Mission Local is publishing a daily campaign dispatch for each of the major contenders in the mayor’s race, alternating among candidates weekly until November. This week: Ahsha Safaí. Read earlier dispatches here.
Ahsha Safaí never left the one-mile radius around City Hall on Wednesday, but it felt like he’d been everywhere: A visit to St. Anthony’s, a merchant walk in the Tenderloin, an endorsement interview, and his 100th campaign meet-and-greet.
Safaí, once again, started his day at a labor union’s office. This time, it was SEIU Local 87 in the Tenderloin, a pink, partly graffiti-covered building where Safaí worked with the janitors’ union for about a decade.
He kept that history front and center, introducing himself as someone who started his career 24 years ago at the San Francisco Housing Authority and went on to work for the union to almost everyone he met Wednesday on the campaign trail.
As he walked around the Tenderloin, Safaí criticized the mayor’s response to overdose deaths, namely her decision to increase arrests and crackdown on public drug use and dealing. Those measures, he learned from a hearing on Tuesday, have led to a rapidly increasing jail population with an influx of mentally ill inmates.
The arrests, he added, failed to solve the problems of drug use and mental health. Those problems were alarmingly clear on Safaí’s merchant walk along a few blocks of Hyde and Turk streets.
He walked by boarded-up storefronts, feces on the sidewalk and people yelling in the background. A group of elementary-school kids walked by someone sitting in a parklet using drugs. Volunteers from Tenderloin Safe Passage escorted them through, quickly.
“What’s the real plan?” Safaí asked. “We have to have a public health response, not a criminal justice response, if you want to respond to people dying from drug use.”
Was the Tenderloin given fewer resources from the city?
“I don’t necessarily think it’s less resources. I don’t think there’s a coordinated strategy,” Safaí said. “We have the money, we just don’t have the leadership, management and accountability.”
Does the city have the money, though? San Francisco faces an $800 million budget deficit over the next two fiscal years.
Safaí said it does, but city departments routinely come to the budget committee halfway through the budget cycle, saying they’ve moved around or “found” unspent money. That means, he said, that the departments have over-allocated resources, but failed to fully implement them, Safaí said.
“How can you have millions of dollars sitting in the Department of Homeless and Supportive Housing when people are suffering and dying on the streets?” he said.
In the one-hour walk — accompanied by his former boss at Local 87, Ahmed Abozayd, campaign manager Lauren Chung and campaign coordinator Prabhat Jammalamadaka — Safaí stopped at seven businesses, mostly corner liquor stores.
At a couple of stores, he and his team spent less time talking to the owners than they did trying to put up his signs. At others, he took about 20 minutes introducing himself and asking owners about the issues that concern them. Homelessness, drug use and street cleaning, the owners said nearly unanimously.
Da Hot Spot, a smoothie bar at the corner of Turk and Jones streets, was popping with workers getting their afternoon smoothies when Safaí walked in.
“We need a new mayor,” said Walleed Shehadeh, the owner, from the back of the kitchen — before even showing his face. Shehadeh was concerned about safety, especially after his mom, Eman Diab, had someone throw a drink at her two weeks ago.
That’s not the first incident, he said. The store’s restroom, Shehadeh said, has been the scene of several overdoses. When a mentally ill person came into the store and acted out, he saw tourists leave their food on the table and just walk out.
“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Shehadeh said. “I hope for change.”
Later, when asked about how he felt about Safaí, he said: “He seems good, but you [never] know, until the action.”
But others seemed to have made up their mind.
Loki, a 29-year San Francisco resident, walked up to Safaí and said he wasn’t supporting London Breed, calling her Proposition F “Draconian.” The measure was placed on the ballot by Breed and won, meaning some welfare recipients in the city will soon have to undergo drug screening before receiving benefits.
Although Loki said he had never heard of Safaí before, by the time he walked away with a campaign flyer, he seemed impressed.
When asked if he already decided to support Safaí, after he and his campaign team left, Fadhl Radman, owner of Radman’s Produce Market, didn’t hesitate.
“I’m supporting anybody who’s promising to fix the city, and he’s given me the promise,” said Radman. “He comes in with a humble intent to fix the city.”
On this walk, Safaí was, indeed, hands-on when it came to fixing things.
At one of the liquor stores he visited, when his staffers said it was impossible to get the sign on the glass through the metal grid, Safaí rolled up the sign, poked it through the grid and flattened it against the window.
“I don’t take no for an answer,” Safaí laughed with a smidge of smugness. The sign, just slightly crooked, was up. Safaí will put up many more.
If Mr. Safai’ likes fixing things, how about fixing the 70-80% of the storefronts being empty in his district along Mission St. and San Jose Ave. in the Excelsior? He can look “very nice”, but I don’t see any improvement.
I’m losing track of all these candidates. They all seem the same.
More photo-ops from Safai, which is all he’s good for. Take a look at his District 11 corridors, and ask yourself if he can run an entire city. Mayor Breed is doing a terrible job, but putting him in Room 200 at City Hall would be like having Ronald McDonald running the hen-house. Please do not vote for this clown in November 2024.