On the campaign trail, Mayor Daniel Lurie pledged to provide 1,500 new shelter beds to get people without homes off the streets.
Lurie wanted wealthy donors to fund his effort, and he successfully changed city law to ensure he’d face no legal restrictions in doing so.
Now he’s finally revealing who turned out their pockets.
The mayor’s office has been pledged a collective $37.5 million from the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, Crankstart (cofounded by Michael Moritz, chairman of The Standard), notable SF Symphony funders Keith and Priscilla Geeslin, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and Tipping Point Community, started by Lurie himself, which has received generous donations from his mother.
The donations represent the first use of Lurie’s fentanyl emergency powers to waive a city rule barring behested payments, or the solicitation of money from entities with business before an official.
Those funds will help stand up 1,500 shelter beds and reform the city’s anti-fentanyl and homeless housing efforts, the mayor’s office said in a statement. These are major elements of his “Breaking the Cycle” plan, which will shift the city away from harm reduction practices that include giving away drug paraphernalia without services attached.
The private donations will be collected into the Breaking the Cycle fund and will be reported to the California Fair Political Practices Commission within 30 days of receipt.
Lurie’s efforts to tackle the fentanyl and homelessness crises mirror those of Tipping Point Community, which seeks private donors to jump-start city anti-poverty efforts.
“This work is about so much more than money alone,” Lurie said in a statement. “It’s about breaking away from failed strategies and building more effective systems and services to break the cycles of homelessness, addiction, and government failure—and reclaim San Francisco’s place as the greatest city in the world.”
The money is crucial at a time when the city stares down an $820 million budget deficit spurred by a cratered downtown economy.
It seems the private funds will not shore up those budget cuts but will instead go toward supporting one-time costs in the Breaking the Cycle plan, such as site acquisitions for housing, feasibility studies, design, and construction. Lurie has previously said he will prioritize public safety and the opioid crisis when contemplating his first city budget, which is due June 1.
At a press conference Thursday, Mark Mazza, a Department of Emergency Management front-line worker tackling the drug and homelessness crisis, said the city sorely needs the resources.
“We need more beds, every day,” he said. “Most days the beds we have to offer are gone before lunchtime.”
Lurie, a centimillionaire and heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, recently made a donation in the $50,000 to $99,000 bracket to the Tipping Point Community, according to its website. His mother’s foundation, the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund, contributed more than $1 million.
Tipping Point’s donation to the Breaking the Cycle fund could be seen as Lurie’s second major personal donation to fund San Francisco government. His first was a $134,000 electric Rivian vehicle for his own mayoral motorcade.