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Dear neighbor,
As a joint March/April newsletter, I want to start with a shout out to Women’s History Month and its 2023 theme “celebrating women who tell our stories.” I dedicate the work we have accomplished to all of the amazing women who are working in District 9 to build community, care for our residents in myriad ways, and share our stories through art and culture. In this newsletter, we are highlighting the amazing work of Mujeres Unidas y Activas, "a grassroots organization of Latina immigrant women with a dual mission of promoting personal transformation and building community power for social and economic justice." Read on for more.
In April, to celebrate Earth Day and highlight the importance of our community's work for Climate Justice, we encourage you to participate in one of the many events being held across the city on and around April 22. In D9, our very own Bernal Heights Business Alliance and Events on the Hill are co-sponsoring an Earth Day Stroll with crafts, arts, music and green ideas for residents from local organizations. Event details:
Bernal Heights Earth Day Stroll
Saturday April 22nd from 11am-4pm
Cortland Street and all around Bernal Hill
In other news, there is so much that we are trying to accomplish to improve conditions in our district and City-wide, and I want to share with you our ideas and priorities directly. To foster open dialogue with you about these efforts, I will be offering open office hours once a month, rotating locations among local small business venues in each of our three neighborhoods. Face to face conversations with my constituents have led to very enlightening exchanges, and we look forward to seeing you at one of our upcoming meet and greets.
As always, you can reach out to my office with any concerns or questions by emailing: ronenstaff@sfgov.org.
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Homelessness
Focus on mental health and addiction
While the San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team and the Healthy Streets Operation Center have been working hard on making placements and reducing the overall number of tents on the streets of the Mission, some residents, who are likely experiencing severe mental health issues, addiction, or both, refuse to accept shelter. For people living with these types of conditions, congregate shelter may not be appropriate because of these aggravating factors. We estimate there are about 8-12 of these folks living on the street in the Mission right now, and are the most persistent and entrenched encampments.
To better address their needs, the Department of Public Health will now be taking the lead on outreach and critical case management. This means that a DPH mental health outreach team will be in the Mission interacting constantly with these individuals while assessing their needs and building their trust. Often people with such conditions do not easily trust the government or believe they will be cared for appropriately. This is why persistence and consistent outreach is needed to get these individuals into the appropriate setting and put them on a path to healthy and independent living. We hope that by addressing the most persistent encampments we can bring the number of tents on the street down even further.
In order to understand the scope and monitor progress city-wide and for D9, you can look at city-wide data here, and check out our D9 data tracking here.
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Street Conditions
Mission Community Ambassadors coming in May
Our persistent advocacy and attempts to get more resources for the Mission are finally paying off. The Mayor has allocated just over 2 Million Dollars for a Mission Ambassador Program. I am pleased to announce that the procurement process has been completed and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development has awarded the contract. The new Ambassador team is currently being trained and recruited with the expectation that they will be on the street by mid-May.
The 11 ambassadors will deploy in troubled areas in the Mission and be trained to specifically deter unhealthy street behavior as well as build trust with the community and merchants. They will be a regular presence on the streets to help residents feel safer and to communicate with the Police, Fire and other city departmental resources to help address issues as they arise. More details coming soon.
Cleaning Up Trash on the Streets of District 9
Last month the Board of Supervisors approved a 25 Million dollar budget supplemental for Public Works, to help them address the massive amounts of trash, graffiti and other blight on the streets of San Francisco. We will be closely monitoring this spending and working with Public Works to ensure the Mission and D9 gets appropriately resourced by the department to help improve the trash and conditions on the street. We have plans to get the Mission its very own power-washer!
Sex Work on Capp Street
We have been getting a lot of questions about our approach to addressing sex worker safety and street conditions, particularly on Capp Street, where a prostitution track along Capp from 22nd to 18th was untenable and dangerous. Conditions have improved as a result of these barriers on Capp, but it has done nothing to protect the sex workers from unsafe situations and sex trafficking.
We have been meeting with stakeholders and subject matter experts to best understand how we can 1) effectively combat sex trafficking, 2) offer sufficient exists from sex work to individuals who wouldn’t be engaging in sex work if not for their socioeconomic standing, and 3) offer robust legal protections for sex workers who consent to being in this line of work. We are planning to hold a hearing in a few months where we will call on stakeholders to present and finally begin these important conversations in the public forum.
Also, the concrete barriers on Capp will soon be replaced by bollards that will serve the same purpose but allow quick removal by the Fire Department in case of an emergency.
