Mayor Daniel Lurie is sharing details about how he plans to use his fentanyl state-of-emergency powers in an executive order he signed Monday.
The directive, titled “Breaking the Cycle,” outlines immediate actions and long-term reforms to address the homelessness and drug crises. The city sees roughly two overdose deaths per day.
“I believe our city must be judged by how we care for our most vulnerable residents, and today, we are outlining immediate actions and long-term reforms to address the crisis on our streets,” Lurie said in a statement. “This directive will break the cycle of homelessness, addiction, and government failure by transforming our homelessness and behavioral health response. My administration is bringing a new era of accountability and will deliver outcomes that get people off the street and into stability.”
The proposal builds on Lurie’s Fentanyl State of Emergency Ordinance, which passed the Board of Supervisors 10-1 and was signed into law last month. The vote means the supervisors gave up oversight of roughly $1 billion in contracts and lease agreements, according to the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst.
The mayor previously announced plans for a 24/7 police-friendly stabilization site to open this spring at 822 Geary St., a center long planned under former Mayor London Breed that Lurie said was expedited by the emergency powers.
Last year’s biennial Homelessness Point in Time report found that more than 8,000 people experience homelessness each night in San Francisco. Among those surveyed, 51% reported behavioral health challenges, including mental health issues, addiction, or both. About 36% experience chronic homelessness, cycling through city systems without achieving stable housing.
“For years, my son struggled to get the support he needed while living on the streets of San Francisco,” Tanya Tilghman, cofounder of Mothers Against Drug Addiction and Deaths, said in a statement. “Mayor Lurie’s plan gives me hope that people who are struggling like my son was will finally get real help to rebuild their lives.”
Veterans group Swords to Plowshares will play a role in Lurie’s efforts. “Swords to Plowshares looks forward to working with the mayor to make sure these much-needed resources reach veterans and help them achieve the long-term stability they deserve,” Tramecia Garner, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
The directive creates a three-stage implementation plan over the next year.
In the first 100 days, the city will launch integrated street outreach teams, deploy emergency housing vouchers, and reform assistance programs to prioritize San Francisco residents, according to the directive.
San Francisco has nine street-outreach teams across various departments, a structure the mayor views as ineffective. The directive aims to consolidate these efforts into a more coordinated approach. Details will be announced in coming days.
Within six months, officials plan to add 1,500 interim housing and treatment beds, improve case management services, establish new accountability standards for service providers, and merge the city’s Journey Home and Homeward Bound programs.
One-year goals include maximizing state and federal funding sources, improving technology systems for better coordination, and evaluating the organizational structure of the city’s health and housing programs.
The plan also includes changes to Journey Home and Homeward Bound, reconnection programs that help homeless individuals return to their hometowns. Officials said the programs will be merged and improved after finding that outreach in certain settings, like triage centers, had limited effectiveness. A March 1 post to X sharing initial findings from the city’s Sixth Street mobile triage center found 23 referrals for the Journey Home program but zero completions.
While the directive reassesses policies around the distribution of fentanyl smoking supplies in public spaces, the mayor’s office emphasized that it is not a wholesale rejection of harm-reduction approaches. Instead, the plan refocuses on evidence-based interventions like clean needle exchanges while balancing “carrots and sticks” to help drug users access services, not just supplies.
Regarding harm-reduction practices, a Lurie official said the administration aims to connect people with medication-assisted treatment and recovery programs rather than maintaining a “treadmill of Narcan and foil.”
“These important reforms serve Mayor Lurie’s vision for creating safe streets while serving the needs of San Francisco’s most vulnerable,” said Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford.
Lurie this month launched the Family Homelessness Prevention Pilot, an 18-month effort supported by $11 million from Tipping Point Community, the grant-making nonprofit he founded in 2005 that aims to help at-risk families remain housed.