In December 2024, Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie named Ned Segal Chief of Housing and Economic Development and stated he had served as co-chair of the Lurie campaign. The release said Segal would align Building Inspection, City Planning, Economic and Workforce Development, Housing and Community Development, the Arts Commission, Libraries, and the Airport. It did not name the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing — HSH, the city department that runs shelter, outreach, and supportive housing. On February 13, 2025, sf.gov used the same housing-and-economic-development title. The hire and the official title are already in this file. See the appointment recap and the sf.gov title page.
The San Francisco Standard, December 17, 2024, by Josh Koehn, framed the job as steering San Francisco out of its economic and housing crises. The Standard’s own tweet said he was “in charge of steering San Francisco out of its economic and housing crises.” That is reporting, not a city org-chart line that he runs HSH. The Standard also reported the new role would work with Building Inspection, Planning, Economic and Workforce Development, and Housing and Community Development, plus Arts, libraries, and the Airport — the same list as the mayor-elect’s release. HSH is not on that list.
A Point-in-Time count — PIT — is a HUD-required one-night census of people in shelter and people sleeping outside, in vehicles, tents, or other places not meant for living. On January 30, 2024, before Lurie took office, HSH counted 8,323 people experiencing homelessness: 4,354 unsheltered and 3,969 sheltered. Total homelessness was up 7 percent from 7,754 in 2022. Those figures are on the city’s 2024 PIT page.
The 2026 count was taken the morning of January 29, 2026. On May 12, 2026, HSH published preliminary results: 7,973 people, a 4 percent drop from 8,323; unsheltered homelessness 3,400, a 22 percent drop from 4,354, which the city called the lowest level recorded since 2011. The same page says 57 percent were sheltered — the highest sheltered rate recorded to date — and that family homelessness rose 15 percent, to 465 families. The Mayor’s Office release the same day added an 85 percent drop in people in tents and structures: fewer than 100 people observed in tents in 2026, against nearly 650 in 2024. It does not name Ned Segal. It quotes HSH Executive Director Shireen McSpadden, and it says Lurie had appointed Mike Levine as HSH executive director the month before. The city’s PIT collection page, as last checked August 27, 2026, still said the full 2026 report would come “later this summer.” The remaining official count, even on the city’s own preliminary figures, is 7,973 people.
HSH is a city department with its own budget. That money is not a payment to Segal. The adopted HSH budget for fiscal year 2024–25 — July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025 — was $846.3 million. The later two-year budget, adopted in July 2025, allocates $785.6 million to HSH in FY 2025–26 and $705.2 million in FY 2026–27. Those are city documents. They do not assign the appropriation to the housing chief as personal funds.
This site did not locate a city-published “cost per homeless person” for the whole HSH budget. Pair the FY 2024–25 HSH figure of $846.3 million with the 2024 night count of 8,323 and the quotient is $101,682. Pair the FY 2025–26 adopted figure of $785.6 million with the 2026 preliminary count of 7,973 and the quotient is $98,533. Both are this site’s arithmetic from those two primaries. They are not a city unit cost. HSH’s own 2024 PIT page says more than 20,000 people seek homeless services over a full year, so a one-night count is a snapshot, not the year-round caseload. The Controller’s Office, March 10, 2025, did publish shelter-bed estimates for FY 2023: $126.25 per filled adult or transitional-age-youth bed per night, and $221.81 for family shelter, with roughly $176 million — about 25 percent of HSH — going to shelter in FY 2024. Multiply $126.25 by 365 and you get $46,081 for one filled adult bed-year. That last step is again this site’s arithmetic from the Controller’s nightly number. It is a shelter-bed figure, not a citywide cost per homeless person.
On housing production, the Planning Department’s 2025 Housing Inventory, dated April 2026, reports a net addition of 2,669 units in calendar 2025 — about 26 percent below the ten-year average of 3,622 — and says the Department of Building Inspection authorized 1,900 net units for construction. Affordable completions are listed at 1,758 units. Against the state Regional Housing Needs Allocation of 82,069 units for 2023–2030, the Inventory shows 9,581 units of progress, 12 percent. That report does not name Segal. The official PermitSF page names him as working with Director of Current Planning Liz Watty on permit reform. No official 2026 housing-unit count published in his name was located. The Mayor’s May 12, 2026, homeless-progress release does not give him the HSH numbers either.
Unresolved, and it stays unresolved: he is the Mayor’s Chief of Housing and Economic Development. He is not named, on the city pages checked, as HSH director. The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that another policy chief, Kunal Modi, holds the health, homelessness, and family-services portfolio. That is reporting around the mayor’s office structure, not a finding that Segal spent the HSH budget. No DataRepublican graph edge, USAspending.gov named award, or doge.gov/savings line to Ned Segal or to him via HSH or the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development was located this pass. None is invented.