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Mayor Daniel Lurie throws out the ceremonial first pitch before the San Francisco Giants home opener at Oracle Park on Friday.— was visibly thrilled by the panel of speakers he’d assembled to discuss his Crankstart Foundation’s long-in-the-making report on San Francisco homelessness.
Among the speakers at last week’s roundtable was Kunal Modi, who, while a partner at worldwide consulting firm McKinsey & Co., helped Crankstart produce its new, sweeping inquiry into The City’s“It’s such a happy coincidence that Kunal decided to make the leap and put into practice what he’d once analyzed and what he had long thought about in his prior work at McKinsey,” Moritz said speaking at the event.Lurie, too, benefited from the work of his predecessor — crime rates, for example, have fallen. But those in and around Lurie’s orbit say they believe his arrival in City Hall has brought fresh faces, new perspectives and a distinct vibe to San Francisco. Mayor Daniel Lurie speaking at the Tenderloin Town Hall hosted by St. Anthony Foundation in San Francisco on Thursday, March 27, 2025., Lurie — an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and founder of nonprofit Tipping Point Community — went out of his way to highlight his dearth of experience inside city government and promised to dispense with the traditional ways of doing business in San Francisco.Gloria Bruce, Crankstart’s program director of housing security and public private partnerships, said the foundation has collaborated with city officials for several years, including under the administration of former Mayor London Breed. However, she said, “I do think it seems like Mayor Lurie is taking a different approach in terms of who he’s bringing to the table to look at these issues.” Supervisor Connie Chan — a progressive who has worked in city government for close to 20 years — said the change isn’t in just who Lurie has brought to the table, but how he reacts to disagreement from those sitting at it. “He keeps his cool and he stays calm,” Chan said. “So does his team, and they value communications more than disagreement.” Lurie might not reinvent city government from the ground up or mark a wild departure from Breed in terms of ideology.The structure at the top has fundamentally shifted. Lurie opted to assemble a team of policy chiefs who would oversee different portions of city government, reducing thedirectly to the mayor, a problem highlighted by the think tank SPUR in a 2024 report. SPUR President and CEO Alicia John-Baptiste has since left the organization — to join Lurie’s administration as a policy chief. Lurie has tapped a number of people with substantive government experience to serve in his administration, but he has also brought people inside who are from firmly outside the traditional political power structure in San Francisco. Modi, who worked as a consultant for McKinsey in San Francisco, is among them. But Lurie has also brought in people like former Twitter CFO Ned Segal — a Tipping Point board member — to serve as chief of housing and economic development.It was widely speculated that he would quickly oust Police Chief Bill Scott, given that public safety was his chief concern throughout the campaign. But Scott, thus far, remains on board. So, too, does Sarah Dennis Phillips, the head of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development tasked with spurring economic growth downtown. And Lurie’s decision to replacefentanyl-emergency ordinance , an early and signature piece of legislation that will allow his administration great leeway in taking on the fentanyl and homelessness crises. For example, his administration is now able to negotiate and sign leases for new properties — without Board of Supervisors approval — to launch new treatment facilities or homeless shelters.; critics responded that doing so only pushed the problems to 16th and Mission. He touted police efforts at 16th and Mission; critics countered that doing so only pushed its But for Lurie’s backers, he’s at least doing something, even if early results and improvements are incremental. “The fact that things are changing and it’s clear that he is making things happen is refreshing to see,” said Steven Bacio, a director of moderate political group GrowSF. “It didn’t seem like anything was moving under Mayor Breed. It felt like nothing was changing.” Mayor Daniel Lurie, right, greets school children while walking through the Tenderloin neighborhood on the morning of his inauguration Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, in San Francisco.into the candidacy of Lurie’s main opponent, Breed, in last year’s election. But he had nothing but praise to offer to the new mayor when contacted by The Examiner. “I’ve been very impressed with the mayor’s ability to build a team and his consistency and focus on downtown revitalization, public safety and addressing our mental health challenges,” Larsen said in a text message. “His energy is infectious and I’ve never felt more optimistic about the city’s future.” But, why, exactly, has the energy changed? Larsen credits it, in part, to the change in the environment around the mayor. The balance of power has shifted on the Board of Supervisors, which is now controlled by political moderates similar to Lurie — not that he has made a habit of securing single-vote legislative victories. Larsen also gave Lurie credit for seeking private-public partnerships between business and government in much the