ELECTION 2020
The Frisc asked all the candidates for District 5 supervisor to answer five questions about the city’s critical issues. Three 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: Vallie Brown (the district’s former supervisor), Daniel Landry, and Dean Preston (the incumbent).
What should San Francisco do to protect the unsheltered from COVID-19? What’s your long-term strategy for helping the homeless?
Vallie Brown: We need creative, sustainable solutions to ensure all San Franciscans have access to housing and COVID-free spaces. We must expand the Small Sites Program to purchase private buildings and create small supportive housing sites with off-site or drop-in resident support services.
These sites will provide housing for the most vulnerable residents transitioning out of homelessness. Off-site supportive service is far more cost-effective and can be implemented immediately. I also propose identifying smaller and more disbursed options, including renting vacant apartments* and permanently converting certain hotels* into housing.
We can be more creative and broader in our approach with “smaller” projects and programs while fighting for larger facilities that won’t come online for some time. Having legislated the first safe sleeping site* in SF, I also strongly support more such sites, outdoors and with plenty of space between residents, with supportive staff nearby, while more housing comes online. Even the fastest long-term solutions are not fast enough to provide housing for everyone who needs it tomorrow. Outdoor, monitored sites are safe alternatives while the group shelters* are closed.
Daniel Landry: Immediately we need to force hotels* to open for more temporary housing. In addition, we need to utilize more public indoor facilities, like Kezar Pavilion, and other Rec Gym facilities located throughout our city. To plan for long-term shelter for the homeless, we will need leadership with long-term vision. COVID-19 just speaks to another example of politics that get in the way of real solutions to make our city a decent and safe place to live for everyone.
We also need to explore partnering with owners with large warehouses to compel them to open for emergency shelter. For example, 799 Eddy at Van Ness Avenue has over 44,000 square feet that’s been totally empty, while people are in tents just outside. Partnering with the private sector and even using eminent domain if necessary will send a message that everyone must sacrifice to address the homeless crisis. I believe the tent encampment plan* was shortsighted. Lastly, I support Mayor Breed’s Prop A measure*, which will help address our immediate and long-term homeless issues.
Dean Preston: When homeless shelters were closed* due to COVID-19, thousands of people were pushed onto the street* with nowhere else to go. My office leaped into action, fundraising to house homeless women and families in hotels and opening the second safe sleeping site* in the city. We also overcame a lawsuit filed by the co-chair of Women for Trump against the effort*. We’ve taken a leadership role in pushing for hotel rooms* for every unhoused San Franciscan. It’s unconscionable that people are on the street when we have tens of thousands of vacant rooms.
We need to invest in mental health, substance abuse services, and permanent supportive housing, and we need to create thousands of units of deeply affordable housing. That’s why I wrote Propositions I and K, which would enable the city to create thousands of units of social housing*. We also need to implement Prop C* as soon as possible. I was an early supporter, and our team ran the D5 outreach. There is no better plan than one written and passed by advocates on the front lines, and I’m delighted it has overcome the legal challenges preventing its implementation.
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?
Brown: We absolutely need to build more housing at all levels. The city has a supply problem that has driven up costs and pushed people out of the city, or worse, onto the streets. It can cost as much as $800,000 to build a unit of new housing, including affordable housing, in SF. We need to bring construction costs down [and] more housing online as fast as possible. We need to prioritize affordable housing for working families and seniors in three primary ways:
Increase inclusionary rates* when possible in private developments. This is a great way to build more affordable units without cost to the city and fund future affordable housing, while preventing segregation of neighborhoods.
Expand private-public developments. While District 5 supervisor, my office’s Housing Opportunity Report indicated that nearly 5,000 new units could be built on city-owned land and former HUD co-ops, 30 percent to 40 percent of them affordable, [and] people in the community would have priority.
Expand the Small Sites Program. This not only keeps people in their homes, it also adds to 100 percent affordable housing and is half the cost of building a new unit. [Editor’s note: Through 2019, the program has acquired 38 buildings, totaling 309 units.]
Landry: Yes, there’s a housing shortage in San Francisco. The 2018 D5 Housing Opportunity Report recommended five key strategies to focus on improvement. 1. Preserve affordable housing. 2. Strengthen protections and provide services for residents. 3. Expand nonprofit capacity. 4. Increase funding for affordable housing. 5. Increase housing production.
I support and will implement those recommendations. In addition, I propose for the short term we streamline the permit process* at the Planning Department, so low-income and affordable housing can be built faster without unnecessary red tape. Furthermore, the D5 Housing Opportunity Report also stated in just D5 alone the city could build potentially 2,081 units [on] publicly owned sites. We must focus on building affordable housing on all city-owned land if possible.
Preston: There is a devastating shortage of affordable housing*. I’ve been an advocate for decades of increasing inclusionary* housing requirements, investing in affordable housing, and using public land for 100 percent affordable housing. I’m holding a hearing on the topic in the next few weeks.
Propositions I and K would be major steps* towards addressing this shortage. Proposition K would authorize the city to acquire or construct up to 10,000 units of municipally-owned social housing. This has to go to the ballot because of a racist state constitutional amendment, Article 34, passed in 1950 to keep tenants of color out of mostly white communities. It requires that, before any city government creates low-income housing, they must gain approval from a majority of local voters.
Prop I doubles the transfer tax on property sales over $10 million. It is anticipated to raise over $100 million per year*. Revenue will be put toward creating thousands of units of new social housing, and helping tenants pay back rent they missed because of COVID-19 —an important part of preventing further evictions* and displacement.
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?
