\u201cPublic safety is the foundation for San Francisco\u2019s recovery, and it will always be my north star as mayor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The improvement of San Francisco\u2019s reputation, Lurie said, is reflected in increased conference bookings and this week\u2019s announcement that Nashville-based Vanderbilt University will open a campus<\/a> for about 1,000 students in the Showplace Square neighborhood near Mission Bay. Lurie courted Vanderbilt, which is buying the campus of the venerable California College of the Arts that will go out of business.<\/p>\n \u201cA year ago, people questioned whether San Francisco would ever recover. Today, institutions like Vanderbilt, with plenty of choices, see our city as the place to be,\u201d Lurie said.<\/p>\n Lurie recalled his creation of a \u201chospitality zone\u201d police task force centered on a downtown area that includes the Moscone Center convention halls and the Union Square shopping and hotel hub. He said the strategic alignment has been bolstered by efforts to recruit more police officers and the opening of a new downtown \u201creal-time investigations center,\u201d<\/a> a hub of surveillance technologies and practitioners that police say has assisted in at least 800 arrests since early 2024.<\/p>\n One of those in the audience Thursday was Ghazi Shami, founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based music company Empire, who was encouraged by developments in The City over the prior year.<\/p>\n Empire last year bought the historic and long-vacant One Montgomery building downtown and is working to turn into an innovative headquarters complex.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it was pragmatic,\u201d Ghazi said of Lurie\u2019s speech. \u201cHe has a real understanding of where The City is at and where we need to progress.\u201d<\/p>\n Former Mayor Willie Brown and current District Attorney Brooke Jenkins greet Mayor Daniel Lurie after his State of the City Address at Rossi Park in San Francisco on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n Craig Lee\/The Examiner<\/p>\n The mayor, speaking amid an ongoing surge of federal law and immigration agents into Minneapolis, got a standing ovation Thursday when he recalled, without mentioning the president by name, how an influx of federal agents into San Francisco was called off in October. Lurie told President Donald Trump in a telephone call<\/a> then that The City was making progress in lowering crime rates and stimulating its economic recovery. Some business leaders interceded with the president as well to say such a deployment was not needed.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder my administration, San Francisco will always be a city that takes care of its own,\u201d said Lurie, referring to a $3.5 million appropriation he and the Board of Supervisors approved for additional legal defense funding \u201cfor our immigrant communities during an unprecedented time of fear and insecurity.\u201d<\/p>\n Highlighting a less tolerant approach to public drug use, Lurie pointed to February\u2019s passage by the Board of Supervisors of his Fentanyl State of Emergency Ordinance<\/a>, which gave his administration more flexibility in contracting with mental-health services and addiction-treatment providers. Lurie subsequently ordered that city-funded programs not distribute fentanyl-smoking paraphernalia<\/a>, a departure from harm-reduction policies, while also expanding shelter beds.<\/p>\n \u201cWe stopped freely handing out drug supplies and letting people kill themselves on our streets,\u201d Lurie said. \u201cIt is not a basic right to use drugs openly in front of our kids.\u201d<\/p>\n The fentanyl crisis raged on, nonetheless, with fatal drug overdoses<\/a> on track to roughly match the level in 2024 at year\u2019s end.<\/p>\n Lurie promised that this spring The City will open a stabilization center in SoMa<\/a> for people arrested for public intoxication that will serve as an alternative to jail and hospitalization, and a connection to addiction treatment and other behavioral health programs. Those taken into custody will get access to help, while officers can get back on the beat faster, Lurie said.<\/p>\n \u201cSan Francisco is no longer a safe haven for those who want to sell drugs, do drugs and live on our streets,\u201d Lurie said.<\/p>\n On the homelessness front, Lurie, who founded the antipoverty nonprofit Tipping Point before becoming mayor, said The City opened 600 new treatment-focused beds, and pushed for better coordination among health services, social services, law enforcement and other emergency responders, and the effort is showing results.<\/p>\n Shelter placements are up by 40%, and The City logged a record-low number of street encampments in December, the mayor said. Newly passed legislation is getting families living in recreational vehicles<\/a> into housing and helping to \u201crestore\u201d public spaces, he said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Department\u2019s departures, elimination of unfilled positions is stretching patience at The City\u2019s center<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Like everyone else who has watched the Canadian television sports romance, Ali Wunderman\u2019s life has since been turned upside down<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
