The first two articles in this series looked at two different ways Hayes Street has been shaped.
The Market & Octavia Area Plan established a long-term planning framework through years of public participation, environmental review, and coordinated decision-making.
What followed years later was very different. Beginning with the pandemic, temporary programs, permits, renewals, events, and other initiatives gradually accumulated on Hayes Street. No single decision produced the street we see today.
That raises another question: Who has been making those decisions?
A complicated governance structure
There is no single agency responsible for Hayes Street. Different aspects of the corridor involve different public agencies, elected offices, permit holders, nonprofit organizations, event operators, and advisory bodies. SFMTA oversees the recurring weekend street closure and transportation operations. Planning is involved in land-use and public-realm planning. OEWD has played a role in the Entertainment Zone. Other City departments become involved depending on the particular use, permit, event, or public-space issue. The District 5 Supervisor’s office also plays an important role in neighborhood policy and communication.
And outside government, neighborhood organizations and permit holders have increasingly become involved in operating and programming public space. Each participant may have a defined role. The difficulty is not simply understanding how those roles fit together. It is determining who is responsible when individually authorized programs collectively reshape a public street, and where affected residents and businesses can seek meaningful review of that cumulative policy.
From planning to permitting
The distinction matters because planning and permitting are not the same thing. A comprehensive planning process asks broad questions about how transportation, businesses, housing, open space, circulation, public space, and neighborhood needs should work together over time.
A permit generally asks a narrower question: Should this particular use be allowed under this particular program?
When one permit is followed by another renewal, another program, another event, and another initiative, each individual decision may appear relatively limited. Collectively, however, those decisions can reshape how a street functions. That is essentially what has happened on Hayes Street.
The result is not simply a collection of individual permits. It is an evolving public-space policy assembled incrementally through separate administrative decisions. And while responsibility for those individual decisions may be distributed among different agencies, programs, permit holders, and operators, no comparable process necessarily exists for the public to consider—or approve—the cumulative result.
The growing role of nonprofit and private actors
Another important change has been the role of nongovernmental organizations in shaping the street. Public agencies still issue permits and retain governmental authority. But the day-to-day operation, programming, and presentation of public space can increasingly be influenced by nonprofit organizations, permit holders, event producers, and other private actors.
On Hayes Street, that distinction is not theoretical. The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association, a nonprofit neighborhood organization, holds the permit for the recurring weekend street closure, while the closure’s operation and programming have involved additional nonprofit and private actors. Public agencies retain the authority to issue, renew, condition, or revoke the permit, but nonprofit organizations have come to occupy an increasingly consequential role in how this public street is used and programmed.
That creates an important distinction. A neighborhood organization can advocate for an idea. It can organize programming. It can hold a permit. But nonprofit status, a permit, or participation in a City program does not itself confer representative authority over the surrounding community. A neighborhood organization does not necessarily represent every resident, merchant, property owner, visitor, or stakeholder affected by the use of public space.
When a private organization becomes closely involved in operating a public street, the question of representation therefore becomes inseparable from the question of governance. Who gets a seat at the table? Who does not? And who is responsible for ensuring that competing perspectives are heard?
Representation matters
This is why the question of representation has become increasingly important in Hayes Valley.
Representation becomes especially important when organizations participating in the operation or programming of public space are also treated as voices for the surrounding community. Residents, merchants, property owners, visitors, and organizations do not occupy interchangeable roles, and participation by a neighborhood organization cannot substitute for a public process that independently reaches the people affected by a policy.
A healthy public process requires more than collecting competing opinions. It requires a structure in which affected stakeholders can participate before policy is effectively established, alternatives can be meaningfully considered, and decisions can be reviewed through an identifiable public process. That becomes especially important when temporary programs begin influencing the long-term use of public space. The question is no longer simply whether one program is popular or whether one event is successful. The larger question is whether a series of separately approved temporary uses can collectively establish a long-term policy for a public street without that cumulative policy ever being presented for meaningful public consideration as a whole.
A public street, a public process
Cities and neighborhoods change, and public space changes with them. The question is how those changes acquire legitimacy. When substantial changes to a public street are contemplated, the process used to make those changes matters.
The Market & Octavia Area Plan demonstrated one model: comprehensive planning, competing priorities, public participation, environmental review, and an adopted framework. The evolution of Hayes Street since 2020 demonstrates another: temporary programs, permits, renewals, programming, and administrative decisions accumulating over time. Understanding who initiated, approved, operated, expanded, and renewed these uses—and what opportunities existed for the broader public to influence or challenge their cumulative effect—is therefore essential to understanding how Hayes Street arrived where it is today.
The story continues
The governance history is only one part of the story. As temporary programs have continued and new initiatives have emerged, the City has increasingly turned to studies, surveys, public engagement, and new planning efforts to evaluate the future of Hayes Street.
Those processes raise their own questions. What exactly is being studied? Who defines the questions and alternatives? Who is consulted before those questions are established? What assumptions form the starting point? And perhaps most importantly: when the results relate to the long-term framework that already exists, will the public have a meaningful opportunity to reconsider that framework itself?