SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is poised to grant newly elected Mayor Daniel Lurie greater powers and flexibility to expedite the city’s response to a fentanyl crisis that has turned sidewalks into open-air dens of drug consumption and homelessness.
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco ready to grant new mayor greater powers to battle fentanyl crisis
The legislation, which supervisors will vote on Tuesday, eliminates competitive bidding requirements for some contracts and allows the administration to solicit private donations to quickly add 1,500 shelter beds and hire more public safety and behavioral health specialists. It is the first piece of legislation for Lurie, a Levi Strauss heir and anti-poverty nonprofit founder who had never held elective office until he squashed Mayor London Breed’s reelection bid last year.
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The proposal already has the six votes needed to pass, and will likely pick up more votes Tuesday.
The 11-member board relinquishing oversight powers for an effort with no concrete plan or metrics underscores how desperate supervisors are for a solution. It also signals their embrace — for now — of a political outsider who pledged to work collaboratively to create common sense solutions.
Supervisor Connie Chan said last week at the budget and finance committee she chairs that board oversight helps ensure taxpayer money is spent judiciously and transparently. But she also said this is “truly an unprecedented time” that calls for unusual measures, and she appreciated the mayor’s willingness to compromise. Breed had a frosty relationship with the board’s progressive members, Chan included.
San Francisco has long been known for its liberal politics, but homeless tent encampments and public drug use surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overdose deaths fueled by cheap and potent fentanyl reached a record high in San Francisco of over 800 in 2023.
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In response, frustrated residents voted to enhance police powers and backed crackdowns on street homelessness. They also elected more moderate Democrats to the board.
Lurie’s proposal would allow the city to bypass the competitive bidding and procurement process for contracts, grants and leases related to addiction, homelessness and public safety hiring. City departments could sign new leases without board approval. He wants to open a 24-hour drop-off center that would be friendly to police and an alternative to jail.
Supervisors would have only 45 days to vote on contracts up to $25 million — down from the original $50 million proposed by the mayor — or relinquish their oversight. Expedited contracting would sunset in one year, down from the original five.
San Francisco AIDS Foundation opposes the proposal because it lacks metrics and details, such as how it would actually reduce fentanyl use, said Laura Thomas, the nonprofit’s drug policy expert and senior director of HIV & harm reduction policy.
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She applauds the mayor’s desire for more housing and treatment services but hopes he will not endorse policies forcing people into treatment, which has shown to be ineffective and often counterproductive.
“We want to know more about what the proposal is,” Thomas said Monday. “We’re raising notes of concern and we want to know more information before we can support it.”
At Wednesday’s budget and finance committee, legislative analyst Nicolas Menard warned that waiving competitive bids would likely increase service costs and “create opportunities for waste, fraud and abuse.” The fiscal impact is unknown, but the grants and contracts budget for the affected city departments totals just over $1 billion.
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“I need to be very clear that you’re giving up a lot here,” he said.
Still, it passed out of committee to the full board with a unanimous recommendation and in a statement released later that day, Lurie said that with the ordinance “we are no longer looking the other way — we are treating the fentanyl crisis like the emergency it is,” he said. “This is a new era in City Hall.”
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced multiple hate crime charges, as well as assault and vandalism charges against an Oakland man for an incident that happened in the Castro District last month.
On Thursday afternoon, Hans Haken pleaded not guilty to one felony count of assault with a deadly weapon, one count of assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, one count of vandalism, one count of hit-and-run, and one count of reckless driving.
Prosecutors also allege each of the felony assault counts was a hate crime.
“In San Francisco, we have zero tolerance for any hate, hateful acts, certainly that cross the criminal line, and we will do everything that we can to protect our residents from these types of incidents,” said Jenkins at a Thursday afternoon news conference.
It was on May 16, around 5:30 p.m., when prosecutors say Haken spray-painted a homophobic slur on the wall next to Chartreuse by Roje, a gay-owned floral boutique in San Francisco’s Castro District.
“It was a reminder that even though we’re here in Castro, San Francisco, we live in this well-protected bubble that we have created very passionately and strongly, that that can still happen,” said Jeffrey Dumlao, the owner of Chartreuse by Roje. “If anything, that is what’s scary, that it happened here in broad daylight of all times.”
Dumlao says his store had already closed by that time, but Justin Donnelly, who lives above the store, heard the spray-painting and came down to confront the man and tell him to stop.
“He just became very agitated,” Donnelly said. “I tried to remain calm and just tell him, like, sir, you know, I don’t, I don’t, I’m not involved in any of that. I’m just, I live here, right, and this is, this is my home, and you know, this is vandalism.”
Donnelly says when he took a picture of Haken’s license plate, Haken got in the car and tried to run him over. Then, prosecutors say he got out of the car and punched Donnelly in the jaw while uttering homophobic slurs.
“I’m definitely doing a lot better than I was. It’s been, I don’t know, a month or so,” Donnelly said.
He says the incident has shaken him, but he’s been lifted up by the community’s support and law enforcement.
“A lot of people have said, ‘oh my god, I can’t believe something like this could happen in San Francisco, of all places.’ And the fact is that something like this can happen anywhere, but in San Francisco, we don’t stand for it, and we deal with it, so, so that makes me feel good,” Donnelly said.
In announcing the charges, Jenkins pointed out the climate in this country has become more hostile to the LGBTQ community. She says that makes it even more important for elected officials to protect that community, just like they do every other community.
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San Francisco, CA
Artwork quilt unveiled at San Francisco dirt alley that was mistakenly bought at auction
In the fall of 2025, CBS News Bay Area first brought you the story of a Sunset couple that had the winning bid for a piece of property next to their home. They thought they were getting the duplex next door. Instead, they got a small patch of land known as Dirt Alley.
This story has many chapters, but it ended with a community celebration.
The final chapter in the story of Dirt Alley was written Wednesday night as they unveiled the tiles of artwork on the pavement.
“I’m very happy today,” JJ Hollingsworth said. “It’s just amazing that these artists that I’ve been working with and sold the alley to have come through with this incredible art.”
JJ Hollingsworth was the original property owner. She took out $25,000 from her retirement to pay for this parcel in a city auction. She thought she got a bargain for the duplex next door. When she found out it was actually the alley, the stress led to health problems and a lot of anxiety.
“I’m trying to forget, but I caused all this,” she said. “That’s what happened. I caused all this.”
Then came an email that would help her get out of the Dirt Alley nightmare. A group of friends from San Francisco was interested in buying this 82-foot-long alley.
“I know she was really stressed out when she first bought this and kind of didn’t know what she was going to do with it,” Theo Bleier said. “It’s really lucky. We were going to buy a different parcel, and we lost the auction. It was more than we wanted to spend. We felt really lucky the coincidence worked out, and we were able to help out JJ.”
The new owners then had the idea of laying an artwork quilt on the pavement and took submissions online.
“I think we had about one million people visit the website at least,” owner Patrick Hultquist said. “1.2 million, I think is the number of people that visited the website.”
The tiles with the most votes made it onto what is now called Notion way.
“Now, it’s not an official name of the street. It’s an unofficial name, but we did get an official-looking sign,” he said.
JJ Hollingsworth, who is a music composer, wrote a ballad called Notion Way for the special occasion. What started as a horrible mistake ended up bringing the community together.
“It’s really beautiful,” neighbors Tom Goslinga & Nesha Niezrecki said. “It’s how culture gets created in a lot of ways. People kind of being creative with an interesting situation. It’s really cool.”
While Hollingsworth is grateful for how this story ended, she says she learned a valuable lesson from this whole experience.
“Read the fine print and ask a lot of questions,” she said.
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