The New Neighbor in the Trendy Mission District: An Innovative Homeless Shelter

Key to the success of the shelter, technically considered a pilot program, will be its ability to evaluate the residents "to determine what is needed: a trip back to their home city to live with family, to be considered for permanent housing or for drug-treatment or mental-health services," writes The Wall Street Journal's West Coast reporter, Alejandro Lazo. And they'll have to do that during the ten days they'll be there. [See SF Gate Photogallery]

Lazo writes how other cities have dealt with their homeless populations, including those "with large-scale intake centers ...(b)ut few places, if any, have tried an approach that pairs an intake center with the potential for access to permanent housing and social services, city officials and national experts said," writes Lazo.

The Navigation Center, as it is formerly called, will only be a temporary fixture, up to 18 months, in the MIssion District. "After that, the site is slated to be developed into below-market-rate housing," adds Lazo.

The initial population the center, located at 1950 Mission Street near the 16th Street BART station, hopes to serve is "the estimated 400 homeless people that live in surrounding blocks," writes Lazo.

Finding permanent rental housing in "The City" is difficult even for middle income people, as any one who has looked for housing here will tell you. "The average asking rent at the end of 2014 for a studio apartment was $2,575, an 11% increase from 2013, according to the firm RealFacts," adds Lazo.