View the San Francisco for Thursday, March 6, 2025
City Attorney David Chiu speaking at a press conference in support of San Francisco as a sanctuary city, on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. With a long list of problems but short on cash, San Francisco leaders are looking to the private sector for help.
Whether it’s aid for immigrants during the second administration of President Donald Trump or a push to rapidly expand homeless shelters, officials say they are hoping those outside city government will step up and build what the public sector can’t — or won’t — as it faces a major budget deficit. In doing so, city officials are delicately navigating regulations meant to curtail the rampant corruption that erupted into public view in recent years and still lingers in the recent memory of many.facing new threats under the Trump administration. So, too, are stakes high at a time when the city government is desperate to But money is tight. It’s no surprise that San Francisco elected officials would look for outside help at a time when The City is facing a two-year budget deficit that exceeds $800 million. Twice already this year, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has approved special waivers to allow department heads to widely solicit donations to support city services. In doing so, they’ve won an exception to a law that was tightened up just a few years ago — and, according to those who shepherded the new rules through, with good reason. “It has been effective, and it has prevented the government from being for sale and has stopped the quid pro quo of the game that used to be played, which was elected officials getting what they wanted — whether it was donations to The City or their favorite charity — while they were aiding and abetting the desires of the donors,” said Aaron Peskin, the former supervisor who authored the In a statement, City Attorney David Chiu said the Trump administration is an “existential threat to our San Francisco values” and has already targeted “immigrants, women, people of color, LGBTQ+ communities, health care and our environment.” “We will need to leverage private resources to protect our City, our residents, and our federal funding,” Chiu said. “We are eager to discuss pro bono assistance on potential litigation with private law firms, and to explore partnerships with philanthropic organizations that can help us increase our capacity to do this work.”Mohammed Nuru, director of San Francisco Public Works, center, walks in front of attorney Ismail Ramsey as they leave a federal courthouse in San Francisco, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020.Responding to a widespread city-government corruption scandal that culminated in the fall of former Public Works head Mohammed Nuru, San Francisco enacted a new “behested payment” ordinance in 2022. A behested payment is one that is made at the suggestion or request of a government official for an agreed-upon purpose. For example, several departments were authorized last year to solicit behested payments to help offset the costs of bringing pandas from China to the San Francisco Zoo. The regulations prevent soliciting behested payments specifically from “interested parties,” such as the CEO of a company hoping to win a city contract from the department soliciting the donation. If the same executive has no potential conflict of interest with the department, it would not be a prohibited behested payment., was arrested by federal agents in 2020 and accused of running a broad “pay-to-play” scheme. A report issued by the Controller’s Office in 2020in donations made by city contractors to DPW-controlled subaccounts at the nonprofit San Francisco Parks Alliance; Nuru accessed these funds to pay for lavish parties and more. In exchange, contractors who contributed to Nuru’s slush fund earned lucrative city contracts.Mayor Daniel Lurie, the Board of Supervisors and other city officials gather for a Lunar New Year celebration at City Hall on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025.However, a city department can ask the Board of Supervisors for a waiver from the regulations in exigent circumstances. That’s exactly what a coalition of departments has done this year as they attempted to prepare for the uncertainty of the Trump administration.. He has said he plans to use the bureaucratic flexibility granted to him by the ordinance to seek public-private partnerships to address homelessness, mental health, and addiction, issues that are currently top of mind for many San Franciscans. In both cases, the behested-payments waiver sought by — and approved for — the administration were nonspecific. The first does not outline a single project or plan; instead, it broadly outlines the values — such as “defending and supporting reproductive rights” — that The City is trying to protect.and functionally eliminating unsheltered homelessness during his first six months in office. But the behested-payment waiver does not outline a specific proposal for a shelter; rather, it generally allows for fundraising to “support the expansion of temporary shelter and other homeless services to support people experiencing homelessness.” The original intent was for the Board of Supervisors to grant waivers to the behested payment ordinance “only sparingly,” Peskin said. “The way we designed it, it had this mechanism where the department could come forward and state their case,” Peskin said. “It wasn’t like a total prohibition — the notion was that if they did , that they needed to be very specific.” As part of the six-month waiver granted to city departments preparing to take on Trump, supervisors made additions to the waiver that require city officials to regularly report to them on the behested payments, including the identity of the donor, amount of the donation, and the relationship between the donor and the department that received it. “There’s no question that these resources are badly needed, and that’s why we worked to ensure there’s transparency and oversight built into the process,” Supervisor Jackie Fielder said in a statement to The Examiner. “The amendments we secured require regular reporting on how these funds are being used, so if any issues arise, the Board will have the ability to review and decide whether a waiver should be renewed.” In contrast to the behested payments for shelter and legal aid and services, another current proposal before the Board of Supervisors is the extension of a behested-payment waiver for the Recreation and Park Department to fundraise for the India Basin Waterfront Park — a park with anIndividuals line up at St. Anthony Foundation’s Golden Gate Block Party & Distribution event in November, waiting to receive blankets donated by the San Francisco Giants. Just across Market Street from the new mayoral administration’s signature effort so far to address San Francisco’s homelessness, substance-abuse and behavioral-health crises, leaders of an institutional stalwart say they hope to lend their expertise. The St. Anthony Foundation, headquartered at 150 Golden Gate Ave., is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Located a 5-minute walk away from The City’s newly” at the corner of 6th and Jessie streets, St. Anthony’s has long provided services and care to unhoused San Franciscans and those struggling with drug addiction.