Nay Nay stands on the sidewalk, banging on the white steel gate next to a black and orange sign reading: “No Trespassing.” She’s here to buy crack. “Front Gate!” She hollers. Her hair is wrapped in a purple bandana. She wears a tan, thick-knit, hooded sweatshirt zipped up most of the way, even though it’s hot enough for an afternoon beer. Compulsively, she shifts her weight from one blue and white sneaker to the other, swaying her hips in her blue jeans, rocking her studded girly-belt. She sucks on a soda straw and throws the trash from her burger lunch into the gutter. No one answers the front door, so she struts around the corner and yells at the second-story window. A man dressed in black jeans, white sneakers, a blank white t-shirt and a backwards baseball cap lets her in the side door.

“Anyone can walk in there and buy any terrible drugs you want,” says a local businessman, afraid that his windows will be broken if he is identified.

This place, like many in San Francisco, has been a haven for drug use and a bane to local residents and businesses for decades. The landlord can’t, or won’t, fix the building, and the tenants – many repeat drug offenders - find ways to stay mired in the underground world of San Francisco’s heavy drug culture.

This residential hotel is smack-dab in the middle of the thriving 16th Street scene. Chances are that you’ve walked past it plenty of times, wondering why there’s always trash piling up, and why there’s usually a small crowd of raggedy folks standing around or going in and out the front gate. It’s the dingy gray and red Victorian above Kelly’s Burgers, next to Katz Bagels, across Albion Street from Delirium.

Police have been here 46 times since September. Last year, they busted a crank user on Christmas Eve, and have made three arrests since – the last on Feb. 10 for possession of heroin, cocaine and crack with intent to sell.

“That place is a hell-hole,” says SFPD plain clothes officer Ed Robles.

When buildings are this bad, the city sends a task force representing six city agencies to inspect. When they visited, the Department of Building inspection alone issued 29 items that must be cured by March 13. Among them: replace broken window panes, stop ceiling leak, replace missing cover for the electrical junction box, eliminate mouse infestation, stop cooking in guest rooms. If the violations are not fixed, the city attorney’s office will begin litigation. Kelly’s Burgers is already suing the landlord for neglect – mostly for the time water came leaking through the ceiling.

Behind the front gate on the street, at the top of the stairs, a sign reads: “Smile –You’re on Camera.” Inside and to the left, behind a second gate, is a desk speckled with cigarette burns, next to the first steps of a winding staircase that leads to the third floor. Above the farthest door is one of the hotel’s three surveillance cameras.

To the right, the long, straight hallway is a pell-mell of different shades of white, pink, and tan, accented by dark scuff marks and cigarette burns. Beneath temporary blue industrial carpet, there is wall paneling where there should be floor slats. Sunlight shines in from the open fire escape door and bounces off the blue paint of the bathroom. The hall has three bare bulbs and one set of neon tubes – all turned on. Day and night meld together here.

Vena Shotiveyaratana is the new building owner. She is a short, middle-aged businesswoman with dark, buzz-cut hair. She carries a large, black leather handbag and wears slacks and a dark purple sweater. Her eyebrows are meticulously drawn on. Building residents cower as she shouts through the building.

“I am an investor,” she shouts. “I buy and sell! I have been stuck here for over a year! I am broke! The drugs?! I don’t even know what the drugs look like!”

The residents admit they’ve had their problems with drugs and they explain that things are not Shotiveyaratana’s fault. She’s the nicest person they’ve ever met, they say. She gave them a second chance. Sometimes she brings them pizza. She just relies on the tenants to run the building, and has been taken advantage of by some. Yet, they say, she ought to hire professionals to work on the building.

Shotiveyaratana admits she was naive at first, and recently hired a professional contractor to bring the building up to code. She also hired private detective Paul Kangas, who held a three-year position on the San Francisco Drug Abuse Advisory Board, to investigate the building’s drug activity as well as manage it. According to Shotiveyaratana and building residents, Kangas only came by the building about three times during his five-month stint as manager.

Kangas says he evicted the hotel’s worst drug dealer. Kangas videotaped the dealer making threats, and was able to obtain a restraining order and have him evicted.

When Rennie McDonald talks about the dealer she lights up. She’s wearing rollers in her hair, she’s been up all night, and when she smiles, you can see she’s missing her lower front teeth. But she glows enough for you to be happy as well, that the dealer isn’t around.

“I’m so happy he’s gone. He’s the one that was going to gut me like a fish. He threatened me with a knife that was like that long,” she says holding her index fingers about two feet apart.

McDonald says most of the time, she’s the one that calls the cops. She’s the acting building manager. Though she isn’t paid, her work earns her free rent. She and the other residents really are trying to clean up the building. They know if the violations aren’t fixed they’ll be out on the street again.

Gone are the splotches of blood and tar, although a crumpled cellophane wrapper from a pack of cigarettes, containing a few white flakes, can be found on the floor of an upstairs bathroom. The light well has been cleaned, but the roof of Katz Bagels is still littered with needles, crack pipes and a water bottle filled with a yellow liquid. Many of the residents have been evicted, and some were even paid by Shotiveyaratana to leave.

When Shotiveyaratana first bought the place almost two years ago, she hired one of the residents to run things. Mostly, he ran methamphetamine.

A sign on the front door from when Kangas was manager says a valid ID is required to get inside the building. Yet word on the street is that the only ID you need is a green piece of paper with a picture of Abe Lincoln.

“We did that for a while to stop the street people from getting in,” McDonald says. Residents open the doors for their friends and customers regularly, and although things have calmed down a bit, “Open this fuckin’ gate bitch!” can be heard regularly.

“The five bucks was like a test,” says Sleepy, a tattooed and pierced occupant, while holding the leash of the house pit bull, Cali. “Are they serious about visiting a friend or are they here to party?”

If the building fails to cure the code violations and is shut down by the city attorney, it’s doubtful that the lives of the residents will improve. Because of rent control, resident Ed Cassidy pays only $235 per month. If forced to move his rent will probably double.

Cassidy has lived in the building since February of 1982. His door is padlocked in three places and has a large, round, wooden doorknocker that has been wrapped in three equal and separate sections with blue, black and purple electric tape. The door and room are decorated with American flags. Above his bed he has an Iraq War clipping taped next to Dylan Thomas’ famous quote, “Do not go silently into that dark night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Originally from New York and now living on disability checks, he spends most of his time watching TV and drinking Clan MacGregor Scotch. Cassidy says he’s old fashioned and doesn’t do drugs.

“I hope they don’t close this place down,” says Cassidy. “Where the hell am I gonna go? I don’t hurt nobody. I just sit in my room, watch TV and drink.”

Written in small print, on the wall of the hotel’s entryway, with a blue ball-point pen is the phrase: “Everyone pays...”