Not messing around: SF's Lurie calls for emergency-level legislation and powers to address city's drug and homelessness crisis
Image by Thomas Hawk
On the job only since Jan. 8, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is proposing sweeping legislation and mayoral powers to overhaul how the city addresses the fentanyl, homelessness, and behavioral health crises on its streets. The Chron editorial board, below, supports the move.
San Francisco voters made it clear in November — when they elected political novice Daniel Lurie as mayor over four candidates with decades of government experience — that they wanted to radically disrupt the status quo.
Lurie is moving swiftly to do so.
Within a week of being sworn into office, he introduced sweeping legislation to overhaul how City Hall addresses the fentanyl, homelessness and behavioral health crises on our streets.
The legislation, if approved by the Board of Supervisors, would do three key things.
First, it would allow the mayor’s department heads to approve contracts, grants and leases worth between $10 million and $50 million for homelessness, mental health and addiction services without going through the city’s lengthy competitive bidding process — which typically takes up to nine months. Supervisors would have 45 days to review the contracts — previously, they could take as long as they wanted.
Second, it would establish the same accelerated process to hire, recruit and more quickly onboard public safety workers — police officers, deputy sheriffs and 911 operators.
Third, it would allow the mayor’s office for six months to solicit private donations to address homelessness and behavioral health, permit the city to accept gifts, grants and other donations for those issues and allow the controller to funnel surplus money to those causes.
Due to the city’s narrow legal definition of “emergency,” the legislation isn’t technically the “fentanyl state of emergency” Lurie had pledged to declare on Day 1 of his mayorship. But semantic quibbling aside, the proposed ordinance would grant Lurie the powers he needs to treat the chaos and suffering on our streets with the requisite urgency.
In an interview with the editorial board, Lurie was cleareyed that his proposal “is not a silver bullet,” but rather “a first crucial step” toward fulfilling some of his ambitious campaign promises — including adding 1,500 shelter beds within six months, opening 24/7 crisis drop-off centers, expanding behavioral health treatment and addressing severe public-safety staffing shortfalls.
“The one thing I’ve learned in all 14 days of leading this city is that this is not a bureaucracy that moves quickly,” Lurie said, adding, “We cannot continue to do things the same way they’ve been done because we’re going to get the same results.”
“We need to move quickly.”
We agree. And the 11-person Board of Supervisors — which has five new members — seems to as well.
How the Lurie administration will wield these tools remains unclear. And therein lies the controversial part of this bill.
Lurie says he wants to build more shelter beds quickly but has not been clear about where those beds will be built, the form they will take or who will operate them.
He says he wants to improve accountability and outcomes but hasn’t yet specified how he intends to define or measure those outcomes. All of this will cost money, but it’s unclear how much or where it will come from — an important question for a city facing an estimated $876 million deficit.
In short, Lurie is asking for a great deal of trust.
That’s a reasonable ask at this stage of Lurie’s mayorship.
There’s no time to waste
Read the whole thing here.
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