What top SF mayoral candidates say about city's homelessness problem

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- With just about a month left until the November election, the top candidates in the race for San Francisco mayor are battling to be voters' top choice.

In interviews with the four leading candidates, ABC7 News anchor Reggie Aqui teamed up with our media partner The San Francisco Standard and its political and business reporter Annie Gaus, along with Kara Swisher, author and host of the "On with Kara Swisher" podcast. Our panel asked the candidates about some of the biggest issues facing the city: including public safety and crime, homelessness, downtown recovery and the economy, tourism and public perception of the city.

All four candidates - Mayor London Breed, Supervisor Aaron Peskin, Mark Farrell and Daniel Lurie - were in agreement about the severity of the homelessness problem in San Francisco, but they all differ in approaches to solutions.

WATCH: Top San Francisco mayoral candidates detail vision for city, tackling crime, homelessness and more

Breed: homelessness numbers are improving

According to the 2024 Point-in-Time count, homelessness in San Francisco has hit a 10-year low - even though it still showed more than 2,900 unhoused people are living on the city streets.

Breed points to the numbers "trending in the right direction," saying she will continue such leadership if elected for a second term.

"We're making people on the streets uncomfortable so that the only option is to accept what we are offering," she said.

The mayor defended her handling of the crisis up until the June decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, in which justices ruled that cities can ban people from sleeping and camping in public spaces.

"We now have actually the tools we need. We didn't have the tools that we needed until the Supreme Court decision came about. And now we can enforce the law. No sleeping, no lying, no camping - whether we have a place for you to go or not," she said. "But we do try to lead with a place for you to go."

Farrell says he would have had camping ban before SCOTUS ruling

But Farrell, the former interim mayor of SF, said he would have steamrolled ahead with a camping ban despite the back-and-forth on this issue in the lower courts.

"If you want to sue me in my capacity as mayor because you don't agree with what I'm doing, I welcome that," he said. "In the light of conflicting legal opinions, the current mayor's approach was not to do anything and to let it let it be and essentially fester on the streets of our city."

As for the number of people still living on the streets of San Francisco, Farrell said residents shouldn't accept the circumstances, even if it is getting better.

"As you drive through the Tenderloin during the day, let alone at night, ask yourself: as a San Francisco resident, as a voter, are you satisfied? Is this where we should be as a city government? And to me, that's exactly the point is that we need to demand more out of our leaders," he said.

Lurie touts experience from his nonprofit dedicated to homelessness

Lurie, the heir to Levi's and antipoverty nonprofit executive, believes his nearly two decades at the helm of Tipping Point puts him in the best position to handle this issue.

"I'm the only person in this race that's also gotten housing built, shelter built. I've housed over 40,000 people since 2015. I know how to get big things done. And the key component of all of it is holding people accountable," he said.

ABC7 anchor Reggie Aqui asked Lurie if the city is past the point of no return.

"We need to stand up more mental health and drug treatment beds, and we have to get people off the street and into treatment. We need to pull our police officers back from being the first responders to somebody who's in the throes of crisis, mental health or drug addiction," Lurie said. "And what we need to do is make sure that we have the continuum of care built out and this mayor and this Department of Public Health forgot about that. The point of getting people off the streets is to get them into recovery."

Peskin says he's the "only person" with an "actual plan"

In a jab at his opponents, Peskin - the President of the Board of Supervisors - told ABC7 that he is the only candidate with a vision for how to tackle homelessness.

"The first step of it is systemic management reform, to wrangle the nine city departments and the 248 nonprofit service providers into a much more rational, much more accountable structure," Peskin said.

"I will lead a groundbreaking regional approach to address our substance abuse and mental health behavioral health crisis by working with the nine Bay Area counties and the cities of San Jose and Oakland to refurbish unused and underutilized state facilities that have been sitting vacant... to have the economies of scales of scale and efficiencies to address this problem and give people the treatment that they need," he said.

Peskin, a progressive, said he also supports conservatorship for certain individuals.

"We need to expand conservatorship laws in San Francisco and the state of California to give us the tools that we need. And we have to give those people treatment while we are aggressively arresting and prosecuting dealers," he said.

You can watch the full interviews with all four candidates, here.