D9 candidate Roberto Hernandez calls for collective action

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District 9 supervisorial candidate Roberto Hernandez spent much of his conversation at Manny’s on Wednesday night underscoring the power of a community that comes together to resolve issues such as safety, homelessness and drug addiction. 

 “I look at how we can collectively come together and make a change,” Hernandez, the long-time organizer, said Wednesday in his conversation with Precious Green, the moderator and Manny’s director of community. “We really need to look at [everything] from education to employment to drugs to alcohol to all the different needs.”

The conversation Wednesday night was the first of a series of town halls with leading District 9 candidates. After Hernandez, two other candidates, Jackie Fielder and Trevor Chandler will be at Manny’s.

Born and raised in the Mission, 68-year-old Hernandez boasts the longest District 9 residency among the pack of eight contenders. He’s the CEO of Cultura y Arte Nativa de las Americas, which puts on Carnaval SF and other events, such as last week’s Selena tribute.

Most recently, he was one of the founders of the Latino Task Force, which fed thousands of Mission families during the pandemic. On Wednesday, he held close to his Latin roots, meeting his potential voters while wearing a hat from Yucatan, Mexico, making frequent references to Latinx culture, and using Spanish phrases whenever possible.

“Shout out to Mission Local,” said Green, referring to Mission Local’s Meet the Candidates series, in which each candidate is asked one question every week. “They were very helpful in me preparing for today.”

When Mission Local asked candidates about their No. 1 issue in this election, Hernandez mentioned five concerns: Crime, housing, homelessness, decent wages and clean streets. “If elected, which would you tackle first?” Green asked.

Safety, Hernandez answered without hesitation. 

“When we look at safety, everybody expects the police department to solve all the problems,” he said. “They can’t solve all the problems. So we have a responsibility, and together we can do this.” 

He advocated for keeping the seniors safe by reinstating San Francisco’s senior-escort program, and putting more emphasis on community boards to resolve conflicts without police involvement. 

He’s particularly concerned about the safety of youths. Hernandez and his wife, who also showed up at Manny’s on Wednesday, have a 16-year-old son who’s attending Mission High School. “You would not believe the things that he comes home and tells us, of feeling unsafe, whether being on the school grounds or off-site,” he said. 

“Unfortunately today, children cannot be outside and be safe. And that makes me very sad.”

In his recollections, safety wasn’t the biggest issue for him when he was a kid. Hernandez’s mom came to the Mission from Nicaragua six months pregnant. He was forbidden from speaking Spanish when he later went to school. “I had a very difficult time, academically,” he said, and one day, the principal asked his father to come in. “At that time, having him leave a job and miss hours and not get paid was like … the most fearful moment in my life growing up.”

Small businesses

According to Hernandez, on Mission Street alone, more than 60 businesses have shut down since the pandemic. He plans to create incubator spaces to help individuals afford rent, and to figure out how to provide small businesses with a lease with an option to buy storefronts. “Part of the problem is that a lot of these small businesses, the rents are too high. So, we need to change the narrative,” he said. 

He also promised to reduce fees small businesses need to pay, and to cut “the red-tape bureaucracy.”

“One business might have to go to nine different departments,” said Hernandez. “You really need to get all the city departments, and get them all in one room and say, this is what I’m planning, what do I need? And get a timetable.”

Housing

For Hernandez, part of the solution to San Francisco’s housing crisis is to bring all the stakeholders to the table, including the unions. 

“Our mission?” he said. 

“No eviction,” some audience members replied swiftly. As the founder of Our Mission No Eviction, Hernandez has helped to prevent evictions and secured 1,300 units of affordable housing, according to the answer he submitted to Mission Local. 

Hernandez supports building housing for everyone. He also advocated for creating a first-time home-buyer program, because he believes “ownership creates stability for future generations.” 

Drug crisis

Seven hundred people in San Francisco died of fentanyl overdoses last year. As a former drug addict and alcoholic who’s been clean for 28 years, Hernandez said he understands firsthand the experience of a user. His believes the crisis is “about putting them in treatment programs,” and the city needs to provide “service on demand.”

Hernandez said he and his wife have a personal commitment to help drug users. “ Me and my wife, we’ve had plenty of people that we brought to our home, and we have helped heal them,” he said. 

He doesn’t agree with  “allowing people to die on the street,” rather than helping them. City officials have reasoned that they legally lack the power to force people into treatment, but Hernandez sees it differently. “If you get shot and you’re laying on the sidewalk, bleeding to death, unconscious,” he said, do they say, “we don’t have consent?”

“What’s the difference? There is no difference,” Hernandez added. 

Nevertheless, he remains a steadfast opponent of the recently approved Proposition F, which requires cash-assistance recipients to undergo screening for illegal substance dependency and participate in treatment. 

“These Band-Aid solutions don’t work because, once the Band-Aid comes off, the bleeding continues. And so, we got to treat people as human beings with dignity and respect.” 

You can see all of our election coverage here.