In January 2019, the chorus announced it had a permanent home: the National LGBTQ Center for the Arts, an Art Deco building at 170 Valencia Street. Within weeks, the whole city was paying attention.
The mayor comes to Valencia Street
The Examiner’s Joshua Sabatini reported that Mayor London Breed gave her first State of the City address at the center on January 30, 2019. In about 30 minutes, she focused on homelessness, mental health, affordable housing and clean streets, pledging 4,000 more shelter beds and housing placements over four years and a ballot measure to speed up affordable housing. Supervisors Aaron Peskin, Sandra Lee Fewer, Ahsha Safai, Shamann Walton and Catherine Stefani listened from the audience.
The Chronicle’s Dominic Fracassa previewed the 11:30 a.m. speech and streamed it live. Breed, appointed the previous July and running for a full term that November, was expected to lay out new goals on speeding up housing approvals, opening shelters, and addressing drug addiction and mental illness among homeless residents.
A year later, the Chronicle reported that the building had opened its doors with a public event series. In 2023 it opened as The Chan National Queer Arts Center.
From the archives: this post retells reporting by the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle. The original articles survive only in newspaper archives, so we have told the story here in our own words. Details attributed to those outlets are their reporting; see the sources below.
Sources
- San Francisco Examiner, “Housing homeless remains priority for mayor” by Joshua Sabatini, January 31, 2019. sfexaminer.com
- San Francisco Chronicle, “Gay chorus’ new home hosts event series” by Annie Vainshtein, February 18, 2020. sfchronicle.com
- San Francisco Chronicle, “Watch live: SF Mayor London Breed delivers State of City speech” by Dominic Fracassa, January 30, 2019. sfchronicle.com
- YouTube, video of the 2019 State of the City address. youtube.com
