It’s Tuesday morning at Little Learners Daycare in downtown San Francisco. Teacher Wendy herds bright-eyed toddlers, amped up after playtime in the courtyard, back inside.
They’re laughing and swatting at each other playfully, oblivious to the pack of pedophiles lurking nearby.
Four hundred feet away, dozens of registered sex offenders live at 111 Taylor Street. Wendy knew that the Tenderloin, where she operates her Mandarin-immersion daycare, was dangerous. It’s a hotbed for illegal drug activity and homelessness.
But she didn’t realize that sex offenders live so close to her daycare — or that taxpayers fund their housing.
According to this City Journal investigation, more than 25% of sex offenders in San Francisco with addresses in the Megan’s Law database live in taxpayer-subsidized buildings.
Many live near a park, school or daycare, or reside in a neighborhood with a high concentration of children.
They do all of this despite statewide efforts to ban concentrating pedophiles so close to children. Instead of listening to California voters, San Francisco has become a taxpayer-funded dumping ground for sex criminals.
The Taylor Street Center is one of San Francisco’s most heavily populated sex-offender residences. Located in the Tenderloin, Taylor Street houses at least 31 registered sex offenders. The taxpayer-funded California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the federal Bureau of Prisons contract the private GEO Group to run the facility.
The reentry complex can house 240 people. It hosts specialized programs for residents like “cultural diversity education,” “gender-responsive groups” and a “weekly meditation group.” The facility sits just 400 feet from a daycare center, 1,000 feet from a fourth-to-eighth-grade school and five blocks from a preschool.
Any sex offender housed in the Tenderloin is bound to encounter children. Along with having a high concentration of immigrant and low-income households, the neighborhood also has the highest concentration of kids in the entire city.
You can’t just walk into the Taylor Street complex. The facility has at least one guard and multiple security doors. But residents seem to be able to come and go with relative ease.
We spoke with one man, Paul, as he walked to an appointment in the neighborhood. Paul told us that he served time for a sex-related offense, had to register as a sex offender and now lives at the Taylor Street house. In his opinion, there’s overblown “hysteria” around sex offenders’ proximity to children.
“For me, seeing a minor is like walking in the Tenderloin late at night,” he said. “Like, ‘stay away from that person.’”
Some of Paul’s neighbors seem less scrupulous. Multiple residents at 111 Taylor Street are “in violation” of their sex-offender-registration requirements, according to the state’s public database.
At least one has been accused of sexually deviant behavior during his time at the Taylor house: Kevin Adams, a 37-year-old convicted in 2014 of transmitting more than 600 images of child pornography, including some that were sadistic or masochistic in nature.
Adams was released from prison on supervised release after his conviction. While on supervised release, he conducted multiple lewd internet searches, like “Asian Teens; Teen C— Shot; and Teen P—.”
He also searched online for pornographic content of gymnastic videos with young girls. Despite his conduct, Adams was relocated to Taylor Street, where he continued to exhibit “increased sexual deviance related to minors” — including viewing material on social media that depicted minors in various postures, from stretching to kneeling without pants.
As of 2026, Adams was a threat to the community and had a “clear sexual preoccupation with minors,” his probation officer determined. A court revoked his release in September after he admitted to possessing pornography. Adams’ listed address on the sex-offender registry is still 111 Taylor Street.
One of Adams’ neighbors at the Taylor Street center is Michael Eugene Kincade. One night in 2008, after his family had gone to sleep, Kincade went downstairs and molested a 13-year-old girl sleeping on his couch. She cried and told him to stop. He didn’t, according to court documents.
Kincade has a history of alleged sexual misconduct. In 2000, he allegedly fondled an 18-year-old in her sleep before grabbing her, forcing her face into a cushion, choking her and raping her. He did not respond to a comment request.
Neighbors have no idea that the apartment complex on the corner of Taylor Street is crawling with sex offenders. “I would assume the city pushes them over here because it’s a lower income living area [with] subsidized housing,” Steven, a San Francisco resident for 23 years, told us. “People can come over here, get free housing, use drugs and get food stamps, and not have any repercussions in life.”
But the pedophile houses are not restricted to low-income areas like the Tenderloin. Offenders live in subsidized housing across San Francisco. An extensive review of the public registry found that more than 25% of sex offenders with addresses on the Megan’s Law website live in taxpayer-funded buildings.
As of Sept. 25, 779 registered sex offenders live in San Francisco and are listed in the state’s Megan’s Law database. Of the 628 such offenders with an address, 158 live in 65 taxpayer-funded buildings throughout the city.
The buildings operate on various models. For example, 111 Taylor is run by a private contractor. Others, like the Mission Hotel, are permanent supportive housing hotels run by a nonprofit, and funded by the city of San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (DHSH).
Still others, like Hope House, are nonprofit-operated and city-funded interim housing facilities. Hope House, formerly the Sharon Hotel, houses three sex offenders. One, Zayquan Howard, was arrested in 2014 and charged with sex trafficking and pimping out a 14-year-old girl from a motel room not unlike the one in which he currently resides.
The residencies aren’t cheap for taxpayers. San Francisco’s DHSH, which did not respond to our comment request, operates on a more than $800 million budget; between 2025 and 2026, a majority of the budget was earmarked for housing. It can cost the city $30,000 to $40,000 per resident annually to house people in permanent supportive housing.
California didn’t always let sex offenders live so close to children. In 2006, California voters overwhelmingly passed an initiative that banned them from living within 2,000 feet of schools and parks where children congregate. But a group of San Diego sex offenders sued the state, claiming that the blanket restrictions made it hard for them to find a place to live.
In 2015, the California State Supreme Court agreed, declaring that the blanket enforcement “restricted [parolees’] ability to find housing.” With some exceptions, California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation may now only impose residency restrictions on a case-by-case basis. Sex offenders in urban areas are virtually free to live around schools.
At least one California jurisdiction has since recognized that placing groups of sex offenders in residential neighborhoods is a mistake. Fresno County enacted new restrictions this year to limit the number who can live in one residential property to six. The county pushed for stricter regulations after residents with children raised concerns about the sex offenders. A Fresno mother who lived near a house with multiple offenders said that she couldn’t even “get my kids buckled into the car” without predators leering at her family from across the street.
“I’m concerned not about, frankly, the rights of the pedophile, but the rights of law-abiding citizens to live in safe communities and not worry about their children,” Fresno County Supervisor Garry Bredefeld said in January.
In San Francisco, officials seem to have reached an opposite conclusion.
Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America’ s Cultural Revolution. Haley Strack is an investigative reporter at City Journal.
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