San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and other city officials met at St. Anthony’s in the Tenderloin Thursday for a town hall meeting to discuss the next steps in addressing homelessness and drug use, yet most of the town was absent.
“We are going to be relentless about making sure that our streets are safe, that they are clean, and that we get people the help that they need,” Lurie said to an invite-only crowd of around 50 people, mostly non-profit heads and some local residents.
Politicians and the mainstream media often use the word “safety” as a euphemism. “Safer” and “cleaner” streets really means those in power want to remove poor people from an area or police them.
Under Lurie’s new Breaking the Cycle proposal, he will solicit $100 million from private individuals and foundations in order to pay for 1,500 new shelter beds across the city and open a “stabilization center” surveilled by the police on 822 Geary Street this spring.
Moreover, Lurie is the heir to the Levi Strauss denim fortune and poured $8.9 million into his own campaign. He is also the founder of Tipping Point, an anti-poverty non-profit organization.
Despite his philanthropy and proclaimed commitment to ending homelessness, Lurie recently evicted several families and their children from their shelters in the Mission District.
Lurie and his team told the families earlier this month that they could stay as long as they were making “positive progress” toward finding housing. But just days later, several families received an eviction notice, according to Mission Local.
Only the families of Vilma Arias and Maria Flores were able to extend their shelter time after protests and community support.
Still, around 30 other families are facing eviction, Mission Local reported.
On April 7, community members will gather at Buena Vista Horace Mann School at 5:30 p.m. to ask the city to eliminate its eviction policy and demand there be “No more children living on the streets.”
You can sign the petition here.
Lurie also talked extensively about how he frequently gets out of his car to talk to the unhoused community.
“I do have detail, SFPD detail,” Lurie assures the crowd before continuing: “If people are sleeping on the sidewalks, I’m going and talking to people saying, ‘listen, this is not okay for you, it’s not okay for the families that have to walk around you, and you’re using drugs openly, it’s unacceptable on so many levels, how can we get you into help? How can we get you into treatment?’”
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie speaks at a town hall at St. Anthony’s in the Tenderloin on March 27, 2025.
Photography: Jacqueline Cardenas
Mark Puchalski, Director of Facilities at Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC), asked the mayor what he plans to do if the city loses federal funding from the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) under President Donald Trump’s administration.
“It’s going to fall on us as a community to survive this and this is a potential human catastrophe if we lose HUD funding. Have you thought about what this impact would be?” Puchalski asked.
“I’m asked about this often, and I just come back to, we can control only what we can control,” Lurie responded. “I cannot control what’s coming out of D.C. right now.”
Democrats like Lurie have stood on the sidelines meanwhile the far-right administration slashes social programs like Medicaid which are crucial for low-income and working class people.
During Donald Trump’s first speech to Congress during his second term, House and Senate Democrats silently protested.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Women’s Caucus protested the current administration’s policies by wearing pink.