ELECTION 2020
The Frisc asked all the candidates for District 1 supervisor to answer five questions about the city’s critical issues. Six of the seven responded.
Answers have been edited for length and clarity, and we have fact-checked as much as possible, providing links to sources where appropriate as well as a list of extra resources after each question. An asterisk* in a candidate’s answer indicates that you’ll find more information and context in our resources.
Here are the six respondents, with links to their campaign sites: Connie Chan, Sherman D’Silva, David Lee, Andrew Majalya, Marjan Philhour, and Veronica Shinzato.
What should San Francisco do to protect the unsheltered from COVID-19? What’s your long-term strategy for helping the homeless?
Connie Chan: I support the Board of Supervisors’ emergency ordinance to move our unhoused residents immediately into hotels*. I support the continuing implementation of shelters and Navigation Centers*, permanent supportive housing*, and mental health and substance use treatment facilities for long-term stays.
Homelessness is a symptom* of the lack of equity, the lack of equitable access to health care, housing and jobs, and food security for generations of working people. The best way to solve homelessness* is to prevent it from happening by helping tenants stay in their homes with housing assistance and keep their jobs with job training. I will utilize a multipronged approach to address the reasons people become homeless. I will fight for resources and initiatives to help get unhoused residents off the streets and into shelter.
We must also have coordinated efforts around free job training and education with City College, providing meals, safe camping sites, shelter, Navigation Centers, supportive housing, and social services supported by federal and state funding. That’s how we can solve our homeless crisis instead of wasting money on endless bandages that trap us in the cycle of pitting housed and unhoused residents against each other.
Sherman D’Silva: Use city-owned garages to put up temporary rooms within the structure. Bring in portable showers and bathrooms. Once everyone has a secure place to shelter we need to immediately access their needs, whether it’s addiction, mental [health], employment or housing services. We can provide all services on site including food and health care. We cannot enforce a no-sleeping-on-streets policy until we have a safe place for persons to go. This meets the requirement in an inexpensive temporary manner. It also gives persons no excuse to be living on the street, which allows us to focus on helping people who want assistance. Community service must be required as well, such as street cleaning, graffiti removal, or bus cleaning.
David Lee: City Hall needs to be held accountable for providing unsheltered San Franciscans with shelter during COVID-19. Millions [of dollars] have been squandered on empty hotel rooms and services* that don’t get to those who need them. If the city can move the unhoused from the Civic Center into hotels, we can move unsheltered members of our Richmond district into hotel rooms as well.
San Francisco must prioritize housing its most vulnerable in stable, adequate housing. I support projects like 55 Laguna, HOPE-SF and RAD, and down-payment assistance which would allow low-income families to purchase a home. However, I do not support building a Navigation Center* in the Richmond. Navigation Centers are a stopgap, and we must instead invest in long-term housing for our unhoused community.
Homelessness should be treated as a public health crisis, and unhoused individuals should be moved into hotels and granted access to treatment. We need to tap into the $600 million affordable housing bond and build 100 percent affordable housing in the Richmond. We need to decriminalize poverty, address the root causes of homelessness* — drug addiction and mental health — and fund counselors/treatment programs from the current police budget.
Andrew Majalya: We need not treat unhoused individuals as a monolith. There are those who have been unhoused for many years sometimes as a result of coming from various wars defending this country. There are those that recently lost their jobs due to the pandemic or saw their wages cut. There are many LGBTQ kids and teens who are unhoused because of their families’ unwillingness to accept and love who they are.
Each group needs housing. One way to address this is to use the many vacant garages we have. In those facilities we need medical professionals that can provide rapid COVID testing and understand the unique mental health challenges of each aforementioned group. Short term, we need to have some sort of squad dispatched by City Hall to provide PPE (masks) not only to these folks to protect them from us but also to protect us from them.
Marjan Philhour: San Francisco has led the country in our response to COVID-19 in many ways, but the issues we were facing before the pandemic have not gone away. Homelessness has in fact gotten worse. In the Richmond we are seeing a rise in long-term tent encampments and public drug use. It feels at times as if city departments and our local representatives have either checked out or forgotten these problems exist.
