Mayor Lurie Delivers State of the City Address

Mayor Daniel Lurie today delivered his State of the City address. Below are his remarks as prepared for delivery:

Good morning. 

Thank you, Jennifer, for your commitment to our city and to making sure our kids get off to the right start.  

And thank you to the Rec and Park staff, gardeners, and park rangers for making it possible for us to be here today at the Angelo J. Rossi Playground. 

I’d like to acknowledge Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, State Controller Malia Cohen, our state delegation, Mayor London Breed, Mayor Willie Brown, members of the Board of Supervisors, elected leaders, and the many city employees, frontline workers, partners and advocates across this city for helping to steward and support the meaningful progress we have made. 

And I want to extend a huge thank you to the people of San Francisco for joining us and believing in the city we love. 

Today, I am honored to present the state of our city. 

In 12 months’ time, we have become known around the world as a city on the rise. 

And that doesn’t happen without all of you. 

One morning during my first few weeks in office, I approached a man a few blocks off of Van Ness. He was clearly struggling with his addiction, and I said, “Do you need some help?” 

He said, “Mind your own business.”  

In that moment, it all just kind of clicked. I looked at him and said, “You are my business.”  

If you live here, work here, or come to visit our great city, you are my business.  

For me, being mayor isn’t a job you can do from behind a desk. You can’t solve what you can’t see. You can’t fix what you don’t understand. 

To deliver results, you have to be willing to get out in the community every single day and ask: Isn’t there a better way?  

And together, we are proving there absolutely is. 

For the first time in five years, San Franciscans believe we're moving in the right direction. That's not spin. That's not politics. That's people feeling the difference in their everyday lives. 

People are proud to live here again. You can feel it.  

There has never been a more exciting time to be a San Franciscan. And it’s time to put our foot on the accelerator. 

Our recovery is underway. The work now is to make it durable, for everyone. 

Our comeback has to benefit every neighborhood, every family, and give every San Franciscan the opportunity to thrive. 

For that to happen, we must stay focused on public safety, clean streets, and lasting economic recovery. 

2025 will go down as one of the safest years in our city’s history.  

We launched the SFPD Hospitality Zone Task DForce, strengthened our police officer pipeline with our “Rebuilding the Ranks” plan, and we modernized the Real-Time Investigation Center to leverage state-of-the-art technology to keep San Franciscans safe.  

Crime citywide is down nearly 30%. Car break-ins are at a 22-year low, and traffic deaths have dropped by 42%.  

Homicides haven’t been this low since 1954. 

Applications to join the police department are up 54%, and for the first time since 2018, we are growing our ranks of officers and Sheriff's deputies. 

I want to thank Paul Yep for his service as interim police chief, which paved the way for a new generation of leadership at the SFPD with the appointment of Police Chief Derrick Lew.  

Chief Lew, who has been serving neighborhoods across our city for more than 20 years, understands that our recovery is directly tied to our ability to tackle the drug crisis and reduce drug dealing and drug use on our streets.  

Public safety is the foundation for San Francisco’s recovery, and it will always be my north star as mayor.  

Homelessness has been a challenge in San Francisco for as long as I can remember. But fentanyl changed everything and caught our city flat footed. 

San Francisco kept putting people struggling with addiction into shelter and housing with no support. If you’re addicted to fentanyl, you need more than a place to sleep. 

Under my administration, we have changed our approach.  

We stopped freely handing out drug supplies and letting people kill themselves on our streets. It is not a basic right to use drugs openly in front of our kids. 

With the overwhelming support of the Board of Supervisors, we passed a Fentanyl State of Emergency.  

We made San Francisco a recovery-first city and launched Breaking the Cycle to bring together health services, social services, law enforcement, and emergency responders.  

We combined nine different neighborhood outreach teams into one, breaking down silos and increasing shelter placements by 40%. 

We achieved a record-low number of encampments in December, down 44% from 2024.  

We passed new legislation to move families living in RVs into housing and restore our public spaces.  

