A new video allegedly shows Mayor Daniel Lurie and three of his staff members moving a homeless person off of a sidewalk in SoMa near a freeway off-ramp.
In the aftermath of the violent Tenderloin altercation between the mayor’s staffers and bystanders in March, the newest incident again raises questions of where, when, and how the mayor chooses to interact with people resting or panhandling in public space.
The video, posted to Instagram and X by the anonymous social media videographer TenderloinActivities, captured the moment when the mayor stopped at the junction at Fifth and Harrison streets. TenderloinActivities confirmed via an Instagram direct message that the incident took place on Tuesday, April 28.
It shows a woman wrapped in blankets and holding a cardboard sign walking away from the mayor and three staffers. The person filming the video (who is not TenderloinActivities) states that the mayor’s team made the homeless woman move, and then remarks on the fact that the person is stumbling and dropping their belongings in the street. At one point, as the woman crosses the street, she almost gets hit by a car.
The person filming then asks the woman to confirm she was forced to move by the mayor. “Fuckin’ piece of shit mayor,” she responds.
Last month, in addition to the Tenderloin assault, the mayor was spotted on Market Street in the Financial District interacting with a man on the sidewalk. The incident was photographed and posted on X by a person who runs the account @SFHomelessTenantsUnion.
“Lurie is doing this performative theater, attempting to telegraph that he’s the ‘hands-on’ mayor, but him & his staff don’t have any street sense, actual care, or any clue about what they’re doing,” the user wrote on X. “Ultimately they’re going to put people on the street in danger.”
The person behind @SFHomelessTenantsUnion (who requested anonymity due to harassment) told Gazetteer that the mayor’s team “shouted” at the man to ask whether he needs an ambulance, and then left when he did not respond affirmatively. The man then grabbed his wheelchair and got on the bus to leave the area, they said.
The mayor did not respond to Gazetteer’s multiple requests for comment regarding these incidents, including questions on the extent and frequency of his and his staff’s interactions with homeless people, how those interactions are planned, or his team’s policy on handling emotional or physical escalations.
In addition, the mayor’s office was not able to procure a single communication or document that details the use-of-force policy for the mayor’s security staff. (Gazetteer, through a public records request, requested all records related to “use of force,” “security,” and “body guard” since the start of the Lurie administration.)
Christin Evans, a former commissioner of the city’s Homelessness Oversight Committee and a small business owner, told Gazetteer that the mayor’s efforts to “move along” the unhoused can worsen outcomes for people in distress.
She also criticized the mayor’s “defunding” of some homelessness services, including the shuttering of more than 450 shelter beds in the Tenderloin, contrasting it to his campaign promises to expand the city’s offerings to 1,500 beds. (Earlier this year, the mayor touted the city’s opening of 600 “treatment-focused” beds.)
“So often when the mayor talks about homelessness, he’s referencing tent encampment counts, not the number of people whose homelessness has been resolved,” Evans said. “He seems almost compulsively focused on visible homelessness rather than the root causes.”
The strategy to remove some homeless people from the public sphere is also a key element of the RESET sobering center, which has been repeatedly delayed. It will offer 25 reclining chairs to people who are detained by law enforcement for being intoxicated; they will be forced to sober up in a 23-hour period if they want to avoid a criminal charge and jail time or a stay in the hospital.
