Welcome back to our “Meet the Candidates” series, in which District 9 supervisorial hopefuls respond to a question in 100 words or fewer.
You can see all previous questions here.
The residents I met with on Monday at L’s Caffe wondered what the District 9 candidates would do about housing. The three residents who joined me for coffee differed on housing in much the same way as the city in general does. Views ranged from wanting affordable housing first to housing in general.
Oscar Palma, our new reporter, will be taking over this series. Drop by La Boheme at 3318 24th St. Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. to say hello and talk about the district.
Question: Should SF be intent on creating affordable housing or all housing and should districts absorb the need for new housing equally?
Jackie Fielder
Former educator at SF State University, co-founder of the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition. Democratic Socialist. Tenant
SF should create housing at all income levels, striving for 100% affordability wherever possible. The State mandates 57% of our new housing be affordable to people of extremely low to moderate incomes, which is what I’ll fight for.
However, the market will never build enough affordable housing, even in economic booms, because it’s not as profitable. City government must ensure continuous construction, especially in downturns such as these. Establishing a public bank with low- and no-interest loans and utilizing revenue bonds for patient capital investment is crucial. We need a robust housing finance infrastructure to address these challenges effectively.
Endorsed by: California Nurses Association, SFPTE Local 21 (Municipal workers) AFT 2121 (City College faculty and staff, D9 Supervisor Hilary Ronen. More here.
Jaime Gutierrez
Transit supervisor for SFMTA/MUNI; Tenant
Housing is a basic fundamental human right that should be regulated by local, state and federal governments. San Francisco should involve itself in the business of creating adequate housing that is not only affordable, but must be environmentally conscious in its construction and maintenance.
It should create a sense of community and safety for its residents. Housing involves planning, financing, permitting, materials, and quality craftsmanship. Housing, like food and shelter is a need for survival. By this definition, housing must be affordable. Therefore, I shall champion policies that aid with securing housing.
Endorsed by: Transportation Workers Union Local 200. More here.
Roberto Hernandez
CEO, Cultura y Arte Nativa de Las Americas (CANA). Homeowner.
District 9 is special because people all over the world want to live here — yet many families struggle to stay in their homes. I’ve prioritized affordable housing throughout my career because despite years of promises from City Hall, we haven’t built enough, especially on SF’s west side.
But the crisis has reached a point where we must urgently devise creative solutions to benefit all residents seeking housing, including mixed-income for the missing middle that helps fund our affordable housing program. We need first-time-homebuyer programs because ownership creates stability for future generations. And I want our housing built by union members.
Endorsed by: State Treasurer Fiona Ma, Supervisor Myrna Melgar, Supervisor Shamann Walton, State Senator Scott Wiener, BART Director Bevan Dufty. More here.
Michael Petrelis
AIDS and LGBTQ activist
Petrelis wrote in to say, “I’m skipping sending a reply this week, as is rather obvious.”
Endorsed by: Not seeking endorsements and I see much of the Endorsement Industrial Complex as corrupt, rife with payola and favor-trading, and for gotcha responses. More here.
Stephen Torres
Nightlife worker in addition to LGBTQ activism, journalism and events. Tenant.
Our city requires intention and actual planning. To thrive equitably, we need to prioritize affordable and deeply affordable housing.
Under the previous Housing Element, we exceeded our market-rate goals while falling short on affordable housing by 8,000 units. Meanwhile, working families have been forced out of our city.
Trickle-down economics didn’t work in the ’80s, and trickle-down housing won’t work now. To borrow from the current supervisor, it is possible to be both pro-housing and pro-neighborhood.
Endorsed by: Mark Leno, Former State Senator, Aaron Peskin, President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Hillary Ronen, Supervisor, District 9. More here.
Julian Bermudez
Works in and directs his family business, Rancho Grande Appliance. Tenant
Creating Affordable Housing First. The solution to our housing crisis is rent control. Rent regulation is the fastest way to see our city change overnight and to put money back into everyone’s pockets. When I am doing jobs around the city, it’s common to be told by a tenant that their rent rises even though there haven’t been any updates to the building or even regular upkeep. I have a three-step plan to rehabilitate our renting market and possibly revitalize the housing market.
First, I plan to replace property taxes with a “land use” tax to help property owners with affordable or below-market-rate housing. Read more.
h brown
Retired special education teacher. Tenant
Build for the people living on the streets first.
Only way to do that is through federally subsidized housing like in the old days.
City should be land banking every Veritas property in foreclosure.
Buy whatever property SFUSD is about to sell and land bank that too.
Land bank Laguna Honda for certain and fast.
Buy the giant failed department stores and landbank them, too.
Build no higher than 45′, which is tallest SFFD ladder that can operate manually in rubble.
For Maximum Density go ahead and Land Bank 45′ dwellings under the ground.
Build a statue of Henry George !
Trevor Chandler
Substitute teacher at SFUSD. Former director of government and public policy at Citizen, a public safety app. Tenant
Building the 41,000 units of affordable housing mandated by the Housing Element will require an all-of-the-above strategy pursuing both mixed and 100% affordable housing. It’s why I support eliminating fees on 100% affordable housing and modernizing our broken permitting process.
I also support enforcing Neighborhood Preference to ensure affordable units are prioritized in immediate area market-rate units so we can fight gentrification.
We can build the housing we desperately need while protecting our neighborhoods, but we must move beyond the stale ideological fights that led us to this crisis in the first place.
Endorsed by: Latino LGBTQ political organization HONOR PAC, State Senator Scott Wiener, Assembly Member Rick Chavez Zbur, Brownie Mary Democratic Club, Supreme Court Marriage Equality Lead Plaintiff Jim Obergefell. More here.
Candidates are rotated alphabetically. Answers may be lightly edited for formatting, spelling, and grammar. If you have questions for the candidates, please let us know at lydia.chavez@missionlocal.com.
Read the rest of the series here. Illustrations for the series by Neil Ballard.
You can register to vote via the sf.gov website.
I like how pretty much every single candidate deflected the part about “Should districts absorb the need for new housing equally?” Seems like all of these candidates will be positioned to defer to the other supervisors as they try to NIMBY all new housing whatsoever out of the more affluent parts of their own districts, as previous boards have for far too long.
I wouldn’t be surprised by this from candidates in, say, D3, but why the waffling here?
Did Peskin endorse anyone else ?
In 2002 we had 22 candidates running in D-5 w/Mirkarimi eventual winner.
Best field I’ve ever seen and we quickly created a ‘Candidates Collaborative’ and agreed to two things …
1. We agreed that no one would attend a debate or other Public show w/out the others. It truly worked well and became an art form (to me) in and of itself.
Imagine 22 intelligent people all together on stage anwering your housing quesiton in a minute each. You’d be surprised how much you can cram in 60 seconds.
2. We agreed to make our own Ranked Choices early on an update them as the campaign ensured. First to go Public was me and last was Robert Haaland.
Only candidate to violate rule was Ross who took private 2 hour meeting w/Hellman.
This series could win a Pulitzer prize for design with ongoing Public Input week by week from so far out and becoming a series of slides under Lydia’s magnifying glass.
I’m staying with Hernandez first, moving Torres to second and Fielder third.
Go Giants !!
h.