Mental Health SF and Tackling Addiction
Overdose Prevention Centers
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| Photo credit: Jackie Prager. San Francisco's delegation met with Rhode Island's Attorney General on the state's plan to imminently open Overdose Prevention Centers. These elected officials in Rhode Island are leading the nation on using opioid settlement fund dollars to fund OPCs. (March 2022) |
The Chronicle reported on where we are in our fight to open Overdose Prevention Centers in San Francisco, but here’s some more context.
Overdose Prevention Centers (OPCs) are a proven way to save lives after an overdose and to stop open air drug use on the streets. With an average of two people dying from overdose a day in SF and rampant drug use in front of children on the streets, San Francisco must step up and take urgent action to address both crises. OPCs are one strategy among many that we are pushing to help people plagued by drug use disorders to regain control of their lives and reach recovery.
Back in March, a group of us from SF took a profound trip to NYC to visit OnPoint NYC —the nation's first City sanctioned Overdose Prevention Center (OPC). We met with the amazing OnPoint Staff, local advocates and funders, and neighbors who oppose the centers because they are tired of all services for the poor being concentrated in their neighborhood.
A few things struck me while visiting these sites:
- The extreme amount of poverty and pain in both NYC and SF
- The fact that the services to address these issues are in such short supply, and
- The powerful impact of OnPoint’s main recipe: love and respect for people who are in pain and have lost love and respect for themselves and have not been able to find such open arms anywhere else in society.
Having a shame-free place where you see people who love and care about you, and where you can slowly learn to trust someone enough to contemplate a way out of addiction makes so much sense to me. After our visit with OnPoint, we also met with elected officials in Rhode Island to discuss how they’re leading the nation on using opioid settlement fund dollars to fund OPCs.
Since that visit, we’ve engaged in conversations with City Attorney David Chiu, who is singularly preventing us from opening these lifesaving facilities. The Public Defender’s office sent a legal memo to City Attorney Chiu stating that they disagree with his legal analysis and articulating a legal defense in the case San Francisco was sued for funding the sites.
San Francisco will receive approximately $130 million in opioid settlements that are required to be spent on opioid crisis abatement. A broad and diverse coalition of support, including Mayor Breed and Supervisors Dorsey and Preston, and nonprofit providers are ready and raring to open these life saving sites.
We will continue to push this vision forward to ensure our City can implement this life-saving model as part of our continuum of care in addressing the addiction crisis.
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Affordable Housing & Tenants' Rights
Where we are with Affordable Housing in D9
We’ve been working hard with our non-profits developers to build and preserve essential affordable housing in District 9. This graphic shares the progress we have made in pushing for affordable housing in our District. We will continue to work together with community partners and City departments to bring in new affordable housing units in D9 during the time I have left as Supervisor.
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Fighting Corruption
In response to these and other cases, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed legislation I authored to address the most egregious violators of our Planning and Building codes. The legislation multiplies fines for developers who knowingly build unsafe, illegal units. The impetus for this legislation came from the example in the article above, at 2861 San Bruno Avenue, located in the Portola, where a developer originally permitted for 10 units in a mixed use building, actually built an additional 20 units. Worse yet, along the way, he failed to build adequate fire escapes and created terrible and unsafe living situations for dozens of tenants. My office is working with the tenants’ rights advocates, the Planning Department, and the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD) to ensure the tenants have resources and alternative options as the developer addresses the building’s problems.
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- Select Committee on Homelessness and Behavioral Health Select Committee: As the Chair of this new committee, I will be joined by Vice Chair Supervisor Mandelman and Supervisor Walton, addressing some of the most urgent issues impacting our City. We will meet every 2nd & 4th Friday of the month. Our first meeting will be held on Friday, April 28th at 10:00am, accessible for viewing on SFGOVTV.
Mental Health SF opening 70 new beds on Treasure Island: Each new behavioral health bed opened in the City reaffirms our commitment to caring for San Franciscans suffering from severe mental health and substance use disorders and also brings us closer to a fully functioning Mental Health SF which I authored in 2019 and is slowly but surely being implemented.
- Protections for Sanctuary City: On March 7th, the Board of Supervisors passed my resolution 10-1, urging the federal government to extradite two individuals accused of serious crimes (and to face charges here in San Francisco) without making any unnecessary changes to our sanctuary city policies.
