Lessons from San Francisco and Portland
...154 days to go...
In recent months, two of our peer cities on the west coast have tried bold new strategies to fight homelessness that I wanted to share, and question whether these approaches could work in Seattle. San Francisco has attempted to mobilize private wealth, while Portland has had the novel idea of treating the crisis… like an actual crisis.
San Francisco: The Breaking the Cycle Fund
In January 2025, Daniel Lurie began his term as mayor of San Francisco. Within weeks he launched the “Breaking the Cycle Fund.” Within four months, the fund had already raised $37.5 million to support expanding shelter and treatment bed capacity, mostly from four donors:
$11 million from Tipping Point Community (Lurie’s former nonprofit)
$10 million from the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation
$10 million from Michael Moritz’s Crankstart Foundation
$6 million from Keith and Priscilla Geeslin
These funds helped stand up 500 new beds, including over 70 behavioral healthcare beds specifically for people with mental health or substance abuse issues.
At 822 Geary Street, SF opened a 24-hour stabilization center funded by the program. In the first five months it’s been opened, 344 people have been admitted. Of those, 88 entered residential treatment programs. Not bad for a brand-new program.
I should be clear: these funds aren’t transformative on their own. San Francisco spends about $700 million annually on homelessness services. So $37.5 million represents a roughly 5% boost—significant, but not revolutionary.
Still, $37.5 million in four months is remarkable. And 500 new beds in five months represents the kind of rapid deployment that cities usually claim is impossible due to permitting, NIMBY opposition, and bureaucratic inertia.
San Francisco, like Seattle, will complete its Point-in-Time Count this month. When those results are published, perhaps we’ll have a better sense of whether this accelerated approach is actually reducing street homelessness.
Would this work in Seattle? I’m a bit disappointed we haven’t tried something similar yet. Seattle has its share of wealthy individuals, foundations, and corporations that claim to care about homelessness. We have the Gates Foundation. We have Amazon, Microsoft, and a dozen other tech giants. We have billionaires and near-billionaires in every neighborhood with water views.
Where’s our Breaking the Cycle Fund?
Mayor Katie Wilson pledged to create 4,000 new units of emergency housing and shelter over four years. That’s an ambitious goal that will require funding beyond what the city budget can provide. A privately-funded $40-50 million initiative—similar to San Francisco’s—could jumpstart that effort and demonstrate that Seattle’s wealthy are willing to put their money to work.
Portland: Moving at Disaster Speed
A year ago, Portland elected Keith Wilson as mayor (no relation to Katie Wilson, though they share a determination to actually do something about homelessness). He ran in part on a promise to stand up 1,500 units of shelter fast—“as if a natural disaster had struck,” as the Seattle Times reported.
A year in, he’s actually done it.
Portland has added 1,200 overnight shelter beds in twelve months and an additional 400 “flex” beds, more than doubling the city’s shelter capacity in a single year. Those beds served 3,174 people in 2025—roughly half of Portland’s unsheltered population.
Would this work in Seattle? Too soon to know if Portland’s approach will actually reduce chronic homelessness or just shuffle people around temporarily.
But here’s what Portland demonstrates: cities can move incredibly fast when they have the political will.
We always hear that opening new shelters takes years due to permitting, community opposition, construction timelines, and funding cycles. Portland proved that’s not actually true. When you treat homelessness like the emergency it is—when you move with disaster-response urgency—you can double shelter capacity in twelve months.
Our new mayor, Katie Wilson, certainly seems determined to try something similar. The question is whether Seattle has the political will to actually make it happen. Will we allow sites to open quickly, or will every project get bogged down in neighborhood meetings and appeals?