Ever since the city announced a plan to move the 83 long-term residents living at its General Hospital’s Behavioral Health Center and repurpose the center as a facility for patients with more severe mental health conditions, Sharifa Rahman has been waking up in the middle of the night, crying at the thought of her patients being pushed out of the front door at 887 Potrero Ave in their wheelchairs.
“We are talking about the most vulnerable people in San Francisco,” said Rahman. Many of the Center’s residents also have chronic mental health conditions. “Even moving from one room to another room is depressing for them. Think about moving them out of this place they call home.”
Rahman, a mental health worker, is known as “the Mother of ARF” (short for the Behavioral Health Center’s Adult Residential Facility). She’s worked there for 24 years. San Francisco’s Department of Public Health plans to move the 83 residents to two facilities on Laguna Street in Hayes Valley.
According to a flyer issued by the Department of Public Health, the Behavioral Health Center is “an extremely rare asset” because of its architecture — it was built to serve as a locked mental health facility, which makes it easier to separate residents who pose more of a risk to themselves and others…