Mayor Daniel Lurie has an audacious goal: Creating 1,500 new shelter and treatment beds in San Francisco by mid-September to combat homelessness and a street mental health crisis, following on a pledge he made as a candidate.
His initial campaign promise, 1,500 shelter beds in his first six months in office, was modified soon after Lurie arrived at City Hall: In a March executive directive, Lurie not only expanded the definition of what constitutes a shelter bed, but also moved his deadline from June to mid-September.
Under the new definition, a shelter bed is not just temporary housing for homeless people, but a mix of things: “Interim housing and stabilization/treatment beds, including emergency shelter, hotel vouchers, transitional housing, stabilization centers, recovery and sober housing, and residential treatment.”
No matter the deadline or the definition, Lurie is making progress, and we’re tracking it.
As of May 23, 2025, Lurie has announced a total of 420 beds, which is 28 percent of the way to his goal. Among those, Lurie opened 122 beds, including 54 recovery beds at James Baldwin Place on May 22, a site in SoMa at 9th and Harrison streets, and 68 homeless shelter beds on April 2 at Jerrold Commons in the Bayview.
“Recovery is possible here in San Francisco, and this is just the start,” Lurie said in an Instagram video after a ribbon-cutting alongside the city’s homeless department director, Shireen McSpadden, and recovery advocate Supervisor Matt Dorsey. “This is a really important moment in our city’s trajectory.”
Among the 420 beds announced so far, 68 are homeless shelter beds, 76 are beds that provide short-term medical care and stabilization for about 30 to 60 days, and 182 are beds in longer-term recovery housing.
There are also 94 treatment beds, 57 of which will replace 97 current beds at the Behavioral Health Center at the General Hospital.
As of May 23, 2025, there are 1,080 beds yet to be rolled out.
The 420 beds announced so far are mostly concentrated in eastern neighborhoods, such as SoMa and the Bayview. Supervisors there — Bilal Mahmood of District 5 and Shamann Walton of District 10 — proposed new legislation in April to ensure “geographic equity” of shelter distribution across the city.
Under the proposed law, every supervisorial district would have to approve one homeless shelter by mid-2026 to ease the burden on these eastern neighborhoods.
But that legislation has already met with pushback from Lurie. The San Francisco Standard reported that Lurie’s amendments would remove the requirement on each district to approve one homeless shelter. Instead, districts would only have to “endeavor to” approve a shelter by mid-2026.
So far, among all the beds Lurie announced, only one site, with 68 recovery beds, is located outside of the eastern neighborhoods. It’s in the Marina.
Mission Local will continue to track Lurie’s progress to roll out the 1,500 promised beds, breaking down the beds by type and geographic distribution. Check back on this page to see Lurie’s progress.
The number of beds open as of initial publication should have been 122 instead of 54.
You can have all the beds you want but you can’t make folks go.
Many folks don’t want any rules (curfew, drug/booze use) so what happens at that point?
This is exactly the case. But part of it is “my stuff”. Part of human nature is to collect stuff and the less you have, the more valuable it is to you. That’s why you see people with cartloads of crap. To you, it’s garbage, but to them, it might have taken a year to accumulate all that stuff that – to them – has value. When you go to that shelter, all that has to go. And in the morning, you start with absolutely nothing.
As far as I’ve seen, the only solution is really those tiny-houses or some kind of apartment building…. anything where they can be as “free” as when they have a tent on the street. All I know is “shelter beds” are a solution that really only works for a tiny percentage of these people..
Don’t forget the animals they’re forced to relinquish to care and control – which is often full up, meaning euthanasia.
They need more than just shelter. A place to keep belonging ,and be decent enough to go to work and such.
And not take all their belongings into a dumpster and their pets into euthanasia.
Please factor in the 35 lost “beds” at the “safe parking”. Only 1/3rd of us were put back into the system. The rest of us are still out here in our broken, unregistered RVs getting tickets and being threatened by SFMTA and SFPD to have our RVs seized. We have been “blacklisted” because of our complaints to HUD about the horrific conditions.
So please subtract 35 “beds” from the above numbers.
The word is (in the media ) that there will be NO HELP for the RV dwellers, no more “safe parking”, yet we are counted as homeless and they get our info (including Social Security numbers) and they use it to get government grants for “helping” us. There’s 1442 RV dwellers in the HSH system but no help if you won’t agree to give up your RV.
The mayor is outside my office window right now talking to a homeless guy about options for getting off the street. Very impressed with his hands on approach and evident interest in understanding how to help people.
Great work now here’s how he reaches his goal,
Take half of Lincoln Golf Course and act like there has just been an earthquake and you need to build an RV/tent community for a thousand rich white folks.
Call in Army Corps of Engineers and the National Guard.
FEMA should help cause this is certainly an Emergency situation.
Put FEMA RV’s in the Golf Club parking lot.
You can easily fit the 1,000 slots into 62 acres by my slowing calculations.
go Niners !!
h.
FEMA is over. Don’t count on that for anything.
No thanks.
Well if he can do it for his city why are they not doing the same for LA county like North Hollywood.
As a homeless individual or unhoused as they call it I’m perplexed at the thought of housing the homeless is resolved by more shelters, I have alot to say and I may even write the mayor’s office to air my opinions. I’m currently residing at the next door shelter not because of any addictions, evictions, or anything of that nature. I was recently released from prison with the preconceived, reconditioned mind that I wasn’t going to break the law anymore so I humbled myself walked away from criminal activity and went to a shelter…… Want to know more contact me for my story at no charge because I need to be heard I will say this much I have to go to therepy now based on the trauma i experienced since I been at the next door she’s i been here a few months
It’s been almost a year since the SCOTUS decision allowing municipalities to fine people for “camping” on public property, giving them the legal leverage to remove tents in which the unhoused live. In San Francisco, most of the tents are now gone. So, where did all the people go? Judges used to allow the encampments because there were not enough shelter beds available — and there still aren’t enough. Are the shelters now full? If so, what are conditions like in the shelters? If not, then where have the thousands of people for whom there still aren’t enough shelter beds gone? There have been reports that SF has increased its program for providing unhoused people bus transportation to go somewhere else, does that account for the difference (doubtful)? If SF has successfully found beds for everyone who needs one, does that suggest that SF was not doing enough before to meet that goal? If SF has not found beds for everyone who needs one, then where are all the people now who still need one? I haven’t seen any news updating what’s going with the unhoused situation in the year since the City began clearing out the encampments and so I’m curious as to where the unhoused people have gone. Thank you, Zack
I’d just like to remind the mayor that for most of us, when we say we’re concerned about the homeless, what we mean is we want them to stop committing crimes.
Sir I can assure you that there is beds available at MSC South and Nextdoor Shelter where I currently reside and the reason why is alot of the addicts out there don’t want to go inside and the ones who do are getting high off of that poison. The staff are suffering from lack of skills to deal with people like them vs people like me. I have a front row seat to the day to day madness in this volunteer jail wanna know more but me a cup of coffee and bring your tape recorder and get a prospective from one of the unhoused as I see it
Has 40 years of failure meant nothing to the ‘geniuses’ in San Francisco? Most of these people are… UNFIXABLE … They will die still addicted, just like the most beautiful hustler on Polk Street did. David Royal Lundy. Sure, they gave him a room to do drugs in, but he still OD’ed and checked out of life anyway… What a stinking waste of civic resources.