by MARINA NEWMAN March 28, 2025 (MissionLocal.org)
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The top city officials in charge of the Tenderloin told an invite-only crowd gathered at St. Anthony’s Foundation on Thursday evening that they agreed on one goal: To clear the streets of drug users, drug dealers, and homeless people by expanding the amount of available shelter beds across San Francisco by 1,500.
“We have a great partnership,” Mayor Daniel Lurie said as he addressed the town hall organized by St. Anthony’s Foundation, a Franciscan organization that serves the Tenderloin’s homeless population. Standing beside the mayor were District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood and Lurie’s policy chief of health, homelessness and human services, former McKinsey partner Kunal Modi.
“We are going to be working very closely together, so you should be reaching out to Mahmood with your concerns as much as you are reaching out to us,” the mayor said during an hour-long interview and Q&A. “We are in lockstep, we’re listening, working with you all.”
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Much of the audience of about 50 people, which included nonprofit heads, parents, and community leaders, received the San Francisco leaders with open arms.
Lurie promised on the campaign trail to add 1,500 beds, but has redefined and expanded the definition of a shelter bed to include a broad listing of treatment beds. The push to expand available beds, and redefine what a bed is, is part of Lurie’s campaign goal to end street homelessness.
“We need the right types of beds,” said Modi when asked what they will do to address the mental health needs of homeless people in the neighborhood. “When we talk about expanding our housing capacity, it’s not just the next bed that’s available, it’s the right bed to get people the care they need. That includes beds that will have a treatment and clinical model.”
Lurie has been filmed and photographed across San Francisco personally catering to those on the streets, including by handing out business cards at 16th and Mission streets. He held a similar meeting with neighbors of the BART plaza last week, also promising change and saying conditions remained “unacceptable.”
On Thursday, Lurie described leaving his vehicle three times over the course of the town hall to ask a homeless person or drug user on the street why they were there and how he could get them a bed.
“I am jumping out of my car when I see someone in the middle of the street, or at a median, struggling,” said Lurie. “I’m getting to know these people, saying, ‘This is not okay for you to be here, it’s not okay for the families who have to walk around you using drugs openly, this is unacceptable. How can we get you into treatment?’”
He then went on to describe chasing after another man, with his security detail in tow, when the man he approached did not at first respond to his efforts to help.
“I left City Hall, and was on my way to Chinatown, when again, I jumped out of my car when I saw a man lying on the street. I asked him, ‘Are you okay? You can’t be lying here on the street. How can we help?’ He ranted and ran away, and my security guard and I followed him, and called SFPD.” Lurie then clarified, “Not to arrest him, to get him the help he needs.”
Del Seymour, a former drug-user and dealer, now the founder of Code Tenderloin and the neighborhood’s self-proclaimed “mayor,” was the only audience member to express concerns with Lurie’s methods.
He questioned Lurie’s scaling back of harm-reduction programs in favor of an abstinence-first approach. “There are a lot of people who aren’t in this room today,” observed Seymour, “and those are harm reductionists. We have to treat people. Abstinence won’t do that for everyone.”
UCSF doctors on a Thursday panel agreed that depriving drug users of medications like methadone, which is used to treat opioid addiction, could be deadly. The World Health Organization recognizes methadone as an essential medicine to use against opioid dependence.
“We believe in science, and we’re going to follow the science,” said Modi. “Something’s not working, and we have to try new approaches if that’s what we’re going to do.”
