The city spends nineteen thousand dollars per resident, employs thirty-four thousand people, and is still telling domestic violence programs there’s no money. So today we’re digging into what’s actually inside that $15.9 billion. Welcome to San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily — I’m Cassidy, Mark’s here, and today we’re doing the whole board: SFPD staffing, the state housing audit, small-business permits, and the budget blueprint tying it together. Five years after Prop E blew up the charter floor on police headcount, we finally get the biennial staffing report the city was supposed to be producing anyway. And the budget numbers sitting next to it are not cute. The state was already calling out SF’s housing failures in October 2023 — before the AI-sector demand surge fully hit — so yeah, we’ve got receipts. And we’re using them. This one's from City & County of San Francisco Police Department:
In November 2020, San Francisco voters approved Proposition E, amending the City Charter to remove the previously established Police staffing baseline and requiring the Police Department to submit a report and recommendation on staffing levels every two years to the Police Commission for consideration when approving the Department’s budget. The purpose of this report is to determine and recommend baseline staffing levels for the San Francisco Police Department using rigorous, industry-reputed methodologies.
This is the 2025 SFPD Staffing Analysis — the biennial report Prop E, the 2020 ballot measure, actually requires. It removed the old charter-mandated headcount floor and replaced it with a report to the Police Commission every two years. So now the Commission has real leverage over staffing that it didn’t have before. Five years. That’s how long the department ran with no statutory baseline, from November 2020 until this report landed. And here’s what Lurie’s people don’t want to answer: crime improved during that gap. So did commanders get better at using the officers they had, or did the turnaround happen despite being structurally under-resourced? Because those are very different stories, with very different price tags. The methodology matters too. They’re not just making up a headcount number — they’re using a workload-based model tied to actual demand for police services. That’s a straight upgrade from the 1994 Prop D approach, which just locked in a number. This one’s from the California Department of Housing and Community Development: This comes from the California Department of Housing and Community Development — HCD — and it was released in October 2023. It’s a formal policy-and-practice review of San Francisco specifically, and it has statutory teeth: the state had legal grounds to audit the city’s housing compliance, not just opine about it. And the timing matters. This dropped in October 2023 — before the AI-sector demand surge fully hit, before rents went parabolic again. The state was already on record saying SF was failing on housing production before the latest wave of pressure even arrived. That’s not a prediction, that’s a receipt. The key findings section flags inconsistencies with state law, problematic CEQA use — that’s the California Environmental Quality Act, which critics say SF weaponized to block or slow projects — publicly initiated discretionary review, and what the document calls “development by negotiation.” That last phrase is doing some serious work. “Development by negotiation” means whoever has the best lawyer and the most patience gets to build. Everybody else gets ground down by the process. HCD didn’t stumble into that phrase — they named the machine. Hacker News (3 pts thread), weighing in:
The City’s failure to implement the Required Actions will result in HCD initiating the process to revoke housing element compliance. Various consequences may apply if the City does not have a housing element in compliance with Housing Element Law, including ineligibility or delay in receiving certain state funds, referral to the California Office of the Attorney General, court-imposed financial penalties, the loss of local land use authority to a court-appointed agent, and the application of…
That Hacker News commenter is quoting the enforcement language straight from the document — revocation of housing element compliance, referral to the Attorney General, court-imposed penalties, and even the possibility of a court-appointed agent taking over local land use authority. San Francisco nearly lost its zoning sovereignty. That’s not a talking point; that’s what the state put in writing. And we were already tracking the 469 Stevenson Street fight earlier this week as a case of structural veto power blocking housing. The HCD review is the state-level paper trail saying that pattern isn’t just one project — it’s the city’s operating system. That case now has a source behind it. Here's SF Planning:
If you are planning to start, renovate, expand a small business, or change the type of business operating at an existing business location, you may need a permit. Depending on the business type and zoning district of the property, your project may be approved and the permit may be issued at the Planning Counter.
The SF Planning small-business permit page — and I mean the official city page — opens with “you may need a permit” and then immediately pivots to a “thorough review process, including several pre-application and staff review steps.” That’s the city’s own welcome mat for someone trying to open a sandwich shop. To be fair, there is a Planning Information Counter, an email address, a Property Information Map — the scaffolding exists. The question is how many hoops sit between that first email and an actual permit. And the HCD housing review — the one the state dropped in October 2023 — was already citing SF’s planning failures before any AI-boom demand surge hit. This permit page is a live artifact of the same friction HCD was documenting. The state put it in writing, and the city’s own website confirms it hasn’t changed. From San Francisco City Attorney’s Office:
This Statement of Incompatible Activities is intended to guide officers and employees of the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office (“Department” or “Office”) about the kinds of activities that are incompatible with their public duties and therefore prohibited.
Quick housekeeping item from the City Attorney’s Office: they’ve published their Statement of Incompatible Activities. That’s the formal document telling staff what outside work, financial interests, or side arrangements are off-limits under the San Francisco Campaign and Governmental Conduct Code, specifically section 3.218. I’ll be honest — this is a routine compliance document, not a scandal. Every city department has one. The fact that it’s in the rundown probably says more about document crawlers than about any actual misconduct at David Chiu’s office. Fair. For listeners, violations can run up to termination and monetary fines under Charter section 15.105, and employees still get due process through their collective bargaining agreements. But nothing here signals an active investigation — this looks like a published policy document, full stop. From SF Blueprint:
San Francisco has one of the largest and most complex local budgets in the United States. With a $15.9 billion annual budget, a ~34,000-person City workforce, and spending of roughly $19,000 per resident, the scale of government here rivals that of entire states and even entire countries. Yet despite this enormous level of spending and years of rapid budget growth, many of the City's most pressing problems such as homelessness remain unresolved.
Following up on Lurie’s budget squeeze all week, today’s thread zooms out to the structural math. SF Blueprint puts three numbers on the table: a $15.9 billion annual budget, roughly 34,000 city employees, and about $19,000 spent per resident per year. That nineteen-thousand-per-resident figure is the receipt I’ve been waiting for. Because we spent this entire week watching cuts land on domestic violence intake and Free City College, and the answer was always “we can’t afford it.” Nineteen grand a head, and that’s where the scissors came out. To be fair, the Blueprint also flags a projected deficit north of a billion dollars by 2030, so the squeeze is real. But the size of the baseline makes “we can’t afford it” a much harder sentence to say with a straight face. The question was never whether there’s a deficit. The question is whose line items get protected inside $15.9 billion when the cuts come. And three days of this week answered that pretty clearly — it’s not the nonprofit service contracts, and it’s not the community college. If this briefing helps you keep up with San Francisco, please subscribe and leave a quick review wherever you’re listening. It really does help other people find the show.
You’ll find links to every story from today’s briefing in the show notes, so if one of them deserves a closer read, that’s the place to go. Thanks for listening, and have a great Friday. That’s San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.