When Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) went to San Francisco a couple of years ago, his luggage was stolen. Every bag. He wasn’t the only one.
At the time, smash-and-grab jobs were the preferred method of thieves looking for a quick score. Almost everyone who went to the airport and left their luggage in the car to grab a drink or get something to eat returned to find a lot of broken glass but little else.
Schiff was in the House of Representatives at the time. He went to a Target in South San Francisco for toiletries, and he had to flag down a clerk to open a locked shelf. Inside was the usual: toothpaste, toothbrushes, razors, and deodorant. Stores in the area had been forced to lock up items because of progressive policies that were soft on crime. Anyone could walk into a store, steal less than $900 worth of items, and walk out scot-free. If they were arrested, which they rarely were, they were back on the street within hours or minutes in some cases. It was all part of a progressive push to decriminalize large swaths of criminal activity in the name of good governance. It was anything but and, in turn, forced retailers to start locking up items.
The clerk at Target had a message for Schiff. “She basically said — in not so many words — that Democrats are a**holes,” Schiff recalled.
Schiff knew then what Democrats seemed blind to. If they had such a big messaging problem in arguably the most progressive corner of one of the bluest states in America, they would be royally screwed elsewhere.
He was right.
Over the past two years, California voters have made it clear they are fed up and want change. They booted out progressive prosecutors in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Alameda County.
They voted in San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a no-nonsense centrist who has made extraordinary advances in his city’s homelessness, crime, and accountability problems. This has made him the enemy of progressive Democrats who have criticized his approach, and yet, crime is lower, homelessness is being handled, the streets are cleaner, and the quality of life is better under his mayoralty.
In Oakland, ground zero for California’s progressive movement, voters flirted with the idea of having a much more centrist mayor in last month’s special election. Ultimately, they voted in Mayor Barbara Lee, a 30-year congressional titan of progressive politics. But even she realized the city craved change, and she reflected it in her transition team, which included more centrists than the city had seen in years.
In San Francisco, voters were frustrated with how Democratic Mayor London Breed did her job. San Francisco didn’t feel any safer, tourists stopped coming, crime rose, businesses fled, and the city, once one of the most naturally stunning in the country, had turned into a human toilet bowl. The city also failed to bounce back as quickly as others in the area had after COVID-19.
“Japanese tourists would come all the time,” George Huang, who has worked in the hospitality industry in the city’s Union Square area for 17 years, told the Washington Examiner. “They all went back and told their friends they can’t get help from the police if they are robbed or need help. They went online and took videos of San Francisco and all of the drugs and homeless people, and everyone across the world saw how San Francisco had become. They stopped coming. Today, I saw two Japanese families at the restaurant. That’s more than I have seen in weeks.”
In November, San Franciscans pinned their hopes for a turnaround on Daniel Lurie, a political novice.
Lurie is the billionaire heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and the founder of the anti-poverty nonprofit group Tipping Point Community. He pledged to clean up the city, eliminate destructive progressive policies, slash unnecessary regulations, take only a $1 salary, and promote good governance. Even though he had never held an elected office in city government, the city was ready to bet on him, and so far, he has mostly delivered.
He has gotten help and insight on drugs, homelessness, and bringing back business from some interesting and deep-pocketed sources, including his friends and family members. He has also received some pushback from nonprofit groups that say his commonsense policies don’t gel well with theirs. Another common complaint is that they believe he overpromises and underdelivers, something that will be put to the test when he rolls out his budget later this month.
When it comes to drugs and homelessness, Lurie has been listening to Tom Wolf.
Wolf spent six months living on the streets of the Tenderloin neighborhood, San Francisco’s notorious 50-block district steeped in crime, prostitution, and every vice imaginable.
He had a well-paying job as a child support officer, but things took a turn for the worse for the father of two in 2015 when he needed foot surgery and was prescribed a 30-day take-home supply of opioids.
“I started going out to the street to purchase more because I couldn’t get any more from my doctor, and I got full-on addicted,” he told the Washington Examiner. “At the peak of my addiction, I was taking 560 milligrams of oxycodone every single day.”
Wolf said the levee broke when his wife found out that their house was in foreclosure because he had stopped paying the mortgage to buy drugs. She cut him off from their money. He went into withdrawal and started to buy cheap heroin. When she found out, she kicked him out and got a restraining order.
Wolf returned to the Tenderloin, where he became a mule for drug dealers. He got arrested — a lot. But in California, at the time under interim Mayor Mark Farrell and then Breed, that only meant a slap on the wrist.
“I got arrested six times in a three-month period, and finally, after the sixth arrest, they kept me in custody for three months,” he said.
He went to jail, got clean, and entered a six-month residential treatment program at the Salvation Army because it was free.
“I found recovery, and I have been clean and sober. I’ll have seven years on June 24,” he said. “And I am back with my wife and kids.”
These days, Wolf is trying to help those with addiction get off the streets, something he believes starts with a get-tough approach to crime, homelessness, and drugs that the state has lacked under Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). Wolf testified before the legislature and is pushing a “recovery first” drug strategy that prioritizes abstinence and long-term remission.