Brown: I’m dedicated to doing everything in the city’s power to ease the burden on our neighborhood businesses, including streamlining permitting processes*, easing conditional use requirements, and deferring business tax payments* as needed. Small businesses that can’t stay open can’t provide income or health care to their employees, all of whom desperately need both right now. We protect workers and business owners by protecting small businesses, and we further support workers by using the city’s borrowing credit to provide rental subsidies to tenants, preventing evictions and staving off foreclosures.
Landry: Continue the moratorium on all commercial evictions* and provide more grants and forgivable loans for small businesses. Second, help small businesses pay employees during this pandemic and give incentives for employers to retain employees and guarantee employment even after COVID-19.
I would like to create in District 5 and in every district a Small Business Repair COVID-19 Taskforce to directly work with the merchants, property owners, and the public on a long-term plan in reopening safely and repairing the damage done by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Preston: COVID-19 has been devastating for District 5 businesses. My office led the way on a moratorium on commercial evictions and, with Sup. Aaron Peskin, has been leading efforts to extend these protections. I also launched an unprecedented program with the district attorney to provide direct financial assistance to D5 businesses that are vandalized during shelter in place.
I’ve also pushed to give businesses flexibility to reopen in ways that don’t increase transmission risk, like curbside delivery and the Shared Spaces program*. We worked to launch Shared Spaces in Hayes Valley just weeks ago, providing a lifeline for merchants. I have supported and recently celebrated the opening of Picnic on the Plaza, activating the Japantown Peace Plaza and supporting J-Town restaurants. I will continue to work with small businesses on creative new ways to safely re-open. My office will also continue working with potential new business owners, especially those from marginalized communities, to make sure that they have the support they need to thrive in District 5.
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 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?
Brown: Defunding SFPD in favor of community justice and resilience, a goal I strongly support, can’t be achieved in one cut. While cutting [$120 million] is a good start, the board and mayor will have to keep a careful eye on the results, in case further cuts or a restoration of funds, if absolutely necessary, are called for.
Public safety is a complicated term. For many people whose communities have suffered from police violence, public safety is incompatible with SFPD as we know it. We need to change city services so that all San Franciscans are and feel safe, regardless of race or community. In some neighborhoods that may mean maintaining beat patrols, especially where property crime rates are high* or garage break-ins are increasing. In other neighborhoods that means diverting funding to nonprofits like health clinics or homeless service providers.
Much of the SFPD’s man-hours are unrelated to public safety — wellness checks or deputy chiefs or administrators. It’s worthwhile investigating how we may better spend some of that money. We have to listen to the neighborhoods and get feedback. It’s a major change, and it won’t succeed if the board works in isolation from the community.
Landry: Too little. The SFPD needs to be completely reformed* from top to bottom. Our city has spent money time and time again to study and give reports on how to fix the SFPD with little or no real changes.
In 2008 we pushed the city to adopt the community peace plan, and the city hired an outside group, which gave us the comprehensive “PERF Report,” a 354-page report with recommendations that still have not been fully implemented.
I don’t think we should reward a police department that has a history of cover-ups* and failing to de-escalate situations when it comes to the Black and Brown communities. Safety will come when communities are empowered and hold everyone accountable. If we’re serious we will address the quality-of-life issues which are the root of crime* and law-breaking activities from poverty.
Preston: I have long been a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement and have worked to confront systemic racism and oppression my entire adult life. I continue to believe that there are alternative forms of policing that are more effective in many situations. The money we save needs to be invested into getting people off the streets and programs like job training that make neighborhoods safer for everyone, with an emphasis on black and brown communities that continue to be disproportionately underfunded, displaced, and too often left out of the conversation. We have an opportunity to drastically reform how we police today, and I think a [$120 million] cut is a solid foundation — but not enough for us to build towards a more just and equitable future.
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?
Brown: I’m sorry we have not built a city that could support you in the bad times, as well as the good. While it’s understandable that people might move away to rejoin families and support networks in a time of crisis, it’s deeply telling that their families were not here. Over the past 10 to 15 years San Francisco has become inhospitable to many middle- and working-class residents, especially families with children and senior citizens.
To keep our residents in their city, we must build more housing, especially for low- and middle-income families, in every neighborhood. Too many people have left due to the unsustainability of living in San Francisco during a pandemic, just as too many people have left in previous years because their rent was raised, or their mortgage became too much, or because they wanted space to raise a child.
Many people left for reasons that may have been true of any city during the pandemic — they wanted more space or less crowds. For everyone who left because they could not survive here during a crisis, we must do better.
Landry: Don’t leave. San Francisco is a very resilient city, and just look closer at the symbol in our city flag: a phoenix bird being reborn from the ashes from the fire, which represents overcoming tragedies like the 1906 earthquake.
However, it’s amazing that in a city where Black people were used for labor during World War II then pushed out by redevelopment, we’re now seeing another out-migration under a new name called “COVID-19.” San Francisco is a powerful great city. However, San Francisco has not been a good city historically to the Black, Brown and even poor whites. I believe, like Bernie Sanders, housing for all is a human right, and we must find a way to do better. High rent here is a bubble that eventually will burst if something is [not] done drastically to change our current direction. We need immediate legislation that will give businesses and landlords incentives to “Make San Francisco Affordable for the People Again.”
Preston: I have spent the last 20 years as a tenants’ rights attorney, affordable housing advocate, and district supervisor fighting to keep people in their homes. I am working hard every day to make sure that everyone who wants to stay in this city is able to. For people who have left because they can no longer afford to live here, I am working to create a San Francisco that they can come back to.
Extra resources: Leaving SF
THE BASICS: Last year, SF had more than 881,000 residents — its highest total ever and a nearly 10 percent 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.