I would expand what is working and push to do it faster. Safe sleeping sites* have been relatively effective in places like the Haight and Civic Center. I understand our budget is limited, and not all of the money spent on hotel rooms is refundable for state and federal sources. But that program, while challenging, is a better option than not having anything.
We need to acknowledge that one of the main causes of homelessness*, and one of its main deleterious effects, is addiction and compounding mental illnesses. We should expand treatment beds, shelter placements, step-up housing, permanent supportive housing, and resources for clinicians, homeless outreach team members, and other specialists to treat people where they are and bring them to more stable housing options.
Veronica Shinzato: Our city has received state funding to acquire hotel rooms and get unhoused folks off the streets, but it’s taking a while. One of my top priorities is to expedite this process. But this is a Band-Aid solution.
Homelessness is a public health crisis and must be treated as such. One of my top priorities is to invest in 311 services by hiring more mental health professionals and case workers, while investing in treatment centers and transitional housing to provide permanent housing* for our unhoused residents and teach them to be self-sufficient.
We need to dismantle our foster-youth-system-to-streets pipeline. We have so many young people age out of the system who have nowhere to go. As a working single mom, I find this truly unconscionable.
We need to improve our data collection system*. We have an invisible homeless population that we don’t account for — folks on the verge of homelessness, such as young people jumping from one friend’s couch to another.
Extra resources: Homelessness
THE BASICS: Every two years the city conducts the “point in time” count. The previous one tallied more than 8,000 unhoused people; the next one is in January. In 2019, 39 percent said a lost job or eviction was the primary cause of their homelessness. Twenty-six percent cited substance abuse or mental illness. These problems are visible and notable, but experts like UCSF’s Margot Kushel note that they can be brought on or compounded by living in the streets. Permanent supportive housing is the current consensus for the best solution for homelessness: getting people into homes surrounded by services.
A few years ago, the city’s new Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, or HSH, began overhauling a tangled web of services and building a tracking system to help homeless people more efficiently. Last year The Frisc reported that the system had been slow to take hold.
The Frisc’s running timeline of the city’s COVID-era response to homelessness is here.
FUNDING: In 2018, voters approved the Prop C business tax to boost services and housing (estimated to bring in more than $300 million a year). It won, but Mayor London Breed and some allies opposed it, and the margin wasn’t large enough to stave off a lawsuit. The state Supreme Court just struck down the suit — a big help for the city’s next budget cycle.
The new two-year, $13.7 billion budget has $1.4 billion for HSH (page 143), but with caveats. Some sources aren’t guaranteed, like federal reimbursement for hotel rooms. City officials say the federal government will reimburse perhaps 75 percent of hotel costs. In addition, the nearly $500 million Prop A bond on the ballot in November sets $207 million for facilities related to mental health and homelessness.
HOTELS: City data on hotels and other shelter sites during COVID are updated here. There are about 1,900 occupied hotel rooms and about 600 more under lease. When COVID struck, advocates called for the city to close shelters and lease thousands of suddenly empty hotel rooms. Supervisors demanded more than 8,000 rooms by end of April. Breed refused, citing logistics and costs. HSH said in August it would stop leasing rooms and move everyone into shelters, tent sites, and permanent housing by June 2021.
NAVIGATION CENTERS: These are invite-only shelters, now closed during the pandemic, where residents have more privacy, can keep belongings and pets, and get transitional help to housing and services. Many proponents want at least one in every district. Some opponents fear the centers will boost crime. The Frisc’s special report earlier this year showed there is no pattern of rising crime around new centers.
The centers are meant to last a few years. Reports on construction costs have ranged from $2 million up to $12.5 million, which doesn’t include operating costs.
SAFE SLEEPING SITES: The first sanctioned tent site went up in Civic Center to ease the crisis in the Tenderloin. (Updates on the neighborhood are here.) In the Haight, neighbors including Amoeba Records sued to stop the city’s second site but backed away when it became public that the suit was filed by a local Trump-loving Republican. Neighborhood opposition remains. A third site was recently slated to open in the Mission.