And we’ve opened 600 new treatment-focused beds so people on the street can get inside and get help. 

We also took a hard look at every dollar the city spends on homelessness—over $1 billion dollars a year.  

Then, we passed the first reform to Prop C’s outdated funding formula. And this year, we will begin redoing every single homeless services contract in the city with a clear focus on accountability and results. 

This spring, we will open a new RESET Center with the Sheriff’s Office and Department of Public Health that is staffed with health professionals.  

If someone is openly using drugs on our streets, they will be arrested and brought to the RESET Center, where they will have a chance to detox and get treatment. This will also allow our police officers to get back on the beat faster. 

Just because things have been broken for a long time does not mean they have to stay broken. San Francisco is no longer a safe haven for those who want to sell drugs, do drugs, and live on our streets. 

People will look back on 2025 as the year that cleaner, safer streets helped San Francisco’s economy come roaring back.  

The Ferry Building is bustling every day. Stores like Nintendo, PopMart, and Zara are bringing new life to Union Square. Foot traffic and revenue are increasing from Japantown to Stonestown. And last year, nearly 1 million square feet of office space was leased by AI companies alone.  

Conference bookings are up nearly 50%, with companies like JP Morgan and Microsoft making multi-year commitments to return.  

The Dead and Company concerts brought out the best of San Francisco: community, music, and joy. With Bob Weir’s passing, we are reminded of what a gift that was.  

Our summer of music welcomed 500,000 fans to Golden Gate Park, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact that stretched across our city.  

This holiday season, we had the most travelers in SFO’s history, and Muni ridership has hit its highest numbers since the pandemic. 

People want to be in San Francisco again.  

Our numbers are headed in the right direction, but we must create lasting economic growth.  

Before I was elected, we didn’t have an entity that could leverage public-private partnerships to work with City Hall. We created the Downtown Development Corporation, which has raised more than $60 million dollars from the private sector to help revitalize downtown. 

Downtown is the centerpiece of our recovery because it has historically represented 60% of our tax revenue, our jobs, and our small businesses. That economic activity powers Muni, funds our parks, pays our first responders, and sustains critical services that help families thrive.  

Yes, we are on our way back. But we still have work to do. 

Next month, we will once again welcome people from across the globe for Super Bowl LX. In March, we’ll kick off the baseball season for the country when the Giants play the Yankees at Oracle Park. Then this summer, we will host six World Cup matches. 

And I have no doubt that our city will once again rise to the occasion as the spotlight of the world shines on San Francisco. 

Our future also depends on continuing to attract and educate the brightest minds of the next generation.  

Twelve months ago, I told you we were going to make people want to be downtown again. Since then, we’ve actively recruited the best businesses and institutions in the world, shared our blueprint for change and our commitment to relentless improvement. 

And, thanks to the tireless efforts of this administration, earlier this week, I was proud to announce that Vanderbilt University has agreed to open a new campus for 1,000 students right in the heart of San Francisco starting in the fall of 2027.  

A year ago, people questioned whether San Francisco would ever recover. Today, institutions like Vanderbilt, with plenty of choices, see our city as the place to be. 

As Vanderbilt establishes its San Francisco campus, it will do so on a site that has been home to California College of the Arts—a cornerstone of our city’s creative and cultural life. Honoring its legacy will be an important responsibility for Vanderbilt and for our city. 

It has been an extraordinary year. But one year of momentum is not enough.  

When tech booms, opportunity grows, but so does anxiety about rising rents, displacement, and a boom-and-bust cycle that has historically left too many people behind.  

Opportunity and stability must rise together for every resident and every neighborhood. 

Including right here in the Richmond. It’s so good to be here at Rossi Playground.  

As a kid, I played soccer and baseball here. As a dad, I’ve watched my son do the same. 

As simple as that sounds, that’s the kind of San Francisco we are working to build, one where everyone can share the joy of the city they love with their children. 

But for too many families, San Francisco has become a city out of reach.  

I spent some time last week with the members of Local 38.  

