Shortly after 5 p.m. on Monday evening, Mayor Daniel Lurie was on Market Street, as he is many days. I was on Market too, doing an errand, and I spotted the mayor crouched down low, talking to a homeless man. The man was on the ground near a wheelchair, some of his belongings, including his hat and coat, strewn about him.
This wasn’t the first time I’d run into the mayor around town. In December, I found him surveying homelessness on Sixth Street. Two weeks ago, we were both in McLaren Park with Roger Federer, although Lurie got to hit with him.
Approaching Lurie and the homeless man, I took a photo. They both looked up at me and I could tell Lurie was annoyed by my presence; the homeless man winked at me, which made me feel a little better about intruding on their conversation. Sensing I wasn’t going anywhere, Lurie returned to his interaction.
The man, who told Lurie his name, didn’t seem entirely coherent. He slurred his words, causing the mayor to lean in closer to hear him. The mayor asked if he had been in a shelter, and offered to call city services on his behalf.
The man questioned Lurie’s motives.
“If I see someone on the ground, I’ve got to check to make sure they’re OK,” Lurie told the man. “I want you to be in a shelter, or in treatment. We’re here to help.”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” the man responded. “You’re trying to clean up the streets.”
“I’m trying to do that, and I’m trying to help people,” Lurie told him.
“Sometimes a homeless man has no choice,” the man replied, sounding suddenly a lot more coherent.
“I understand that,” Lurie said. “We need to do better as a city.”
The man asked Lurie who he was and when Lurie said his name, and explained that he was the mayor, the man responded, “The mayor!? Fuck!”
The two shook hands. The man picked himself and his belongings up, got back into his wheelchair, and moved on.
After their exchange, I approached Lurie, and told him I was a reporter and wanted to ask some questions. The Mayor was reluctant.
“I’m trying not to — this is not about getting press,” he said. In the past during his walkabouts, he brought reporters along, but apparently he didn’t want to do that today. He granted me one question, so I asked how he had come upon the man, and what would happen to him. Lurie told me he talks to homeless people five to ten times each day.
“If I see someone in distress, I don't think we — I as the mayor — should walk by anybody that is lying on the ground, on the cement, on the cold cement, anymore,” Lurie said.
“And so what’s the resolution here?” I asked.
“Well, I can get his name, and I can get our neighborhood outreach team to try to get him into a shelter, or in his case recovery, or a treatment bed, which we've been standing up a lot more of.”
Lurie explained that the city’s outreach team is fully staffed from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., but that there are too few shelter beds at nighttime and on the weekends. By 1 p.m. each day, the city’s shelter beds are full.
“We’re out of space, so people have to wait until the next day, which is not good, right?,” Lurie said.
I agreed and asked what San Francisco is doing about that?
“We stand up more beds, and that's what we're doing,” Lurie said. “I mean, we've stood up 300 to 400 of the right kind of beds. And we need to be at 24/7,” he said.
Shelter, and a bed, available around the clock for those who need it? The proposition seemed at once reasonable, and far away. The mayor walked off. I let him go.