CONGREGATE SHELTERS: Before COVID, the overnight shelter system had about 1,200 beds for adults and 1,000 people on the wait list. The system is now mostly shut down. The mayor’s office plans to “reactivate” up to 1,000 beds as part of a larger homelessness plan.
CONSERVATORSHIP: When a person is a risk to themselves or others due to mental illness or substance abuse, a 2018 state law lets officials compel them into treatment, with many caveats. After a well-known mentally ill homeless man killed a Glen Park resident in May, Sup. Rafael Mandelman, a conservatorship proponent, told the SF Chronicle that the city had not used the law once.
Is there a housing shortage in San Francisco? If so, how do we fix it?
Chan: While there is a housing shortage in San Francisco, currently there is an estimate of 10,000 up to 30,000 empty housing units in the city, likely held up by speculative investors for investment purposes, or for short-term rental profits*. We need to close the loopholes and free up the units so that we increase our housing stock and stabilize costs — if not lowering them.
We also need to preserve the current stock of rent-controlled units and place further rent control on units, including below-market-rate rental units built after 1979*. San Francisco is better when open to all, not just the wealthy. I advocate the preservation and production of 100 percent affordable housing, focused on low- and middle-income residents. I also support a balanced approach to development that prioritizes protections against displacement for vulnerable tenants, and local control so that residents can weigh in on new developments. I supported the $600 million affordable housing bond and the Prop E rezoning of land for educator and workforce housing in November 2019. Affordable housing development should include community benefits such as ground-floor space that meets the needs of the neighborhood residents, environmentally sustainable design, union labor and local hire, and more.
D’Silva: At the moment there is a housing shortage. However, we need to see how the new tech industry work policies (work from home) affect the number of units available in San Francisco and the Bay Area. There is a limit to what government can do. There will always be people who want to live in SF, so no matter how many units are built, there will be someone else who wants to live here.
I do, however, think relaxing some of the height restrictions* are in order. I would limit height to a maximum of three stories above garage level on commercial corridors [and] in residential areas like the Sunset, two to three stories depending on current existing structures. On blocks of only single family homes, two stories are probably max. We should encourage studios and one-bedroom units to free up two- and three-bedroom units for families. Airbnb-type rentals should not be permitted in any unit. Colleges and universities should be required to provide housing for all students attending.
Lee: Yes, there is. I believe we need to build more 100 percent affordable housing* at all income levels. We need 100 percent affordable housing, reserved and priced to low- and middle-income families.
Majalya: There is absolutely an affordable housing shortage. Zoning laws* need to be changed so that 2–3 story (upzoning) multifamily properties can have more capacity to provide housing for those who need it the most: our elderly, veterans, single moms, single fathers, LGTBQ teens, and working-class families. This will mean making tough decisions. It will also take working together with moderates, conservatives, and liberals to find a permanent solution to these problems.
Philhour: Absolutely. For 20 years, the supervisors representing the Richmond have run on a platform that says that the ONLY housing we should build is “100 percent affordable housing*.” This is a great slogan but not a solution. During that time we’ve built fewer than 50 new homes per year*. It’s no surprise that housing has become more expensive, and our low-income and middle-income neighbors have been forced out.
I’ll support the creation of all types of housing, especially affordable housing. We have major transit corridors* in the Richmond where we’re not even maximizing the zoning currently allowed. I support streamlining the creation of new 100 percent affordable housing and projects that include more affordable units than currently required by the city. If a project complies within existing rules and has more affordable housing than required, we shouldn’t subject it to unnecessary delays because of the city’s broken bureaucracy.
I’ll push for strong tenant protections so residents can remain in their home, as well as work with local and state representatives to protect renters from eviction* and property owners from foreclosure due to the pandemic.
Shinzato: Yes. While we are doing better relative to other California cities*, we are lagging behind high demand in our own backyard.
