Blueprint Brief: Week of 7/21/2025

‍Don’t just take our word for it: Lurie’s crushing it. But there may be clouds forming on the horizon of these good vibes.

We said it when he hit 100 days and we’ll say it now (with the backing of a poll from the SF Chronicle): Lurie is crushing it and the vibes are good. So good, in fact, that Daniel Lurie is more popular than Mayor Breed was unpopular at this time last year. 

But when you drill into the nuance of the poll, it begs the question: is the music starting to slow for our Mayor? People are digging the clean streets, the heavy-handed approach to tackling crime, and the emphasis on downtown revitalization - but he got lower marks when it came to how he’s sheltering the homeless, handling fentanyl, and lowering the cost of living. 

People are rushing back to SF for the AI gold rush and heating up the housing market, and the Mayor’s team recently walked back a huge campaign promise: 1,500 shelter beds by his first six months (which we know isn’t happening - that’s not our take, his administration said it). If there’s one thing SF voters are, it’s perceptive - and Mayor Lurie should look at these areas of relative softness in the poll and use it as a roadmap for where he focuses next.

‍How is SFUSD still getting it wrong?

In what feels like an episode of Groundhog Day, we are still talking about SFUSD…and everything its administration continues to get wrong. Our parent organization (Neighbors for a Better San Francisco) ran a poll of parents to get a sense of how they think things are going. The answer? Not well. In fact, 92% of current SFUSD parents surveyed don’t feel like the district is headed in the right direction. No doubt, the administration’s botched handling of Ethnic Studies had something to do with this.

Regardless of whether or not you support Ethnic Studies (which, as an organization, we do - so long as it’s well vetted and thoughtfully implemented), the bottom line is this: San Francisco families need to have a high degree of confidence in our public school system. As one of the most important drivers of whether families choose to stay or leave our city, and at a time where we are seeing hugely unfavorable age demographic dynamics taking hold in our city, the stakes are simply too high to not get things right.

A major player in the homelessness industrial complex just walked off with $2.8M of taxpayer dollars…ending what amounts to a frivolous lawsuit against SF.

In 2022, the Coalition on Homelessness sued the City to stop its encampment sweeps. Well, they just won $2,828,000 of taxpayer dollars (amidst a massive structural budget deficit) to cover the cost of their attorneys fees, pending approval by the Board of Supervisors. While this will stop them from continuing to pursue costly and frivolous claims in appellate court, it hurts to see so much go to an organization that doesn’t always seem to have the city’s interest at heart.

Their case centered on questions around whether or not the City was effectively bagging and tagging the personal property it cleared from encampments (“bagging and tagging” is where City employees collect belongings from an encampment, tag it with its’ owner, and then hold it for said person to come retrieve) as well as whether the city was allowed to conduct sweeps in the first place.

While City Attorney David Chiu represents the City and more or less had to present this settlement for approval, it sheds light on the types of tactics the Coalition uses; the Coalition isn’t on the side of what’s right for the City, nor our unhoused folks. And these frivolous lawsuits are coming at the expense of everyday San Franciscans. Read more of our take here.