Last updated: November 15, 2025
At‑a‑Glance
- What’s happening: The street-closure permit for the 400 block of Hayes Street is now before the SFMTA Board of Directors on Tuesday, November 18. This is the final step: the Board will decide whether to renew or end the closure.
- What else is happening: Separately, the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association (HVNA) has quietly applied for a year-long amplified-sound permit through the Entertainment Commission for Fridays/Saturdays through November 2026 — with minimal outreach and significant procedural overlap with the Shared Spaces permit renewal.
Why this matters: The closure has operated with persistent violations, manipulated data, political interference, and a lack of equitable stakeholder input. SFMTA’s own materials confirm major omissions: ignored violations, unsupported safety claims, and an aggregated sales-tax dataset that obscures the 400 block’s economic underperformance. - Our position: Do not renew the permit. The temporary program has dragged on far beyond its purpose and morphed into something unrecognizable. A full-time street closure is disproportionate to the occasional events that could easily take place in existing open spaces — Octavia Boulevard, Proxy, Patricia’s Green, Linden Living Alley, the Hayes Valley Playground or underused sites such as Parcels R and S — without blocking a vital commercial corridor. Restore Hayes Street to regular public circulation/a functioning neighborhood street. Return event programming to the established pre-pandemic process that offered clearer rules, accountability, and a better balance of stakeholder input.
What’s New Since Our Last Update ?
Since our prior review, several new issues have surfaced during the SFMTA renewal process:
• Manipulated sales-tax data in SFMTA’s slide deck.
The agency presented aggregated revenue figures combining the 300, 400, and 500 blocks, masking the 400 block’s underperformance and creating a misleading impression of economic health.
Read more -> How SFMTA Manipulated Sales Tax Data on Hayes Street
• A quiet HVNA application for a year-long amplified sound permit.
Filed with the Entertainment Commission with limited outreach, this permit would authorize weekly amplified entertainment through November 2026 — overlapping with the Shared Spaces renewal and raising inter-agency consistency concerns.
• Incomplete record before the Board.
The staff report omits key information: documented violations, stakeholder correspondence, safety concerns, and Planning inconsistencies raised throughout the year.
Read more -> SFMTA Hearing Materials Debrief
Familiar with this issue? You can skip ahead → click here for SFMTA hearing
Key Findings
- Chronic violations; enforcement deferred. More than 40 weeks of consecutive documented noncompliance — including parked vehicles, blocked access, unpermitted vendors, and traffic diversion with no meaningful correction. SFMTA staff have acknowledged these issues yet indicated they would “address them at renewal” rather than act when harm occurred.
- Politics over policy. Staff reluctance to revoke or correct course has been repeatedly linked to political pressure from the District Supervisor. The result: policy decisions made to protect relationships rather than uphold standards.
- Economic harm to retail; narrow benefits. Independent retailers report substantial sales declines and reduced access for customers and deliveries. Benefits concentrate among a handful of bars and restaurants. Shared Spaces parklets -the program’s intended tool remain under‑utilized, yet a full‑block closure persists.
- Process exclusion. After counter-viewpoints opposing the continued closure emerged, City staff stopped engaging with our group and instead collaborated with a small inner circle aligned with the permit holder — the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association (HVNA). Those who bear the costs and financial losses were systematically excluded from any dialogue.
- HVNA/the Permit Holder. The HVNA, a private membership organization, has acted as de facto gatekeeper for the closure despite representing a minor portion of neighborhood stakeholders. The current permit structure has uniquely advantaged a small cluster of hospitality operators closely aligned with HVNA. This alignment blurs the line between private interest and public authorization, allowing a few actors to dominate the public right‑of‑way with limited accountability.
- Local commerce vs. event spectacle. The closure has shifted the corridor from a functioning retail street to a festival-style venue, where temporary programming often overshadows everyday business activity. Hayes Valley welcomes visitors and customers, but a constant “event” environment distorts the local economy and displaces the regular rhythm of neighborhood life. Activities of this scale belong in existing open spaces — which are currently underutilized not in the center of our prominent business corridor.
- Public safety and access risks. Recurring reports cite blocked emergency access, ADA barriers, and spillover traffic onto Grove, Fell, Oak, Ivy, Octavia and Laguna. These hazards persist in the absence of any credible management or enforcement mechanism.
- Policy conflicts. The closure contradicts adopted planning frameworks for the Market & Octavia Area Plan, which identifies Hayes Street as a critical east‑west connector supporting neighborhood retail diversity and mobility. Converting it into an event‑based corridor undermines those objectives and lacks public consent.
Bottom line: A program that relies on deferring enforcement, sidelining stakeholders, and privileging politics over public trust cannot be renewed in good faith.
These findings make clear that the Hayes Street closure cannot be justified. Renewal would only deepen the failures already visible in the record.
For a detailed look at how this process unfolded including agency correspondence and Supervisor involvement …
read our companion report: → Behind the Process
What Needs to Happen
- What Needs to Happen
- The SFMTA Board must not renew the Shared Spaces permit.
- Restore Hayes Street to normal circulation and access.
- If temporary activations are desired, return to properly permitted, time-bound events with transparent community approval and merchant opt-in.