ELECTION 2020
The Frisc asked the candidates for District 3 supervisor to answer five questions about the city’s critical issues. Three candidates 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 three respondents, with links to their campaign sites: Sup. Aaron Peskin (the incumbent), Danny Sauter, and Spencer Simonsen.
What should San Francisco do to protect the unsheltered from COVID-19? What’s your long-term strategy for helping the homeless?
Aaron Peskin: Keeping people housed is fundamental to “Housing First” solutions to homelessness. I have stood up to speculators and held the corporate rental industry and companies like Airbnb and Academy of Art University to account through legislation and litigation, removing incentives to hold units off the market* and securing tens of millions of dollars for affordable housing* projects.
I’ve secured the most meaningful reform of SRO legislation in decades by extending just-cause eviction protections to all single-room-occupancy tenants. In recent months, I authored rent-freeze legislation, “Shelter In Peace” legislation to mitigate construction impacts to tenants, and co-sponsored Sup. Dean Preston’s legislation to prohibit eviction for nonpayment of back rent due to COVID-19. More recently, I’ve joined with state Assemblymember David Chiu to push for the strongest possible eviction protections* statewide, and to protect our local protections from being invalidated by state law.
I’ve won approval for a new transitional-aged youth Navigation Center* in my district. I joined colleagues to push the executive branch to house the homeless in the city’s vacant hotels*. Amid a spike in homelessness in the Tenderloin*, Tendernob, and Lower Polk neighborhoods, I authored a memorandum for humane solutions to this ongoing crisis.
Danny Sauter: When shelters cannot be at full capacity, we need to continue finding new ways like hotel rooms* to shelter those on our streets. But these are short-term solutions, and they are only needed because we were failing at sheltering our neighbors in the first place. Before the pandemic, there was a crisis on our streets, with shelter waitlists* at 1,000-plus nightly.
Long term, we need to pursue a housing-first strategy that has led cities like Houston to reduce homelessness by half in the last five years. On the contrary, District 3 has completed zero new units of housing for the homeless since 2015. Given this, we should not be surprised that the homeless population in District 3 has risen more than 40 percent in the last 5 years.
In tandem with housing, we need a robust set of workforce development programs. The No. 1 reason someone experiences homelessness is the loss of a job*. As supervisor, I’ll bring new workforce programs to District 3 like the Downtown Streets Team, an integrated program that offers both shelter and employment in service of beautifying our neighborhoods.
Simonsen: Ensuring our residents are housed in safe locations should be the first priority. It’s a failure in policy and City Hall that months after the outbreak of a major pandemic, we still have unsheltered residents on our streets. Last year, we saw nearly 300 homeless individuals die on our streets. This is unacceptable.
Long term, we must ensure that temporary housing leads to permanent housing* and services. We can do this by referring them to rehabilitation, mental health, job placement, permanent housing, and other resources, much in the same way a Navigation Center* would.
We also must ensure that resources give us the outcomes we want. A lot of residents would say they’re unhappy with the state of our city*. People experiencing homelessness are not new to our city but [have] increased recently*. We need solutions that put long-term outcomes first rather than politics and short-term Band-Aid solutions.
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% 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?
Peskin: There are many ways to describe this: as a shortage of affordable housing, as an eviction* and displacement crisis, and as an overall shortage. The Regional Housing Needs Allocation* (RHNA) reports indicate that while we have exceeded targets for production of market-rate housing, we have chronically underbuilt housing that is affordable to most San Franciscans*.
We have seen low-income communities and communities of color pushed out at an alarming rate. I will continue to push for more affordable housing to be built in my district and across San Francisco. In my latest term, I have opened affordable housing at Broadway-Sansome, broken ground at 88 Broadway and 735 Davis, secured rights to facilitate construction at 772 Pacific, secured permanent supportive housing at 1000 Sutter, and more.
I’ve pushed to convert every former freeway parcel in my district to 100 percent affordable housing. I also passed legislation to authorize Accessory Dwelling Units citywide.
I intend to pass a residential vacancy tax that will incentivize the return of vacant homes to the market* and an end to this absurd artificial constraint on the housing market in the midst of a housing crisis.
