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Steiner Murals Progress

The murals on Steiner near Haight have been expanding over the last week or so.

Plan Drawings

Updated: Here are the images of the Duboce Triangle Transportation Improvement Plan drawings. Note that these were created back in early 2008, before the community workshop. They have since been revised to reflect the feedback gathered at the workshop, but we have not created new drawings. Please ask if you have any questions about specific elements.

Note that the crosswalk changes on this one (plan area two) have been scrapped. They are currently called for staying the same.

You can also see the text presentations here, which include the data collection.

Harvey Milk Center Gets a Name

The lettering is up on the front of the Harvey Milk Center.

Not-So-Fun Times on the N-Judah this Weekend

The Church Street station was chaotic and crowded.

The Church Street stop was the end point of the one-car trains, packed to the rafters.

Buses took over the rest of the route while the MTA replaced track further west.

New DTNA Homeless Taskforce

Supervisor Dufty convened a meeting last Thursday to discuss the homeless situation in the neighborhood. The meeting was prompted by an increase in concern about drug-fueled incidents on the streets in the area close to Church Street.

There were representatives from the many groups involved in dealing with the impact of the homeless and/or addicts in the neighborhood, including DTNA, Friends of Duboce Park, the Community Benefits District, Safeway, Forbes Security (which patrols the Safeway grounds), Community Housing Partnership, Maitri, the Department of Public Health, the police department, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, St. Francis Church, the mayor’s office, the Department of Rec and Parks and the district attorneys office.

It was a long meeting with far too much information to be capture here. But some of the important themes and outcomes:

• The main community concern tends to be the behavior of those people with substance-abuse problems. There seems to have been an uptick in drug use on the streets as of late, which has created more tension on our streets.
• Unmanaged spaces, like parking or undeveloped lots, are particular attractors of homeless activity.
• Residents (and businesses and service program) feel that their attempts to use the normal channels to report problems are not working. There needs to be better public information about how to be most effective. The fact that Duboce Triangle is covered by four different police districts does not help the situation.
• For now, if you see a homeless person who you think could benefit from entering the city’s service system, call Brenda Meskan, who leads the city’s local homeless outreach team, at 415-850-7412 or e-mail her at brenda.meskan@sfdph.org. It’s best to call.
• The owner of the yellow house at Carmelita right off of Duboce Park (pictured above), which has attracted squators, will shortly be cited for a variety of permit and other violations, including illegal building work. This should hopefully spur the owner to do a better job of managing the unfortunate building.

DTNA is forming a taskforce to develop a list of specific ideas to pursue to ameliorate the impact of homeless/addict behavior in the neighborhood. If you are interested in being part of this taskforce, e-mail Kit Hodge at kitrhodge [at] gmail DOT com. We’ll report on our progress here, and will be asking for your feedback along the way.

We know that there is a lot of concern about this issue in the neighborhood, and we’re looking for people with constructive ideas and attitudes to help make a difference.

Shooting in Lower Haight last night

If you thought you heard gun shots last night, you were right. As SFist is reporting:

“Right around 9:30 there was a drive-by at Rose and Webster. Scuttlebutt around the neighborhood is that one young man was hit and taken to the hospital, and the perpetrators drove off in a car right after. No details yet, but the block is cordoned off and the police presence is beyond heavy.”

If you live on the side of Duboce Triangle near the Lower Haight, consider joining the community mailing list to get info about other incidents and, yes, positive efforts in the area.

Reminder: Youth Play Area meeting tonight

This morning the new commissioner of the Recreation and Parks Department, Jared Blumenfeld, stopped by Duboce Park as part of his park tour by bike. He had quite a healthy following.

Representatives from both DTNA and the Neighborhood Parks Council were on hand to talk to him about projects in and around the park, including the N-Judah stop design and the youth play area. As a reminder:

The final community meeting for the Duboce Park Youth Play Area will be on TONIGHT! Tuesday November 18 at 6:30 pm at the CPMC Davies Auditorium.

Sunday in the Triangle

Photo of the Day

Photo by WascaliWabbit from the Duboce Triangle Flickr Group pool.

Add your photos of our neighborhood to the group!