Has Daniel Lurie Kept His 90-Day Promise?

For years, a popular gathering place for San Francisco's homeless population has been the 16th Street Mission BART station. Open-air markets are commonplace here. Drugs are sold and used openly. In describing the street-level concourse, “comfortable” and “inviting” don’t come to mind. NIMBY-minded Mission residents blame that on the neighborhood’s abundant SRO (single-room occupancy) hotels, a source of cheap lodging. Others blame BART and Muni, which meet at this intersection. The 2018 closure of a nearby homeless navigation center didn’t help. At 16th Street BART, substance abuse and housing insecurity don’t just intersect, they crash into each other. 

Transit centers serving denser districts of crowded cities make for natural meeting points. Paris’ Gare du Nord, London’s Liverpool Street, New York City’s Penn Station, and San Francisco’s 16th Street BART station. At every transit hub, accessibility is the point. Blaming BART or Muni for the overnight conditions at 16th Street is like blaming the riverbed for a flood. 

To some, it’s like their neighborhoods were purpose-built to attract homeless people. They fail to account for how such “controversial” features (seated plazas, temporary housing, transportation access) were designed with the public in mind. It also seems many are forgetting the conditions producing San Francisco’s homeless were largely instituted by the Reagan administration. While homelessness existed here prior to Reagan’s presidency, the magnitude was not so pronounced. Severe federal spending cuts to psychiatric treatment facilities meant patients everywhere were discharged with nowhere to go. You try holding down a job unmedicated and in withdrawal. 

Another apparatus has been changing the face of the Mission District, and more recently. Critics are saying SFPD crackdowns in the Tenderloin and SoMa are pushing narcotics sales and street vending into the Mission. Meanwhile, half the SROs near 16th Street BART report vacancy rates greater than 50%, so they can’t be held responsible. And yet, even if every vacant room filled up tonight, open-air drug use among the homeless would continue. In a society that at once creates and despises homeless addicts, who is responsible for keeping them off the streets? 

If it’s not SROs, and it isn’t public transit, that leaves SFPD and the politicians that support them. 

In June, Mayor Lurie announced a 90-day strategy to stymie the flagrant narcotics abuse, violence, and flipping of stolen goods at the 16th and 24th Street BART stations. SFPD has since issued 534 violation notices, with 93 first-time offenders, 14 second-timers, and three misdemeanors, per Mission Local. If those numbers look impressive, it’s by the grace of some unfamiliar metric. During daylight hours, cops and so-called “city ambassadors” patrol both Mission District BART stations to discourage crime and drug use. But come 6:30, those ambassadors clock out for the evening. Police presence thins. Vendors roll out their likely stolen wares for sale, and the night market sets up shop. It’s as if Lurie’s 90-day strategy only cares about the “day” part. 

This is how an average weekday night at 16th Street BART station goes. 

Wednesday, September 9, around 11:40 PM. An SFPD patrol SUV sits idle on the sidewalk, its lights spinning silently. At the same time, a group is slowly growing into a crowd opposite the SUV. Then, the officer inside it starts the engine and drives carefully to the southeast side, and the people scatter. 

The group reconvenes at the northeast corner where the Walgreens used to be. But the cop returns, and the crowd scatters yet again. Some go north on Mission. Others evade patrol cars via the underground BART passage. Amid this perverse game of Whac-a-Mole, one man is dousing another with cold water to keep him from nodding off. Police then advance down Mission Street on foot, firmly asking members of the crowd to disperse.

But the cops cannot hang around all night, not like vendors and their customers. The tide returns night after night, surging a little on weekends. Nevertheless, Mayor Lurie’s office insists they saw results from Denim Dan’s P90X program. San Francisco’s homicide rate has plateaued since this time last year. The SF Department of Public Health recorded 296 overdoses by July, about a 30% drop compared to July 2025. Property crime has also declined overall compared to last year. It’s good news, but not definitive proof these statistics and Lurie’s leadership are connected. 

Have you noticed how SFPD crackdowns on drugs and stolen goods in the Tenderloin only push problems one neighborhood over? The Tenderloin to SoMa, from SoMa to the Mission, then back again. One district deteriorates while another reports improvement. Forget a cohesive strategy for combatting homelessness like the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act, which the mayor vocally opposes. It seems the city prefers to sweep its pills under the rug.