Sauter: Is there a housing shortage? Yes. It’s the result of decades of underinvestment and underbuilding in our city.
We must start by reforming the outrageous set of zoning* rules that keeps apartment buildings illegal in 70 percent of San Francisco. Cities around the country have made strides in recent years to end exclusionary zoning laws, which result in more expensive, less diverse neighborhoods. Meanwhile, SF’s current Board of Supervisors has used every NIMBY excuse in the book to ignore the situation.
In addition to reforming these zoning rules to encourage the production of affordable, family, and senior housing, we need to do more to protect our existing tenants and make sure our existing housing is on the market. As a renter, this is personal to me. We need to push to get vacant units online* and expand funding for neighborhood tenant clinics to make sure legal services are nearby and accessible, especially in the midst of this pandemic which threatens to push so many out of our communities.
Simonsen: There is a shortage of housing that is affordable to all residents and income levels in San Francisco. All housing built should have a mix of income levels including market-rate and below-market-rate (BMR) units. When building market-rate, we must use a tiered strategy so it’s affordable to the middle class, not solely for millionaires or billionaires.
However, I believe targets to build 100 percent BMR housing also impact housing creation negatively. Market-rate needs to be equally affordable and achievable for service workers, city employees, first responders, teachers, and many others who make up our middle and upper-middle classes.
We need to develop creative solutions to expand our housing. One potential solution is updating zoning* laws to allow for new uses of spaces and current buildings. With the exodus of companies in the Financial district, we have an opportunity to explore new housing projects that don’t necessarily require major construction.
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% 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, 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?
Peskin: Few have fought as hard as I have to reduce barriers to entry for small business, protect legacy businesses, and create a regulatory landscape that favors community-serving businesses. I’ve streamlined the conditional use process, I’ve “reset” liquor license controls, and I passed a storefront vacancy tax with the backing of merchant groups and over 70 percent of the electorate that I believe is already creating downward pressure on retail rents in advance of its implementation*.
Shared Spaces has more implementations in District 3 than any other district. I am pushing for a two-year extension. I am pursuing legislation to permanently cap commissions that food delivery apps* charge to restaurants.
I am proud of legislation that I passed last year to preserve ground-floor and second-story retail throughout Union Square from being converted to office space. For that policy to prove successful, we should look at ways to reimagine Union Square — and Fisherman’s Wharf, for that matter — as actual neighborhoods that invite local residents. I have begun discussions to convert office space in Union Square to residential and other neighborhood-building use types. I have also created a fund to improve the walkability of downtown and Union Square.
Sauter: For neighborhoods like the Financial district and Union Square, we need to be creative in our interim uses of space and real estate to make sure these neighborhoods remain vibrant, even amid enormous changes in behavior. I’ve written more about our plan to achieve this here.
For small businesses, the No. 1 thing we can do is make it radically easier to open in our neighborhoods. Current zoning laws mean it is illegal to open a bakery in North Beach, an art studio on Polk Street, or a pop-up anywhere in District 3. We’ve tried the current approach* — one of highly political approval processes and confusing language — and the results make it clear that it’s not working.
We need to do more to support existing small businesses too, and it’s why I’m proud to be the only candidate to have put out a comprehensive COVID Small Business Plan that outlines ways to support essential workers, create new programs, and expand resources to make sure City Hall helps, not hinders, our neighborhood businesses.
Simonsen: We must first have a plan to safely reopen businesses while also ensuring we protect against COVID-19. We must assess policy to reopen on a neighborhood level. Different communities have different needs. If you ask Chinatown business owners, they’ll talk about the physical constraints of the neighborhood (small stores, narrow sidewalks, etc.). Taking these limitations into account is critical to reopening safely.
District 3 has a diverse variety of neighborhoods: Chinatown, North Beach, Polk Gulch, and more. Each must have specific plans to ensure not only that businesses survive but also thrive. We must ensure small businesses have protections against evictions* as well as financial and other support from the city.
One major opportunity to help small businesses in areas where large companies have left (like the Financial district) is to rethink and repurpose those spaces. Building communities and housing using existing spaces allows us to avoid massive construction projects while also providing new housing that can help support those local small businesses.
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 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. Peskin could not provide evidence for his claim above that it has already had an effect, even before implementation.
