View the San Francisco for Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie — seen meeting supporters at St. Mary’s Square on Nov. 8 — is set to be inaugurated at City Hall today. Daniel Lurie held off on being a San Francisco City Hall insider Wednesday for just a few more minutes.
Lurie’s inauguration took place Wednesday morning — and unlike administrations past, he was not sworn in on the steps of City Hall or inside it, but across the street on a stage in Civic Center Plaza. The setting might just be one of necessity, given the thousands of people to attend what is just one in a series of extravagant events signaling the arrival of new leadership in San Francisco. But it conveniently reflects Lurie’s unusual journey to power, which took place entirely outside — and not from within — City Hall. An heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and longtime leader of a prominent San Francisco nonprofit, Lurie was hardly a no-name when he announced his candidacy for mayor in 2023. Still, his inauguration Wednesday as The City’s 46th mayor capped the rapid rise of a man who had previously never held — or sought — political office.Workers on Tuesday prepare Civic Center Plaza in front of San Francisco City Hall for the inauguration of Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie. Starting Wednesday, Lurie can begin to make good on his yearslong pledge to bring much-needed change to San Francisco government, which has lost the confidence of so many of its residents. “We have a bright future, we have all the resources at our disposal,” Lurie told The Examiner shortly after launching his campaign in 2023, a message he echoed throughout the months to come. “We simply need the leadership, and I believe I bring that.”and by building a broad political base, eschewing traditional political labels. And, in the end, he won in large part by securing a sizable share of second- and third-choice votes in The City’s ranked-choice voting system. “I’ve always felt good about Daniel — I think the challenge has always been not knowing what to do with the direct government experience issue,” said former Supervisor Matt Gonzalez, who endorsed Lurie as his second choice in the election. “Because of his work ethic and his determination, if you meet with him and watch him closely, you get a sense that he’s very committed, and he embodied a frustration that so many San Franciscans had about the status of The City.” His path to office was different, but Lurie has been laying the groundwork leading up to this moment for years.Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie, left — seen in 2013 with San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York— was bid chairman for the successful effort to bring Super Bowl 50 to the Bay Area in 2016., an antipoverty organization based in New York City. He returned to California and received a master’s degree in public policy from UC Berkeley, providing him the platform from which to launch his own antipoverty nonprofit in 2005. With its title a nod to a popular book by author Malcolm Gladwell, Tipping Point Community was built on the assumption that Bay Area poverty could be taken on with a smarter approach. Lurie’s work at Tipping Point was a cornerstone of his pitch to become San Francisco’s next mayor. On the campaign trail, Lurie regularly argued that Tipping Point — and, by association, he himself — had a record of holding nonprofits accountable to deliver the services they promised. He contrasted that record with that of his opponents and The City that they had led. In 2019, Lurie stepped down from his CEO position at Tipping Point, freeing him up to eventually pursue his next move., owner of Manny’s Cafe in the Mission, to flood San Francisco’s neighborhoods with renewed life through arts, events and volunteerism, and combat negative post-pandemic perceptions of The City. “It was a total joy working with him in that first period of the Civic Joy Fund,” Yekutiel told The Examiner. Yekutiel recalled a Sunday on Pride weekend — a “holy weekend,” he added — when he and Lurie were scheduled for an early morning“Daniel picked me up in his car with coffee — he was like ‘We got this’,” Yekutiel said. “It was so much fun.”different perspective and ample resources In a memo published after Lurie’s victory, his political consultant, Tyler Law, explained that Lurie’s campaign realized from the jump that its path to victory was by making him the candidate— to a degree they argued was actually dangerous — it played right into his hands. Of course, he countered, the City Hall insiders running against him would say that — they’re afraid of change. “Voters want experience,” Law wrote in the memo. “But they want the right experience to create change. In other words, at a moment defined by a demand for change, Daniel had the right message and the right experience to meet the moment.” It was a message that resonated with voters who had recently recalled a district attorney and multiple school board members, and signaled in poll after poll that they were tired ofThe one thing that Lurie lacked was name recognition, a deficit he was able to make up for by campaigning full-time and tapping into a vast pool of resources toAfter a long and disciplined campaign, Lurie came out on top, defeating an incumbent mayor and accomplishing the rare feat of being elected to lead a major American city despite lacking any previous experience in elected office.Left-right: Mark Farrell, Ahsha Safaí, Daniel Lurie, Mayor London Breed and Aaron Peskin on stage for the mayoral debate at UC Law San Francisco on Monday, June 17, 2024. Yekutiel — who didn’t make any endorsements during the election — said he was proud and excited for Lurie after winning what seemed, at first, like a “long shot.”After an arduous campaign, the real work has begun. Lurie quickly made good on his pledge to change things up in City Hall, starting with implementing a restructuring to the mayor’s office that will see the appointment of four new policy chiefs. His team will be charged with addressing The City’s most pressing challenges, including persistent homelessness, deadly fentanyl overdoses, startlingly high commercial-vacancy rates, and a public-transit system that faces impending fiscal struggles. The resources he’ll have at his disposal to solve those problems will be limited, as The City faces a two-yearBetty Louie, a longtime Chinatown community member and leader, endorsed Lurie early on in the race for mayor. She described him as pragmatic and intelligent. “We need compassion, and he has compassion in him, and I think he’ll come to the table with new ideas,” Louie said. Government experience can work against someone when illogical thinking becomes