It’s been almost 100 days of Daniel Lurie as San Francisco mayor.
During his 13-month-long campaign, Lurie promised to make streets safer and cleaner, to crack down on open-air drug markets, revitalize downtown, and reduce homelessness. He has worked with the Board of Supervisors to pass legislation to expedite contracts related to homelessness, drug overdoses, and substance use, and pushed the board to let go of some of its oversight power.
But it is on the streets that residents most want change. To that end, Lurie set up a “triage center” on Sixth Street to deal with the nearby drug market. The police department rolled a “mobile-command unit” onto the southwest 16th Street BART plaza and has parked it there 24/7 as part of Lurie’s operation to clean up the area. Downtown, Lurie’s “Hospitality Zone Task Force” brought an increased police presence.
Still, there are limits to what can be done without adequate services and shelter beds, Lurie said in an interview with Mission Local reporter Xueer Lu and managing editor Joe Eskenazi. The two sat down with Lurie and his press secretary, Charles Lutvak, on April 7, 2025, in Room 200.
During the interview, Lurie acknowledged that, although he doesn’t want to keep chasing drug dealers around town, the city will “have to do it for a little bit” to change San Francisco’s reputation as a place that tolerates open-air drug use.
But, he said, he understands that the city will not “arrest our way out of this problem” and needs to get people “into the help that they need.”
Getting that help and shelter, however, will take time.
The mayor also talked about his goals for the next 100 days, and among many things, the thinking behind his ceremonial first pitch at the April 6 Giants home-opener.
The interview has been edited for clarity.
Xueer Lu: We have been documenting street conditions around 16th and Mission streets. And we’ve also been talking to nearby residents and businesses. Some neighbors point out that the police presence has had minimal impact on the drug use on nearby alleyways and side streets.
Can you help us understand the overall strategy? It’s not unreasonable for residents to wonder why police sometimes fail to act when something illegal is clearly going on.
Daniel Lurie: I was there this morning. I go there two or three times a week. In January and February, there were people that passed out in the bus stops, people using fentanyl in the bus stops while kids were going to school. I didn’t see that this morning.
Now, we have a long way to go: Weiss and Julian and Capp are disastrous, at times. Every community member was saying to me: “You have to do something about it, we need to see police officers there.” And people see police officers there. They see DPW members there. They see ambassadors out there.
I am not going to sit by and allow our students and families to have to stand at a bus stop while people are either selling or openly using drugs.
I told this story, I don’t know if either one of you were here: As I was going to Manny’s for an interview with Manny a week and a half ago, I was at Capp Street. And I was on Capp Street three or four times in three or four nights. And this woman came up to me and said, “My 91-year-old mother cannot leave her apartment on Capp because people are doing drugs and dealing drugs outside.” I went there a couple days later, and there were five people smoking fentanyl in the entryway, blocking the door.
So, what’s my strategy? My strategy is to make sure that those streets are clear of people using fentanyl, [and] offering rehab and treatment options, which we do not have enough beds for right now. That is part and parcel of the fentanyl state of emergency. We need to stand up more beds and treat people. Give people options, instead of option A, which right now is simply keep using fentanyl and watch two people a day die of overdose on our streets.
XL: And the mobile unit has been there for a while.
DL: A few weeks.
XL: Yes. How long is it going to be there?
DL: I haven’t made a determination. We will remain flexible. We will adapt to situations.
The mobile triage center that we stood up on Sixth Street — we learned a lot. It has not produced on some counts, but what it produced, in terms of Homeward Bound or Journey Home, was not able to produce results there, because people were too sick.
[Homeward Bound and Journey Home are two city programs that help homeless people relocate by offering them a bus or train ticket. Homeward Bound, which ran from 2005 to 2013, required participants to have someone to vouch for them at their destination and included follow-up checks. It transported more than 11,000 people out of the city.
Journey Home, launched in 2023 under Mayor London Breed, is more flexible and has fewer guardrails. It offers bus or train tickets to homeless people and drug users without needing someone at the destination to provide housing, focusing on quick relocation with support like meal stipends.]
But what it did produce was this really, really interesting way of all of these departments working together. What was born out of that was this neighborhood outreach team approach, where we have one phone number that you call. Instead of having to call five different departments, you get to call one person for the Mission, one person for the Tenderloin, and then we’re able to deploy help.
[In March, Lurie launched five neighborhood-based street response units to help people experiencing homelessness and behavioral health crises. Each team coordinated with seven city departments.]
