Can He Turn the City Around?

San Franciscans know that you can’t fix a problem unless you acknowledge it first. When District Attorney Chesa Boudin blamed skyrocketing property crime on the economic hardship caused by Covid-19, voters responded by recalling him from office.

In contrast, Mayor Daniel Lurie, inaugurated in January, is owning up to his city’s problems. “Widespread drug dealing, public drug use, and constantly seeing people in crisis has robbed us of our sense of decency and security,” he said at his inauguration. In his first month, he visited every police station and was frequently seen at the city’s drug and crime hotspots. Speaking to a reporter about his visits to 16th and Mission Street earlier this year, he described “people passed out in the bus stops, people using fentanyl in the bus stops while kids were going to school.”

If step one is acknowledging the problem, step two is fixing broken processes. Until recently, five city departments responded to street crisis calls. Lurie has rationalized the system so that a single integrated team focuses on a particular geographic area. “Before, it was nine different outreach teams, five different departments. No one was in charge. Now, someone is in charge,” he said in an April interview.

So far, so good. But Lurie faces at least two further challenges: changing the perception that San Francisco is a place where you can come to do drugs while accessing free services; and improving the city’s grim fiscal outlook.

San Francisco is famous for its “compassion.” Addicted? We give you free needles, pipes, foil. An illegal immigrant drug dealer? Don’t worry—we don’t cooperate with ICE. Arrested for petty crimes? The problem isn’t your behavior—it’s systemic racism. As most of the rest of the country knows, this is no way to run a city.

To help change this public image, Lurie should take note of the federal government’s approach to securing the southern border. In addition to stepping up enforcement, the feds sent a clear message—using both words and powerful imagery—that illegal immigrants are no longer welcome in the United States.

Lurie need not go full-on Donald Trump to send a similar message about San Francisco. But he might start by converting the Cow Palace grounds, site of the 1964 Republican Convention, into a large-scale temporary homeless shelter. The Supreme Court’s Grants Pass ruling last year allows the city to remove homeless people from the streets as long as shelter beds are available. By providing thousands of beds in short order and clearing the streets in a highly visible operation, Lurie could let the world know that in San Francisco, compassion means treatment, not tolerance of lawlessness. Lives can be saved even as public spaces are reclaimed.

Second, the mayor needs to help the city face reality about its finances. San Francisco is said to have a nearly billion-dollar budget deficit. This is true as far as it goes: next year’s projected expenses are nearly $1 billion more than projected revenues. But this framing obscures a larger truth: the city has a dire spending problem.

San Francisco’s population has shrunk by 5 percent, or 45,000, compared with 2011. In the same period, the budget has ballooned by 54 percent in constant dollars. Today, San Francisco spends more than $19,000 per capita, compared with $12,500 per capita in 2012 (real dollars). If the city spent the same amount per capita as it did 13 years ago, it would now have a $4 billion surplus.

Comparing San Francisco with eight other consolidated cities/counties in the U.S. with populations ranging from half to twice its size, the budget is about twice as large as average on a per capita basis. If Lurie takes hard steps to reform work rules, cut unnecessary positions, and invest in technology, San Franciscans would enjoy improved core services as well as lower taxes.

If Mayor Lurie can accomplish these two goals—changing the city’s public image on addiction and homelessness and streamlining government—he can turn the city around. The leading global tech companies headquartered here could surely help, as could the anchor businesses, whose continued presence remains vital to the city’s fiscal health. Does Lurie have the fortitude to meet these challenges? Time will tell.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images