San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is looking to remove a proposal from City Council members that would require each district to have a homeless shelter.
Supervisor Bilal Mahmood wrote the proposal, dubbed the “geographic equity” law, which would ease the burden on certain neighborhoods by requiring leaders in other neighborhoods and all of the city’s 11 districts to create temporary shelters for people experiencing homelessness.
If the measure is approved by the City Council, each San Francisco district will be required to approve at least one new shelter, transitional housing facility, behavioral health residential care facility, or outpatient clinic by June 2026, according to the San Francisco Standard.
However, Lurie has opposed this push. Amendments authored by the mayor’s office would gut the “geographic law” and instead require that each district simply “endeavor to” approve a temporary shelter.
Lurie spokesman Charles Lutvak said the amendments are driven by data.
“Voters gave Mayor Lurie and the Board of Supervisors a shared mandate to tackle our behavioral health and homelessness crisis,” Lutvak said. “We will continue working with Supervisor Mahmood and the entire board to build on that strategy and give people struggling on our streets a better option.”
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Mahmood said Lurie’s amendments are an early starting point for discussion, but did not comment on their specifics.
“We’re operating in the spirit of collaboration,” Mahmood said. “The mayor and our office are not going to agree on 100% of things. We want to help people with unmet needs across the city. Our methodologies may differ.”