Downtown Napa is not the ideal place for a center that provides services to the homeless, but finding another site will require a lot of time and effort, the Napa City Council said Thursday night.

After listening to three hours of emotional testimony from nearly 50 speakers, the council rejected a request by Old Town neighbors to shut down the Hope Resource Center at Fourth and Randolph streets.

Instead, council members vowed to crack down on neighborhood troublemakers while working with social service agencies to improve homeless services and potentially find a new home for the center.

Three dozen speakers, including many formerly homeless people, said the Hope Center played a central role in reducing homelessness. To kill it would only make the area’s problems with anti-social behavior worse, they said.

Neighbors agreed that the center did good, but said it served as a magnet for rowdy adults who hang around to use drugs and alcohol, engage in boisterous behavior and commandeer landscaping for bathrooms.

“I’m not a NIMBY,” said Michael Hamilton of Randolph Street, invoking the acronym for those who want to make sure social problems are “not in my backyard.” After enduring six years of daily aggravation, “I’m here to tell you this doesn’t belong in anybody’s neighborhood.”

Napa will accept an offer by the Napa Valley Coalition of Nonprofit Agencies to form a homeless task force. Independently, the city will increase police enforcement and look at ways to roust adults who gather at the Triangle, a spit of city-owned land at Franklin and Division streets.

Jim Featherstone, assistant director of Napa County Health and Human Services, agreed that the border between downtown and Old Town was attracting some hard-core homeless.

But to imagine that closing the Hope Center would cure the problem was “magical thinking,” Featherstone said. “It’s like closing Queen of the Valley Hospital and hoping sickness will go away,” he said.

Kathryn Winter, executive director of Fair Housing Napa Valley, displayed a neighborhood map showing the many attractions that bring the homeless to the area.

Besides programs at the Salvation Army and First Presbyterian Church that offer free lunches and dinners, there are many social service agencies, low-income apartments and places for hanging out and sleeping.

With such a constellation of attractions, it’s hard to know if the Hope Center is a significant part of the problem or not, said Ryan Gregory, a neighborhood business owner who serves on the board of Hope’s parent organization, Community Action Napa Valley.

Largely because of two police outreach workers, complaints about the homeless are down 39 percent this year, but the neighborhood still has plenty of policing problems, Police Chief Rich Melton said.

Several residents suggested moving the Hope Center to Napa State Hospital or Gasser Foundation land in south Napa. Ideally, downtown’s feeding programs would follow, creating a services zone that would not disturb so many homeowners, they said.

Celeste Carducci, a B&B owner on Randolph Street, endorsed a Gasser site, saying that she and her guests are constantly harassed by adults, many of them under the influence, who hang out near the homeless services.

Council members said they sympathized with aggrieved neighbors, but couldn’t agree that removing the Hope Center would dramatically improve the situation.

“We could remove it and problems could still continue exactly as they are,” Councilman Mark van Gorder said. “There is no proof that this is strictly a homeless issue.”

Councilman Jim Krider said today’s complaints are similar to what neighbors were saying before the center opened in October 2001. The problem may not be Hope patrons who behave badly when they leave the center, but a tougher crowd, he said.

“There are feral people out there. They show up. They make a mess. They go home,” he said.

“We need more help out there,” said Councilwoman Juliana Inman, who worried that city police were carrying a burden better handled by social service agencies.

The city needs to mobilize these agencies to begin looking for a better center site, said Inman. She noted that the lack of an approved smoking area meant Hope customers had to disperse into the neighborhood to smoke.

Councilman Peter Mott ripped the Napa County Board of Supervisors for not putting more money into homeless services. “They are the ones failing this population. It is not a priority for this board of supervisors,” he said.

Mott said he would like to see the Hope Center moved to the county’s human services complex on Old Sonoma Road, where it would be near mental health and drug and alcohol services.

Mayor Jill Techel said it made sense for the city to team up with social service agencies and the county to look at ways to improve homeless services. While alternative locations for the center are looked at, Old Town residents need relief now, she said.

Napa Assistant City Manager Dana Smith will begin meeting with other agencies to try to create a homeless task force. In January, she will suggest a timetable for its deliberations.