WHAT WE'VE BEEN WORKING ON

PASSING SFUSD SUPPLEMENTAL: The Board of Supervisors approved a budget supplemental I introduced with Mayor Breed to appropriate nearly $12 million to the Department of Elections to support two unanticipated elections, including the recall of three members of the SFUSD Board of Education. The school district is already facing a $125 million deficit this year, with a state takeover looming, while the City is anticipating a $100 million budget surplus. Reasonable people can disagree about the merits of the school board recall, but I am glad that my colleagues and I agreed our public school students shouldn’t bear the costs.

OPENING UP CASTRO BARS: The Board unanimously approved my ordinance to allow new bars in the Castro. New bars are actually prohibited under current zoning, but now they’ll be able to open as a conditional use with community input.

SISTER VISH-KNEW WAY: I can think of few organizations that have had the cultural impact and have done more to advance the cause of queer liberation over the last four decades than the global LGBTQ+ community service organization, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Sister Vish-Knew co-founded the organization on Easter Weekend in 1979 and has remained engaged with their work for the past 40 years, hosting countless community fundraisers and representing San Francisco and the Sisters at events around the world. That’s why on January 11, I introduced a resolution at the Board of Supervisors to honor her by adding “Sister Vish-Knew Way” to a street in her longtime neighborhood. 

21 D8 WINS IN 2021

1. MAKING THE CASE FOR A PLACE FOR ALL: In April, the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee considered my “A Place for All ” legislation. Hundreds of San Francisco residents and small business owners wrote and called into the meeting to support our comprehensive plan to ensure every unsheltered person has a safe place to sleep that is not a sidewalk, plaza or park. The legislation faced strong opposition from homeless advocates who oppose shelter-for-all policies and has been held at the Budget and Finance Committee since then, but I have not given up. I have continued making the case to colleagues and hope to be able to enact the legislation in 2022.

2. LAUNCHING STREET CRISIS RESPONSE TEAMS: In February, the Street Crisis Response Team began to serve the neighborhoods of District 8. Each SCRT is comprised of a behavioral health clinician, a community paramedic, and a peer, and responds to 911 calls for people experiencing behavioral health crisis on the streets. The SCRT was a top recommendation of the 2019 Methamphetamine Task Force, which I co-chaired, and I had worked with Mayor Breed and Supervisors Ronen and Haney to secure full funding for this new program in the 2020-21 Budget.

3. OPENING THE VALENCIA HUMMINGBIRD: With the opening of 1156 Valencia Street in May, District 8 became home to the first-ever community-based Hummingbird Navigation Center. The Valencia Community Hummingbird provides more than 20 beds, supportive services, and a path to stability and wellness for unhoused people struggling with mental illness and substance use disorder from the surrounding community. Unfortunately, persistent issues related to encampments and unacceptable behavior around the Hummingbird Center have reinforced the urgent need to pair expanded service offerings with effective consistent street interventions to improve street conditions in the areas where these services are provided. That is as true in the Mission as it is in the Tenderloin as it is in Pacific Heights.  

4. PILOTING A DRUG SOBERING CENTER: The City is implementing another top recommendation of the Methamphetamine Task Force with the opening of the SOMA-RISE (Recover, Initiate, Support, Engage) Center . This facility will offer a safe place for people who are intoxicated from meth or other drugs to access clean bathrooms, showers, food and a place to rest. Trained staff will be on site to reverse overdoses and connect participants with medical care, mental health and substance use and housing services.

5. ENSURING PUBLIC SAFETY STAFFING: I advocated in the Board’s budget process for a number of important non-police investments to address public safety. These included Street Crisis Response and Street Wellness Teams. But I also fought for $15 million for academy classes and overtime funding for foot patrols, investigations and anti-burglary operations. We should identify and fund alternatives to police where they make sense, but after years of declining staff levels SFPD needs hundreds of additional officers to meet our City’s public safety goals. The academies funded in this year’s budget are not enough to get us there, but they are a start.

6. INVESTIGATING SAN FRANCISCO'S USE OF ANKLE MONITORS: My office investigated the use of electronic monitoring in San Francisco. We sent letters of inquiry to the Sheriff and Adult Probation to gather data on SF’s use of electronic monitoring and found that more than ⅓ of people on pretrial electronic monitoring in San Francisco remove their ankle monitor or commit other crimes, and they often fail multiple times. If one out of every three cells in our jail had broken locks we would do something about it. I have requested a Budget and Legislative Analyst report on how San Francisco courts’ reliance on electronic monitoring compares to courts in other counties; we are expecting to receive that report in February.  

7. ADDRESSING ORGANIZED RETAIL THEFT: In November, I convened SFPD Chief Scott, DA Boudin, and representatives from Safeway and United Food and Commercial Workers to address organized retail theft at Safeway stores in San Francisco. Coming out of that meeting, SFPD has collaborated with Safeway on best practices, employee training, and store layout. The Board of Supervisors also unanimously passed a resolution I authored calling on Congress to pass H.R. 5502, the INFORM Consumers Act, to require online marketplaces to collect, verify, and disclose certain information from high-volume sellers. Passing the INFORM Act is an important step toward addressing organized retail theft, as most stolen goods are sold on Amazon and other e-commerce sites. 

