It was surprising, and encouraging at first, to run into Daniel Lurie walking the grimmest stretch of 6th Street Sunday afternoon.
The mayor-elect, who takes office in three weeks, was checking out a span of the street from Howard heading toward Market, surrounded by a small entourage of security types, some of them cops. He was deep in conversation with David Lazar, the San Francisco Police Department’s assistant chief of operations.
The area has long been home to single residency hotels, supportive housing, pizza shops, liquor stores, pawn shops — and more recently to an active fentanyl trade. Homelessness and drug addiction have reportedly intensified on 6th, as people living on the street or in encampments have been chased out of the Tenderloin and Civic Center by street sweeps and other enforcement.
That a corridor of such misery exists less than three miles from the excess of Billionaire’s Row should defy logic. Instead, extreme disparities have become an accepted norm of San Francisco, with housed residents often blaming unhoused ones for their place at the rock bottom of gross income inequality — as perpetrators, rather than victims.
During his campaign, Lurie promised to humanely vanquish the depravity of such visible poverty from the streets. He defeated incumbent Mayor London Breed with $9 million of his own money, and a campaign focused on adding more cops to the payroll.
Crime is best prevented, he has argued, by addressing mental health, substance abuse, poverty, and homelessness. To that end, during his campaign, Lurie promised to expand emergency psychiatric services and specialized care units. Clearing encampments requires that San Francisco “always has shelter beds available for anyone who needs one,” according to his campaign website. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, he also pledged that he’ll "create 1,500 emergency shelter beds during his first six months in office, and 2,500 temporary housing units within two years."
So I was cautiously hopeful when I spotted Lurie on 6th Street last weekend; he’s visited those particular blocks at least three times since he was elected.
I introduced myself as a journalist, and asked him why he was there. Lurie declined to chat, but put me in touch with his communications people, who later sent me a statement to attribute to the mayor-elect.
“I'm building a team rooted in accountability, service, and change to tackle our city's historic challenges,” the statement read. “That includes turning around a behavioral health system that has failed to address the despair on our streets, and ensuring police are not serving as our homeless outreach workers and mental health professionals.”
On Sunday, though, as Lurie moved toward Market, one of the policemen in his entourage lingered, before approaching two men laying on the ground. The officer told the first man it was illegal for him to lie there, and ordered him to stand up. The man complied. The officer then moved on to rouse the second man; in a daze, he got to his feet unsteadily. The officer told him that if he needed to lie down, he should go to an alley — where, presumably, he wouldn’t be seen.
I spoke to the second man, who confirmed that the officer told him to move to the alley if he wanted to lie down. He declined to be interviewed.
Lurie was probably twenty yards away, and as far as I know, he didn’t see or hear the interaction. But to me, it represented a cruel irony: In the mayor-elect’s wake, the homeless were treated with the indignity and callousness that Lurie claimed he would reject in his campaign. The police escorting him weren’t solving a problem, just working to obscure it.
(The SFPD didn’t respond to requests for comment about its officer’s treatment of the two men.)
San Francisco’s so-called “sit-lie” ordinance, prohibiting someone from sitting or lying on the sidewalk, was enacted when Gavin Newsom was mayor here. But it wasn’t vigorously enforced until June, when the U.S. Supreme Court concluded such laws don’t violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
These days, violators of the law can be fined or jailed, which only entrenches poverty, said John Do, a senior attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
San Francisco police responses to homelessness have resulted in an “extremely high” and unnecessary use of force, according to Do. Dispatching the cops to respond to homelessness is also expensive, and removes them from the jobs they’re supposed to do. At the same time, housing, healthcare, and addiction services in the city remain hard to get in a timely manner.
“Everyone agrees that homelessness is a crisis in San Francisco, and that we all want safe and accessible streets,” Do said. “That involves not merely making sure that the appearance of homelessness is addressed, but also the underlying issues.”
In the weeks leading up to San Francisco’s mayoral inauguration, as Lurie continues to absorb the lessons of the roughest stretches like 6th Street, he is aligned with organizations like the ACLU. While Do is “encouraged” by the commitments Lurie has made, only time will tell whether he approaches mass homelessness with solutions — or more ways to hide the problem from wealthy eyes.
“I can't speak to what Daniel Lurie will be doing, once he comes into office,” Do said. “We will see come January.”