Our housing crisis is the product of a statewide deficit, thanks largely to the high cost of living in the city*, compounded by restrictive zoning laws* and the lack of a singular source of funding to subsidize the costs of construction*.
We are at a crossroads. We need to recalibrate requirements (affordability, parking, permitting etc.) to incentivize construction. At the same time, building new projects is not necessarily going to solve our affordable housing crisis. For one, construction is expensive* and takes a long time. Second, we often talk about “affordability,” but affordable for whom? As of 2017, more than 88,000 SF households, mine included, were living below the minimum required to live in the city ($130,702). In the Richmond, more than 19,000 households spend at least 30 percent of their income on housing alone.
This requires reevaluating our lottery process to prioritize those with the most urgent housing needs, and reevaluating some policies to accommodate other low-cost housing alternatives, like home sharing and co-ops.
Extra resources: Housing
THE BASICS: In most of SF, the residential height limit is 40 feet and most properties can only house one or two units (not including “in-law” ADUs), a legacy of 20th-century racist “redlining” practices. Attempts by former city supervisor and now state senator Scott Weiner to allow more density in California cities (along transit lines, for example), have drawn vehement opposition from SF progressives along with suburban legislators statewide, and have repeatedly failed. A less ambitious local program, HOME-SF, has had limited effect in the face of resident complaints and other factors. (Lots of zoning information and maps are here.)
PRICES: Rents were once arguably the most expensive in the US. (This story explains the “arguably” part.) As demand drops during COVID, rental prices have plummeted. Before the pandemic, home prices were soaring. The median cost of a two-bedroom: $1.35 million. These days, condo sales have fallen, but SF’s median home price is up 3.8 percent from 12 months ago. For a deeper dive into the debate over supply-and-demand and housing prices, start here.
EVICTIONS: The city tracks evictions filed with its rent board. Pre-pandemic, SF had one of the lowest rates in the country, with the caveat that California law keeps them undercounted. (By how much is a matter of debate; this 2018 report counted an average of 3,275 a year from 2014 to 2016, 52 percent more than the rent board’s count.) With COVID’s financial crisis, local and state officials have enacted eviction moratoriums, but the latest state action has sown confusion.
VACANCIES: How many SF houses sit empty in the midst of a shortage? This pre-COVID story said that as of 2018, there might have been some 30,000, depending what you call a vacancy. (Thousands of those units were up for rent, according to the urban think tank SPUR. Housing is complicated around here.) SF’s 2015 regulation of short-term rentals led to a sharp drop of vacant homes, according to this 2019 study (page 24). Suspicions about so-called speculators buying up properties haven’t been verified. It’s unclear how a tax on vacant units, proposed by some candidates, would affect vacancies.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING: It can range from supportive housing for the formerly homeless to housing for teachers and other middle-income workers. It’s no less expensive to build than market-rate housing, and especially expensive in SF. (See page 7 of this report.)
Market-rate projects of 10 units or more must include a percentage of affordable housing on site, or pay for it offsite. The linkage is problematic. Some supervisors and candidates want to eliminate it because they want as little market-rate housing built as possible. (This recent Frisc story is a good place to start for an explanation.)
Where else could funding come from? There’s bond money, like last year’s successful $600 million Prop A, which at current costs would create about 2,800 units. Also there are taxes, like the one proposed by this November’s Prop I that might pay for up to 10,000 city-owned rental units.
We aren’t building enough units to make SF affordable for more people or to meet California’s RHNA mandates (page 24). From 2015 to 2020, the city completed nearly 1,000 units per year; more than 70 percent were in only two districts. City planners have set a target of 50,000 new affordable units (among 150,000 total units) by 2050.
Cost isn’t the only barrier. Many San Franciscans don’t want development for reasons of congestion, noise, and aesthetics, among other issues. Our planning process often lets them block or delay projects, and their representatives on the board often don’t push back. The YIMBY movement rose in part to counter these forces.
Merchants are in deep trouble. With employees working from home, downtown offices are empty. What can the city do to revitalize business?
