San Francisco Mayor David Lurie launched the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) Hospitality Task Force and secured a key vote in support of the Fentanyl State of Emergency Ordinance this week as he works to clean up San Francisco's streets and restore common sense policies to the liberal city. 

San Francisco has had one of the slowest economic recoveries from the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. Images of San Francisco’s open-air drug markets, homeless encampments and empty office buildings have caught the nation’s attention since the pandemic. 

The SFPD Hospitality Task Force will target San Francisco’s business and tourist districts, increasing police presence, dedicating resources to high-traffic areas and offering support to the hospitality industry. 

"Helping people feel safe walking downtown is the key to unleashing our city’s comeback," Lurie said. "We are creating the conditions for a thriving commercial center by launching the SFPD Hospitality Task Force. The Hospitality Task Force will break down silos to increase the police presence across the areas that drive our city’s economy, not just during large conferences, but 365 days a year."

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Major retailers, including Nordstrom and Saks Off Fifth, pulled out of San Francisco’s downtown due to rising crime and dwindling foot traffic. After more than 20 years in the heart of downtown San Francisco, Westfield abandoned the San Francisco Centre mall in 2023, citing a decline in sales, occupancy and foot traffic. 

San Franciscans voted Mayor London Breed out of office in November. She was elected in 2018 and led the city through its struggling pandemic recovery. Lurie, a Levi's heir and political outsider, began his first term as mayor in January. 

He campaigned on cleaning up San Francisco’s streets, public safety, tackling the city’s drug crisis, creating housing, cutting through corrupt bureaucracy and "breathing life back into our downtown."

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"With a safe, bustling downtown, we will attract businesses, shoppers, tourists and conventions, creating jobs, generating revenue and helping us provide better services for everyone in San Francisco," Lurie said of the new task force. 

Also this week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 in favor of Mayor Lurie’s Fentanyl State of Emergency Ordinance. 

"As a candidate for mayor, I promised San Franciscans that I would work in partnership with the Board of Supervisors to take action on the critical issues facing our city," Lurie said. "As mayor, I am proud to be delivering on that promise today. The Fentanyl State of Emergency Ordinance gives us the tools to treat this crisis with the urgency it demands. And with our partners on the board, that’s exactly what we will do." 

The ordinance will equip the city with the resources "to get drugs off the street and keep San Franciscans safe" by unlocking funding and expediting the contracting process to allow for expanded treatment options, increased shelter capacity and health initiatives. The full Board of Supervisors will address the ordinance Tuesday for a second and final reading before Lurie can sign the ordinance into law. 

"I don’t think there’s a problem facing San Francisco today that isn’t caused by or made significantly worse by street-level drug addiction," Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who voted in favor of the ordinance, said.

"Mayor Lurie’s emergency ordinance aims to surge resources that deliver solutions as big as the problems. This is a needed approach to restore order to our streets, to diminish San Francisco’s attraction as a drug-use and drug-dealing destination and to save lives."

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has announced a new $77 million plan to clamp down on subway crime, while the MTA has also begun installing "spikes" on some of its turnstiles to stop fare evaders who cost the transit agency hundreds of millions of dollars a year in lost revenue.

The new spike features consist of metal sheets with sharp edges installed on guardrails between turnstiles that are intended to stop fare beaters from using the gate handrails for leverage when jumping.

However, the spikes are not very sharp, and evaders are still able to place their hands on top of the spikes and jump over them — or simply duck underneath the bars. The spikes have so far been installed in Manhattan's Lexington Avenue 59th Street Station, which services the N, R, W, 4, 5 and 6 trains. 

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Skipping payment is notoriously easy, particularly at subway stations that do not have high turnstiles. One rider told the New York Post the new spikes were "silly and foolish" and a waste of money.

Additionally, the MTA also spends around $1 million a month on private unarmed security guards to deter fare beaters, per Fox 5, but the guards have no authority to apprehend those who dodge payment. 

Hochul’s fare evader plan focuses on installing more modern high-rise turnstiles at 40 stations, and it is unclear if the spike rollout at 59th Street is part of this plan.

Hochul said fare evaders cost the MTA around $700 million per year in lost revenue. About $500 million of that is via the subway system, while the remainder is attributed to the bus system.