Now, we have the Department of Emergency Management that is in charge of our outreach teams. Before, it was nine different outreach teams, five different departments. No one was in charge. Now, someone is in charge.
XL: Is that person Santiago [Lerma]?
[Lerma was a legislative aide to former District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen before he took on the role as the Mission Street crisis coordinator for San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management ]
DL: It depends on the neighborhood. Mark Mazza is one of them [the Tenderloin streets operation manager for San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management] ,and Santiago is another. But they’re going to have their own neighborhood outreach team. So we’re going to have five neighborhood outreach teams and one citywide team.
XL: What exactly do officers do there every day [at the plazas], and how many officers are in the mobile unit?
DL: I’m going to ask you to talk to the captain. She’s in charge. We’re happy to follow up with you on that. But it’s delivering a presence. And I think that that presence was requested by a lot of residents.
XL: Residents have complained that action has been increasing around Julian and Capp. And the district police captain has acknowledged that some of that is new and a result of the crackdown in Tenderloin.
Is there an overall strategy in how you diminish activity in one area without moving it to another area?
DL: Listen, we acknowledge displacement. That’s going to happen.
What we’re seeing on McAllister Street after Jefferson Square Park, it’s a real thing. [On Feb. 26, police officers raided Jefferson Square Park, which is known for drug dealing, and arrested nearly 90 people and seized 1.21 pounds of narcotics.]
But the park is clear. Families can actually use one of our great public parks now, whereas for months, they couldn’t.
We’re not going to accept this type of behavior anywhere in our city, so we’re going to follow it wherever it goes.
I’m not happy that it’s moving to a different neighborhood, but we’re going to go to that neighborhood and follow it.
Joe Eskenazi: I talked to cops who are old enough to be our fathers, and they did this in the 1980s. And they’ve asked me to ask you: What’s new? Because they did this. They went through and arrested people.
DL: Joe, can I ask you a question?
JE: Sure.
DL: There’s people that say, “Don’t interrupt drug markets, because overdose deaths go up afterwards.” Fentanyl is different. Two people a day dying of this drug use is different. Allowing open air drug markets to continue is … I just can’t. I don’t know any mayor that could sit by and do that.
After one of the debates that we had when I was running, John Mulaney, the comedian, performed after a Salesforce event, and someone was like, “You have to come.” There were 300 people dealing drugs. It was one of those big mob things. I’m sure you’ve seen it. It’s not there now.
[The stand-up show was at the Golden Gate Theater, which stands at the intersection of Golden Gate Avenue, Taylor and Market streets. And drug dealing occurred nearby.] I mean, now someone can maybe go to the theater and not see just an open-air drug market.
So maybe this officer is old enough to be my father, too. I don’t know how old this officer was. But I’m worried about what’s happening right now. I’m worried about getting people into treatment. I’m worried about watching out for families, making sure that they can be safe walking down our streets.
JE: No one could object to that. But what I’m wondering is, you had talked about displacement, and after the Market and Van Ness raid, neighbors who were on Fell Street just two blocks away said, “They’re all here now.”
And now what can we do to get past just moving people around town?
DL: But there are people that say, “Don’t do anything, let it happen.”
JE: Well, you won the election. So they can try again in four years. But in this case, we are moving them around the city. And you said “We’ll follow them wherever they go.” But the word here is “follow.”
How do we get past the chase strategy?
DL: I don’t want to keep chasing. But we’re going to have to do it for a little bit until people around the Bay Area, around the country and around the world realize that San Francisco is no longer a place you come to deal drugs or to use drugs on the streets.
We became a place that was known to everybody that you could get cheap drugs here and stay on the street. No one would interrupt you. We are interrupting this cycle. We are interrupting drug dealing. I want to interrupt drug use and get people into treatment and into the help that they need and deserve. And that’s the game plan. And you can’t tell the world that without enforcing the laws.
Charles Lutvak: We were talking earlier, also just about how the fentanyl state of emergency helps expedite getting some of those sites online.
DL: The difference is also that this isn’t about just enforcement. We’re going to do enforcement, but it’s also about getting people inside, into shelter, into treatment, into rehab, into recovery. We are pairing everything we are doing with an approach that is true to our San Francisco values, which is empathy.
JE: Can you hire people fast enough? Because always when I talk to the providers, they say, “We’re understaffed.”
DL: We are. And that’s what allows us to be able to hire more quickly. It’s where our focus is on as we head into a really tough budget season, where we are going to prioritize core services, getting people off the street and into help, and hiring caseworkers and clinicians.
JE: Tell us where we’re going to be in the next 100 days. Where are your tangible goals?