same way that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did in the wake of 9/11. “That is bringing a more pragmatic approach which will help accelerate our recovery,” said Larsen, who will help lead the newSpeaking of those pesky supervisors, who have battled with mayors in the past, Lurie has been diligent in seeking consensus with legislators. Rather than secure a narrow majority for passage of his coveted fentanyl legislation, Lurie made the compromises necessary to win 10 of 11 supervisors’ votes. Bacio said one change under Lurie is that he “actually wants to hear when you disagree with him and have a problem.”Mayor Daniel Lurie speaking at Tulip Day in Union Square where people came to pick 80,000 free tulips in San Francisco on Saturday, March 22, 2025.As a candidate who almost entirely self-financed his campaign, some suggested that Lurie might not be beholden to labor unions in the way that other politicians — elected with the financial and boots-on-the-ground organizing help of unions — have been. Thus far, labor and Lurie have largely tiptoed around one another. Though his call for city employees to be in the office at least four days a week rankled some of the rank and file, union leadership Friction might finally surface when Lurie releases his first budget proposal, which will require The City to close a budget deficit of about $800 million over the next two years. Already, unions have signaled that they won’t accept cuts that come as a result of — as they describe it — The City’s well-off failing to pay their fair share into the system.,” said Theresa Rutherford, president of SEIU 1021. “We strongly feel that it’s also a flagrant disregard for the well-being of the city and county of San Francisco and its residents.” Labor unions also expressed concern about the effects President Donald Trump’s administration will have on its members. “We are in a moment where the mayor’s office and unions in San Francisco have to work together in order to protect our communities,” Rutherford said. “None of us have a choice, so we have reached out, we have made suggestions and are continuing to seek to work collaboratively.” Lurie, for his part, has bent over backwards to avoid engaging with the Trump administration on any level, instead pledging his focus on what he can control within San Francisco’s borders. “I think that everybody has a different style in dealing with this moment and for Mayor Lurie, it seems to me that he’s focusing on San Francisco and recognizing the limitation of his power and limitation of the time and jurisdiction and resources,” Chan said. “I’d much rather have a mayor that has focus on tasks at hand than a mayor that has some kind of aspiration or goals of higher office or any other agenda.” Valentine’s Day wedding of Jack Ryder and Bartolomeo Magnani officiated by Mayor Daniel Lurie at San Francisco City Hall on Friday, Feb. 14, 2025. Absent a helping hand from the federal government, Lurie has also made clear that he’ll seek help from the private sector, whether it be to help fund his ambitious vision to massively expand shelter and treatment beds in San Francisco or kickstart downtown’s redevelopment. For potential detractors, cozying up to the private sector — whether for ideas or for workers — could lead to problems. “This is contracting out, and this kind of money could be better spent hiring full-time workers and really creating a more committed workforce,” Rutherford said, noting The City already spends billions of dollars on outside contractors.about whether those funding The City’s initiatives will be setting its policies, or if the government retains control of the ship. Crankstart was delighted to see that the solutions it outlined in its homelessness report also popped up in Lurie’s own “” plan, but Bruce maintained that a plan out of whack with city priorities wouldn’t pass muster, no matter who’s paying for its implementation. “They will continue doing their great work,” Bruce said of city staffers. “We hope that this is a useful research and data tool for them.”The San Francisco skyline after a rainy day and the storm clouds clearing at the end of the day on Wednesday, March 29, 2023.The next several months could produce a new housing plan that shapes the course of development across San Francisco for decades to come.that would increase height limits and add density throughout much of the north and west of The City. In total, the new plan would Adopting the upzoning map would mark an important milestone for San Francisco as it works to meet ambitious state-mandated housing targets in the coming years. Those targets require The City to plan for 82,000 new homes by the end of 2031, about half of which must be affordable developments set aside for low-income residents. But in order for the upzoning plan to be finalized, it still must win approval from the Planning Commission, the Board of Supervisors and the mayor.