A built-in tennis court may sound like a heavenly amenity in San Francisco, but when it’s located near Van Ness Avenue and Eddy Street, you’ll have some problems lobbed at you.
A new segment today on KPIX speaks to tennis coach John Yandell, who moved into an apartment building at Larch Street off Franklin Street in 1984, lured by the appeal of a private tennis court on the property. “Having a private court that opens up off my apartment right down there, that drew me,” Yandell told KPIX.
But fast forward nearly 40 years, and operating a tennis school at this property is a whole lot less feasible. “Students used to come and go at the gate. That doesn’t happen anymore,” he told the station. Yandell blames people “defecating in the alley, urinating in the alley, openly [smoking] fentanyl.”
The KPIX segment seen above is one of those video-only stories. But the video captures neighbors actually popping manholes to steal electricity, or using inventive methods to successfully break into the building’s lobby.
“Chaos, actually, and it never stops,” the building’s owner Richard O’Neill told KPIX. “Curb appeal? Out the window.”
O’Neill says he has enough trouble retaining any of the 174 tenants of the building, let alone paid security guards, because they kept getting assaulted.
Mayor Breed did just announce the addition of some 430 new shelter beds near the neighborhood: 250 of them at 711 Post Street some six blocks away from this location, and the new Baldwin SAFE Navigation Center, which will have 180 private rooms.
According to Breed’s announcement last Tuesday, “HSH plans to add back 592 shelter beds throughout the system that were taken offline during COVID. That means that this September, the City will have over 1,000 new beds available for people living unsheltered not available today.”
Image: Google Street Voew
