by Randy Shaw on December 15, 2025 (BeyondChron.org)
Mayor Lurie Boosted SF’s Hopes
San Francisco in 2025 was framed around Mayor Lurie’s efforts to promote the city’s “comeback.” He faced multiple obstacles: the nation’s highest downtown office vacancy rate, a dying San Francisco (formerly Westfield) Centre, retail vacancies around Union Square and other neighborhoods, a weak private housing construction market, a struggling tourist economy, and open-air drug markets and sidewalk drug use in multiple communities.
A sharply declining San Francisco economy and huge city budget deficit reflected these problems.
In the face of these challenges Mayor Lurie ended the year with a roughly 70% approval rate. While some criticize him for being overly positive, San Francisco wanted a mayor who could restore hope in the city’s future.
The city has a long way to go. But most believe Lurie got San Francisco back on track. Even his regular critics praised him for stopping Trump from sending the National Guard to San Francisco.
Did SF Come Back?
On October 14 I wrote, “How Real is San Francisco’s Comeback?” I went through the problems listed above and found little actual progress. There has since been some recovery in Union Square. New buyers were found for the Hilton and Parc 55 Hotels. The city used private funds to temporarily fill long vacant stores on Powell Street on Union Square’s border.
The now completely vacant San Francisco Centre has gone back to the lender. This sets up an opportunity for a new owner to invest in a successful operation. I’m told it will not be retail. How about something like Legoland? That would bring people to the area.
Otherwise, Mid-Market most positive sign in 2024—the opening of IKEA and its adjacent Saluhall food court—went backwards in 2025. The food hall lacks customers. Many vendors have left. Saluhall suffers from the huge loss of foot traffic caused by the San Francisco Centre’s closure.
Mid-Market during the day often resembles a ghost town. After midnight it’s a different story. The city’s largest evening open air drug market is at the northwest corner of Sixth Street as it crosses Market. JJ Smith’s drone on December 9 at 6am shows the overhead view of massive public drug activities only a block from the Golden Gate Theater and near upscale hotels. The drug market has recently expanded to also cover the block of Golden Gate Avenue housing St. Anthony’s.
Seeing this huge drug crowd in a prime theater area is shocking when seen for the first time. But it is there nightly.
Mid-Market is included in the funding orbit of the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation. That could help the historic neighborhood in 2026.
SOMA also failed to come back in 2025. The SOMA West CBD spent over $800,000 on private security guards this year, $600,000 coming from the city. And the Folsom Streetscape Project has badly hurt businesses in the area; the head of the SOMA West CBD believes that street disruption “probably hurts corridor merchants more than the addiction crisis.”
Overall, while many city neighborhoods are doing great, Central City retail corridors are not. It’s a tale of two San Francisco’s, one that City Hall will have to try harder to unite.
Prioritizing Downtown
The mayor helped raise over $60 million in private funds for the newly-created San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation. CEO Shola Olatoye wants downtown to be a “24/7, world-class neighborhood.” Downtown San Francisco has never been such a neighborhood so the SFDDC’s ambitions are high.
Lurie is razar focused on reviving downtown. The city can beautify downtown and ensure public safety but if workers aren’t coming to offices the area’s revenue base will not return.
The mayor has drawn strong support from hotel owners for his efforts to revive San Francisco’s tourist industry. Trump’s attack on international tourism and Canadians in particular didn’t help, but the mayor did all he could to get tourists back. The convention business in 2026 looks good.
The business community has completely bought into Lurie’s vision. We’ll know by the end of 2026 whether this translates into higher downtown occupancy and a resurgent local economy.
Public Safety
“We know the crime numbers in these places are meaningless. Crime doesn’t get reported when things are off the hook, reporting goes way up when things are quiet and your relationship with the community improves.”—David Kennedy, Don’t Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America
San Francisco has seen steadily declining crime numbers. But as Kennedy states, people don’t bother calling the police about drug activities where open-air drug markets “are off the hook.”
Because the city does not count the number of sidewalk drug users, progress must be determined visually. I did not see fewer Tenderloin drug users in 2025. Nor are people seeing fewer drug users in post-midnight Sixth and Market, at 16th and Mission, along parts of Van Ness, and other neighborhoods.
In 2025 I wrote more stories about the city’s failure to close open-air drug markets and stop sidewalk drug use than any other topic.. Mayor Lurie acknowledges the lack of progress. But as I recently wrote, the city can’t continue using the same strategies that haven’t closed drug markets and cleared drug-filled sidewalks in the past and expect different results.
City Hall needs a specific deadline for closing drug markets and clearing drug users from sidewalks. These impacted communities deserve better in 2026.
Homelessness
The debate about homelessness shifted in 2025 as most people using drugs on sidewalks refused shelter or housing. Many now see homelessness as driven by drugs as well as the inability to afford housing.
Permanent drug-free housing addresses both concerns. Despite support from Mayor Lurie and nearly every supervisor, 2025 ends without a single unit of drug-free permanent housing. Or even a single unit where people who have obtained recovery are guaranteed a permanent home upon leaving their drug-free home.
I understand money is tight. But it’s hard continuing to hear city officials promoting a permanent drug-free strategy without funding it.
The Tenderloin
2025 was a disappointing year for the Tenderloin.
Little Saigon is still suffering from the destructive city programs that converted three tourist hotels in the area to shelters with drug users. Too many Tenderloin sidewalks remain drug-filled.
Only blocks patrolled by Urban Alchemy are consistently drug-free. The city could expand the number of drug-free blocks through a partnership between the SFPD and Urban Alchemy, but City Hall has no plans to do so.
It’s harder to get new businesses to open in the Tenderloin when retail vacancies are widely available in more protected neighborhoods. The Tenderloin was excluded from getting any funds from the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation.
The Tenderloin won a major breakthrough in November when the Police Commission voted 7-0 to reduce and revise the boundaries of Tenderloin Police Station. We had to wait ten years to reverse that radical shift in boundaries that former Chief Suhr rammed through in 2015. Starting in June most Tenderloin officers will again be serving the Tenderloin.
In 2025 my Tenderloin Housing Clinic colleague Pratibha Tekkey became the first Tenderloin-based member of the Police Commission. The combination of a new Police District and Tekkey’s presence on the Commission should help reduce sidewalk drug activities.
2025 also saw the Tenderloin Museum celebrate its 10th Anniversary. It was accompanied by a planned expansion that will triple its size. The expansion will enable the Museum to launch the nation’s first permanent exhibition on the national Indian-American hotel industry, which has deep roots in the Tenderloin.
The 2024 lawsuit filed by Tenderloin families and small businesses continues to fight to stop nonprofits from handing out drug materials to addicts. Unfortunately, City Attorney David Chiu continues to wage an all-out legal fight to keep the flow of drugs going in the Tenderloin.
Politicians all talk about how the Tenderloin is a neighborhood of children. Yet they allow Tenderloin kids to be subjected to sidewalk conditions they would never accept for their own families.
On to 2026
After using 2025 to lay out his foundation for future progress, Mayor Lurie must deliver results in 2026. For many the mayor’s honeymoon ends at the start of his second year. Lurie has shown in many ways—the Family Zoning Plan, permit reforms, small business assistance, efforts to increase police staffing to name a few—that he likes to get stuff done.
San Francisco needs stuff to get done. Let’s hope more stuff gets done to move the city forward in 2026.
Randy Shaw is Editor of Beyond Chron. If you are looking for a fun holiday read with over 118 rare photos, pick up his updated new book, The Tenderloin:Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco.
Randy Shaw
<I>Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. </I>