- Transit: Last month, the San Francisco County Transit Authority (SFCTA) approved our D9 funding request for a long-term Bikeway Pilot on Valencia Street, including the potential for a one-way street and two-way bikeway. I amended the request to include a pilot block for placemaking and pedestrianization after community outreach and study.
- Neighborhood Benefits Permit: When DPW began citing neighbors for minor encroachments for installations such as the Mirabel benches, we pressed DPW to come up with a solution. These benches and other objects are an incredibly important community-led asset we want to encourage. DPW heard this feedback and in response is establishing a low-cost, low-barrier permit for neighborhood benefit projects. We are keeping our eye on the process to ensure permitting will be truly accessible.
- Supporting Small Business Shared Spaces Parklets: This month, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed my legislation to support Puerto Alegre and Blondies, two long standing small businesses on Valencia Street, who were at risk of losing their Shared Spaces parklets. The legislation enables them to keep their parklets after the pandemic-era program sunsets on March 31.
- Grants to revitalize commercial corridors: Avenue Greenlight provides funding to business alliances/merchant organizations, nonprofits and community groups to organize events, community activation, beautification and street improvements along commercial corridors in San Francisco. Our office encouraged District 9 merchant groups and community organizations to submit proposals, and several did. We look forward to hearing the list of final grantees in May.
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| Photo credit: Pamela Gentile. Puerto Alegre's parklet. |
Spotlight on a D9 Community Organization
To lift up the amazing work that is happening every day in Bernal, the Mission and the Portola, we are featuring the work of one D9 organization in each newsletter. This month features…
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Since the early 1990’s, MUA has been building immigrant women power, supporting the immigrant community and pushing for legislation to expand rights, while fiercely fighting legislation that attempts to roll-back protections for workers, women and immigrants. MUA came out in full force to speak to the importance of protecting San Francisco’s Sanctuary City ordinance this past month amid attempts to erode the historic legislation that has been essential for public safety and the protection of immigrant rights in our City.
Among MUA’s innovative programs:
- Support groups
- Clinicas del Alma: a peer counseling and referral service
- Support line for domestic violence and sexual abuse survivors: 415.431.2562
- Legal referrals: MUA helped to found the San Francisco Immigrant Legal Services and Education Network. Through this Network, MUA is able to connects members to legal partners at Dolores Street Community Services, CARECEN, La Raza Centro Legal, La Raza Community Resource Center, Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus, and Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach for violence-related immigration status remedies such as VAWA and the U and T Visa program as well as deportation defense.
- Grupo Mam: working with Guatemalan immigrant women in the Bay Area who are primarily Mam speaking, an indigenous Mayan language.
Check out more of MUA’s work and consider supporting this vital organization that is serving immigrant women in District 9!
The D9 Team at Your Service
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| (Left) The D9 staff: Santiago Lerma, Supervisor Hillary Ronen, Jennifer Ferrigno, Jackie Prager, Ana Herrera. (Right) Honoring long-time intern, Lisa Haut and bidding farewell to Nikita Saini. From left to right: Jesus Barragan, Nikita Saini, Ana Herrera, Anne Gallagher, Lisa Haut, Hillary Ronen, Jennifer Ferrigno, Imelda Carrasco. |
Last month, we bid farewell to Nikita Saini who worked in our office as a legislative aide for two years, tackling Criminal Justice, the effort to move towards closing Juvenile Hall, implementation of Mental Health SF, constituent services for the Portola, and so much more. We sent her off with well wishes for her next chapter, as she returns to work as a Public Defender. We know her clients will be well served by her expertise, compassion and fierce advocacy.
With Niki’s departure, we are blessed to welcome Jackie Prager as her successor. Jackie comes from having worked for over a year at City Hall as a legislative aide for Supervisor Mandelman, and prior to her work in the D8 office, she was the Executive Director of the San Francisco Democratic Party, and worked for many years with community-based organizations and nonprofits in San Francisco.
We also said goodbye to Lisa Haut, dedicated senior intern who provided constituent services for over five years, alongside her senior intern colleagues, Anne Gallagher and Jesus Barragan. We honored Lisa at the Board of Supervisors on March 14th and gave her a certificate of honor in gratitude for her work. Anne and Jesus have both committed to staying with us for the duration of my term, and we thank them for their grace and continued attention to D9 resident concerns.
Our full team includes D9 Legislative Aides: Ana Herrera, Jackie Prager, Jennifer Ferrigno & Santiago Lerma; and D9 Interns: Anne Gallagher, Jesus Barragan & Hector Mondragon.
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