SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- San Francisco's first navigation center opened in 2015. Since then, the city has built several others in an effort to move some of the homeless into permanent housing. They have always been controversial.
In August 2019, a surveillance camera caught a resident of a building near San Francisco's Embarcadero being attacked by a homeless man with mental health issues.
The timing could not have been worse as the city had announced just several months before that a navigation center for the unhoused would be built just a few paces from where the attack happened.
A battle ensued between residents of the South Beach and Rincon Hill neighborhoods and City Hall, arguing that the navigation center would bring in more homeless, attract crime, and more drug use.
It turns out, it never did any of those things.
Let's compare crime incident reports in that area before the navigation center opened with the most recent incident reports provided by SFPD. Turns out, the neighborhoods with a navigation center, like the rest of San Francisco, have seen a decrease in crime.
Some of the residents overlooking both the Bay and the courtyard of the navigation center have also argued they've been financially affected.
"The people that own here in this condominium probably lost about 15% of the value of their home," says resident Dirk Etienne.
According to the data, residents have lost 13-15% of their value, but they can't blame the navigation center because every neighborhood in San Francisco has seen a similar or higher decline.