Chan: In my New Start plan, I call for policies to ensure small businesses are prioritized in business assistance programs by providing technical and legal assistance to apply for state and federal relief funds. Our small businesses are the backbone of our local economy, and we can help them sustain and grow through tax credits for local ownership and production; streamlining the small business permitting process with technical support; and business tax code reform* that holds corporate and chain businesses to equal if not higher standards as local merchants. We also need to continue our efforts towards public banking to further invest in small businesses, and expand the Legacy Business program to recognize more longtime anchors of our neighborhoods.
D’Silva: Nontech businesses can take up space in San Francisco, but we need to stop placing punishment taxes and fees on them for merely doing business. They should not pay any more or less than any other business. We need to streamline application processes* and assign a city representative to help businesses maneuver red tape. Addressing the homeless issue, cleaning the streets, enforcing laws, and improving the quality of San Francisco can go a long way to bring companies back.
Lee: When reopening San Francisco, we need to make the environment easier for small businesses to succeed, and we cannot do so if we have tax increases during the COVID-19 pandemic*. It would be irresponsible to impose more taxes on middle-income and working people during a time as stressful as the one we currently find ourselves in. The cost of living is too high, and thousands have lost their jobs. I oppose any new taxes during COVID-19. Instead, we need to stabilize neighborhood business to get people back to work.
I also support expanding the Legacy Business Registry. Small businesses, especially long-standing, community-serving businesses, often serve as valuable cultural assets, and we need to encourage their viability and success. In addition, we need to let employees access Healthy San Francisco accounts immediately, and use funds for rent, food, and basic necessities during COVID-19. I support economic hardship loans and payment assistance programs to assist businesses experiencing financial hardship.
Majalya: Now more than ever, we have to rely on small businesses to power our economy, because a lot of the tech companies like Google, Salesforce, and Twitter are contemplating or have decided that their employees can work from home forever*. It saves them a lot of money, because they will no longer have to pay a premium to have a building in the Financial district or SoMa. This hurts our city when it comes to tax revenue, not to mention all the money that tech workers were putting into our local economy via sales taxes.
When you combine all these factors, you have to provide more funding, ease guidelines on opening a small business, and most importantly cut all the red tape at City Hall. In many cases, it can take upward of a year* for an aspiring small business owner to get all the permits, while still having to pay rent/lease every month. Something has to change in this regard, sooner rather than later.
Philhour: I am a small business owner and the cofounder of the Balboa Village Merchants Association in the Richmond. Every day I am talking to friends whose stores have to close, who don’t know when they can reopen, and who have to lay off employees who have worked for them for years.
The red tape and months of applications and permits* for a business to open or change operations was a problem before the pandemic, leading to empty storefronts. Now it’s a matter of survival. I am strongly supportive of Proposition H because we need to let small businesses be flexible in how they respond to this pandemic.
We know that remote work will have some impact, though we don’t know exactly what form that will take. We need to approach the issue with the same willingness to innovate and act quickly that we’ve done with programs like the Slow Streets and Shared Spaces programs. That might mean converting underutilized office space to other uses. We’ll also need to attract different industries and businesses, not just maintain the ones here now.
Shinzato: As a small family restaurant owner, I understand the challenges facing so many of our mom-and-pop shops. I’ve also had to temporarily shut my doors for the well-being of our community.
We have to extend COVID assistance and create a one-stop shop to navigate state and federal resources. We know that many of those shut out of the Paycheck Protection Program are minority-owned businesses.
We need to reevaluate business and property taxes* to be more responsive to the needs of our small business owners. We need to rethink how bureaucracy* is making it harder for them to thrive, let alone survive in this economic environment. We [also] need to invest in resources to help them navigate their fiduciary responsibilities and landlord negotiations, especially for those unable to pay their rent.*
Extra resources: Small business
There’s a city moratorium on commercial evictions, but it’s set to expire Sept. 30.
BUSINESS TAXES: With Prop F, supported by the mayor and supervisors, SF voters must decide in November whether to shift the city’s tax structure to gross receipts. Smaller and more beleaguered sectors would get a break. Prop F would add nearly $100 million to city revenue, the controller estimated. Also on the ballot: Prop L, the “overpaid CEO” tax, docking companies where the top executive earns at least 100 times more compensation than the median employee.
