The view from the double bed would be worthy of a five-star hotel: the serene green of Fort Mason sloping toward the Marina, the Golden Gate Bridge stretched out like a welcome mat, the rock of Alcatraz Island studding San Francisco Bay.
San Francisco, CA
Airbnb Might Be Struggling, but SF Hostels Are Thriving—Sort of
But it’s not a five-star hotel, or even a hotel at all. It’s Hostelling International’s Fisherman’s Wharf hostel, perched on a gorgeous bluff above Aquatic Cove, where private room No. 23 sets back guests as little as $100 a night. Visitors won’t have their own bathroom, but they can enjoy a cozy common area with a crackling fireplace, an in-house theater, an expansive shared kitchen and free breakfast.
The hostel—housed in a historic 1863 building that once billeted Civil War soldiers—is one of nine such affordable accommodations scattered around the city. While San Francisco hostels have long attracted young and crunchy international travelers on a budget, the city’s bargain beds are now giving Airbnbs a run for their money by offering more than just affordability.
Hostels’ increased privacy and perks are attracting a wider range of ages and demographics. The Music City hostel in Lower Nob Hill—which recently underwent a major overhaul—has rooms equipped with guitars and amps for practicing. The hotel-like Samesun on Lombard Street includes free parking and private rooms. The funky Green Tortoise Hostel in North Beach features zany carpeting, a boho common area and a free dry sauna.
“We’re very bullish about where San Francisco is going to be in two to three years,” said Russ Hedge, president and CEO of Hostelling International USA, the largest hostelling network in the world. The company also operates a location in Union Square and a pair of famed lighthouse lodgings down the coast in Montara and Pigeon Point, where you can fall asleep to crashing surf for as little as $45 a night. While Hostelling International closed one of its Downtown hostels during the pandemic, the company is now actively scouting a new location in the city.
All of this is conspiring to make the hostelling scene something it hasn’t been in at least a generation: broadly desirable. Across the country, elaborate amenities like rooftop pools and steam rooms have led some to speculate that hostels are poised to overtake Airbnbs as accommodations of choice.
“Guests want the social vibe that comes with staying at the hostel,” Hedge said. “But they also want a level of privacy that probably didn’t exist 20 to 30 years ago.”
That has led to changes like more private rooms, more single-stall bathrooms and private changing areas in shower rooms, amenities that didn’t exist in hostels a decade or two ago.
Even though hotel bargains are hard to come by in high-cost San Francisco, you can score a hostel bed for as little as $28 in the heart of the city with amenities galore—so why are so many of them only half full?
Perception Is Everything
With their prime locations, array of amenities and basement prices, hostels could be a stiff competitor to Airbnb, which witnessed a rise in vacancy rates last year. But both forms of accommodations appear to be suffering from the same problem: the negative narrative surrounding San Francisco.
“The doom loop narrative is keeping people away,” said Ruben Ortiz. The general manager of Hostelling International’s Fisherman’s Wharf hostel cited a recent school group—50 kids from the United Kingdom—that canceled their reservation because of what they were seeing on the news.
Overnights in San Francisco hostels were down 15% in 2023 as compared with 2019—whereas that rate is only 8% in the rest of the country, Hedge said. The Hostelling International president attributes the San Francisco drop to the lack of a rebound in travel from China and the Asian rim. But it’s not only that.
“Our travelers are quite well-informed,” he said. “So if there is media coverage that raises questions about a city or a neighborhood, they’ll take that into account in terms of their travel plans.”
At the European Hostel on SoMa’s Minna Street, that kind of news was happening in real time during a visit by The Standard. “Tourists are very scared to come to this street right now,” said receptionist Nikunj Upadhyay on the phone, while registering a guest’s complaint about people doing drugs outside his front door. “There are kids staying here.”
The capacity at Green Tortoise is currently under 50%, lower than is typical for the slow winter season, when occupancy rates usually hover above 60%. The Fisherman’s Wharf and Samesun hostels are also below 50% occupancy.
Yet despite all the negativity in the ether, hostel guests interviewed by The Standard only had positive things to say about the city, highlighting its beauty and the friendliness of the residents.
“It’s a great city,” said Samesun guest Renata Paulo, who traveled from Washington, D.C., to celebrate New Year’s Eve. “I can’t wait to come back.”