One of the plumbers—a guy born and raised in San Francisco—he’s got two kids, loves the city, loves his job.  

He came up to me and said, “We couldn’t make it work. Now, I’m commuting over an hour each way five days a week. What has to change so families like mine can live here?” 

Right now, a family of four needs to earn over $160,000 a year just to meet their basic needs and cover costs like food, rent, daily health and hygiene. That’s the equivalent of each parent holding down two full-time, minimum-wage jobs. 

Affordability has been a challenge in San Francisco for a long time, but as the federal government cuts support and drives up costs on everything from the price of groceries to insurance premiums and child care, the pressure is building. 

Families are being forced to make impossible choices—delaying having children, sacrificing savings, or leaving the communities they call home.  

I will not let that be the future of San Francisco. 

Our future depends on the servers in our restaurants who are working double shifts, the teachers going to bat every day for our kids while raising their own, the young families early in their careers, and the artists and immigrants who make San Francisco the greatest city in the world.  

Today marks the beginning of a powerful effort to reduce the cost of living for San Francisco families by tens of thousands of dollars each year.  

Our Family Opportunity Agenda is centered on a cradle-to-career approach that will tackle the cost of housing, child care, education, food, health care, and transportation.  

In December, thanks to the leadership of Supervisor Melgar, with the support of Supervisors Mandelman, Sauter, Mahmood, Dorsey, Sherrill, and Wong, we took an essential step toward a more affordable future by approving the Family Zoning plan—a generational roadmap for housing that will help ensure San Franciscans can afford to raise their kids here. 

For decades, deeply entrenched politics stopped us from building the housing we need and put us at risk of letting Sacramento take over. 

Some people are still putting their own interests ahead of what’s good for San Francisco families by trying to shut down this plan.  

But I will not back down. 

We are going to expand our housing supply the San Francisco way. We will retain control over how and where we build. We will preserve the character of our neighborhoods and protect rent-controlled buildings, small businesses, and historic landmarks. 

So many San Franciscans came together to make this Family Zoning plan a reality, from seniors and small business owners to affordable housing builders and our Board of Supervisors.  

It’s now on us to get the funds for affordable housing out the door as quickly as possible, and that’s what we are going to do. 

In 2025, we completed more than 1,000 affordable housing units and started construction on over 700 more. 90% of those units are for low and very low-income families.   

We will continue to fight to bring down the cost of utilities for those families. And we will maintain a range of down payment and loan support programs to assist educators and first responders striving to become homeowners and build generational wealth in the communities they serve.  

But we all know that housing alone will not relieve the burden so many families are facing.  

Which is why I am thrilled to be launching an effort to make sure every family in San Francisco has access to child care. 

Starting this month, a family of four making less than $230,000 a year will qualify for free childcare at hundreds of high-quality providers across San Francisco. And by this fall, those earning up to $310,000 a year will receive a 50% subsidy. 

This plan leverages unspent money and ongoing funds from a ballot measure voters passed in 2018 to explicitly fund child care. These funds will also be used to raise early educator salaries, support high-quality education, and create or expand child care facilities. 

This is going to remove a huge burden for working parents. And we’re not going to take four years to roll this out—we’re going to be the first major city in the nation to actually get it done.  

We will also maintain our critical investment in the San Francisco Unified School District and push for excellence in academic milestones like third grade literacy, eighth grade math, and college and career readiness.  

And we will continue opening the doors to higher education and economic mobility without crippling student debt by providing free tuition at City College. But we are going to do more than that. 

Today, I am proud to announce that in partnership with SFUSD, we will launch a new dual enrollment pilot program enabling high school students across our city to earn associate degrees and industry certifications at City College, with a guaranteed transfer to San Francisco State University.  

So, for example, if you're a high school junior and you want to be a nurse, you can pursue a Community Health Worker Certification at City College and then earn your Bachelor of Science degree in nursing at SF State. Other pathways could serve those who want to become police officers, pre-K teachers, auto technicians, chefs, and more. 

We are going to empower San Francisco students with the tools and trade skills to earn good-paying jobs and fulfill our city's most important workforce needs of the future. 