VACANCY TAX: Authored by District 3 Sup. Aaron Peskin and approved in March, the tax on owners of vacant storefronts has been delayed for a year until 2022 because of the pandemic. There is no evidence that it has already begun to work even before implementation, despite Peskin’s claim in his statement to The Frisc.
CLOSURES: Of about 4,000 SF restaurants, as many as half may close this year, the SF Chamber of Commerce told The Frisc. The local restaurant trade group says 87 percent of eateries it surveyed are not breaking even from takeout and delivery. In response, more than 1,300 restaurants have the green light to build emergency “Shared Spaces” parklets for outdoor dining; hundreds more applications are pending. Owners still need to pay for materials and hope customers return. (Some can tap into grants or free PPE.) Those depending on delivery now pay lower fees to delivery app companies.
RED TAPE RELIEF: COVID didn’t start the fire. Hundreds of SF restaurants closed in 2019. Small businesses, dealing with neighbors forcing delays and other red tape, have fought for relief for years. In 2018, Sups. Ahsha Safai (running for reelection) and Katy Tang pushed through flexible-retail rules for some districts. It failed to gain citywide traction. Small-business regulations will get an overhaul if Prop H passes in November, but many merchants will likely give up before then.
WORK FROM HOME: Twitter, Square, and many other white-collar giants are not going to use their offices for quite some time — perhaps never, and it’s not just tech letting folks work from home. It’s a near-term disaster for the delis, cafes, and happy-hour hangouts around those offices. Longer term, we don’t know what will happen. Many of those at-home workers may buy more coffee and lunches in their neighborhoods, keyword being “may.” (The Frisc reported on SF’s post-pandemic economic quandary in August in two parts, here and here.)
The city will shift $120 million in the next budget from law enforcement to the Black community. Is this too little, too much? It will also shift responsibility for mental health and other calls away from the police. What will you do to ensure public safety ?
Chan: Our police department has increased its budget by 58 percent in the last decade to over $600 million* with no clear data tying this to an increase of safety, especially for communities of color.
Given my 15 years of public service, including time at the district attorney’s office, I know many of our communities feel disconnected and underserved from police officers, who are supposed to protect us. This often leads us to believe that increased policing is the solution. But historically our Chinese American community were often ignored by police, and their pleas for safety still go unheard. Our Black and Latino communities already know too well that racial bias among law enforcement agencies* threatens their lives and civil rights.
We must push to transform our law enforcement system and dismantle racism.
In the face of a $1.7 billion deficit*, we must prioritize resources to equitably serve working people, small businesses, and vulnerable communities. To support our recovery, we need to invest in public health care, public schools, and economic and job development. These strategies are an important part of public safety for our communities.
D’Silva: I will not cut the SFPD budget. One of the biggest issues in San Francisco are car break-ins, shoplifting, and burglaries. These issues do not get solved with fewer officers on the ground. You need to do exactly the opposite. Increasing officers on the ground acts as a deterrent to crime. The city already allocates funds for mental health. We can pull resources from other areas if needed, but to do that we need to get a handle on what type of help is necessary and how many persons are affected in that category, which is why getting persons into the temporary garage shelters immediately is imperative.
Lee: Cutting $120 million over the next two years, as proposed by Mayor Breed, is a good start. I support the effort to reallocate portions of SFPD’s budget to community-based organizations (CBOs), especially those uplifting underserved communities through job training, providing security, health/wellness, etc. Research has shown that such investments can lead to a decrease in crime and increase public safety. Our police officers should not be responding to nonviolent calls like quality-of-life complaints or mental health concerns. We can recommit those resources and appropriately reallocate them to CBOs trained to provide mental health, drug treatment, conflict de-escalation, restorative justice, and other solutions.
Public safety is a top priority for me. The police serve an important function to protect our community. However, recent tragedies have once again revealed the need for systemic reform in law enforcement. We must enact immediate reforms in recruitment and training, policing procedures, disciplinary policies, and firing of racist officers. This is necessary to eliminate systemic racism so that laws can be enforced equitably and fairly without bias or prejudice.
Majalya: We are [at] an inflection point where cries for social justice reform and defunding the police get louder and more demonstrative.
What we need is systemic reform of policing practices, meaning not only self-defense (when and how to draw your weapon), but [also] understanding the historical context on how the police are viewed by African Americans, along with approaching nonviolent conflicts with the ability to be the voice of reason and make sure everyone is able to go either back home or spend some time in jail — living to see another day.
The proposed cuts to the police don’t work in my district, because while we have seen a decline in violent crime, property crime is up*, and we have a police force already unable to respond to every call due to lack of resources. I would ask for more funding for police in my district.
Philhour: I support the plan, led by Mayor London Breed and Sup. Shamann Walton, to reallocate some funding to historically underserved communities. I’m glad a long-term, comprehensive process has begun to iron out the details. I do think that police play an important role in this city, and I support having officers in our neighborhoods, walking the street to prevent crime. I hope that we can remove some responsibilities for noncriminal activities that the city has asked police to do because the city didn’t have the resources in place to respond accordingly.
For example, someone who is in mental distress, who is not a threat to themselves or others, should be responded to by a mental health counselor trained for those situations. Homeless Outreach Team members should have a consistent presence in every neighborhood to help connect people to services and shelter. We should let police focus on the violent crimes and property crimes that are beginning to rise again* throughout the city.
Shinzato: We need to take time to evaluate the impact of redirecting these funds, which is where strong government oversight and accountability come in. Even before public pressure to redirect SFPD’s funds, a $700 million budget* [was] not financially sustainable.
To ensure public safety, we need to work with our city attorney and district attorney to investigate and prosecute property theft and hate crimes. We know that due to COVID-19, there has been an alarming increase in hate crimes against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. We also need to streamline reporting mechanisms and increase multilingual outreach around these resources.
Finally, we need meaningful dialogue between law enforcement and our communities, especially during politically charged times. We know that for communities of color, police presence can be triggering. This is where foot policing and better community outreach could help alleviate those fears and restore trust.
Extra resources: Policing
THE BASICS: SF is not going to defund the police. But it is cutting and redirecting part of the budget, with the blessing of the chief. The budget 10 years ago was $455.5 million. The final pre-pandemic budget was $692 million. In that decade, full-time headcount rose 20 percent to 3,285. Current plans are to cut $37 million over the next two years, to $656 million. Cuts are also planned for the Sheriff’s Office. All told, $120 million will be redirected to academics, social services, and other resources for the Black community.
REFORM: In 2016, SF voters passed two measures to overhaul civilian oversight of the police. The same year, the Justice Department recommended 272 reforms in a report on the SFPD’s biases and excessive force against people of color. The cops say they’re committed to “responding” to the recommendations. The state took the reins of the oversight after the Trump administration ended federal involvement. In early 2020 the city passed a law to make the police report victim demographics in response to fears that Chinese seniors were being targeted for crime. The president’s blame of China for the pandemic seems to have exacerbated the situation in SF.
CRIME RATES: With 27 homicides through July 2020, SF is on pace for its highest annual murder count since 2017 (56). But the overall trend on crime is lower, not higher. From 2013 to 2019, violent crimes dropped 13 percent to 6,080. There were 2,800 violent crimes through the end of July 2020, which suggests another decline.
Among property crimes, burglaries are an outlier: 4,109 burglaries were reported through July, which is approaching the full 2019 tally of 4,800. But overall, property crime (23,167 reports through July) could drop below the 48,551 incidents tallied in 2013.
Crime data from 2015 to 2020 are posted here. (This document has data for 2013 and 2014.) The SFPD case clearance dashboard is here.
Folks are leaving San Francisco for several reasons. What do you say to them?
Chan: Before the pandemic, I heard stories of young families looking for an RV to live in because they couldn’t afford San Francisco rents. Now people are leaving the city for other reasons: the ability to work remotely or losing jobs and the threat of eviction*.
The social and economic impacts will be devastating and far reaching. We may need to fundamentally change how we live and conduct business. I have proposed the New Start for San Francisco plan to put forth transparent and coordinated efforts to invest in housing security for the homeless and working families.
I have also said many times that we need to fight for the soul of our city. That means that as we recover, we center our vulnerable populations, working and immigrant families, and the small businesses that are the backbone of our communities. And that certainly means we seek out ways to connect our recovery to our community roots.
D’Silva: I am saddened when people, especially longtime San Franciscans, decide to leave the city. But I understand everyone must determine what is best for them and their family.
Lee: We need to cut waste, clean up corruption*, and streamline government first to restore trust in City Hall. We need to reform City Hall and make San Francisco livable again for working- and middle-class families. It is financially irresponsible to impose new taxes on our working- and middle-class families during this time. We cannot kick people when they are down. The cost of living in San Francisco is too high, and thousands have lost their jobs due to COVID-19. Ordinary people cannot afford to pay any more taxes.
Majalya: I deeply regret you are not able to live the life you dreamed of, in what I consider to be one of the best cities in the world in terms of culture, arts, history, people, and its great cuisine. We are going to have to do a better job of providing affordable housing for everyone. This needs to be based on a combination of many factors, the most important being salary, debt-to-income ratio, and how many dependents those that are leaving have. When we do that, we will be able to [have] true affordable housing and you will see the people who are fleeing the city come back.
Philhour: San Francisco is a city that knows how to recover, and we’ll emerge from this pandemic too. This is not an easy time for any of us, and we’re seeing longtime staples of our community close, our friends lose their jobs, and persistent issues like homelessness and addiction get worse.
We can get through this. But we need leaders who are focused on driving our economic recovery rather than on furthering an ideological agenda. We need leaders who are willing to work together, rather than trying to amplify our differences to score political points. And we need leaders who understand their districts, know their community, and are ready to do the work. That’s why I’m running for supervisor.
Shinzato: Let’s give San Francisco a chance. I’ve lived here for 30 years since my family moved from Peru. I cannot imagine living anywhere else. I am a proud public-school graduate and an even prouder public-school mother. It’s not easy being a working single mom and a small restaurant owner, especially in this economic environment. I have faith we can overcome this together. But we have to put in the work.
Many of my friends and neighbors no longer live in San Francisco because they could no longer afford to live here. We need to start rethinking affordability, not just in the context of the real estate market, but in the context of the average purchasing power of regular San Franciscans.
If we are intent on seeing changes, we cannot go back to politics as usual. We cannot also tax our way out. We need new leaders with fresh and bold ideas, like myself, who understand the struggles facing working families and struggling tenants.
Extra resources: Leaving SF
THE BASICS: Last year, SF had more than 881,000 residents — its highest total ever and a nearly 10% jump from 2010. There have been many stories about people fleeing cities for the suburbs, but the data don’t bear that out, and some ex-residents may even return.
SATISFACTION: While COVID has spurred some San Franciscans to relocate, how many remains to be seen; wait for findings from the 2020 census. Last year, the city controller released its biennial satisfaction survey: Libraries, really good. Muni, not so much. In an early 2020 pre-COVID survey by the Chamber of Commerce, SF respondents said that life in the city was getting worse.
CORRUPTION: Department of Public Works chief Mohammed Nuru was arrested in early 2020 on federal corruption charges. Former Mayor Ed Lee appointed Nuru in 2011 over the protests of city attorney Dennis Herrera who had pursued Nuru for ethics violations. (Then a mayoral candidate, Herrera’s objections were dismissed as political.) The growing investigation has spurred Prop B, which would reorganize DPW and create more oversight. The seventh and eighth defendants in the current probe were named earlier this month.
Kristi Coale (@unazurda) is a San Francisco-based freelance writer and radio producer for various outlets, including KALW’s Crosscurrents and the National Radio Project’s Making Contact. Alex Lash contributed to this report.