Right now, we’ve disrupted the drug markets, but we haven’t stopped them. They’re moving around town. They probably know that they can’t do things as overtly as they did. But what is success here? What is incremental success?
DL: I think first, property crime is down 35 percent. Violent crime down 15 percent. Car break-ins are at 22-year lows. We can get a lot better, and we can see vast improvement on that.
[Under the Breed administration, crime fell in 2023 after slight rises in 2021 and 2022. And in 2024, reported crime has continued to fall by double digits. On the campaign trail, Breed made declining crime her staple but voters said they felt less safe and were not satisfied with the state of public safety.]
I want the people of San Francisco all measuring: How are we doing on office-vacancy rates? How are we doing on tourism? How many people are coming back to work? Conventions and hotel room nights?
JE: That’s a challenge. The crime rates have been lowered for a while and we’ve been writing about that in Mission Local. But the office vacancy rates, that’s a challenge.
DL: We do hard things in City Hall and in San Francisco.
We have momentum right now. There is no doubt that this city is on the upward trajectory. We are a city on the rise. There’s a sense of hope and optimism here, despite what’s going on nationally and globally. It’s a tough time out there, but I fundamentally believe that San Franciscans see a future that is brighter.
So I want you, everybody, holding me accountable for all those metrics.
But then this morning, when I was walking down Capp Street, it was rainy. It was in the morning. There was no one using drugs on Capp this morning. Weiss and Julian were relatively quiet. I am sure by 4 p.m. it’ll be wild again.
And what I want is for those alleys to be clear. As an anecdote, I want those alleys to be clear. I want those residents there to feel safe coming outside of their building, to come there on those plazas at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., when kids are coming and going from school. I want them to feel like this is a normal block. This isn’t a block where people are using and dealing drugs.
So little things like that are what we should be measuring ourselves on if you’re talking about 100-day things.
JE: You’ve got your 100 days on the 18th, which is unfortunate, because that’s the anniversary of the quake. But 100 days from then, if we’re sitting down with you again, what are the things you’d like to be able to say: “We’re making real progress on this” or “We’ve accomplished this”?
DL: First, we have gotten a budget passed, and prioritized core services. I would like to have seen us stand up many of the shelter beds that we have talked about opening, and that we have set an audacious goal of 1,500 beds.
[In a March executive directive, Lurie altered a key campaign promise to stand up 1,500 shelter beds across the city during the first six months of his administration. Lurie expanded the definition of shelter beds and pushed back the timeline, and counted 361 beds that were already in the pipeline under Breed.]
So, I want those either up or about to be up. I think that will be really important for the people to see.
I want that 822 Geary St., the stabilization center, to be up. And hopefully, we’re learning that that’s a really positive place and trying to get more spots like that, easing the burden on our emergency rooms, because right now, that’s where we take everybody to, and that costs everybody, and people usually end up right back on the street.
So, those are a few things. I know we have this artificial 100-day thing. I don’t necessarily think in 100-day increments. But usually we’re thinking 100 days, and then six months and 12 months.
I want Muni to continue to grow its ridership. I think that’s incredibly important. I want people to feel safe riding Muni. That’s something that I’m going to be working very hard on with these budget deficits. Making sure that we continue to grow ridership and make sure people feel safe on Muni.
[Lurie was at first criticized for not giving enough attention to Muni while putting downtown revitalization as his priority in office. Muni is facing a $50 million budget deficit in this upcoming budget season and is facing service cuts this summer. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Lurie has since spun up a ballot measure committee to ask voters to fund Muni in 2026.]
JE: One last one, an easy one: Nice first pitch. Can you tell me your strategy?
DL: You’re really into the strategy.
JE: I mean, when you go up there, is the thought, “I want to really rip this like Colin Kaepernick,” or is it like, “I just don’t want to embarrass myself like Mariah Carey”?
DL: I love that you brought that up. I went out on Sunday afternoon, a few days before, with my son. So, he and I were able to practice. People were like, “Do not go off the mound.” Then people were like, “Go off the mound, wear spikes, wear tennis shoes.”
I had friends texting me the night before, “Top-10 worst first pitches.” I was like, “Thanks a lot, friends. You’re really kind.” Right?
And then all the players from the 2000 team were like, “Don’t bounce it, don’t bounce it.” I was like, “Don’t say that to me minutes before … ” Dusty Baker [former manager and now special advisor to the San Francisco Giants] afterwards was like, “I was going to tell you that, don’t bounce it. But I didn’t want to get that in your head.” I was like, “Your players all get that into my head already.”