With new federal work requirements and administrative hurdles on the horizon, we are implementing programs and tools to simplify enrollment for programs like Cal Fresh and prevent gaps in health care. 

When the government shutdown put San Francisco’s food assistance at risk, we joined forces with philanthropic partners to get $18 million dollars in food assistance out the door to 112,000 San Franciscans in seven days.  

We will continue to provide access to high-quality food through community partners, especially in our city’s historic food deserts.  

For those who lose their Medicaid coverage, we will streamline transitions to Healthy San Francisco.  

And we’ll make sure people know how to access these resources. 

When a family is working hard to make ends meet, every single dollar counts, and time is money. No one knows that better than our small business owners. 

Last February, we launched PermitSF, introducing 18 pieces of legislation so far that make it easier to run a small business or build housing in San Francisco.  

We doubled down on common sense and cut through a lot of red tape. We are even making it legal for you to park in your own driveway. 

We eliminated the requirement to come to the Permit Center to put candles in restaurants and let businesses put tables and chairs on sidewalks without fees or bureaucratic hurdles.  

These may sound like small changes, but we are giving people back real time and money and saving small businesses thousands of dollars a year in unnecessary fees that take away from their bottom line. 

One of the owners at Bar Darling in the Marina told me that he completed our online application in 15 minutes and was quickly approved. After years of frustration as a small business owner in this city, he couldn’t believe how easy it was. 

Starting on February 13th, the one-year anniversary of PermitSF, residents will be able to apply for permits on our new permitting platform, enabling us to work seamlessly, with greater transparency.  

You shouldn’t have to fill out three applications and go to four hearings for two departments just to get permission to fix your back deck. 

But we are going to go further than that.  

Today, I am excited to announce that we will begin the process of combining the Planning Department, the Department of Building Inspection, and the Permit Center into one entity. 

For residents and small businesses alike, this will mean better coordination, time and cost savings and a more predictable permitting process, easing the way to build more housing and continue our economic recovery.  

I look forward to coming together with our partners in labor, builders, department heads, and community leaders on this much-needed reform. 

And we are all going to have to come together to save Muni and BART, because there is no continued recovery in San Francisco without them. They move our communities and our economy.  

A few months ago, I rode the 25 bus to Treasure Island with Nochae Park, a retired nurse in her 60s who moved to San Francisco to be closer to her family. She has ridden every Muni line in our city.  

Public transit has made it possible for her to buy groceries, go to the doctor, see her children, and enjoy all the beauty and culture San Francisco has to offer.  

Saving Muni is non-negotiable. We cannot operate as a world-class city without safe, reliable, and affordable public transit.  

Which is why when I took office, I immediately appointed new leadership at the SFMTA. 

Over the past 12 months, we have convened stakeholders from across the city, who don’t always see eye-to-eye, to hammer out a plan for a stronger, more responsible Muni. 

This plan to fund Muni prioritizes protecting tenants, homeowners, and small businesses, and ensures that Muni not only survives this financial crisis but thrives for generations to come.  

But let me be crystal clear: This is not a blank check. 

We will stabilize the cost of Muni, prevent unmanageable fare hikes, and crack down on fare evasion. We will also improve and expand service so more people will want to ride Muni again.  

As we do, accessibility will remain essential, which is why Muni will continue to be free for young people under age 18 and seniors over 65.  

And we’re not forgetting about BART.  

In partnership with our state legislators and other Bay Area leaders, we have developed a regional transit funding measure that will ensure people across the region who want to come to San Francisco to work or to play will be able to count on safe, reliable BART service. 

Together, these measures are the prerequisite to our economic recovery. We can’t move forward without them. 

And we cannot make progress if we don’t work together.  

In a world that is increasingly rewarding hatred, rage, and hardened identities, hope and collaboration have become courageous acts.  

The politics of the day continue to draw attention to every instance in which we disagree.  

I will work with anyone who wants to help San Francisco. My condition is not that we always agree but that we always come to the table on behalf of the people we serve.  

