There’s a joke I’ve made to certain wealthy San Franciscans I’ve interviewed over the years, as they vent their indignation over the city’s never-ending homeless problem. “Move all the encampments to Pacific Heights,” I tell them. “And you and your neighbors will get things sorted out snappily.”
Obviously, this is a pipe dream. There isn’t a lot of empty real estate for setting up tents or shelters in the city’s toniest neighborhoods. And the posh and powerful people who live there wouldn’t tolerate their existence if there were.
But I was reminded of my fanciful solution when Supervisors Bilal Mahmood and Shamann Walton, who represent the Tenderloin and the Bayview, respectively, introduced legislation that would require the city to place shelters or other services in each of the city’s 11 districts. Their dead-serious idea echoes my comical one in that it would force the areas that haven’t borne the brunt of the homelessness crisis to finally do their share.
The proposed “geographic equity” ordinance has become a political flashpoint since Mahmood and Walton offered it in late April. Mayor Daniel Lurie is quietly pushing back against it, arguing behind the scenes that the measure would hobble the administration’s considerable efforts to add shelter beds and systemize services for the unhoused. Mahmood and Walton, meanwhile, are vociferously standing their ground.
All the while, political San Francisco is titillated by the fracas because it promises a showdown between the mayor and the supervisors he has been congenially courting since taking office. As The Standard’s Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez reported last week, Lurie has suggested amendments to the Mahmood-Walton bill that will effectively gut it. If the two supervisors won’t accept the changes, and a majority of the board sides with them over the mayor, its passage could produce Lurie’s first veto, which the board likely wouldn’t be able to override.
Yet where others see conflict, I see opportunity: a chance for the mayor and his team to work collaboratively with elected officials who too often have opted for performative fights over good-government solutions. The best-case scenario would be for the mayor to get his way while acknowledging the legislators’ concerns, and in time — say, in a year, after he has stood up those 1,500 shelter beds he has promised — he can lock down that mythical Pacific Heights homeless shelter.
The legislation is straightforward. By next year, it would require a collection of city agencies to approve the installation of at least one shelter or related service in each supervisor district. It also would ban new facilities within 1,000 feet of existing ones — an acknowledgement that the Tenderloin, South of Market, and the Bayview have shouldered more than their fair share of the problem and should no longer be treated as “containment zones” for the unhoused.
Part of the legislation is toothless, as its only check on compliance is a requirement for the mayor’s office to deliver twice-annual status reports to the board. In other words, if the mayor doesn’t do what he’s told, the supervisors will shame him for it. The “anti-saturation” language preventing new facilities from opening near old ones comes with more of a stick, as the administration could be sued for violating it.
Mahmood told me he’s pushing for this bill now not because he doesn’t trust Lurie and his team to come up with citywide solutions to address homelessness, but because he wants to make sure Lurie’s successors do. “I’m not always going to be on the board, and this mayor won’t always be in office,” he said.
Earlier this year, as part of his emergency public safety legislation, Lurie was given a one-year reprieve from the board overseeing contracting and hiring for new homeless services. I told Mahmood I’d heard the mayor’s office had committed to a moratorium on building new facilities in the Tenderloin as part of the deal. His response: “The mayor has been collaborative. But this isn’t about one year. This is about the future of this district for 10 years. Our legislation is about codifying this into law.”
For its part, the mayor’s office isn’t talking publicly about any amendment-offering, arm-twisting, or dealmaking it may or may not be doing. I am told, for example, that it has shared with supervisors all the sites it is considering for new shelters and other facilities. Supervisor Myrna Melgar — who represents several upscale west-side neighborhoods and the areas around Lake Merced that are rife with unhoused people living in RVs and camper vans — told me she’s been told of two potential shelter sites in her district and is OK with both.
What this debate comes down to is what’s more important: adding beds and services where they will be most effective or sharing the burden equitably. Joshua Bamberger, clinical professor of family and community medicine at UCSF and one of the most passionate homelessness advocates I know, said his biggest concern right now is the federal government’s dismantling of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which could leave the city on its own to finance and develop housing and services for the homeless. The imperative, he said, is to add support rapidly: “I don’t think it matters where.”
In other words, helping people who need it trumps the geographic equity sought by Mahmood and Walton. And tying the mayor’s hands in proscribing how to deliver that help likely isn’t the best approach.
That said, I can’t help but respect the supervisors’ effort. Walton was particularly incensed that Lurie moved forward this month with a plan for a shelter in the Bayview over the community’s wishes, calling the mayor an “oligarch” in the process. Walton has maintained a consistent position in this debate, as the only supervisor who voted against Lurie’s emergency legislation granting the city the ability to sidestep the board for contracting new sites.
“The mayor thinks that because my colleagues made that vote that he can just do what he wants, when he wants,” Walton told me. “And I had to remind him I didn’t support it. I don’t care what the other 10 people did. He doesn’t go around and say, ‘Screw the community’ and make these unilateral, totalitarian, Trump-like decisions. That’s a problem.”
Walton said Lurie confronted him about the oligarch comment. (Imagine how the mayor will react to being compared to Trump.) Walton allowed that Lurie “is a nice person” but is not impressed with the assertion that the legislation puts handcuffs on the mayor.
“It seems like this administration, when you ask them to do something they don’t want to do, says you’re adding a level of bureaucracy,” he said. “Not having containment zones and providing opportunities for some of our unhoused population to receive services in other areas of the city that haven’t traditionally stepped up is most certainly going to make it a better situation.”
In fact, Walton thinks he’s assisting Lurie, who campaigned on helping the unhoused population everywhere in the city. “I think this gives him a push to not only say that we support your focus on that, but also … to look across San Francisco,” he said. (Of note, Mission Local is keeping a valuable scorecard of Lurie’s shelter-bed progress. Spoiler alert: There’s a lot of work left to do.)
Win or lose, and Mahmood and Walton will likely lose on this specific legislation, this push is a good thing. They are forcing Lurie to confront the inconvenient truth that San Francisco’s richer neighborhoods need to do more than tsk-tsk at a problem they don’t consider their own. Lurie’s predecessor, London Breed, repeatedly blamed a recalcitrant board for blocking her ability to govern. This mayor deserves a shot at implementing his plan — and then facing voters, who can decide whether or not he succeeded.
If the city serves a population in dire need and spreads the burden as best it can, everyone will win.