The Hostelling International president, for his part, remains optimistic about the future of San Francisco—and about what hostels can provide for it. “Our guests have felt so welcomed by the people of San Francisco,” he said. “There’s an attitude that distinguishes it from other cities, a graciousness.”
What’s more, hostels can host group sizes not possible in Airbnbs, like touring cyclists or large Girl Scout troops, like the one that overtakes the Fisherman’s Wharf hostel every year.
“The whole place fills up with little girls,” Ortiz said. “And the chaperone moms sipping on their chardonnay, saying, ‘We have to drink to get through this.’”
Narcotics police officers arrest a drug dealer on Eddy Street during a drug bust in San Francisco on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023. Federal prosecutions of suspected drug dealers in San Francisco dropped under the Trump administration, data shows, an puzzling juxtaposition with the administration’s tough talk about crime in the city.
Just hours after staving off what was to be President Donald Trump’s latest immigration enforcement surge in a major blue city, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie took to the national stage and announced that he would, in fact, “welcome” some federal assistance — but of a different kind.
The planned militarized raids would harm the city and stifle its recovery, Lurie said in an Oct. 23 press conference, relaying what he told Trump the previous evening. But Lurie also explicitly encouraged the continuation of city partnerships with agencies including FBI, DEA, ATF and U.S. Attorney’s Office, he said, “to get drugs and drug dealers off the streets.”
Trump, who described San Francisco as a “mess” days earlier, said in a Truth Social post that Lurie had helped convince him to call off the troops, but believed the mayor was making a mistake.
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“I told him … we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the law does not permit him to remove,” the post said.
A Chronicle analysis of federal prosecution data, however, shows that since Trump took office, federal officials have significantly dialed back an initiative that targeted some of San Francisco’s most high-priority criminal offenders and fast-tracked the deportations of those convicted.
Federal drug cases filed in San Francisco dropped by an average of more than 50% per month in 2025 compared to recent years; the result of a slowdown of the federal-local partnership Lurie described in his remarks without mentioning by name.
That initiative was an operation forged under the Biden administration dubbed “All Hands on Deck.” The program directed the power of U.S. government against low-level dealers in San Francisco, where penalties for drug crimes are much stiffer in federal court compared to state court.
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All Hands on Deck was among a wave of 2023 crackdowns that took aim at drug hotbeds in the Tenderloin and SoMa neighborhoods, where users and dealers often congregated by the dozens.
Crucial to the initiative was lowering the bar for the types of drug crimes that would be handled by San Francisco’s federal prosecutors, who had traditionally pursued cases against major players within the drug supply chain.
Federal prosecutors in San Francisco filed an average of seven drug-dealing cases a month so far in 2025; plummeting from the average 15 monthly cases filed between August 2023 — when All Hands on Deck was launched — and December 2024.
The San Francisco figures are a stark example of a broader trend. A recent Reuters investigation found that the rate of federal drug charges filed this year was lower than it had been in decades; a downturn that comes after the Trump administration diverted thousands of federal agents who investigate crimes to instead focus on civil immigration roundups.
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In San Francisco, this included agents with the DEA, FBI, ATF who had been working with local police on drug busts, according to federal law-enforcement sources familiar with the operations.
The Chronicle reached out to the local branches of FBI, ATF and DEA for comment on this story. Spokespeople for the FBI and DEA did not respond to questions about their agents’ reported shift to immigration enforcement, both citing the government shutdown. An automatic response from ATF stated that the agency’s spokesperson had been furloughed, also due to the shutdown.
With their attention directed at immigration enforcement, federal agents have privately feared that hard-won gains in cleaning up San Francisco streets will begin to backslide.
“There were huge discussions going, ‘hey, we need to focus on the threat, and not going out there chasing people for immigration enforcement operations,” said one federal law-enforcement official.
The Chronicle spoke to multiple current and federal officials on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly,in accordance with the Chronicle’s policies.
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Michelle Lo, a spokesperson for the U.S. District Attorney’s Office of Northern California, said the office wasn’t able to comment on the charging data reviewed by the Chronicle due to staffing shortages related to the federal government shutdown.
Lo said the office remained committed to the All Hands on Deck operation, which was introduced by San Francisco’s former top federal prosecutor, Ismail Ramsey. Trump fired Ramsey in February, and in May appointed Craig Missakian as his successor.