It’s \u201can invitation to San Francisco to see Ukraine as it is today,\u201d said The City’s Consul General of Ukraine, Dmytro Kushneruk<\/p>\n During the coming year, Lurie said that The City, which spends more than $1 billion a year on homelessness programs, will begin \u201credoing\u201d every single homeless services contract \u201cwith a clear focus on accountability and results,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In a related vein, Lurie laid out a variety of other initiatives aimed at making The City more affordable \u2014 a theme increasingly prevalent in politics across the nation.<\/p>\n Cranes are shown at a construction site in front of the skyline in San Francisco, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025. (AP Photo\/Jeff Chiu)<\/p>\n Jeff Chiu<\/p>\n The recent passage of his Family Zoning plan<\/a> will help produce more housing that people can afford, Lurie said, though housing development is a slow-moving train. A coalition that includes a neighborhood alliance and a small business organization also filed a lawsuit filed this month challenging the plan, a move that apparently drew a swipe from the mayor. Lurie said Thursday that \u201csome people are still putting their own interests ahead of what\u2019s good for San Francisco families by trying to shut down this plan.\u201d<\/p>\n The mayor promised to fund affordable housing projects and down-payment and loan-support programs \u201cto assist educators and first responders striving to become homeowners and build generational wealth in the communities they serve.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, Lurie announced an expansion of free and subsidized early child care using money from a 2018 ballot measure voters approved for that purpose. Starting this month, he said, a family of four making less than $230,000 a year will qualify for free childcare at providers across San Francisco, and by the fall, those earning up to $310,000 a year will receive a 50% subsidy. Money will also go to raising early-childhood educator salaries and creating or expanding child-care facilities, among other purposes.<\/p>\n Lurie also unveiled a partnership with San Francisco Unified School District that will enable high school students to earn associate degrees and industry certifications at San Francisco City College, with guaranteed transfers to San Francisco State University. A student could thus get a Community Health Worker Certification at City College and then a Bachelor of Science in nursing at SF State.<\/p>\n Supervisor Bilal Mahmood said he welcomed Lurie\u2019s emphasis on varied approaches to making life in The City less costly. Mahmood\u2019s District 5 includes the Tenderloin, Hayes Valley, Lower Haight, Western Addition, Fillmore, Alamo Square, Japantown, NoPA, and Haight Ashbury.<\/p>\n \u201cI appreciated the focus on affordability,\u201d Mahmood said. \u201cIt’s a holistic issue that has to address housing, childcare and transit.\u201d<\/p>\n Lurie vowed to keep leaning into public-private partnerships, like the Downtown Development Corporation, a privately funded nonprofit he called for on the campaign trail that has raised more than $60 million dollars for civic improvement projects that have included increased street cleaning and the fielding of welcoming ambassadors outside BART stations.<\/p>\n A top goal, meanwhile, will be winning voter approval in November for two anticipated ballot measures<\/a>, one authorizing a city parcel taxi to fund the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the other a regional sales tax to fund SFMTA, BART and other local agencies facing deficits, Lurie said.<\/p>\n The proposed parcel tax would raise an estimated $183 million to $187 million, with annual levies starting at $129 for a single-family home up to 3,000 square feet and charges to tenants in rent-controlled apartments capped at $65 and single-room-occupancy units exempted. The five-county regional sales-tax measure, meanwhile, would allow for a 1% surcharge in The City.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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