by Randy Shaw on January 6, 2025 (BeyondChron.org)
Daniel Lurie
This week marks my 12th mayoral inauguration in San Francisco. But Daniel Lurie faces a unique challenge: he confronts the most troubled San Francisco of its post-gentrified era.
Addressing the city’s deep crisis requires urgent actions. A candidate running on Change must quickly break from the status quo. Here are some priority actions Mayor Lurie could take to immediately boost confidence in San Francisco’s future.
Prioritizing Public Safety
Mayor Lurie has selected former SFPD Commander Paul Yep as Chief of Public Safety. I’ve talked to a lot of people familiar with Yep since Lurie’s election; the feedback has been universally positive.
Lurie has identified Yep’s chief responsibility as “coordinating the strategic alignment of city departments, whose primary focus is community and neighborhood safety, street behavior, emergency preparedness and response.” This is a critical task. One that current Chief Bill Scott, entering his ninth year, has failed to effectively carry out.
Lurie’s pledge to close open air drug markets requires breaking from Chief Scott’s failure to carry out three essential strategies: Consistency, Visibility and Collaboration. Officers must have a consistent, visible presence in high drug areas instead of making major arrests one day and leaving the next. And the SFPD must coordinate and collaborate with DPH, DPW, Urban Alchemy and other agencies in clearing sidewalks of open drug users (DPW is essential in removing sidewalk vendors of stolen goods).
Drug users dominate sidewalks in multiple neighborhoods. It takes more than the police to remove them.
Mayor Lurie knows the buck stops with him. We will soon know whether the multi-agency cooperation necessary to clear sidewalks of drug activities finally happens.
Replace Department Heads
A mayor may conclude that an inherited department head under fire was just following orders and shouldn’t get the blame. But new department heads symbolize change. Word on the street has people expecting leadership changes at the Departments of Public Health, Homelessness and Supportive Housing, and the Police. The latter enables an interim replacement to be made by the mayor.
Phil Ginsberg has done a phenomenal job as Parks Director. But his bold actions—like opening a skateboard park in UN Plaza and moving the Farmers Market– always bring critics. We’ll see if Lurie keeps him.
Jeffrey Tumlin voluntarily left SFMTA at the end of 2024. Tumlin took heat that otherwise would have hit Mayor Breed; Lurie may also want someone willing to take the inevitable hits any transit chief in San Francisco will get.
Change Homeless Policies
Mayor Breed encouraged drug tourism. This hurt the international image of San Francisco. Changing this requires Mayor Lurie to take at least five actions.
First, he must tell police to aggressively restrict tent dwellers from returning to their sites. That the same person has been allowed to pitch a tent outside the Cinnabar legacy business at Jones and Ellis for months (!) without facing arrest reflects a failed police strategy. Tent dwellers either already have access to shelters or housing or refuse it; either way, they should not be allowed to keep wrecking local businesses.
Second, the mayor must change city procedures for dealing with “property” owned by displaced tent dwellers. This part of the Coalition on Homelessness’ injunction against San Francisco remains in effect. It’s 100% London Breed’s fault for not changing it.
City policy treats trash, garbage, and other detritus carried by the unhoused as “property” which must go through an elaborate safeguarding and inventorying process. That includes the massive shopping carts filled with trash. Police should not be required to save trash and garbage. Mayor Lurie must get to the bottom of this for the city to reclaim its sidewalks.
Third, Mayor Lurie must stop funding non-congregate shelters in converted tourist hotels. This wins my award for San Francisco’s Number 1 Homeless Funding Boondoggle. Taxpayers are spending tens of millions of dollars without reducing homelessness—all while destroying nearby businesses.
The program costs two to three times more (!) to keep people homeless than to permanently house them; as a longtime operator of homeless programs Mayor Lurie has to recognize this tourist conversion program is a fiscal and programmatic failure. (See “How San Francisco Promotes Drug Tourism,” December 2, 2024)
Fourth, San Francisco also promotes drug tourism by spending millions of dollars annually handing out drug paraphernalia. So called “harm reduction” creates massive harm to residents and businesses in the Tenderloin, which is where the vast majority of drug materials is handed out.
Finally, for all of City Hall’s talk about promoting recovery there is not a single housing program offering permanent drug-free housing. Why does San Francisco continue subsidizing addicts over those trying to live drug-free lives?
Support Existing Small Businesses
San Francisco offers help for new businesses. But businesses that have held on for dear life amidst the city’s post-COVID economic downtown should also be eligible for capital improvement grants and other subsidies.
The quickest way for Mayor Lurie to boost economic revitalization is to announce in his inauguration speech that cars, or at least ride share vehicles, will be allowed to return to Market Street. Virtually every Mid-Market business sees this as essential.
Perhaps no city agency declined more from Mayor Lee to Mayor Breed than the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Mayor Lurie needs to get top-notch business people who understand city processes in these jobs. Katy Tang’s Office of Small Business has made up for some of OEWD’s decline but the mayor needs to decide what agency will be central to his business revival strategy or consolidate the two agencies with Tang in charge. She is doing a great job.
Work With Not Against the Board
Mayor Breed treated the Board of Supervisors as an adversary. This furthered her political goal of blaming the Board for decisions actually under her control.
Successful mayors work to win at least six votes. Mayor Lee always wanted to get at least eight. Lurie may have already signaled this direction by appointing former Rafael Mandelman aide Adam Thongsavat as his Board liaison.
A city in crisis cannot have the mayor and Board fighting with each other. Particularly since, contrary to what many believe, they agree on most of big picture priorities.
We look forward to Mayor Lurie’s January 8 inauguration speech.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including 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. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco
