The current director of Massachusetts’ Medicaid program was named the new executive director of San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
Mike Levine will take on the role starting in June for outgoing director Shireen McSpadden, who has served in the role since 2021 and is retiring.
Levine was introduced by Mayor Daniel Lurie at a press conference at a tiny house village at 33 Gough St. He said Levine’s experience navigating complex policy and funding streams made him the right person for the job as the city seeks to expand funding options to treat a range of health issues that he said are inseparable from housing insecurity.
“We will not solve homelessness by treating it separately from drug addiction or mental illness,” Lurie said. “People don’t experience these challenges separately. And neither can we.”
Levine will take on a monumental task in a city that recorded rising rates of homelessness among families and young people, as well as those experiencing chronic homelessness, mental illness or developmentally disabled, according to the city’s 2025 Homelessness Needs Assessment that was presented in January.
The biennial Point in Time Count conducted in 2026 won’t be made public until later this year, but the 2024 count saw an increase in unhoused people on the one night of the count from 2022.
The count is widely considered by advocates and local governments to be a rough estimate that does not capture the true extent of homelessness because of its limited methodology of physically surveying streets on one day and night every two years.
But while the overall number of unhoused or homeless people increased to 8,323 in 2024 from 7,754 in 2022, the percentage of those staying in shelters increased.
‘More than a housing issue’
Levine is a graduate of Pomona College in Southern California. He managed a 1,000-person workforce and oversaw a $23 billion Medicaid program in Massachusetts that served 2 million people.
“My experience in Medicaid has taught me that homelessness is more than a housing issue,” he said. “We will only succeed in getting people stabilized if we treat addiction and mental health issues.”
The city’s 2025 homelessness needs assessment said its priorities were to address systemic causes of homelessness, including inequities in housing, employment and health care that impact people of color, LGBTQ residents, and people with disabilities.
The report also listed priorities as limiting entry into homelessness by addressing a lack of affordable housing and increasing care for those with mental illness or behavioral health needs.
Lurie and Levine both acknowledged the city’s current funding constraints, as Lurie looks to balance the city’s budget by laying off over a hundred city staffers and has ordered cuts in each department.
Levine said he would pursue as many federal dollars as he could to help fund supportive health and homelessness services.
“We cannot leave money on the table in times like these,” he said.
Lurie’s office said in a statement that tent encampments on city streets reached record lows in February and touted a program that pays for people to leave the city called Journey Home. Lurie also said about a hundred households living in RVs had accepted stable housing offers, and there were 26% fewer RVs on city streets than last year at this time.
Outgoing executive director McSpadden said in a statement that she had confidence Levine would be an outstanding fit.
“Mike has deep expertise and a proven track record of innovative solutions; I have confidence in his ability to lead HSH’s efforts in addressing homelessness with compassion and effectiveness,” McSpadden said.