A man was critically injured Wednesday night, following a machete attack that took place on an infamously troubled block in a San Francisco public housing development.

According to the San Francisco Police Department, at 9:20 Wednesday evening, two men engaged in a "verbal altercation" on the first block of Santos Street, which is located in San Francisco's Sunnydale-Velasco housing projects.

As the argument escalated, one of the argument's participants, a 28-year-old man, stabbed his opponent "in the abdomen with a machete," police say.

This isn't the first time this stretch of Santos Street has been the site of violence: Described by the Chron in 2008 as "quite possibly the most dangerous, depressed and decrepit area of the city," the blocks of the Sunnydale housing project have long been known as the site of frequent shootings, stabbings, and assaults, many of them fatal.

In Wednesday's attack it remains to be seen if the victim, a 49-year-old man, will recover. According to police, he suffered life-threatening stab wounds to the abdomen as a result of the machete attack, and was transported to San Francisco General Hospital for treatment of his injuries. An update on his condition was not available at publication time.

His attacker, police say, fled in an "unknown direction," and had not been arrested as of Thursday morning.