“We’re trying to create a seamless environment where it isn’t just about optimizing any one particular service,” he said. “The population we care for has a set of complex needs that isn’t just one thing.” St. Anthony’s offers warm meals twice per day, computer access, showers, and medical and behavioral-health care, among other services. The organization is aimingCity leaders have pointed to the foundation as a model for San Francisco’s own responses to homelessness, substance abuse and behavioral-health issues, including one of St. Anthony’s own. Kunal Modi, whom Mayor Daniel Lurie appointed as the chief of Health, Homelessness and Family Services in January, formerly served on the board at St. Anthony’s. He said at a St. Anthony’s Leadership Council meeting last week that San Franciscans trust the organization because of “its work, its outcomes and the data it tracks.” “Our entire city system should reflect that same standard,” he said, according to comments provided to The Examiner by the organization. “It hasn’t for too long, but we’re beginning to change that by rethinking contracting and accountability, all with the goal of better serving our community.” Lurie has prioritized addressing homelessness and the fentanyl epidemic during his first two months in office, introducing a “state of emergency” ordinance that supervisors overwhelmingly voted to approve. The measure makes it easier for The City to sign leases for new treatment facilities and major contracts with service providers.Daniel Lurie serves morning meals at St. Anthony’s Dining Room on Jan. 8 before being inaugurated as mayor later that day. On Feb. 7, the Lurie administration opened the mobile triage center as part of a 30-day pilot program. Sunday marks 30 days from the opening of the center, where people arrested for using or selling drugs are brought and given the option to either accept treatment, leave The City on a bus, or go to jail.in operation last month. Most people who arrived did so on foot and under their own volition, meeting with representatives from the San Francisco Fire Department or the San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team who connected them to off-site services, housing and medical treatment. That’s not the case at St. Anthony’s. If someone arrives at its Golden Gate Avenue welcome center needing medical attention, they can be taken across the street. If St. Anthony’s doesn’t have adequate services for a person’s needs or is at capacity, volunteers escort them somewhere else. “I think this has been tried before, and the problem that has occurred over and over again is that for the population that we’re trying to help, if access doesn’t mean immediate service, then it’s not access,” Dr. Terry Osback, St. Anthony’s chief medical officer and a psychiatrist, said of the model The City’s mobile triage center is following. Brandon Clark, a volunteer-services program coordinator for St. Anthony’s who has been in recovery since 2023, said he previously relied on the foundation’s assistance. He said his experience there stood in contrast to his with the Tenderloin Linkage Center, which closed in 2022. “I was feeling really hopeless in the midst of my addiction, and I went in , and was like, ‘Hey, I’m interested in getting into treatment, can you help me?’” he said. “They provided me with a printout of a list of treatment centers in San Francisco, most of which were actually closed.” Clark said he managed to get in touch with one that was open, but was told there was a waiting list and that he’d have to call back every day at 7 a.m. to see if there was a spot available. “What if someone didn’t even have a phone or have the capability of making a phone call, let alone every day for the next week?” he said. “I needed to call this place in like the window of opportunity for someone to get sober or has a willingness to change in that moment.” Clark said St. Anthony’s was able to help him in that “window,” and he has seen it do the same for others. He said he isn’t sure if Lurie’s center will manage “to capitalize on people’s suffering and pain, and that opportunity for them to want to change.”Osback said centers connecting to off-site services can serve as barriers for people to “bounce off of,” or “another place where you’ll get sorted into some kind of referral process that may or may not actually meet your needs.” St. Anthony Foundation psychiatrist Dr. Terry Osback: “If access doesn’t mean immediate service, then it’s not access.” Osback said he hopes that can change beyond the pilot’s 30-day window, and that clinicians — and immediate services such as food and clothing — can be offered on-site. When The Examiner visited, there was coffee, tea, and snacks provided. “Every program I’ve ever worked in comes with that idea of some centralized access, and it almost immediately gets nicknamed ‘non-access,’” Obsack said. “All you do is give an appointment two weeks down the line, or worse yet, two months or two years. They just bounce. They don’t come back.” Ultimately, St. Anthony’s leadership said they feel the issues facing San Francisco’s unhoused population and those struggling with behavioral-health challenges are long-term problems, requiring long-term investments lasting far beyond elected officials’ time in office. “Politicians look at two-year cycles, and we look at 30-year cycles,” Osback said. “I think that’s the perspective you need to look at if you want to fix