As Super Bowl 60 draws near, San Francisco’s mainstream media is recounting how 10 years ago, for Super Bowl 50 city workers “swept unhoused people and drug users away,” and “inadvertently created a tent city on Division Street.” Every article places blame on the late Mayor Ed Lee, but none of them mentions that San Francisco’s current mayor deserves much of the blame.
In 2013, Daniel Lurie spearheaded the Bay Area’s successful effort to host the 50th Super Bowl at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., a place better known for Silicon Valley than for professional sports situated 45 miles south of San Francisco. I imagine Lurie was able to pull a few strings: he became an heir to the Levi’s fortune when his mother, Mimi, inherited around 15 percent of Levi Strauss & Co. from her second husband, Peter E. Haas, the late great-grandnephew of Levi Strauss.
During the 2024 mayoral campaign, Lurie and his family spent more than $10 per San Francisco resident (around $1.4 million) to run on the premise that he was a City Hall outsider, but that wasn’t true. For starters, his wife, Becca Prowda, was a “confidential assistant” to Gavin Newsom when he was San Francisco’s mayor. In 2019, she became director of protocol for Governor Newsom, where she remains one of his closest confidants. Wifely connections aside, Lurie had his own close ties to San Francisco politicians: the late Mayor Ed Lee tapped him to chair the Bay Area Super Bowl 50 Host Committee. Press releases bragged that Lurie “helped raise $13 million to invest in lower-income communities.” That sounds super, but the Super Bowl festivities actually helped to create much of the visible homelessness seen in San Francisco today.
On his campaign website, Lurie announced his “emergency shelter plan to end unsheltered homelessness in six months,” which is even more audacious than what he said during debates and town halls.
In less than a month, Lurie and Lee built a city for fans to party in and then tore it down as if it never existed — a fantastic feat. Yet, driving down Division Street a few days after the hoopla, my friend Steve and I counted more than 130 tents occupied by homeless people. “It looks like a Hooverville,” Steve said, referring to the shantytowns built by homeless people during the Great Depression and named for President Herbert Hoover. “We should call these ‘Leevilles’ after Mayor Lee.”
In February 2016, Lurie penned an opinion piece for Fortune Magazine entitled “The Huge Problem Super Bowl Host Cities Can’t Ignore.” In it, he praised the Big Game for bringing big business and generating economic activity. “As the Chairman of the Host Committee for Super Bowl 50, I’m excited to welcome a million fans and visitors to the Bay Area for the biggest single-day sporting event in the world. Visitors from around the world who explore my native city of San Francisco will enjoy the renowned food and wine, progressive mindset, and breathtaking views the Bay Area is known for,” Lurie gushed. “But as the full-time CEO and founder of Tipping Point Community, an organization that funds anti-poverty programs in the Bay Area, I am not proud of something else these visitors are going to see: the legion of the homeless. … As we gather for this 50th-anniversary celebration, and the eyes of the world turn to our city and region, we must not look past our neighbors in need. They will be here when the game is over, and the visitors are gone. We must shine the global spotlight both on the competition on the field and the challenges on our streets.”
He also said “25 percent of every corporate sponsorship dollar” would be contributed to the 50 Fund, the Host Committee’s 501(c)(3) arm, established to manage and allocate funds to “deserving non-profits” in the Bay Area. “Fan experiences, entertainment, and civic events are all part of the foundational planning when hosting a Super Bowl. Why shouldn’t taking care of the surrounding community be part of that planning, too?” Lurie asked with an odd mix of arrogance and naïveté.
The reality, however, was much harsher.
Before wealthy revelers came to celebrate a football game played 45 miles south in Santa Clara, Mayor Lee told the press he would give the homeless “alternatives,” but they would have to leave the streets. San Francisco hastily prepared giant warehouses on the outskirts of town to hide the destitute. At first, unlike in swanky Super Bowl City, the plumbing wasn’t even working. Why Host Committee Chairman Lurie didn’t put his fundraising skills and personal resources toward finding a solution for a problem he helped to create is still a headscratcher.
Lurie’s sweeping two-peat
Now mayor of San Francisco, Lurie has quietly been hiding the homeless just as he and Lee did 10 years ago. One of the most troubling developments is that The Gubbio Project, a “daytime shelter” known for wreaking havoc for residents of Julian Street in the Mission District, is opening 80 beds and 14 chairs nightly between Feb. 2 and Feb. 8 after 5 p.m. Gubbio’s executive director Lydia Bransten doesn’t know the amount of funding the city will provide as it hasn’t been finalized but suffice to say she’s thrilled to take in more taxpayer money, and her neighbors are rightly furious. “We already have people smoking fentanyl in front of our place because of Gubbio, so this is going to be a nightmare,” one neighbor said.
Gubbio’s executive director, Lydia Bransten, doesn’t know how much funding the city will provide, as it hasn’t been finalized, but suffice it to say she’s thrilled to take in more taxpayer money, and her neighbors are rightly furious.
I have long advocated for Lurie to end funding for Gubbio altogether after undercover video and subsequent visits confirmed drug use inside and outside the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist, where Gubbio resides. They also hand out drug paraphernalia, including smoking supplies like pipes, brillo and foil, along with syringes (something Lurie recently said the city stopped doing). Dealers sell drugs right outside the church, and Gubbio “clients” shoot and smoke them right there within feet of an elementary school (and yes, there have been overdoses).
On the campaign trail, Lurie’s signature talking point was his plan to spread 1,500 new shelter beds throughout San Francisco in the first six months of his administration. On his campaign website, Lurie announced his “emergency shelter plan to end unsheltered homelessness in six months,” which is even more audacious than what he said during debates and town halls. He repeated his strategy in a March 2025 executive order, and he touted the goal again in May after raising almost $40 million from private donors.
From the first time I heard Lurie say he would “stand the shelter beds up starting with his district” (and get around neighbor disapproval by declaring a state of emergency), I knew it would never happen, and it never did — Lurie scrapped the impossible plan right at his self-imposed six-month deadline. Kunal Modi, the mayor’s top policy chief on homelessness, said at the time that San Francisco’s money would be better spent “fixing a broken system that fails to properly coordinate agencies and address the root causes of homelessness, such as drug addiction and mental health issues.” That was July of 2025. Fast forward six months, and the best Lurie can do is stand up 80 shelter beds and 14 chairs at the notorious Gubbio Project. While the San Francisco 49ers (who play in Santa Clara) may not have had a Super Bowl win in 31 years, San Francisco’s mayor has achieved a 10-year two-peat for moving the homeless out of sight.
In Part 2: A longtime West SoMa resident says she’s “reliving the horror” from Super Bowl 50 as the homeless are once again “relocated” to her neighborhood for Super Bowl 60 festivities.