This is how government should work, and I’d like to give the entire Board of Supervisors under the leadership of Board President Rafael Mandelman a round of applause for an unprecedented level of collaboration with the Mayor’s Office. 

We’ve changed the way we work at City Hall. But the only path to true change is to stay focused on changing the system itself.  

We created a new structure by appointing five chiefs in critical focus areas and brought in new accountable leaders across this city. From the Fire and Police Department to the Department of Public Health, we’ve appointed 15 new department heads. 

Many said balancing the budget would break us.  

Instead, thanks to Supervisor Connie Chan and my colleagues on the Board of Supervisors, we are starting to get our fiscal house in order. Last summer, we reduced the city’s structural budget deficit by $300 million dollars and moved away from the reckless practice of using one-time emergency funding to cover ongoing city costs.  

In partnership with Supervisors Fielder, Walton, and Chen, along with the entire board, we unanimously approved $3.5 million dollars in additional legal defense funding for our immigrant communities during an unprecedented time of fear and insecurity. 

And this past fall, the progress we’ve made helped us prevent federal agents from taking over our city streets. 

Under my administration, San Francisco will always be a city that takes care of its own. 

And we know it’s not going to be easy.  

As a result of sweeping federal cuts, we are now facing a nearly billion-dollar budget deficit.  

I've instructed city departments that we are not going to spread ourselves thin by doing everything a little less well. Instead, we are going to prioritize and deliver better services in essential core areas that keep our streets safe and clean and continue to drive a citywide economic recovery.  

We are also going to continue to expand our public-private partnerships to fuel our efforts to break the cycle of addiction and poverty on our streets, provide urgent legal assistance to immigrant and other vulnerable families, and keep the heart of our city beating strong. 

Finally, we cannot fix the system that has failed us if we don’t update our City Charter.  

San Francisco’s insanely long 550-page governing charter works for insiders and special interests but not for everyday San Franciscans. In cities like New York and Los Angeles, the charters are less than 200 pages. 

I will not accept or maintain an outdated system that drives up costs and breeds dysfunction and, even worse, corruption.  

In partnership with Board President Mandelman, this November, we will offer voters a way forward on our City Charter that works for the people of this city.  

I don’t just want to bring San Francisco back—I want to build something better, something that will last well beyond my time in office. A place you and your children and their children are proud to call home. 

Twelve months into this administration, the state of our city is resilient. You can see it everywhere you go. 

Last month, I stopped by a new diner in the Mission run by a renowned chef.  

They took me on a tour of the kitchen, and when I locked eyes with one of the guys cooking on the line, I said, “I know you.”  

He smiled and said, "Last year you spoke at my graduation at the Salvation Army. Now I’m working here.”  

Through the support of a powerful program and a lot of people who believed in his recovery, he is doing the work to overcome his addiction, while finding stability, reconnecting with his son, and doing what he loves.  

This is the kind of resilience I’m talking about. 

If you love this city like I do, and I know you do, you have to refuse to give up on it. 

That can be as simple as joining our first citywide day of service this summer. It’s part of an initiative our First Lady, Becca Prowda, is launching to inspire residents across neighborhoods to roll up their sleeves and show their civic pride. 

Change doesn’t happen from the top down. It happens when ordinary people decide to do extraordinary things.  

If you look across our city, there are so many great role models.  

The Muni drivers and librarians who show up every day. The nurses at San Francisco General. The firefighters and police officers who run toward danger. The city staff who process permits and answer phones, clean our streets, clear our drains, and hold the doors open for people at midnight when the power goes out.  

Making San Francisco work means doing the little things right, every single day.  

But here’s the thing: City Hall can’t do this alone.  

I’m calling on each and every one of you to join us—service, accountability, and change in big ways and small. 

By staying focused on the problems that need solving right here in San Francisco, we can reclaim our place as the greatest city in the world. 

We're just getting started, and we are not going to leave anyone behind. 

Let's go, San Francisco. Thank you. 

###