A First Look at SF Mayor Lurie’s Yearlong Plan on Homelessness Response

Updated 3:37 p.m. Monday

As Mayor Daniel Lurie’s plan to reshape San Francisco’s homelessness and mental health response begins to take form, he is set to sign an executive order on Monday aimed at restructuring the street outreach teams, consolidating bureaucracy in city services and potentially scaling back some harm reduction programs.

The yearlong plan announced Monday comes on top of Lurie’s earlier promises to build at least 1,500 shelter beds within his first six months in office, as well as the first major legislative effort of his term — a law passed in February giving him expanded authority to cut through bureaucracy and more quickly hire and contract out both homelessness and drug treatment services.

Lurie had made reducing San Francisco’s homeless population, estimated at more than 8,000 people, a key priority on the campaign trail.

“At the heart of my administration’s strategy for improving conditions on the streets are our efforts to help people move into the treatment and care that they need,” Lurie said at a recent Board of Supervisors meeting where board members questioned his long-term plan for addressing street conditions, after two overnight law enforcement raids at public spaces known for open drug use and sales. “We must strengthen and expand our behavioral health and homeless systems.”

Dubbed “Breaking the Cycle,” the mayor’s new blueprint will first aim to consolidate the city’s 10 street outreach teams within the next 100 days. The teams provide critical services, including emergency medicine professionals responding to overdoses and outreach workers helping people into shelters.

“We’re going to overhaul how the city organizes our street outreach efforts, replacing a fragmented structure with neighborhood-based teams that have the tools to connect people to treatment while keeping our public spaces clean,” Lurie said at a press conference on Monday.

A city audit published in 2023 found that the rapid expansion of the teams during the pandemic lacked coordination and consistent messaging. The audit also found that in the vast majority of cases, first responders are unable to connect people to services, the reason is a lack of shelter and housing.

“Resource referral, connection, and transportation are distinguishing and essential functions of the city’s street teams, but the ability of street teams to fulfill this function is inherently limited by the underlying system of services to which street team members can refer clients,” the report reads.

According to the blueprint announced Monday, Lurie is still aiming to reach his 1,500-shelter bed goal within six months. However, the effort has already hit a few snags — the 116-resident Cova Hotel that opened during the pandemic for homeless residents recently shuttered, and other plans to expand shelter beds in two Tenderloin hotels have met backlash from neighbors.

Over the next year, the city aims to use state and federal funding to increase shelter and other homeless services, according to Lurie’s announcement, as well as to overhaul data systems used to track clients and measure outcomes for the city’s homelessness response.

Lurie is also looking to review the city’s harm reduction services, an approach to health care the city adopted after the HIV/AIDS crisis that involves preventive efforts such as handing out cleaner supplies to reduce infection.

While harm reduction is supported by public health officials and advocates as a life-saving method for reducing overdose risk and connecting drug users to service providers, it has become a polarizing fixture in the city’s debate over drug treatment and law enforcement.

“There are two people a day dying of overdose in our city. By any standard that is unacceptable, and what we’re doing is not working,” Lurie said Monday. He did not say which programs could downsize in particular. “Everything is going to be looked at, and things will change.”

Kunal Modi, chief of health, homelessness and family services for the mayor’s office, recently posted on social media platform X that the city is also looking to invest in more sober living options.

Some recovery advocates have celebrated the push for more sobriety housing, saying it gives residents space to distance themselves from drug use, while others have pointed to state laws requiring permanent supportive housing to accept residents regardless of their drug use status. The idea is based on research showing people are more successful in their recovery if they have access to housing first rather than as a reward.

After the Board of Supervisors passed Lurie’s Fentanyl State of Emergency Ordinance last month to expand his powers, the city set up a walk-in triage center in the South of Market neighborhood to connect people to government programs and provide a police command station. The results, however, have been stunted by the city’s inability to provide longer-term treatment or shelter, city officials said.

Its successes, Modi posted, were “improved street conditions, cross-department collaboration, service placements and arrests.” But he said what didn’t work was that the city ran out of shelter and treatment beds daily, and outdoor drug markets were not eradicated but only displaced to other neighborhoods.

Lurie is now planning to open up a second center at 822 Geary Street where first responders can drop off people in need of medical care, slated to open this spring.