accepted as “the way we’ve always done it,” Gonzalez said. “It’s very hard to change culture when you have to learn the culture to succeed in a particular microcosm,” Gonzalez said. “He has that advantage — he’s a person who’s interested in working.” Lurie has already made clear he’s willing to get his hands dirty. In the weekend leading up to his inauguration, Lurie opted not to spend his time locked away in the boardroom, but out on The City’s streets leading neighborhood cleanups. you celebrate. And so far, in San Francisco Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie’s case, the where has mainly been Chinatown. Lurie, who was sworn into office in a ceremony outside City Hall on Wednesday, has chosen the oldest ethnic enclave of its sort in North America as the setting for arguably his two biggest events since— the culmination of his unprecedented ascent to the top of San Francisco politics and the official start of his term at the helm of The City. Lurie’s inauguration team, along with eight Chinatown community organizations, will host a lavish Chinese banquet at Far East Cafe and a simultaneous free night market — featuring a variety of vendors and a performance by San Francisco-born electronic-dance-music purveyor DJ Zhu — right outside the restaurant and spanning three blocks of Grant Avenue from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesday. Several established Chinatown leaders told The Examiner that Lurie’s consistent presence in Chinatown since his win in November has stood out. “Mayors will usually have at least some of their inauguration go through Chinatown, but to basically center and organize most, if not all, of their inauguration around Chinatown is a really, really big and unprecedented thing,” said Malcolm Yeung, president of the Chinatown Community Development Center, which is not involved in the celebration. “It’s very unique.”“So goes Chinatown, so goes San Francisco,” Lurie, the only candidate with a headquarters in Chinatown, repeated several times during his campaign.Daniel Lurie speaking during the Mayoral Town Hall presented by the API Council at the Hilton Hotel in Chinatown, San Francisco on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. Lily Lo, president of BeChinatown and one of the co-chairs of Wednesday’s celebration, said she expects the event to be one of the largest in scale in her more than 40 years in Chinatown. The restaurant will be maxed out at around 800 people — 10 guests at each of the 80 tables — while thousands more are expected to go to the night market, she said.She said Lurie is one of the main funders of the monthly Chinatown night markets she has hosted the second Friday of every month beginning in 2023. Lo said Lurie choosing to celebrate his inauguration in Chinatown further signals his commitment to rejuvenating the historic district that hasDonald Lu, president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, one of the organizations hosting the banquet and night market, said he expects the celebration to “create a lot of energy in Chinatown.”San Francisco’s Chinatown — the oldest of its kind in North America — will play host to post-inauguration events marking the start of Daniel Lurie’s term as mayor. Hanna Zhang, owner of ICafe on Waverly Street, said she frequently saw Lurie in the neighborhood speaking with merchants and residents in the community, including herself. “He’s very personable and close to people on the ground,” she said in Cantonese through a translator. “When he said during the campaign that it was an honor to serve The City and the people, I was touched by that.Yeung said that Lurie’s emphasis on Chinatown proves that he understands the critical function the neighborhood still plays as a hub for San Francisco’s Chinese community, even as many of its members have moved to and continue to live in other neighborhoods. “It’s hard to deny the fact that, in many ways, Chinatown is a venue for our community to express political solidarity and express political power,” he said. “If you go to the Sunset or the Richmond or Silver Terrace — I think all of these places have a core Chinese American population. But I also don’t think that the legacy of those places are as solidly tied to the Chinese American experience as Chinatown.” And while both Yeung and Mary Jung, former chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, agreed that time will tell whether or not his decisions are genuine or political posturing, they were optimistic about his intentions. “I think Mayor-elect Lurie is committed to the neighborhood and to the voices of Chinatown,” said Jung, a fervent supporter of Breed. “Everything that he’s ever said to me, everything that I’ve read in the papers, everything he said to friends of mine and acquaintances, have all indicated that he is aware of what has been going on in Chinatown.” Yeung acknowledged that there is “a need for a healthy level of cynicism” whenever politicians speak about or hold events in Chinatown. But he said that personally, he is not taking the “road of cynicism” — and he thinks the community shouldn’t either. “If we’re closing these things off because we’re cynical about sort of political motivations, then I think we’re also cutting off the opportunity to really deepen relationships, and do deeper and stronger work for our community,” he said. “I personally think that in order for San Francisco Chinatown to succeed, we need the Lurie administration to succeed.”are trumpeting a new city report that they say bolsters their case for the development of so-called “social housing” — a form of publicly backed housing development that in many cases aims to house not only the poor but also moderate-income earners as well. While such mixed-income housing has yielded impressive results in a handful of cities around the world, so far, it has made little headway in the U.S. — in part because federal housing laws restricting funding for such projects make them difficult to finance. The report found that while social-housing projects would take a large upfront investment from The City to get started, once they’re up and running, the relatively high rental revenue generated by such a model would keep projects largely self-sustaining. However, the report also found that those numbers will only pencil out if San Francisco is able to secure favorable loans for its projects. That means finding — or perhaps even creating — a lender willing to loan out capital at interest rates that are far lower than typically found on the private market. “I think that the takeaway is that this is entirely doable,” and with less investment than many had thought, said outgoing Supervisor Dean Preston, a longtime champion of social housing.Outgoing