8. BUILDING AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN D8: In May, I joined Mayor Breed and Habitat for Humanity to break ground on a new affordable homeownership project at 36 Amber Drive in Diamond Heights. This is the first time the City has funded construction of a 100% affordable homeownership project, implementing a new strategy featured in last year’s District 8 Housing Opportunities Report that I commissioned.  

9. PROTECTING HOUSING SERVICES FOR TENANTS: In November, the Board passed my legislation to strengthen protections for tenant housing services like storage, laundry, and parking from landlords attempting to replace these spaces with additional units, or ADUs. While I support the ADU program, new units shouldn’t come to the detriment of existing residents. The ordinance adds notification requirements, provides tenants with a right to petition the Rent Board, and enhances the legal remedies for tenants whose services are wrongfully removed.  

10. MOVING FOURPLEXES FORWARD: Throughout the year, I have worked to advance an ordinance that would make it easier to build small multi-family buildings in residential neighborhoods citywide. We are revising my “fourplex” proposal now in response to the Planning Commission’s recommendations and the legislation is on track for a hearing at the Board’s Land Use committee in February.

11. REIGNING IN MONSTER HOMES: My ordinance to slow the tide of smaller, older homes being flipped into luxury single-family mansions also moved forward last year. Following the Planning Commission’s advice, we have simplified and scaled the proposal back to apply to the most impacted D8 neighborhoods and look forward to bringing it to a vote at the full Board early this spring. 

12. PRESERVING RESIDENTIAL CARE FACILITIES: In September, the Board passed my ordinance amending our zoning controls to discourage the further loss of existing residential care facilities, while also making it easier to add new residential care beds in San Francisco. These facilities provide stable housing and essential care for elderly residents and those living with disabilities and chronic illness, making them an essential component of preventing and ending homelessness for seniors and people with disabilities.

13. INVESTING IN SAFE STREETS AND SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION: In my first year as Chair of the County Transportation Authority, we allocated over $100 million to pedestrian and bicycle safety improvements, roadway and transit infrastructure investments, and paratransit operations across the city, and advanced major regional transit projects like bringing high speed rail to the Salesforce Transit Center.

14. MAKING SLOW SANCHEZ PERMANENT: The Slow Streets program began during the early days of the COVID pandemic as a way to provide additional outdoor recreation space and routes for car-free travel during those difficult shelter-in-place days. In September, the Sanchez Slow Street was approved as one of the first streets to be included in a permanent Slow Streets network, along with a slate of safety and pedestrian improvements along Sanchez that I helped to fund.

15. RESTORING MUNI SERVICE: Since the pandemic began the restoration of transit service has been one of my top priorities, and District 8 was one of the first to welcome back all our Muni lines. In December, the MTA Board adopted a 2022 service plan that will restore all but two Muni lines citywide, and will include the return of direct service to downtown on the J Church via the Muni subway and modifications to the 48 and 35 bus routes to respond to community concerns. 

16. MAKING SHARED SPACES PERMANENT: My office helped dozens of D8 businesses open their parklets and secured funding to support street openings on Valencia and in the Castro. I joined Mayor Breed in introducing legislation to create a permanent version of the program, which clearly remains necessary as the pandemic evolves and that I will continue working to improve to ensure a balanced program that works for all residents and businesses.

17. SUPPORTING CANNABIS BUSINESSES: In December, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved my legislation suspending the imposition of the City’s Cannabis Business Tax through December 31, 2022. Cannabis businesses create good jobs for San Franciscans and provide safe, regulated products to their customers. Now is not the time to impose a new tax on small businesses that are just getting established and trying to compete with illicit operators. 

18. EXPANDING WATER REUSE AND RECYCLING: The Board unanimously passed my water reuse and recycling ordinance, to more than double the amount of water that new large buildings are required to collect and reuse on site. The ordinance also directs SFPUC to come up with a plan for expanding the City’s supply and use of recycled water. 

19. DELIVERING BUDGET WINS FOR D8 NEIGHBORHOODS: The 2021-2022 budget passed in the summer had some major victories for the residents and businesses of District 8, including funding for new District 8 sidewalk gardens and plantings in Christopher Park, Pink Triangle Park and Mount Olympus Park, and a watering system in the Arlington Cut. 

20. COLLECTING SOGI DATA: The Board of Supervisors unanimously passed legislation I co-sponsored with Mayor Breed to allow the City to collect Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) data for all City employees and applicants for City employment. The legislation removed a prohibition on the City from inquiring into “sexual orientation, practices, or habits” of City employees that was necessary when enacted (in 1985 at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic) to protect LGBTQ City employees and applicants from potential discrimination. This legislation will help us to identify and address the needs of these employees and ensure that we are supporting and expanding San Francisco's LGBTQ workforce.

21. MAKING HISTORY AT THE LYON-MARTIN HOUSE: This year we took a historic step to honor the legacies of LGBTQ icons Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin when the Board approved my ordinance to make their longtime home in Noe Valley a city landmark. This is the first local landmark site in San Francisco specifically recognizing the lesbian community, a step that is long overdue. 

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