“We haven’t changed the zoning on the western side of The City for 50 years,” said Planning Department Director Rich Hillis during a public talk he gave April 3, shortly after the release of the draft map.To get a sense of how this highly consequential — and potentially contentious — approval process might play out in the coming months, The Examiner checked in with advocates on all sides of With the first round of public review set for Thursday, some advocates are already gearing up for a knockdown battle.As the dust settles from last week’s release, it has become increasingly clear that the new draft plan — which has received support from Mayor Daniel Lurie — has delivered much of what the pro-development side has been pushing for.Jane Natoli, San Francisco organizing director for YIMBY Action: “I do see this as the kind of plan that can realistically pass.”The plan focuses much of the added density on high-traffic commercial corridors on the thinking that these areas have the most capacity to support an influx of new residents. As one largely representative example, many parcels that lie along Taraval Street in the Sunset District would see their height limits increased from four stories to six — or, in some cases, eight — stories.The plan also applies so-called “density decontrol” to broad stretches of western and northern neighborhoods. The policy allows builders to add more units within existing height and size limits. In effect, the change would mean that many suburban single-family homes could be redeveloped into duplexes or fourplexes. The proposal “unlocks a lot of opportunities,” said Brianna Morales, an organizer with the San Francisco-based Housing Action Coalition, which advocates for homebuilders. While The City’s construction industry has struggled in recent years to overcome strong market headwinds — in the form ofAs for Natoli, while she said she is broadly pleased with last Thursday’s release, she would have liked to have seen height-limit increases applied more broadly across The City. “We have lots of examples already in San Francisco and many other cities of tall buildings coexisting with single family-homes or duplexes, and it’s not the end of the world,” she said. Nevertheless, Natoli acknowledged that such changes could easily have stoked even stronger backlash from politically influential residents in The City’s western neighborhoods.All throughout the last year, neighborhood advocates have been organizing to oppose San Francisco’s nascent upzoning plans. Now that the draft plan has been released, they appear to be redoubling their efforts. “We’re preparing for a citywide showdown,” said Lori Brooke, who has been helping to lead this campaign as the co-founder of Neighborhoods United SF. Lori Brooke, co-founder of Neighborhoods United SF: “You start going up to six or eight stories, that dramatically changes the whole light and air and sense of space.”Brooke has been pushing back against the argument that widespread development will help address San Francisco’s housing shortage. Instead, she warns, loosening restrictions on developers will lead to land speculation, demolitions that will displace low-income residents and local businesses, and the construction of hulking residential buildings full of apartments that few renters will be able to afford. “You take these vibrant, sunny, walkable — in many ways, historic — commercial corridors, and you start going up to six or eight stories, that dramatically changes the whole light and air and sense of space,” Brooke said.Many tenants’ rights advocates have also been railing against the upzoning proposal, which they say will do little to meet state-mandated requirements for the production of new affordable housing. “There’s still no affordable housing plan,” said Joseph Smooke, the co-founder of People Power Media. In fact, he said, upzoning could make the development of affordable housing — which typically requires government subsidies — even more difficult to pull off by driving up the value of land, thus making it more expensive for affordable-housing developers to purchase. “So what we’re doing is we’re creating a disadvantage in the marketplace for creating affordable housing,” Smooke said. To level the playing field, Smooke said, The City should be setting aside more public land to be used exclusively for affordable housing. Brooke’s group, Neighborhoods United SF, has already sent out a letter to supporters urging them to show up to this Thursday’s Planning Commission meeting, during which the commission’s staff will present the new upzoning proposal.The upzoning skepticism extends to at least one member of the Board of Supervisors. Connie Chan — who represents the Richmond District, a largely suburban west-side neighborhood that would see significant upzoning under the plan — told The Examiner that if the approval vote were held today, she would be a no.She said that she, too, doubts that upzoning alone will address San Francisco’s affordability crisis. District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan joined with tenant advocates in voicing skepticism that the upzoning plan would yield significant affordability gains for low-income residents. Like the tenant advocates, Chan said she wants to see any upzoning effort that does advance to also be coupled with stronger measures to protect tenants and small businesses from the displacements that might be caused by widespread development growth. She also called for a more thorough review of the potential transit and infrastructure effects that such growth could cause. “These are things that we need to put on the table, and not in a piecemeal fashion for a plan that clearly is going to change the landscape of San Francisco in the most literal sense,” Chan said.Following last November’s supervisor races, development-friendly candidates gained ground on the 11-member board, a shift that could signal a new direction for a legislative body that has, in the past, resisted state attempts to limit The City’s control over local development. As for Natoli, she said she is expecting the current upzoning plan to make it through the political wringer that lies ahead.Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, at Station F, during an event on the sidelines of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025.OpenAI is under the gun to transform from a nonprofit to a for-profit by the end of the year. The author of a state bill that would have barred that move quietly withdrew it last week. Last week, California Assemblymember Diane Papan stripped from Assembly Bill 501 text that would have applied to OpenAI. Papan, who represents much of western San Mateo County, replaced it with new language regarding a completely different subject — notification requirements that those who hold liens on aircraft must adhere to in order to sell the vehicles. David Burruto, Papan’s district director, told The Examiner that the assemblymember gutted and replaced the bill after other nonprofits, legal scholars and other people raised concerns that it might affect other organizations beyond OpenAI. Papan felt the issue needed to be studied further, Burruto said. “We determined that due to its complexity, we needed more time and resources to vet it,” Burruto said. “We needed to take a pause.” Assembly member Diane Papan, D-San Mateo, speaks on a bill before the Assembly at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, June 1, 2023.Papan submitted the rewritten bill to the Assembly on Thursday. That was just three days after San Francisco-based OpenAI announced it was. Some $20 billion of that total is contingent on OpenAI transforming itself into a for-profit corporation by early next year. Although Papan has had conversations with representatives of the artificial-intelligence giant recently, those conversations were about two other bills related to data centers and not specifically about AB 501, Burruto said.The Coalition for AI Nonprofit Integrity, a newly formed nonprofit that organized an open letter in favor of the legislation signed by several AI luminaries, expressed disappointment with Papan’s move. “California is at a critical moment with trillions of dollars and humanity’s future at stake,” coalition spokeswoman Janet Fernandez said in a statement. “We urge the Legislature to engage in this decision to safeguard nonprofit integrity and the interests of all Californians,” she said. OpenAI’s organizational structure has been a source of tension for years. In 2015, when CEO Sam Altman founded it, he structured it as a nonprofit, with the intention of having OpenAI serve as a research lab for advancing AI. But in 2019, with the costs of AI development increasing, OpenAI formed a for-profit subsidiary that allowed it to raise substantial capital from outside investors., charging him with not being candid with board members. Days later, Altman returned as CEO and shook up the board., The Information reported in December. That same month, OpenAI made that intent public, saying in a blog post it planned to turnand give shares in that company to the nonprofit. A public-benefit company is a for-profit business that promises to be operated in a way that benefits society by doing more than just generating profits. Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk, arrive before the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. Zuckerberg’s Meta and Musk have sought to stop OpenAi’s transition to a for-profit company.Elon Musk — the owner of xAI, another public-benefit corporation in the AI field — sued OpenAI and Altmanand the public as a whole by requiring the for-profit entity to value the nonprofit’s stake in it at $30 billion or higher. It also pushed Bonta to require OpenAI to either transfer to the state of California or provide the state free access to artificial general-intelligence technology whenever OpenAI creates it.Papan introduced AB 501 in February. The bill would have prohibited certain “startup venture capital nonprofits” from being acquired by for-profit entities — even if in small chunks — or converting into for-profit corporations. Although the bill didn’t name OpenAI, the terms within it and the organization backing it made clear that AB 501 was targeting the San Francisco AI giant. Among other things, the bill would have applied to nonprofits at which at least one of the following was true:• The nonprofit controlled a for-profit entity that had either attracted $1 billion in outside funding or for which another for-profit company had gained a stake. • Current or former employees, executives or directors of the nonprofit had been promised a stake in the for-profit entity. • In the space of 12 months sometime within a 10-year period, a majority of the directors on the organization’s board had resigned, were fired or had otherwise left.Burrato held out the possibility that Papan might reintroduce the legislation after studying the issue further. “As we move forward with our due diligence and trying to get our hands around it, that will dictate what happens,” he said., according to records filed with the California Secretary of State’s Office. It’s unclear who is behind the nonprofit, which hired San Rafael law firm Nielsen Merksamer Parrinello Gross & Leoni to lobby the legislature, the attorney general’s office and the governor about AB 501 on its behalf. Earlier this year, the coalition gathered signatures for its open letter in support of the bill. Among those who signed were prominentClick 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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