The 1100 block of Market Street, on Wednesday morning, received a thorough powerwashing. The occasion? A brief public conference held after the release of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s fentanyl ordinance on Tuesday.
The ordinance aims to speed up the city’s process for contracting organizations that provide addiction, behavioral health, and homelessness services by reducing oversight from the Board of Supervisors. It would allow for “surging resources,” and “making sure we can hire people more quickly,” Lurie said on Wednesday.
Less thorough, however, were Lurie’s answers to questions about how this would be funded and accomplished. Lurie took four questions from the press, indicating that conversations with supervisors and department heads were ongoing.
“We need to stand up more mental health beds, more drug treatment beds,” the mayor stressed. “That’s what this ordinance is going to help us do. And it will help us move more quickly.”
Lurie said he would “work with neighborhood groups” to determine locations for new treatment facilities. He added that the city could “add beds” to existing hospitals where there is “space for more beds,” specifically mentioning Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.
This came as a surprise to healthcare professionals who work at General Hospital. They noted that you can’t add beds without also adding staffing, an issue Lurie also acknowledged.
“This seems like a pretty outlandish promise to be making to the public that we have space and we can move quickly,” said Jennifer Esteen, a mental-health nurse and chapter president of the SEIU 1021 union. “When you want to add beds to an acute-care hospital, it requires all sorts of licensing from various agencies, not to mention you have to negotiate with the unions about budgeting, resources and staffing.”
“I do appreciate his optimism,” Esteen concluded.
Aaron Cramer, a nurse in the General Hospital cardiac catheterization lab, chuckled when he read Lurie’s quote.
“We would love to have more beds, and love to have them as soon as possible,” he said. “I don’t know anyplace on campus we can magically set up a place to house and hospitalize people.”
“We are running at a critical capacity issue,” he continued. “We have opened up our ICU and Med-Surge overflows, basically finding beds for people to transition them out of the hospital to take more people in acutely. If he can find us beds, great. I don’t think it’s as easy as he’s making it out.”
District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton, for his part, said it would be possible to add hospital beds, given a more fleshed-out plan.
“Right now we’re being asked to waive policies and we’re being asked to provide emergency powers without knowing what the plan is,” said Walton. “And that’s pretty odd and most certainly concerning for me.”
Tuesday’s ordinance would also ease rules around Lurie and others asking for money from private donors — “behested payments” — but the mayor said he had “not talked to anybody” about specific donations.
“We’re working right now with the Board of Supervisors to make sure that this gets passed,” Lurie continued. “But I do know that people want to help.”
“We have a crisis that needs the urgency. It demands urgency,” said Lurie, standing alongside supervisors Matt Dorsey, Bilal Mahmood and Danny Sauter, who have joined as co-sponsors of the ordinance. “And that’s what you’re seeing from my administration and everybody behind me.”
Afterwards, Sauter said the ordinance would allow for the flexibility to solicit private, philanthropic, and Prop. 1 state dollars to “continue to clean the city, so it looks like this all day, every day.”
When Breed received the behested payments waiver for the pandas, she was made to produce a list of who was to be solicited and appropriation specifics were known. Lurie has made none of this clear, yet he compared his ask to the panda waiver.
The Lurie memo says it’s been done many times before, but really how many times could it have been done since voters passed Prop E in 2022? Likely once. And how does he know corporations, foundations, and whatever the hell OpenAI is want to help? Because they’re already looking for an opportunity to buy in, and he knows it.
“Tuesday’s ordinance would also ease rules around Lurie and others asking for money from private donors — “behested payments” — but the mayor said he had “not talked to anybody” about specific donations.”
He ran on anti-corruption and as soon as he is in office wants to proclaim emergency powers that can’t be done, wants to bypass the Board of Supervisors, and now wants to accept behested payments. I was slightly hopeful he’d be an OK mayor but not anymore. 🙁
“The 1100 block of Market Street, on Wednesday morning, received a thorough powerwashing. The occasion? A brief public conference held after the release of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s fentanyl ordinance on Tuesday. ”
I work on this block. They do this every morning. Every. Single. Morning.
Not a fan of our Mayor or the last one, but the idea that the city just lets filth lie until an elected official sets up to give a speech is an ignorant trope that belongs on Fox news, not Mission Local.
Actually that’s pretty much how Breed (and Lee to an extent) used to do it. They even had an internal checklist that they circulated a week/days before a given PR event. They moved homeless 2+ blocks away and hauled all trash and debris, powerwashed, graffiti abated, had their PR moment and then it was business as usual until the next one. Now they may do it differently now and under Lurie I expect improvement absolutely, but it’s no mere Fox News trope. It did happen.
How about RV and Tent Vet campground next to Fort Miley Medical Complex ?
Really, use half of Lincoln Golf Course and let the golfers do with 9 holes.
I’m an old vet not unfamiliar with homelessness and such a facility sounds like both a blessing and holding space for 1,000 vets over 82 acres of land.
Would anyone dare to take land from the rich and give it to the poor ?
A really rich guy with very rich friends from old American money and values might.
lol
go Niners !!
h.
Go Niners !!
Are there more indictments to be had, given that Prop C 2018 was supposed to have poured significant resources into scaling up substance treatment capacity and nobody in the City has a clue as to how to do that? Into who’s pockets did those moneys flow?