{"id":256671,"date":"2026-04-08T00:49:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T00:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/256671\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T00:49:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T00:49:11","slug":"michael-levine-to-be-the-next-s-f-homeless-czar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/256671\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Levine to be the next S.F. homeless czar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Levine<\/a>, a Massachusetts Medicaid executive, is the sole nominee to lead San Francisco\u2019s homeless department, Mission Local has learned. <\/p>\n

Following his approval today by the Homeless Oversight Commission, Mayor Daniel Lurie will tap him to be the next director of the city\u2019s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, according to multiple sources close to the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the publication of the article, the mayor\u2019s office confirms that Levine \u201cis expected to be appointed\u201d on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Lurie himself put Levine before the Homelessness Oversight Commission,<\/a> sources said. On Tuesday morning, the commission, a body formed in 2023 that has the power to hire and fire the homeless department head, discussed the candidate in a closed session.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the vote, commissioner Sharky Laguana confirmed to Mission Local that the Homeless Oversight Commission advanced Levine, leaving only the formality of Lurie approving his own preferred leader for the department.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe nominated him and it\u2019s very clear the mayor will accept this nomination \u2014 with good reason,\u201d Laguana said. <\/p>\n

\u201cMike oversees a budget of $23 billion, he has 1,000 employees, tens of thousands of providers contract with MassHealth, he\u2019s done over 600 audits and MassHealth has two million clients, more than 10,000 of which are homeless,\u201d Laguana said.<\/p>\n

Laguana described Levine as \u201cridiculously qualified.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Homelessness Oversight Commission last week declined motions to conduct a larger search or establish an advisory group regarding recruitment. Mission Local has confirmed that Levine was the only candidate put forward for the position. <\/p>\n

Shireen McSpadden<\/a>, the current head of the homeless department, who announced her June departure, said she \u201ccannot confirm or deny\u201d the pick, stating that it is \u201cnot my role.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the publication of the article, the mayor\u2019s office shared statements from Lurie and Levine<\/a>. \u201cMike is an expert in connecting health care and homelessness services, and he has seen the power of integrating primary care, behavioral health, and social supports to keep people housed,\u201d Lurie said. \u201cMike brings the experience and the expertise to build on our momentum, and I look forward to working with him.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI am excited to lean in to accelerate our progress to help more people move toward stability and I look forward to being out in the community\u2014meeting with providers, community members, frontline teams, and most importantly the clients we serve,\u201d Levine said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want some fresh take, fresh eyes on homelessness in San Francisco,\u201d a source familiar with the hiring process said, pointing to Levine\u2019s experience with Medicaid, a federal program that is a public health insurance plan for low-income residents and is called Medi-Cal in California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Levine\u2019s experience in the Medicaid system was likely seen as a major plus. If he could fund homeless services through Medicaid and Medi-Cal \u2014 the federal waivers<\/a> \u2014 the city could save on its general fund.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This would be the second time Lurie sought out talent from MassHealth, Massachusetts\u2019 Medicaid program. Levine\u2019s time there overlapped with the Health Department\u2019s Tsai<\/a> for about four years from 2016 to 2018 and then 2019 to 2021, according to LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"TwoDaniel Tsai, the director of the Department of Public Health, speaking during a press conference at the Maria X Martinez Health Center on Feb. 11, 2025. Photo by Kelly Waldron. <\/p>\n

Levine\u2019s public sector career has been largely devoted to MassHealth, where he has worked in two stretches totaling nearly nine years starting in 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Commissioners were impressed by his track record, which includes a redesign of Massachusetts\u2019 behavioral health system that heavily reduced emergency room visits, a tenancy preservation system to keep people in their housing and a streamlining of onerous processes to enroll homeless people to Medicaid.<\/p>\n

Multiple sources have pointed out that Tsai \u201cworks well\u201d with Kunal Modi<\/a>, Lurie\u2019s deputy chief overseeing homelessness and public health, as well as Lurie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Levine also worked at the Bridgespan Group<\/a>, a nonprofit strategy consultancy in Boston, where he put in two separate stints from 2013 to 2019, rising from associate consultant to manager.<\/p>\n

McSpadden in March told staff she would step down<\/a> as the city\u2019s homelessness department director on June 30, marking the end of a five-year tenure that began in 2021 in former Mayor London Breed\u2019s administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

McSpadden\u2019s successor will also work with Lurie on his \u201cBreaking the Cycle<\/a>\u201d initiative, a pillar strategy of his administration to battle homelessness and behavioral health crises \u2014 whether it\u2019s the team of teams<\/a> response system on the streets<\/a> or the mayor\u2019s latest move<\/a> away from longer-term shelter stays to shorter-term shelters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhoever it is \u2014 not just Michael \u2014 coming into this position, is going to have the mayor\u2019s demand of cutting services,\u201d said Sunny Angulo, who served as chief of staff to\u00a0 former Board President Aaron Peskin. \u201cI hope there is a plan before he comes in and we can all support him and follow that plan and make sure people don\u2019t fall through the cracks. \u201d<\/p>\n

Santiago Lerma, former District 9 legislative aide and the current lead of the Mission street team for the Department of Emergency Management, agreed. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a tough job and a very important one,\u201d said Lerma, who said he had not heard of Levine as a possible candidate. \u201cThere is the benefit of starting off fresh \u2014 you are not being jaded. But you need to get the understanding of how the department and city government function. And it is going to be a steep learning curve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Levine, a Massachusetts Medicaid executive, is the sole nominee to lead San Francisco\u2019s homeless department, Mission Local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[636,1493,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-256671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-daniel-lurie","9":"tag-homelessness","10":"tag-san-francisco","11":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","12":"tag-san-francisco-news","13":"tag-sf","14":"tag-sf-headlines","15":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256671","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=256671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}