{"id":149956,"date":"2026-01-26T13:42:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T13:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/149956\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T13:42:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T13:42:15","slug":"mayor-lurie-closes-the-homeless-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/149956\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor Lurie Closes the Homeless Bar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bravo to San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who is ending a ridiculous city program<\/a> that spent $5 million a year to provide booze to homeless alcoholics.<\/p>\n

It sounds like an insane idea to begin with, but the original thought behind the \u201cManaged Alcohol Program\u201d (MAP) seems to have been that keeping homeless people drunk would keep them from going through withdrawal and heading to emergency rooms.<\/p>\n

It was never a good idea to give homeless people more of the very thing that kept many of them homeless \u2014 and to provide incentives for other alcoholics to hit the streets.<\/p>\n

The program only served 55 people \u2014 at an average bar tab of $454,000 for each homeless alcoholic.<\/p>\n

Lurie\u2019s move is good for San Francisco \u2014 and good for the homeless, who need help getting sober, not help staying drunk.<\/p>\n

In the background, there is a serious debate about what kinds of services to provide homeless addicts. Needle exchange programs, for example, may allow homeless people to stay hooked \u2014 but could also protect them from deadly disease.<\/p>\n

Regardless, San Francisco has taken these programs too far. Under Lurie\u2019s predecessor, London Breed, San Francisco ran open-air \u201csafe use\u201d areas, where addicts could get high under city supervision.<\/p>\n

There is a point at which tolerance is too much. The city should not be enabling addiction. And taxpayers should not be footing the bar tab.<\/p>\n

Lurie\u2019s decision to end MAP is another hopeful sign of reform He has a long way to go before he has fixed San Francisco\u2019s problems. He is still facing a $1 billion budget deficit, for example.<\/p>\n

But Luriehas put the interest of residents first. He has also taken a moderate tone in disagreements with the federal government, leading to better outcomes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mayor Lurie has shown simple common sense in axing this \u201calcohol for alcoholics\u201d program \u2014 a quality seen far too rarely among our local leaders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bravo to San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who is ending a ridiculous city program that spent $5 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[1630,74134,1493,975,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-149956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-alcohol","tag-alcoholism","tag-homelessness","tag-opinion","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}