In Sanskrit, the Kailash Hotel means ‘home of the gods.’ A neighbor calls it ‘the hotel from hell.’ 

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On a recent Wednesday afternoon, four people stood outside the Kailash Hotel, a single-room occupancy hotel across the street from the 16th Street BART Plaza. Another man, perhaps in his 20s, crossed the street and handed $3 to one of the group and got a pipe and a lighter in return. The man took a hit, and the group dispersed, two of them heading into the Kailash.

The young man stayed outside, pacing back and forth, pressing his nails into his chest. He moved his hands up and down as if he were scratching himself, waiting for the others to re-emerge. About 15 minutes later, the two people who had walked into the hotel returned, and the young man ran up to them. “Where’s my fenty?” he demanded. The couple ignored him and walked away. 

“Fuck, I lost my $3 and my fenty,” yelled the man, almost in tears. “Fuuuuuck.”

The sidewalk in front of the Kailash Hotel at 179 Julian Ave., named for the “abode of the gods” in Sanskrit, is a longtime fixture of 16th and Mission streets, one of several hot spots in San Francisco where overt drug dealing, drug use, and the rough street life that can accompany both have recently attracted official attention. 

Two months ago, the city established a 24/7 police presence at the 16th Street BART Plaza and its surrounding streets to crack down on drug use and drug dealing. Multiple non-police city agencies are also on the ground, offering access to treatment and shelter. 

How effective such interventions are, however, is unclear. “The cops are not doing anything,” said a man standing a few feet away from the Kailah’s entrance. He was selling small plastic bags tightly packed around a substance he declined to name. “They’re just moving us around,” he added. 

Last week, the Kailash’s management said that it is in talks to sell or lease the building to the city. In the meantime, the hotel remains a magnet for complaints from residents who live nearby. 

“The hotel from hell,” said Conrad Grass, the co-owner of 173 Julian St., a six-unit apartment complex next door. “It’s just a wild, wild west situation” He’s talked with the owner about the activity outside the hotel, Grass continued, but none of these conversations have led anywhere. Grass said that, at 72, he is now too old to deal with the situation and wants to sell his building. 

Half a dozen neighbors who spoke to Mission Local said that drug dealing, drug use, and sex work — and the noise and loitering that follow — are constant problems around the Kailash. They also say that as conditions at the intersection have worsened in the last six months, so has the scene directly outside the Kailash. 

One neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, said that when he moved to the neighborhood five years ago, he saw what looked like drug dealing around the hotel, but no obvious drug use. “I certainly saw people buying drugs, straight up, from my window, but it felt like it was not a hub for others. It just seemed to be that dealers were located there,” he said.

Another neighbor, who has lived in Grass’s building for the last 15 years, is disconcerted by the screams they hear coming from the hotel, and the way residents throw trash out of their windows. Reaching hotel management has not been easy; the hotel has no listed phone number. 

Nick Patel, the hotel’s manager and the son of its owner, Alpesh Patel, said the family does everything it can to be good neighbors to everyone in the community.

The situation, he said, is challenging. Management can’t move people loitering in front of the hotel, he said; it’s a public space. And the police don’t respond to nuisance crimes, he said. People also sneak into the building behind hotel guests, and he opens up the hotel to those who need a bathroom.

“Not every homeless person is staying in my building. I’m just helping them by allowing [them] to use the toilets because if I don’t let them use it, they’ll forcefully come in,” he said. 

But neighbors are restless. According to DataSF, the number of 311 calls about the Kailash has increased in recent years, from 54 calls in 2023 to 76 in 2024. So far this year, there have already been 65 calls, more than twice the number of calls made during the same period last year.

Documents filed with the city’s Department of Building Inspection show that the hotel does not have security on site. 

A sanctuary, despite everything 

But the hotel is also a rare source of relatively affordable housing: The latest report from the building inspections department shows the average rate for each residential room is $1,892.14 a month. Residential guest rooms can’t be rented out for less than seven days. 

And some current or former residents of the Kailash describe it as a sanctuary, of sorts. 

Jaime Randaverde, who has stayed at the hotel, stood outside of the Kailash on a recent Thursday afternoon, a plastic bag full of clothes in each hand and a scooter resting on a bike rack.

Randaverde is a drug user. He says he smokes crack cocaine “a lot,” and that if he doesn’t take a hit, he will “shake” and “sweat” and his bones “feel rigid.” But at the hotel, he says, there’s community. “People offer you food and other resources. They check on you.”

Randaverde says he used to be a unionized painter, making $1,200 a week. He had a truck, “a beautiful wife,” and a son he adored. It’s a life he would like to have back someday.

“It’s hard to have an addiction. People judge us, but we have serious problems,” he added while he rolled a cigarette and sipped a can of Coke. “All of us who are here have a story. We just keep them in a box inside of us. We’re humans. We have souls.”

“It’s cool to even have a place to live,” said another man named Chris, who emerged from the hotel a few minutes later. “At least it gives you a place to rest.”

“If you mind your own business, you’re okay,” added Jabril, another resident.

Dozens of violations, and neighbors mobilize

Still, official building records show a long list of complaints. 

There have been 24 complaints leveled against the hotel at the building department since June 2015, when the current owners bought the building. They include complaints for moldy rooms, improper trash dumping, dirty showers and rooms, lack of electricity, faulty wiring, water leaks and broken appliances. There have also been eight violations to the San Francisco Housing Code in the same time period. 

The complaints include: 

• Two reports, one in September 2024 and one in April 2024, of needles, used condoms, pill bottles, feces and trash in the space between the hotel and the building next door. 
• A report in April 2023 of a unit with broken appliances, dangerous outlet wiring, no heat and water leaks.
• A report in June 2023 stating that a room had mold and no heating, and that management refused to provide clean towels, sheets and blankets.
• A report in August 2022 of clients looking for sex workers.
• A report in March of this year describing loud noise and a gutter that smelled so bad, it kept neighbors from opening their windows.
• A report from April of this year of dirty showers and toilets, and handles missing from showers, a violation of the city’s housing code, according to an inspector whose last name is Lee. 

Patel said that all concerns have been addressed, and blamed previous management for the violations the hotel sustained over the years. The hotel has hired someone to clean the showers and toilets at night, he added, but said it can be difficult to control the conditions inside the hotel when people sneak in and lock themselves in the bathrooms.

The most recent housing-code violation was recorded three weeks ago, on April 29, when a city building inspector “investigated the complaint at the subject property … and observed violations of the San Francisco Housing Code,” the department wrote. The original complaint was described as: “Toilets and showers not being cleaned, very dirty, no grab bars in the first floor showers. Some bathrooms are locked.” 

Those violations have been fixed, said Patel. The management is waiting for a city inspector to come and reevaluate. Patel said that, in addition to the new employees who do cleaning shifts at night time, there are now daily cleanups on the sidewalk and the space between the Kailash and 173 Julian Ave., where hotel visitors had (supposedly) been throwing their garbage.

The Kailash is also considering hiring private security for its entrance, Patel added, and acquiring a land line for neighbors to call whenever it is needed. Allegations from neighbors claiming the hotel has served as a base for drug dealing and sex work are false, he added, but he is aware that dealing and littering take place outside the hotel. It’s a public space, he said, that has become difficult to control.

For that reason, he said, he celebrated the law enforcement operations in the area in recent months, and said that street conditions have vastly improved since those began.

There is, he said, “big improvement” in the area, and that directly benefits the Kailash, because fewer people wander in from the streets. 

In short, things are looking up, Patel said, and “The owner is happy.”

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