So, it was, “Get it over.” I still look back and I’m like, “That was the slowest I threw all of my pitches.” But honestly, I only got nervous right when I got out of the mound.
My other experiences, whether they were on a campaign or what, I got more nervous on some of those things than I did throwing the first pitch. But it was an honor. It was so much fun getting to do that in your hometown.
JE: Team keeps winning. Undefeated at home.
DL: Listen, we’re going to learn from what the Warriors are doing, what Buster is doing; we got to do the little things in San Francisco. We forgot about doing the little things — keeping our bus shelters clean, picking up trash. If we start doing that, the big things will follow.
And I think we got to build on these wins that we’re seeing. We have so many challenges. I am clear-eyed about that, but we are going to be relentless, relentless on making sure we take care of everybody in San Francisco, including those suffering from addiction.
You know, to be crystal clear, we’re not going to arrest our way out of this problem. We have to get people into the help that they need.
The Mayor is doing the right thing focusing on this issue. The problem is this City does not have the resources to help all who need. And that’s not going to change anytime soon. Maybe, with Homeward Bound, we should be contacting the local governments of people’s hometowns and ensure they offer the recovery/treatment services we cannot.
It’s the city with the most Billionaires and 3rd highest rents.
Accountability is key here. First 100 days OK…. but what about 200, 300, etc. I, among a lot of other people in the neighborhood really get tired of the “wait and see” approach. If something is not working- we need a change. Lurie and his team need to demonstrate clear and measurable outcomes. The same holds true for “drug-treatment” and “housing-services” non-profits (Mission Cabins etc). They are not held responsible for showing their work, value or outcomes – other than what they claim. We need to stop giving money away to those who lie about the value of the services they offer. Our Capp street/Marshall Elementary school neighborhood was told by Hillary Ronen that 5Keys/Mission Cabins would get people off the street and into housing. At $2.9 million a year— the mission has even more drugged out homeless people at (15th/16th) and Mission than ever.
I applaud Daniel Lurie for taking this on in the absence of D9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder.
This is a huge crisis. I am a recovering addict/alcoholic and also there is a treatment
center right there on Julian with residents who don’t need to see this behavior, A disgusting display wide out in the open, There’s also a grade school nearby and children
don’t need to see all this. I think this is an emergency that need to be addressed at once.
edalvarez019 – I agree! The treatment center on Julian serves Native Americans and poor people of color – it’s one of the only options for those who want to get clean & sober but who don’t have private health insurance or a Trump-like personal fortune. It’s an absolute disgrace that some in our city government want to put a shooting gallery next door to it! We need to make the Inner Mission a place for health and healing – it’s Native American land, and the Ramaytush Ohlone were people who lived in harmony with the Earth – they would want the neighborhood to be a safe and clean place for all.
Lurie is taking seriously the concerns of ordinary citizens — not just junkies.
Breed never did that.
Why do we insist on infantilizing these repeat offenders and junkies from other states? They are adults. This is real life. Their choices and actions have consequences. Imagine if they tried this crap in any other great global city.
“Can you help us understand the overall strategy? It’s not unreasonable for residents to wonder why police sometimes fail to act when something illegal is clearly going on.”
Let’s see the Mayor and City hold big tech companies accountable. I promise collecting the unpaid taxes owed by AirBNB and other tech giants, protecting jobs by limiting the reckless proliferation of AI and driverless cars, among other regulations of “move fast and break things” companies will have a bigger impact on PREVENTING future homelessness than a whack-a-mole carceral strategy.
San Franciscans ARE CRYSTAL CLEAR on NO SERVICE CUTS TO MUNI. We are relentlessly telling neophyte Mayor Lurie: Don’t damage public transportation and MUNI with service cuts. Service cuts will do irreparable damage to the public’s belief and trust in MUNI. It is near impossible to bring service back once cuts are made. Allowing WAYMOs on Market Street while cutting Market serving transit lines is stupid. HUGE MISTAKE!
Obviously, Ronen and her crew took almost 10 years to wreck the Inner Mission, so Lurie can’t really be expected to fix it in just 100 days. 10 years of the Coalition on Homelessness, Harm Reductionists, and Anti-Gentrification folks who think poor people don’t deserve to have safe, clean neighborhoods…It’s a lot to fix, especially since it caused not only a major economic disaster but also helped elect Donald Trump, who wants to starve all cities, and West Coast cities the most! But Lurie’s on the right track, so I hope he realizes that the majority of the working-class people of color like myself strongly support a clean, safe Mission. We lead with compassion, but we draw the line at enabling bad behavior. I support helping to get those who want treatment into treatment – and those who don’t can take themselves back to the red states from whence they came!
