Civic Center, San Francisco Civic Center, San Francisco The Civic Center in San Francisco, California, is an area of a few blocks north of the intersection of Market Street and Van Ness Avenue that contains many of the city's largest government and cultural institutions. It has two large plazas (Civic Center Plaza and United Nations Plaza) and a number of buildings in classical architectural style. The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium (formerly the Exposition Auditorium), the United Nations Charter was signed in the War Memorial Veterans Building's Herbst Theatre in 1945, leading to the creation of the United Nations. It is also where the 1951
Homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area according to a report by urban planning and research organization SPUR, San Francisco had the third highest per capita homelessness rate (0.8% or 8 in 1000 persons) of all large US cities, as well as the third highest percentage of unsheltered homeless (55%). ("Unsheltered" means sleeping somewhere not designated as a permanent living location, and includes tents, automobiles, and RV's, but does not include people staying in designated homeless shelters.) As SPUR explains in one of their publications: "For anyone who believes, based on their own eyes, that San Francisco has the worst problem with homelessness in the country, this