Dr. Mahendra Dave, an owner of the Seneca Hotel who pioneered the Indian community’s involvement in San Francisco’s hotel leasing program, died yesterday after a long bout with cancer. An SRO owner representative on the 6th Street Project Area Committee prior to the onset of his illness, Dave and his wife were physicians in India before coming to America to ensure their kids a good education. Brilliant intellectually and deeply spiritual, Dave was widely viewed as the conscience of the 6th Street hotel owner community. The death of Dr. Mahendra Dave comes at a time when San Francisco’s SRO homeless housing program ---which includes the Health Department’s Direct Access to Housing program and Human Service’s leasing and Care not Cash programs---primarily links nonprofit groups with Indian-American hotel owners. The first Indian hotel owner to offer his hotel for lease, and the person to whom the rest of the community turned to for guidance on the question of leasing, was Dr. Dave.

Dr. Dave was a physician by training and was investing in SRO’s because people he knew through his religious activities recommended it. After becoming a part-owner of the Seneca Hotel at 34 6th St., he quickly concluded that he had no idea how to run a hotel.

The Tenderloin Housing Clinic was referring tenants to the Seneca through our Modified Payments Housing Program, which is how I got to know the person we all called “the Dr.” The Dr. spent a year trying to convince me that the Clinic should lease and take over management of the Seneca, and I valiantly resisted his entreaties.

With rising rents making housing placements for homeless persons difficult, we finally gave in and had the Department of Human Services assess the feasibility. DHS encouraged us to go forward, and Indian hotel owners across the city looked to the Seneca to see whether they too should lease their hotels.

Fortunately, the Seneca model proved positive for both the city and the Indian community, enabling nearly 2000 Indian-owned units to become part of city leasing programs. Whenever I would talk with an owner considering leasing, they would say, “we talked to Dr. Dave and he says this is a good arrangement.”

The Dr. Dave story I will never forget and frequently tell concerns the day before the Clinic was to take over the Seneca. We held a meeting in the lobby where I discussed our plans with the tenants. Tenant selection prior to our May 1, 1999 takeover had left something to be desired, and during our meeting a fight broke out between two very drunk tenants.

As folks scrambled to break up the fight, a sense of chaos prevailed. I looked at the Dr. and he smiled and said to me “It’s your problem now.”

We join with the broader Indian-American community in expressing our deepest condolences to his wife, children, and entire family.

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