"I say it's time to crack down on the shameless, fare evaders who are just so brazen they just walk through and others who are paying, they feel like, why should I bother," Hochul said at a Grand Central press conference on Thursday announcing her $77 million plan.

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Overall crime in the city is down, Hochul said, but recent high-profile incidents on the transit system have struck fear into everyday strangers. 

A Guatemalan illegal immigrant has been charged with setting a woman on fire and burning her to death on a subway train last month, while on New Year’s Eve, a man was pushed in front of a moving train but miraculously survived. 

There has been a surge of violence on subways in recent weeks, and Hochul said 750 more police officers will patrol the subway system on top of the 2,500 already assigned. An additional 300 will be assigned to the trains onboard between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. Those figures are on top of the estimated 1,000 National Guard troops who have been assigned to the subway system.

"So basically, this means we've doubled the number of law enforcement personnel on the New York City subway system in one year," Hochul said. 

New subway edge barriers will also be installed on platforms at more than 100 additional stations by the end of 2025 to stop straphangers from falling or being pushed onto tracks. 

The governor also announced funding to install LED lighting in all subway stations throughout the system in order to increase visibility throughout the stations.

"Let's just get back to basics, they served their purpose," Hochil said of the barriers. "They're there. If someone wants to stand behind them while the train is approaching and it gives you that sense of security that every New Yorker deserves to have."

Hochul also said a 24/7 "Welcome Center" near end-of-line stations will be expanded to create spaces for homeless people. 

The brief life of the Ghost of Christmas Present passed upon the stroke of midnight on Wednesday, and children began the countdown to the appearance of his brother, one year from now.  

This Christmas, as I do every Christmas, I read Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol." There is a scene, right after the departure of Marley’s ghost, where Scrooge sees disembodied spirits, doomed to wander the earth. These spirits are begging and pleading, unseen and unheard, with the poor, homeless and disenfranchised. What they lament is their inability to help — a tragic irony, as they had the opportunity to act while alive but, now without physical bodies, can do nothing. 

This got me thinking about homelessness. Is it the same thing? As the mayor of El Cajon, California, I’ve been an outspoken critic of how the state has handled the homelessness crisis. I asked myself, "Is it possible, like Scrooge, that I’ve been forging my own ponderous chain every time I criticize voucher programs, lawlessness and housing-first policies?" I wondered: if I were given the same gift that Scrooge received, what revelations might my hauntings reveal? 

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The Ghost of Christmas Past, which brings to mind the 1970s, would show me a California largely devoid of homelessness. Back then, California was a relative paradise, marked by a sense of law and order.  

But did not Christ say, "The poor will always be with us?" I know the 1970s were full of poor people — I was one of them. Most everyone I knew was poor. Yet we could walk downtown without running a gauntlet of homelessness. Crime existed, but police were empowered to protect communities. Beaches were places of beauty, not encampments filled with filth and despair. 

Why? What changed? In my opinion, it was a conscious decision to make homelessness a viable option — by subsidizing the homeless lifestyle financially, eliminating laws that kept communities safe and clean, normalizing addiction and de-stigmatizing vagrancy (using the blunt language of the 1970s). In my imagination, the ghost would make no judgment but would let me draw my own conclusions. 

Would the Ghost of Christmas Present show me the dark, dangerous encampments, rife with rape, violence and hopelessness? I believe he would. But would the blame fall on those trapped in this hell, or on the politicians? Would he show me the backroom deals and development contracts that sustain the homeless industrial complex — a system in which a select few profit from $25 billion in wasted funds while the problem only worsens, leaving NGOs begging for more?  

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Would the Ghost gaze upon the wretched and say, "Blame me not for this misery. This is man’s doing"? Would he point to the people dying on sidewalks and say, "I see a tent left empty. If these policies do not change, this will be their fate?" Would he show me Christmas dinner tables where people laugh, shake their heads and lament California’s self-destruction? 

The final ghost, like Scrooge’s, would be the one I fear most. He would show me a California where cities are uninhabitable and residents are scattered across the nation as refugees. He would reveal lawless anarchy in the streets, where sexual assault and overdose deaths are predictable and accepted outcomes. He would show shuttered retail stores, overrun hospitals and public spaces rendered unsafe. He would lead me to the ruins of the home where I was born. And, with his skeletal hand, he might point silently to places like Haiti, forewarning what lies ahead. 

