Welcome to the Blueprint Brief.

Welcome to the Blueprint Brief, your biweekly rundown of what’s been happening in City Hall and local politics. We’ll do our best to present the facts in a clear, unbiased way - and also let you know what we think about them, always through a lens of pragmatism.

Money, money, money (cue the Abba…)

We’re in the thick of budget season in City Hall. Mayor Lurie has introduced a long-awaited budget—some say his cuts don’t go far enough, whereas others think it’s too much. Making this even trickier? The federal government still owes SF hundreds of millions of dollars in Covid reimbursements from FEMA (which, frankly, we need to come through). 

The quick and dirty, by the numbers…

• The city’s $15.9B budget is more or less the same as last year’s budget, passed by Mayor London Breed
• Despite having a similar population, the SF inflation-adjusted budget is up 53% since 2010
• The SF city government spends almost $20,000 per resident —2x as much as the State of California per capita. 
• SF spends $5.8 billion on contracts with outside vendors
• Nearly 600 vendors are nonprofit organizations; 15% of active suppliers are nonprofits, but 36% of the 44 largest are and comprise $3.1B of total contract value

Future years will need to be more aggressive in addressing structural sources of the budget shortfall (including city headcount) if he’s serious about balancing the budget.

That RV? Move it right along…

The City is making moves to address RV homelessness. After relaxing enforcement around towing oversized vehicles for violating posted parking times, Mayor Lurie has introduced legislation that would put strict limits on RVs from parking on any city street for more than two hours at a time, barring very specific circumstances. As part of this legislation, though - he’s also setting aside funds for street outreach teams to contact and move people out of their RVs and into shelters (this bill also funds the vouchers for shelter). We cover a lot more about the RV homelessness situation in this blog post.

RV homelessness is a complex issue - RVs often times serve as a temporary solution for people who are sliding into homelessness. What’s problematic is when they become a permanent way of life. We’ve seen issues in certain neighborhoods (particularly the Bayview in District 10 and Lake Merced in District 7) with huge numbers of RVs packing neighborhood streets, illegal dumping, and other quality of life issues. We have to balance compassion - helping people exit this intermediary state of homelessness - with also acknowledging that RVs have had an adverse impact on the quality of life in the neighborhoods they’re parked. The Mayor’s proposed legislation strikes this right balance.

In San Jose, action is compassion.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan has charted a decidedly moderate path for himself in a blue state. He’s taken a tough stance on addressing many of the same challenges that have plagued our city: public safety issues, deteriorating street conditions, an addiction and mental health crisis, and homelessness. 

Mahan is going a step further than we have in San Francisco; under newly proposed legislation, someone who repeatedly refuses an offer of shelter could be cited for trespassing, then diverted to the local mental health and CARE courts, which have the power to mandate treatment. 

We have to demonstrate that blue cities (like San Francisco and San Jose) can effectively address the disorder on our streets. Our tired approaches to homelessness in the past have focused too much on philosophy and too little on practicality. The most humane thing we can do to address street level addiction is to mandate treatment for those who may need it most.