“Our work through this initiative has driven visible, positive changes,” Lo said in an emailed statement. “The partnership between federal and local law enforcement remains strong and a priority for this Office.”
When asked for comment from Lurie, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office directed the Chronicle to the mayor’s Oct. 23 remarks.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who has made drug cases one of her office’s top priorities, said the assistance by federal prosecutors provides a “critical deterrent” to drug dealing.
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“If a person goes to trial in federal court, they risk incarceration because the Federal bench takes this crime seriously,” a spokesperson for Jenkins’ office wrote in an emailed statement. “In contrast, in San Francisco state court … many judges do not treat drug dealing as a serious crime and the drug dealers therefore do not fear any significant consequence.”
Jenkins has met with Missakian once, on July 7, where they discussed the All Hands on Deck Partnership, the spokesperson said. No changes to the partnership were discussed.
San Francisco has long posted low rates of violent crimes, and in recent years all categories of crime have been falling to historically low numbers. But the scourge of fentanyl and the pandemic-era boom in the city’s open-air drug markets elevated what were traditionally treated as low-level street dealing offenses to one of the city’s most urgent priorities.
The operation established a partnership between local law enforcement and federal agencies including the FBI, DEA, ATF, aimed at maximizing the arrests of drug dealers and swiftly prosecuting them.
Previously, street-dealing suspects were mostly prosecuted in San Francisco courts, where the risk of lengthy prison sentences and deportation for undocumented immigrants is much lower than in federal court.
In a late 2023 interview, Ramsey said the operation was designed to address the devastation of fentanyl, and the unique challenges of San Francisco’s drug trafficking enterprise, which had evolved away from a traditional hierarchy.
“We have basically a decentralized system of individual dealers who are acting as independent contractors,” Ramsey said at the time. (They’re) “being supplied their drugs on a regular basis, and then they’re commuting to San Francisco to deal drugs and return to their suppliers and do it all over again.”
In San Francisco, where a large portion of those arrested in recent years for drug sales have been undocumented immigrants from Honduras, a federal conviction for drug dealing means near-certain removal from the U.S.
Deportation is a much rarer outcome of a conviction in San Francisco courts, where sanctuary policies prevent city officials from working with federal agents on immigration actions.
All Hands on Deck also fast-tracked prosecutions by offering low-level offenders plea deals that included no additional jail time, but three years of probation and stay-away orders from the Tenderloin. Undocumented immigrants who took this deal were immediately turned over to ICE for deportation proceedings.
Last week, Mayor Daniel Lurie stole a page from the script of the president whose name he refuses to utter. By appointing a glaringly inexperienced and unqualified supervisor to represent the Sunset District, the mayor made an uncharacteristically cynical and risky move — especially for someone whose own thin resume was a liability in his run for office.
As far as I can tell, Lurie’s political calculus in naming to the Board of Supervisors Isabella “Beya” Alcaraz — a 29-year-old former pet-supply shop owner who never had shown the slightest interest in San Francisco’s civic affairs — goes something like this. By appointing someone who is a blank slate, with no known positions on anything other than loving the Sunset, Lurie has birthed a lawmaker who will be completely loyal to him. If Alcaraz can somehow win a special election in June, and then a general election five months later, he will have created an iron-clad ally on the famously fractious board.
But this is a huge risk for the mayor. He and the team that vetted Alcaraz will be wholly responsible for guiding her through the complexities of governing and politicking, from helping staff her legislative office to positioning her for a campaign against formidable competition.
The mayor got Alcaraz off to a quick start: As The Standard’s Power Play newsletter reported Sunday, Lurie is activating his “prodigious fundraising network” to support the new supe, and his staff is already helping her hire her own. On Friday, he accompanied her to the annual Bruce-Mahoney football match between St. Ignatius College Preparatory School and Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, where Lurie (opens in new tab)threw an impressive, pre-game spiral (opens in new tab) and Alcaraz wore her SI varsity jacket from her days on the high school’s crew team.
Lurie is already attempting to spin Alcaraz’s shortcomings into positives. “When I talk to Beya, I see someone who is not a career politician, but has spent her life in service to this community,” he said at her swearing-in ceremony. “She doesn’t owe anyone anything other than the people who live right here in the Sunset.”
It’s impossible to fault Alcaraz, who had the gumption to approach Lurie at a night market, for wanting this role. Before last week, she was working for an after-school enrichment program, having apparently mucked up her failed pet store, which smelled “like death” when she handed it over to a new owner, The Standard reported Monday. Now she is (opens in new tab)earning more than $175,000 a year (opens in new tab) in a government job with top-notch benefits.
