SF Mayor Lurie Tells CNN City "Lost Its Way," Citing 810 Overdose Deaths and 30,000 Car Break-Ins
San Francisco is a city in San Francisco County, California (a consolidated city-county). San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a CNN interview with Dana Bash on October 9 that the city had "lost its way," blaming its homelessness, drug-overdose and business-exodus crises on an overindulgence in progressive ideology. "We lost our way as a city. We were focused on the wrong things and today we're focused on common sense," Lurie said.
"We got so entrapped in our progressive values and talking about progressivism that we weren't taking stock of what was happening on our streets," Lurie said. He cited stark numbers: 810 people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco three years ago, and there were 30,000 car break-ins — "everyone had to deal with whether or not their car was going to be broken into." "There's nothing progressive about that," he said.
Since defeating incumbent London Breed in 2024, Lurie has made restoring San Francisco's battered public image a priority. He told CNN his administration is taking a harder line on crime while working to make the city friendlier to businesses. He added that he still supports progressive values such as caring for immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community, "but we got to a point where we said, 'Well, it's that person's right to be on the street using drugs,' or it's okay for someone to just go in and take what they want from a small business." Car break-ins have dropped 90%, he said.
According to Fox News and the New York Post's October 10 reports on the CNN interview, Lurie also pointed to signs of downtown recovery: falling crime in Union Square and the Financial District, rebounding office leasing, and San Francisco leading major U.S. cities in return-to-office rates. Uniqlo's flagship reopening on Market Street on October 9 was hailed by City Hall as another milestone in the "Heart of the City" recovery plan.
The interview drew national discussion. For San Francisco's Chinese community, improvements in safety and the business climate bear directly on daily life and business confidence — whether the mayor's "common sense first" turn keeps delivering remains to be seen.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 旧金山市政厅，公有领域（Wikimedia Commons，美国国会图书馆 Carol M. Highsmith 藏）