homelessness.” San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman: “The problem for places like San Francisco is that for too long, there had not been enough acknowledgement that tradeoffs were happening.”Left-right: Supervisor Rafael Mandelman and Supervisor Joel Engardio at Daniel Lurie’s Inauguration Day banquet celebration at the Far East Cafe in Chinatown, San Francisco on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025. San Francisco’s recently elected crop of leaders is taking a new look at some old ways that The City has done business. Fresh off their swearing-in ceremonies, Mayor Daniel Lurie and city supervisors have spent the first two months of this year firing off a barrage of reform measures attempting to cut down on the red tape andthat have earned San Francisco a reputation as a place where it’s both difficult and expensive to get anything done.. Supervisor Myrna Melgar has advanced a measure that would peel back rules that limit what sorts of window frames home owners can install. Supervisor Bilal Mahmood has taken aim at contracting requirements that he says make it too hard for government agencies to upgrade their software.is another’s institutional safeguard, and many reform proposals have been met with angry protests from residents making the case that the rules filling up San Francisco’s voluminous law books were put in place for good reasons. Historic preservation requirements, environmental standards, competitive bidding processes — such regulations might be cumbersome, yet backers argue they also help toLooking at the measures coming out of the Board of Supervisors right now, it really seems like a common thread is a desire to make itI think it was a conversation happening in San Francisco, but I think broader conversation happening in blue cities and blue states. We are the people who believe in government and want to see government deliver, and I think there’s growing awareness that there’s a way in which the accretion of regulation over time can actually lead to worse outcomes and hamper government’s ability to actually deliver on the progressive promises that we’re making. And so I think what you’re seeing from the mayor and potentially many members of the Board of Supervisors is an interest in taking a fresh look at the requirements and trying to simplify our processes, to get things moving faster and to allow us to do more.I think there’s also a little bit of a post-COVID recognition that in that time, using emergency powers, where we were able to move more quickly do more things, and a sense that we ought to be able to move quickly on important priorities, even when we’re not in a declared emergency. Of course, residents have been complaining for years and years about these issues. Why do you think this reform push is taking place now?Even in the prior board — a more progressive, more utopian board — we did a lot of housing streamlining and process reform. So the conversation has been going on for several years.You hinted at some soul-searching happening in blue cities right now. Given all the frustration that there is with the direction that many cities are going, do you think that there is a crisis of credibility for progressive-led governments that they can solve the problems that residents care about most?So we need to get out of our own way. We need to deliver for our people, and we have to show that you don’t have to drive off a cliff in the way that the federal government is doing to actually meaningfully address these issues. How do you thread that needle? When you consider what you’re going to cut, how do you plan to weigh that tradeoff between efficiency on the one hand and the need for legal guardrails and safeguards on the other? So I think the problem for places like San Francisco is that for too long, there had not been enough acknowledgement that tradeoffs were happening and that we were slowing down our processes and making it harder to get things done. Notwithstanding the fact that we were trying to do good things, we were making the delivery of basic governmental functions less effective. So it’s a trade-off, and that’s not always going to mean necessarily that you don’t care about this or that social policy, or this or that economic or social-justice priority, but it does mean you have to be honest about the costs and try to weigh them as best you can. It also means you can’t be doing everything all at the same time. It’s too much, and it does result in a sclerotic, overly regulated, too slow, too costly government that cannot deliver basic things. So do we rip out any social value or priority we’ve ever had? Any health and safety regulation? Any worker protection legislation? No, I don’t think we need to do that. But I do think we need to look at everything with fresh eyes and try to pare some of this back and be thoughtful in the future about adding any new kinds of requirements. What areas of government do you think are the most ripe for reform? Where do you plan to focus your efforts? We’re going to need to keep working on procurement, so I introduced my legislation last week . I see that as a first step, not the last step, and I’m hoping that my colleagues will have more in additional contributions. We just need to keep finding new opportunities to streamline procurement contracting for goods and services to do the work of the people. Permitting is another area where, plainly, if we have folks who have been working on this for years, but is still too complicated, then we need to try to simplify it more. I think we’re just going to keep finding that there’s more well-intentioned stuff in there, not only than we need, but than we can afford. Regulatory reform is a big, abstract concept. When will residents begin to feel the difference in their daily lives? When will business owners start to notice that it’s easier to get things done? That is a great question, and I do not know the answer. It may be that you gradually feel things getting better. It may also be that there’s a tipping point where there’s a dramatic shift. I’m not sure. But I know directionally where we need to go, and I’m encouraged that it seems like directionally, we are going there.Bartender Oscar Gonzalez making a tree of Espresso Martinis at the Balboa Cafe at 3199 Fillmore St. in San Francisco on Friday, Feb. 21, 2025.Click 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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