It is my Christmas wish that the true recipients of such hauntings would be the political decision-makers responsible for this crisis. May they wake up on Christmas morning with a new vision and vitality — one that prioritizes the welfare of all Californians over greed and failed ideologies.  

If I were Dickens, I would write an ending where the homeless industrial complex is dismantled and replaced with effective solutions. Most importantly, I would write a happy ending for those trapped by homelessness and addiction — not by enabling them, but by enforcing laws that prevent street living while providing, and sometimes requiring, appropriate treatment. I would see municipalities regain the tools to clean their cities and reverse policies that have made California increasingly unlivable. 

In reflecting on this, I see a disconnect between the poor and homeless of Victorian England and the crisis we face today. In 1843, there was no safety net and options were few. I believe Dickens’ poor would have embraced modern shelters, work opportunities and rehabilitation programs — not because they were better people, but because harsh conditions demanded it. "Are there no poor? Are there no workhouses? Many would rather die than go there," they said. This was their grim reality. 

Today, however, our obligation to the poor and homeless must be matched by their obligation to participate in their own recovery. The real Scrooge in this story is the political class that has imposed a failed social experiment on Californians — a failure by every measure. May we all see the truth so we can proclaim, "God bless us, everyone." 

The United States saw an 18.1% increase in homelessness this year, which federal officials attribute to a rising number of asylum seekers, lack of affordable housing and natural disasters.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Friday released its 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report: Part 1: Point-in-Time (PIT) Estimates, which documents the number of people in shelters, temporary housing and unsheltered settings. 

The report found more than 770,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2024, an 18% increase from 2023. 

More than a dozen communities reported data to the HUD that showed the rise in overall homelessness was a result of a rising number of asylum seekers coming into their communities. 

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Migration had a particularly notable impact on family homelessness, which rose 39% from 2023 to 2024, according to the report. In the 13 communities that reported being affected by migration, family homelessness more than doubled.

In the remaining 373 communities, the rise in families experiencing homelessness was less than 8%, officials noted.

Rents have stabilized significantly since January 2024, with the HUD adding 435,000 new rental units in the first three quarters of 2024, according to the report.

The PIT count was conducted at the tail of significant increases in rental costs, "as a result of the pandemic and nearly decades of under-building of housing," officials said. "Rents are flat or even down in many cities since January."

The HUD said the Maui fire, in addition to other natural disasters, had an impact on the increase in homelessness. Thousands affected by the fire were sleeping in disaster emergency shelters on the night of the PIT count.

"This report reflects data collected a year ago and likely does not represent current circumstances, given changed policies and conditions," department officials wrote in a statement. "… Importantly, this reporting was collected prior to the Biden-Harris Administration taking executive action to secure our border, after Congressional Republicans blocked a bipartisan Senate bill that would have provided needed resources and authorities to help reduce irregular migration."

In the statement, officials said unlawful crossings at the border dropped by more than 60% following the executive action.

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Homelessness among veterans dropped to the lowest number on record, with nearly an 8% decrease – from 35,574 in 2023 to 32,882 in 2024, according to the report. Among unsheltered veterans, the number dropped nearly 11% – from 15,507 in 2023 to 13,851 in 2024. 

The HUD said it helped connect nearly 90,000 veteran households to stable rental homes through the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) Program in 2024 and the Department of Veterans Affairs permanently housed 47,925 veterans — marking the largest number of veterans housed in a single year since 2019. 

"No American should face homelessness, and the Biden-Harris Administration is committed to ensuring every family has access to the affordable, safe, and quality housing they deserve," said Adrianne Todman, HUD agency head. "While this data is nearly a year old, and no longer reflects the situation we are seeing, it is critical that we focus on evidence-based efforts to prevent and end homelessness. We know what works and our success in reducing veteran homelessness by 55.2% since 2010 shows that."

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On Friday, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a series of measures to address homelessness across the country, including expanding the Housing and Services Partnership Accelerator with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and awarding nearly $40 million to support veterans through the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program.