On May 5, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Lurie, Assemblyman Matt Haney, Supervisor Matt Dorsey, and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins in front of city hall in support of Assembly Bill 225, which allows state homelessness programs to support permanent drug-free recovery housing projects across the state.
Haney’s bill would allow local governments to use up to 25% of state homelessness housing funds to support sober living programs — an option currently off-limits under California law. The bill seeks to patch a hole in the state’s “Housing First” policy, which was adopted in 2016 to lower barriers to housing and prohibits programs receiving state funds from requiring sobriety. That means even if someone gets off the streets and off drugs or alcohol, he or she would be placed in an environment that allows those vices and the temptation to be constantly around that person.
“People who want recovery shouldn’t have to live next to active drug use,” Haney said. “Sober housing works because it builds a community of accountability, compassion, and shared commitment to staying clean.”
Haney’s bill has passed the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee, cleared the Health Committee with bipartisan support, and is headed to the Appropriations Committee.
Dorsey, a recovering addict, has pitched a “Recovery First” ordinance that would redefine “remission” from substance abuse disorder as “living a self-directed and healthy life, free from illicit drug use” and enshrine long-term remission through the process of recovery as San Francisco’s primary substance abuse disorder policy goal.
The effort has infuriated critics in a city that has pioneered harm reduction. They argue that forcing addicts to stop doing illegal drugs alienates those who are not ready to quit. The city now prioritizes handing out clean needles, foil, and cans of Narcan. Dorsey’s proposal says the city should pivot.
Drug addiction and homelessness go hand in hand in San Francisco.
As mayor, Lurie has also made decreasing homelessness a priority. On the campaign trail, he promised to solve street homelessness in six months after taking office. That obviously hasn’t happened, but he has stood by a goal of adding 1,500 interim housing units to the city this year. He will rely partly on some projects from the previous administration, but he is betting he can get it done in record time because he was successful in getting an ordinance passed that would give priority to city contracts related to homelessness, drug addiction, and mental health services.
The city will open nearly 300 treatment and interim housing beds by the end of the summer, which will be spread across five sites: four in the city’s South of Market neighborhood and one in the Marina.
“People struggling on our streets deserve a chance to get better. To give them that chance, we must be able to bring them indoors and provide the services they need, and these five interim housing sites will help us do that,” Lurie said in a statement.
Last month, he announced the consolidation of San Francisco’s nine homelessness street-outreach teams into six and put them under the umbrella of the Department of Emergency Management. The teams will refocus their efforts on five neighborhoods. Under previous leaders, the teams lacked communication with one another. A 2023 city audit found that they often had overlapping functions.
When the Washington Examiner spoke to Lurie during his mayoral campaign in October, he stressed public safety as his priority. Crime reports have dropped in the first quarter, and Lurie has pushed for more aggressive police enforcement in places such as Sixth Street and 16th and Mission.
“We’re off to a good start in our first four months in office — property crime is down 35%, violent crime is down 15%, and car break-ins are at a 22-year low, but I’m far from satisfied,” he told us last week. “Our work is not done until residents and visitors feel safe on our streets and downtown is the vibrant area we know it can be.”
The crackdown on crime has made a difference for people like Huang, who say they have started to walk to work again.
“It was so bad, but slowly, very slowly, it’s getting better,” he said. “I know it will take some time, and we have to be patient, but I have seen changes.”
So has Bianca Pal.
Pal is from the East Coast and travels to the Bay Area for business about six times a year. She told the Washington Examiner that she is no longer afraid to walk near the Tenderloin during the day, though she mostly keeps to the Union Square area and other touristy spots. On a recent Saturday, she decided to treat herself to some retail therapy at Williams Sonoma, followed by a trip to the Apple Store and Tiffany & Co. before settling in for five days of back-to-back work meetings.
“I would have stayed holed up in my hotel room, but I took advantage of the weather, and if you look around, San Francisco has cleaned up its act, at least in [Union Square],” she said.
That’s good news for the city, which had seen a huge dip in tourists and had to deal with an exodus of businesses. It will suffer another loss on Sunday, May 10, when luxury retail store Saks Fifth Avenue, a staple in San Francisco, will close its doors for good. The departure follows Macy’s announcement that it would close by 2027 and is the latest of several legacy stores that have announced they are leaving the city’s tourism and shopping district. San Francisco’s vacancy rate is at 35.8%, according to real estate data. While it has improved slightly, San Francisco leaders are already pushing the next big thing.
SAN FRANCISCO’S PUSH FOR ‘RECOVERY FIRST’ DRUG ABUSE PLAN FACES CRUCIAL VOTE
OpenAI’s Sam Altman co-founded a World Network company, the retail location of which opened recently in Union Square.
Nintendo, which has a splashy Mario-themed billboard, will open its store on May 15.
Barnini Chakraborty is a senior investigations reporter for the Washington Examiner.
