Lurie Picks New Homelessness Director to Reshape City Services

Under the freeway overpass in SoMa where Kalani Estis moves her belongings each morning to dodge police sweeps, the city's homelessness crisis has a new point of accountability. Mayor Daniel Lurie named Michael Levine as the next director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing on Tuesday, handing him a department that serves more than 20,000 people annually but has yet to reverse years of growth in the unhoused count.

Levine will need confirmation from the Homelessness Oversight Commission before assuming the role. He replaces Shireen McSpadden, who announced last month that she would retire June 30 after nearly 23 years of city service. McSpadden was appointed by Mayor London Breed in April 2021 as the department's second director, following founder Jeff Kositsky. During her tenure, the citywide homeless count rose 7 percent, from 7,754 in 2022 to 8,328 in 2024, while unsheltered numbers remained flat.

Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman was blunt about what Levine is walking into. "It's a meat grinder," Mandelman said, pointing to how demanding and under-resourced the job is in a politically charged environment.

The new director steps into a department whose January 2026 point-in-time count, conducted with sweeping changes to the city's counting methodology designed to correct longstanding undercounting, has not yet released results. Whatever the new tally shows will set the baseline Levine is measured against. Lurie's "Breaking the Cycle" agenda defines the targets already on the ledger: 1,500 new shelter and treatment beds, reformed street outreach teams, and nonprofit contracts under accountability review. As of spring 2025, the city had opened 122 of those promised beds, including 54 recovery beds at James Baldwin Place in SoMa and 68 shelter beds at Jerrold Commons in the Bayview.

Visible encampments fell from 245 in January to 162 by December as sweeps intensified. But Jennifer Friedenbach, Executive Director of the Coalition on Homelessness, disputed the framing, noting that more than 1,000 citations and arrests for lodging had been issued, with 75 percent of those cases ending in the person being found innocent.

The city's $877 million budget deficit shapes every decision Levine will face. As HSH director, he manages day-to-day service delivery and contract performance with the department's nonprofit network. Funding levels require Board of Supervisors approval, and Lurie's executive orders set the strategic framework, distributing accountability across multiple actors. What the new director controls directly includes shelter intake decisions, outreach team deployment, and program contracts. What flows through the Board and the Mayor's Office includes the budget lines and broader policy direction that determine whether the 1,500-bed target ever gets a firm completion date.

One financial gain is already in motion. Billing shifts under Lurie moved some department programs to CalAIM, a Medi-Cal program, saving $11 million last year, with the services of around 31 other nonprofits potentially next in line for the same treatment. If successful, the approach could free up hundreds of millions in general fund dollars, giving Levine room to maneuver his predecessor rarely had.

The January 2026 count results, once released, will tell residents whether conditions in SoMa, the Tenderloin, and the Bayview have changed at all. If they haven't, Levine will need to answer for it, and so will Lurie.