 30 years. "We're saying, 'This is not how I want to live. I want the streets to be clean. We're tired of the homeless having sex in our alleys, leaving feces in our alleys, and using drugs.' "

[Nevius blog: The Needle Exchange and the Methodist Church. (Video)]

The meeting ripped the cover off a host of other neighborhood issues: from complaints about the congregation at the church - which has been hosting an extended funeral service that has featured late-night drinking and rowdy behavior - to serious concerns about whether the needle exchange could be controlled, to Pashelinsky's general dissatisfaction with the Haight Street culture.

Tracey Packer, the director of HIV prevention for the Department of Public Health, which funds the Homeless Youth Alliance needle exchange operation, says she got the message that the neighbors were up in arms loud and clear.

"Oh, I am so aware of that," she says. "And in the face of the community concern, I couldn't say in good faith that the exchange should move right now."

The Rev. Gary Barbaree, co-pastor at Hamilton, goes even farther.

"Every single person that I heard had a credible reason for what they were saying," Barbaree said. "I am taking the needle exchange off the table."

So, problem solved, right?

Not really. If there was anything learned from this it was that all of the groups - from the congregation of Tongan Methodists, to the neighbors, to the needle exchange directors - need to do a better job of communicating.

There may have been some angry words at Wednesday's meeting, but Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, whose District Five includes the area, says there was some light with the heat.

"I was appreciative of the turnout," says Mirkarimi, who stayed through the entire session. "I encourage it. Communication is central to the start of settling this."

And there may be more common ground than anyone expected. Peter Davidson, the chairman of the board of the Homeless Youth Alliance, listened to residents say they had "been complaining about this for years." This being, for example, that the center has become a magnet for homeless addicts. And yet, he said, he'd never heard of the issues. Others would describe specific instances of bad behavior.

"And I'd think, 'Oh wow, that sounds awful,' " Davidson says. "I wouldn't like that much either."

However, Davidson adds, "There were a lot of misconceptions about what we do and what we plan to do."

He says the two things he heard most often were that the exchange was being evicted from Cole Street and that it wanted to set up a 24-hour homeless residence. Neither, he says, is true.

However, as Mirkarimi says, "HYA has a history of not working well with the neighborhood. The service provider (of the needle exchange) feels it is doing the Lord's work, and they aren't sure why they are not loved."

Davidson and Packer agree that they can do better and say they intend to work to reach out to the community.

Meanwhile, the conflict with the church and the residents is another example of two groups working at cross purposes. Roughly 10 years ago, the Tongan Methodist congregation took over Hamilton, which had seen its membership dwindle to nearly nothing.

However, the Tongans, most of whom do not live in the area, only added to the anxiety about where the neighborhood was headed. The recent funeral service has been going on for two weeks, and features late-night drinking, loud music and double-parking.

That, in turn, say neighbors like Derek Haynes, left them even more skeptical about the needle exchange.

"This isn't being argued on fear or discrimination," Hayes said in an e-mail. "The church was unable to control the previous tenant and has difficulty controlling the current one. It is irrational to expect this behavior to change."

Haynes says he is no NIMBY. He's offered to help with the renovation of the church's gym and visits the daily lunch program for seniors and homeless. But he, like others in the neighborhood, reached a limit, and stood up to make a statement.

"I worked like crazy to buy this place," says Hayes, who lives with his girlfriend in a tenancy in common unit next to the church. "I didn't even get money from my parents. And it just feels like a little bit of what I worked for is being taken away."

Certainly the Rev. Barbaree never intended to be in the midst of these rip-roaring neighborhood controversies. He's been at Hamilton only since July, and jokes that when he left seminary school, he was given a book suggesting ideas for how to meet the neighbors when you move to a new church. One was, he says, "Find the biggest controversy in the neighborhood and invite it into the church."

Looking back on it, he says, "Maybe I should have gone with a bake sale."

Online resources:

video shot by C.W. Nevius while he reported this column

sfgate.com/blogs/nevius

C.W. Nevius' column usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. His blog C.W. Nevius.blog can be found at SFGate.com. E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.

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