San Francisco is preparing to host hundreds of thousands celebrating the Lunar New Year; Thursday, organizers shared their plans for this year’s Chinese New Year parade and festival.

Police shared some of their plans for security preparations for the March parade, at the same time businesses are certainly gearing up in hopes of getting in on the festivities, celebrations and traditions.

At Lion Trading in Chinatown, Lucas Li says the Lunar New Year celebration is an important time for the community and they’re preparing for it.

“I think the most popular thing people come for are our Chinese New Year envelopes, so I think as we welcome the year of the fire horse which is 2026 they are coming to look or these beautiful horse design envelopes,” Li said.

He’s hoping for success and looking forward to the weeks-long celebration starting in mid-February.

“The Lunar New Year I would say is the single largest economic driver for Chinatown every year, small business Chinatown, workers, restaurant look forward to the month long celebration,” said Donald Luu, president of the SF Chinese Chamber of Commerce. “We have a total of 60 floats approximately 70 units different organization, is going to be a huge event.”

The celebration starts in mid-February, with a parade set for March 7. The SFPD says it’s ready to ensure it will be a safe celebration for the tens of thousands who are expected to gather.

“You can expect that you will see a full complement of uniformed officers what we will expecting in terms of specialized units, plain clothes officers, motorcycles, the full gamut of officers to support festivities in this event,” said SFPD Chief Derrick Lew.

“This season is really important to small family-owned businesses like ours because we depend on the support of the community right and we want to promote these traditions for the younger generations,” Li said.

By Todd Gillespie and Catherine Lucey, Bloomberg

The US Department of Commerce is preparing to open a national artificial-intelligence center in San Francisco, putting it closer to firms at the center of some of the government’s most high-profile initiatives.

In addition to the Bay Area, AI export officials will be based in cities across the US, according to a Commerce official, who asked not to be identified.

The Trump administration is looking to increase the country’s edge in AI and defense, industries that are largely based in California. It also aims to exploit natural resources in the state to increase the nation’s energy independence and bolster its geopolitical leverage.

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — For the first time in more than two decades, San Francisco is changing the way it counts the number of unhoused individuals on its streets.

“This is a major change. We’re going from nighttime count to early morning count because we feel we’ll be reaching more people at night people. I was homeless for 18 years. You could never find me,” said Del Seymour, Co-chair San Francisco’s Local Homeless Coordinating Board.

Thursday’s ‘Point in Time’ count will now happen from 5 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Historically, it happened overnight.

Another change, community volunteers will not be involved. Instead, it will only be trained city employees and outreach workers. The Coalition on Homelessness sees that as a lack of transparency.

“They’re not allowing any volunteers on the count. And so, they’re relying on city outreach workers, who in our experience, when they did the RV count, they missed 1 in 5 RVs. It means that it’s not open. And you don’t have the observers and the people participatory process that I think is really important to make sure that everything’s going well,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, Executive Director SF’s Coalition on Homelessness.

MORE: Mayor Lurie talks affordability, homelessness and bringing business back to the SF

We sat with Emily Cohen HSH’s Deputy Director of Communications, who said they made the change to improve visibility.

“We will be identifying vehicles that appear to be occupied and trying to assess if somebody is living in that vehicle. Certainly, if there’s a tent on the street, we make assumptions about how many people are in those tents and try to put together the most accurate picture possible,” said Cohen.

Luz Pena: “Why are volunteers not part of this count?”

Emily Cohen: “To help ensure consistency and transparency of the count, we are relying heavily on trained outreach workers and city staff to conduct the count. Those two groups have always been a part of the count. But in the past, we have had more general volunteers, but we’ve had some training challenges with that in the past, so we’re sticking with, city staff and trained outreach workers this year.”

This time around, the city will also conduct a survey that will include questions like ‘are you homeless?’ and ‘what led to you being homeless?’

Luz Pena: “Do you believe this new method will lead to a more accurate count?”

Emily Cohen: “I think that these improvements will help us ensure an accurate count.”

Our data team aggregated the city’s PIT count data and found that between 2009 and 2024 the number of homeless individuals rose by nearly 30 percent.

MORE: Counting San Francisco’s unhoused — and why you never ask if they are homeless

Some homeless advocates believe the new change is political and could lead to an under count.

“We’re really worried with, you know, a, you know, political intervention on the count, that there could be a false under count and we could show a decrease that in reality is not there,” said Friedenbach.

MORE: Formerly unhoused San Jose Columbus Park residents adjusting to restrictions in new home

In the Fiscal year 2025 to 2026, the city is projected to get $62.8 million or 7.4% of the total budget from federal sources. The city’s Homelessness and Supportive Housing Department will continue with this method for the next 10 years to build up a strong data set.

“We are working very closely with all of the outreach teams in the city, with city staff to go cover every square inch of the city and county of San Francisco to visually count everyone who we assume is experiencing homelessness,” said Cohen.