A good mayor can make an enormous difference to any town or city. No mayor is perfect, yet around 70% of San Francisco's population approves of what its new mayor, Daniel Lurie, is doing. Often being mayor requires enacting unpopular policies. Being a mayor anywhere is a tough job, and San Francisco has suffered from years of big challenges and bad press.

Here are some of the things this mayor has addressed in his attempts to improve the quality of life for all, just about 8 months into the job:

1. Fiscal responsibility: Balancing the budget by closing an $800 million deficit, primarily by eliminating over 1,400 mostly vacant city positions, aligning spending with revenue. The budget also set aside $400 million in reserves to guard against future financial uncertainty from federal and state levels.

2. Downtown recovery and economic development by cutting red tape: The PermitSF plan, launched in early 2025, aims to streamline the city's notoriously complex permitting process by eliminating unnecessary permit requirements and fees for many business signs and sidewalk tables and speeding up permit processing by removing unnecessary review steps.

3. Boosting nightlife: Lurie created 21 "entertainment zones" across the city to encourage vibrancy, particularly downtown. A "First Thursdays" event, for example, drew thousands of people to a closed-off street for music. Major summer concerts in Golden Gate Park in August 2025 were deemed successful, projecting $150 million in economic activity and drawing hundreds of thousands of attendees.

4. Homelessness. Interim housing programs pair shelters with on-site treatment and services. Funding was repurposed to allow for more flexible interim housing capacity. Another program addresses vehicular shelter and includes providing offers of permanent or interim housing, vehicle buyback incentives, and a temporary permit program for those in services, alongside stricter enforcement of parking rules.

5.  Public Safety. A significant increase in police academy applications and lateral hiring from other agencies to strengthen the police force including a special Events Officer Program using recently retired officers.

6. Technology: In July 2025, the city became the largest in the U.S. to offer Microsoft's AI tool, Copilot Chat, to its 30,000 public sector employees to help improve city services and productivity.

7. Infrastructure: The budget includes millions for capital projects, such as fixing potholes, repairing public facilities, and resurfacing playgrounds.

San Francisco has a long way to go but in just a few months investors are back and most see a benefit from notable shifts in the right direction. San Francisco has seen a significant decrease in crime rates from 2024 into the first half of 2025, with overall crime at its lowest point in 23 years by April 2025. In the first half of 2025, violent crime decreased by 19% and property crime fell by 25% compared to the same period in 2024, with motor vehicle theft down by 45%. This downward trend contrasts with the significant decrease in homicides in 2024 compared to 2023, which had already fallen to a 60-year low.  In 2023, the GDP per capita for the city of San Francisco was $325,000, amongst the highest in the US. (Lots of the above is sourced from an article in the Wall Street Journal.)

To all mayors everywhere:  yes, every city and town's circumstances are different, but this may be a case study to learn from. Practical, sensible policies, enforcing laws, etc removed from politics are to the benefit of all. Ideological experiments often fail at the expense of the vast majority of citizens, often those they purport to help. (ie: when lawlessness, crime and drug use run rampant, and overly burdensome regulations add unnecessary additional expense, it's the poor that suffer the most.)