Mayor London Breed delivered a State of the City address on Thursday that painted San Francisco as a city on the rise and dared its detractors to bet against it.
“No longer will we allow others to define who we are, because we know who we are,” Breed said. “We are a city on the rise. We are a dragon taking flight.”
In a speech before hundreds of attendees at the Pier 27 Cruise Terminal, Breed pointed to progress made in disrupting drug markets, curtailing crime and combating other key issues that have dominated San Francisco’s post-pandemic political discourse.
“I don’t begrudge people’s frustration,” Breed said. “I don’t dispute these have been a tough five years. But rather than destroying our city, these storms have revealed our strength, our indomitable spirit and our service to each other.”
Breed called for San Francisco to embrace change, be it in the makeup of its office-dominant and increasingly vacant downtown or in the development of new housing across The City.
Her triumphant speech came just two days after Breed scored major victories at the ballot, with every measure she pushed earning voters’ support and poised for victory as votes continued to be tallied.
Those wins include Proposition E, which weakened the Police Commission and empowered the police department, and Proposition F, which will require people receiving city welfare to undergo screening for drug addiction and participate in treatment programs if necessary.
Unspoken in the address was Breed’s bid for a second term in office, in which she faces stiff competition from well-resourced opponents such as former Mayor Mark Farrell and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie.
Breed’s address also drew criticism from her opponents in the election. Lurie wrote in a statement that “not once did the mayor propose the magnitude of reform that our city desperately needs.”
Supervisor Ahsha Safai argued that The City remains in crisis and Breed has failed to “do enough.” He called out the mayor’s recent midyear budget cuts as disrupting “critical services for our working and struggling families.”
“Working families deserve a leader who will acknowledge and fight for them with clear actions,” Safai said.
Breed’s approval ratings have plummeted since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while San Francisco’s street conditions have garnered international attention for all the wrong reasons.
But in addition to touting her administration’s leadership through COVID-19 and efforts to right the ship, Breed sent a clear message to those “watching from the sidelines who only offer criticism.”
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“San Francisco is not wearing the shackles of your negativity any longer,” Breed said.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who is mulling a run against Breed for mayor, told The Examiner he appreciated Breed’s “pushing back against the disproportional narrative of negativity against The City.” But he also noted that the mayor left Proposition A out of her speech, the affordable-housing bond that held a slim lead as ballots continued to be counted this week.
“She didn’t say a word about affordability,” Peskin told The Examiner. “You would think she would want to take some credit for a ballot measure that actually was the most important thing on the ballot relative to really moving the dial on the most pressing crisis.”
The mayor portrayed San Francisco as a city facing national problems “exacerbated by local conditions,” such as a stark and sudden rise in the percentage of people working from home and the fentanyl crisis.
Still, Breed noted The City’s ability to reduce unsheltered homelessness and increase the number of shelter beds it has on hand.
Breed’s 2024 speech struck on similar themes as her 2023 address, in which she focused on the transformation and recovery of downtown, which has failed to return to its pre-pandemic halcyon days.
Breed stressed Thursday that downtown would have to be reimagined as a place replete with arts, entertainment and education. She called for the area to be home to 30,000 new residents — many of whom would be students — by 2030.
She also characterized the police-staffing shortage felt in San Francisco as a national problem, but noted that The City has seen the highest number of applicants to its police academy in five years. She promised to hire 200 officers in the next year and fully staff the police department within three years.
Breed said crime rates last year were at their lowest point in the last decade, except for in 2020, when COVID-19 lockdowns forced all but essential workers to stay home. She touted the efforts of city law enforcement — in collaboration with state and federal agencies — to disrupt the open-air drug dealing for which the Tenderloin and Mid-Market neighborhoods have become known.
The coordinated crackdown resulted in twice the number of drug-related arrests in 2023 compared with the prior year, Breed said. However, The City has not yet seen a slowdown in the record-high number of fatal accidental drug overdoses.
“Offering people services is critical, but, frankly, we must compel some people into treatment,” Breed said.
Breed ended the address on a distinctly positive note, pledging to make San Francisco a “city of yes.”