Chutzpah alone, however, is a poor substitute for qualifications, experience, or even previously demonstrated curiosity about the subject matter.
Alcaraz attended Diablo Valley College in the East Bay and City College of San Francisco, but didn’t receive a degree from either. She told me in a brief phone interview Saturday that she studied physics and business, but didn’t finish the coursework because she devoted herself seven days a week to her store. (She bought the store in 2019, when she would have been at least 22 years old, more than enough time to have earned a two-year associate degree.)
College is neither for everyone nor a prerequisite for success in life. It is, however, required for many jobs in the government of the City of San Francisco. For example, the city stipulates that candidates for a senior administrative analyst role, a relatively low-level bureaucratic position, have “a baccalaureate degree from an accredited college or university and three years full-time equivalent experience performing professional-level analytical work.”
Legislative aides on the Board of Supervisors, the type of people who will work under Alcaraz, must have “two years of general administrative or office-management experience, preferably in a public or community-based agency,” or have graduated from “a four-year college or university … or an equivalent combination of training and experience.”
Alcaraz doesn’t merely lack credentials. Before she pitched Lurie, she hadn’t shown any clear interest in government. I asked her over the weekend if she had ever been to a Board of Supervisors meeting or a commission hearing. “I have been diligently reviewing the videos,” she told me, referring to (opens in new tab)SFGovTV (opens in new tab) replays of legislative sessions, which I took to mean she hadn’t.
I have, in past columns, railed against the multitude of San Francisco’s commissions, and I often am stupefied at the hours of time wasted by the city’s prodigious public commentariat. But say one thing for the volunteer public servants on the dais and the gadflies who grill them: They show up. They demonstrate their interest in the city’s governmental affairs.
Alcaraz listed for me examples of her civic engagement. “I’ve always been very active in the service world. I have volunteered at at-risk youth camps. I coached basketball. I did a pet-food bank. I would work the church fundraisers for sports camps and help plan parts of the dinners.” She also compared herself to Lurie: “I think the mayor is kind of an example of someone who wasn’t in office before, and then suddenly was,” she said.
Oh my. I am not here to denigrate the value of bake sales and church dinners and the good deeds they fund. But they hardly are preparation for the complexities of this city’s legislative affairs, which are a convoluted mess that take even seasoned operators decades to learn.
Alcaraz told an affecting tale last week about her frustration with applying for a permit to build an animal-waste shed behind her shop, and how the experience will help her empathize with the plight of small-business owners. No doubt. But that’s a bit like saying that suffering the indignity of being kept waiting for hours in the emergency room makes you eligible to be a surgeon.
The elephant in the room of Alcaraz’s unlikely ascension is the outsized controversy over last year’s Prop K — which closed a section of the Great Highway to cars and created the Sunset Dunes park — as well as the subsequent firestorm that cost Engardio his job. Alcaraz has refused to say how she voted on K. She told me she wants to look forward rather than “causing new divisiveness.”
Based on a defensive comment she made last week, though, I’m guessing she voted yes. “The way I voted on Prop. K is because we didn’t have all the facts,” she said at her appearance with Lurie. “We weren’t informed. I did the best I could with the information I was given.”
I asked her why she felt uninformed. “What I mean by that is the way in which Prop K was introduced,” Alcaraz said. “Obviously, the Sunset felt completely betrayed and blindsided. There was no public forum. We weren’t able to voice our feelings.”
The response suggests Alcaraz already has mastered the typical gripe of San Franciscans who don’t like a thoroughly aired out policy decision — and proceed to complain they aren’t being heard. That Engardio bamboozled his constituents is an assertion with which opposing sides will never agree. That the Sunset wasn’t able to voice its feelings before and after the vote on Prop K is laughably untrue.
Americans may have to settle for a (opens in new tab)TV host as defense secretary (opens in new tab) and an (opens in new tab)insurance lawyer (opens in new tab) as the U.S. Attorney in a key federal district for years to come. That’s a reality that liberal San Franciscans have to live with. But residents of District 4 will not have to accept Alcaraz. They will have their say about who represents them — and how respected by the mayor they feel — in seven short months.
If Lurie doesn’t regret this decision already, he may then.
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