I agree arresting dealers might not work, but deporting them sure will.
Perhaps if and when the Miracle on the Mission gets built, things will turn around.
Laurie is doing right and will make great progress if he keeps at it at the pace he started. We do need to hold these non profits accountable and follow the money they are given tho because they do not use the money wisely nor do they spend it how they say they do or for what it is given for.
Maybe we should get the IDF to bulldoze the Mish so the settler-occupiers can dictate land use. Are you listening Ned Segal and other Lick alum at Planning Department?
Sounds like many of these comments are written by Colonizers who don’t acknowledge their complicity in Genocide but take verbal arms suggesting they support Native American descendants — while really doing nada…
this guy is nothing more than talk! he is more worried about his image than doing the things that need to be done. with all the time spent in interviews with the media trying to stroke his own ego with statstics that dont mean jack when all you need to do to manipulate those statistcs is to not enforce the law ignore the calls that are made to the police reporting a violent crime and then like many myself included you quit wasting your time with even expecting any type of response so why even make the call. look ive been severly assulted mutipal times since may of last year when i was stranded here after being robbed and having my vehicle stolen the 5 day of my trip to visit a friend and the city that i absoutly loved the last time i was here 11 years ago. but this place is not recogonizable to the city i left last time. the night i was robbed and my nightmare began i was franticly looking for a police officer to help me because not one person would call the cops for me and when i did finally find a cop sitting in his vehicle when i went up to his window and franticlly asked for help he would not even acknowledge me and put his suv in gear and drove off. i could not have been more defeated and hopeless in my life. since then I have realized that there is absoutly no help to be found here and I’m activily trying every day to finally be one of the two people a day that OD but just because the dope is cheaper does not mean its any good its the waekest dope ive ever seen in my life and most the time its not even dope its just pure menatol no suprise why the overdose rate has gone down. this entire situation is being staged by the people who are behind the scenes and dont have to worry about the consequenses because they are very obviously sheilded from that. i cant honestly believe thast everyone is too ignorant to see whats really going on here who is really pulling the strings and running the side show. i mean its really not that dificult to see if you for one moment disreguard everything you have been made to believe by false statistics and constiant gaslighting.
P.S. sorry for any spelling or grammar errors im really not as dumb as it appears by my lack of spelling and punctuation.
Thanks for the interview. Pretty weak answers from the mayor, frankly. He seems to want a lot of things but is unable to articulate a strategy to get there. From his answers, he also seems to suffer quite a bit from a poor foundation in logical reasoning. There were a handful of responses which fell prey to well-known logically fallacies. I’m still hopeful though.
Loved the interview questions. The answers, not so much. Lurie answers questions like a true politician. He answered the questions more like a Mariah Carey than a Colin Kaepernick.
Joe and Daniel,
You’re digging in the wrong hole which is ending in the same result.
Breed called it something like:
“We’re making life more miserable for them so that they will change.”
I have over 40 years experience and a couple of degrees plus vast amounts of Street Cred from teaching the toughest kids and have written well over 3,000 articles on the subject and I can’t even get a Press Pass.
The Mayor keeps me on their Media notice list but now his office is requiring that those of us on the Press Notice blurbs RSVP to be considered to be given the location of his Homeless event tomorrow.
It seems that neither Lurie’s people nor Mission Local want to even hear new ideas.
Well, if I can’t advocate New Approaches in person, I’ll just keep doing it in chats.
Idea One:
Begin hearings on Decriminalizing Drugs which is a bold move that has born fruit in locales as close as Oregon (but, of course, always battling Right Wing Revengers).
At least listen to the alternative paths.
This Dramatic Move takes the Cops and Dealers out of the Algorithm.
I’m not saying don’t arrest people who commit crimes.
Just stop Rousting and Arresting people for being Addicted and Homeless when they have no other place to go.
Which brings me to Point Two:
Start building SF RV/Tent Campgrounds of a thousand slots each beginning with one on the half of Lincoln Golf Course adjoining the Fort Miley because Vets could fill the spaces as they are completed and even before they are completed because they are a Permanent Alternative to jail and their present In-Town refugee status.
thanks for the Platform …
I look forward to reading your account of your in-person attendance.
Until then I’ll keep writing and working first-hand with this population as they are driven like Concentration Camp Survivors all over the City with no place to go.
Go Niners !!
h.