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 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?
Peskin: We’re facing a tremendous opportunity to radically rethink law enforcement in our community. I’m supportive of the efforts of Reinvesting.us, DefundSFPDNow, Black Lives Matter leaders, and the Office of Racial Equity staff to demilitarize our police force.
I’ve also pushed to modify the POA contract that binds the city in many ways to achieve reforms advocates have been asking for. We’ve also engaged with other groups such a SF General Hospital doctors coalition and a Chinatown public safety coalition to identify alternatives to a militarization police force that still creates community-led public safety alternatives.
The $120 million is a reasonable first step. I am continuing to work to identify opportunities that shift mental health response away from law enforcement. In the wake of racially motivated violence and vandalism in Chinatown*, I facilitated funding for new security cameras at the same time as I passed a first-in-nation ban on facial recognition surveillance and oversight to ensure that surveillance equipment is used appropriately. I am a proud supporter of Prop E and am committed to continuing the conversation around public safety and law-enforcement reform.
Sauter: This is a good start to finally deliver budget justice and to reform our broken policing system, which has put too many in harm’s way for too long. Most important is how the shifts in funding impact the results. Are we reducing incidents of police violence and use of force? Are we more successfully connecting those experiencing homelessness or mental health crises to services that result in recovery? That is what we must hold our budget, and our city, accountable to.
We cannot accept a public safety system in which the safety of one comes at the expense of another. We must radically reform our police system and do so with transparency and accountability at the core. It is unacceptable that 94 percent of requests to the Department of Police Accountability go unreturned. It is unacceptable that the majority of reforms recorded by the Department of Justice back in 2016 have not yet been implemented. As supervisor, I will hold the department accountable for these common-sense reforms which must be completed for all in our communities to be safe.
Simonsen: This is a good start to rebalancing our budget to focus on outcomes rather than politics. However, $60 million is less than 10 percent of the SFPD budget*. The city needs a more in-depth budget analysis to get the outcomes we need.
As of July, the 100 highest paid city employees for 2019 include several from SFPD. The top two on that list have a total compensation of more than $800,000*. Our city’s overtime system is broken, and the resources given to SFPD are not representative of what we should expect for a police department.
The police are critical for maintaining the safety of our residents and businesses. I don’t suggest we have a city without any type of police department. However, I agree that police should only be used for incidents involving violence or force [and] not be expected to respond to many incidents related to mental health, drug overdoses, neighborhood disputes, noise complaints, etc. Those incidents should be responded to by trained experts in those fields.
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.
With Prop E in November, voters can change the city’s police staffing procedures and oversight.
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.
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 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?
Peskin: It’s dispiriting to see so many people I’ve known for many years leave the city, but let’s be clear that there has been an eviction and displacement crisis in San Francisco for many years prior to this pandemic. Last year’s point-in-time count showed that 70 percent of the city’s homeless population had previously been housed in San Francisco, all the more reason for policymakers to focus on keeping people housed before, during, and after this pandemic.
I’m also deeply concerned about the rising vacancy rate. When I caught wind that the Granada Hotel had been sold and that it had a high vacancy rate, I mobilized city staff to consider and ultimately successfully secure its purchase for use as permanent supportive housing, and I will continue to seek opportunities to make the most out of the shifting housing and economic landscape in San Francisco. I truly hope and believe that San Francisco will continue to be a refuge for people from across the country seeking to engage in progressive discussions about the future of our city, state and country.
Sauter: I’m sorry. Our city is sad to lose you, your contributions, and your hopes and dreams. This is a difficult moment that has pushed people to relocate and move for many reasons. But too many were being forced out of our city already by the crushing cost of living, congested and dirty streets, and growing frustration with broken and corrupt* city services.
I hope you can return again one day. Until then, we’ll work every day to improve our neighborhoods to make them a place that you one day can come back to and thrive.
Simonsen: San Francisco always has our door open. A main reason my husband and I decided to live in San Francisco was the inclusion and acceptance we found here. We must always be open and accepting of others, no matter their orientation, gender, ethnicity, religion, background, field of work, etc. We need to work together to continue to make San Francisco a great place to live and work. We’re always happy to welcome both new and returning residents.
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.