District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston: “I’ve always believed that can work. It’s just a question of making the political and financial commitment to doing it.”that San Francisco will need to solve if it ever hopes to meet ambitious state targets for new homes, even as its budget deficit balloons in size each year. Now, as he leaves office after losing his reelection bid in November, Preston said he is hoping this new report will help convince the incoming administration of Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie to give social housing a chance.Two years into the current eight-year housing cycle, San Francisco has produced only about 3,800 affordable units — just one-third of what it needs to stay on track, according to preliminary figures from the Planning Department. For the most part, San Francisco’s existing stock of affordable housing is made up of large apartment buildings, often owned and operated by nonprofit affordable-housing developers. Like most federally-backed public housing in the U.S., these developments are largely reserved for low-income residents. In contrast, social housing developments seek to draw together low- and moderate-income earners alike. And while the supporters of social housing in San Francisco have not yet spelled out their plans in detail, often such projects are directly administered by governments, rather than contracted out to nonprofits. Mixed-income social housing developments, backers say, often become rich communal hubs where people from all walks of life live shoulder to shoulder. In addition, with higher-earning residents, the mixed approach also avoids the common economic pitfalls associated with housing projects that concentrate poverty in a single neighborhood. It’s seen as a good deal for middle-income residents, who often still struggle to afford market-rate housing. In turn, such tenants also pay higher rents, helping to subsidize the housing for less-affluent residents. Inspired by the success of the social housing model in cities such as Vienna and Singapore — in the latter case, such developments house 80% of its population, the city report found — Preston in 2020 championed Proposition I, a successful ballot measure that raised the tax on the transfer of large buildings.Preston said he had hoped to funnel that extra revenue into new social-housing developments. That position was affirmed by his board colleagues that same year when they unanimously passed a resolution calling for Prop. I funds to be spent for that purpose. However, Prop. I legislation itself did not specify how the money was to be used, and in the years that followed, Preston’s housing plans got sidelined by competing budget priorities, as The City faced the economic turmoil left behind by the COVID-19 pandemic. While Prop. I has so far raised $324 million, only about two-thirds of that amount has been spent on housing-affordability programs, according to a report from June of last year. Those have included more traditional forms of subsidized housing as well as rental subsidies.City officials who produced the social-housing report aimed to determine the financial viability of such projects in San Francisco by crunching the numbers for six different hypothetical developments. In each case, they plugged in different figures for important factors such as tenant incomes, development and operating costs, as well as borrowing rates. In five out of those six scenarios, the report found, the added rental revenue from moderate-income tenants would be enough to cover operating expenses and at least some of the debt payment for the development. Of course, housing projects also require a large upfront investment, but the report found that revenue from Prop. I funds in the coming two fiscal years will be more than enough to fund the projects under consideration in the report. Those included hypothetical developments as large as 136 units. For supporters of social housing, it’s a reassuring finding given that federal programs that fund affordable housing are mostly reserved for projects with exclusively low-income residents. That means that if San Francisco were to pursue mixed-income social housing developments, it would likely need to foot the bill on its own. San Francisco’s municipal code defines social housing as developments that will remain permanently affordable and that will serve residents who in aggregate hold average incomes no greater than 80% of area median income — $83,900 for a household of one. But the report’s positive findings come with a catch: All five scenarios assumed a borrowing rate of between 1% and 3% — lending terms that are far more favorable than The City would likely be able to find on the open market. The lone scenario that assumed an 8% interest rate — more in line with what is typically found on the private market — turned out to not be financially viable given the higher interest payments The City would have to pay. Several ideas have been floated to create publicly backed financing mechanisms that could fill that funding gap, including new bond programs, as well as acapable of issuing low-interest loans for city projects. The creation of such a bank is already in the works, but is still in its early stages and likely several years away from becoming operational.Supporters of plans for a San Francisco public bank hold banners at a rally where then-Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer announced her measure introducing a plan for a city public bank at City Hall on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. “I’ve always believed that it can work,” Preston said of social housing. “It’s just a question of making the political and financial commitment to doing it.” Under outgoing Mayor London Breed’s administration, The City’s tight finances have often made budget negotiations into a zero-sum game, and supporters of additional funding for affordable housing have at times run into resistance from Breed, who has cited the need for The City to give precedence to other spending priorities. A spokesman for Breed points out that her administration has spent more than $1 billion on affordable housing during her time in office. Preston said he is hoping that The City’s new mayor will be more receptive to social housing proposals. “It doesn’t have to be a big political fight and big political football every year, and I really hope the new mayor approaches it differently,” he said.and Prop. I funding. He did not answer the question directly, instead saying in a statement that he intends to tackle theClick and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely!Create a password that only you will remember. 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