Mission Local is holding exit interviews with elected officials leaving office after the Nov. 5, 2024 election: London Breed, Aaron Peskin, Hillary Ronen, Ahsha Safaรญ and Dean Preston. You can read our other interviews as they are published here.
After eight years in office, District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen said she left it all on the table, and that itโs time for her to move on from City Hall.
In an hour-long conversation with Mission Local, she spoke about AI and killer robots, being a mother while working in City Hall, her relationship with previous city politicos, and the challenges splitting her time between the Mission and the rest of the district.
Before serving two terms as supervisor, the southern California native spent six years as an attorney at La Raza Centro Legal, and another six as a legislative aide to former District 9 Supervisor David Campos. In 2016, Ronen easily beat Joshua Arce to become Camposโ successor. In 2020, she ran unopposed.
In her time in office, Ronen introduced legislation creating cultural districts (the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District and the American Indian Cultural District) to protect areas heavily affected by gentrification. In 2020, she authored a law protecting tenants living in single-family homes from exorbitant rent increases. And her Right to Recover legislation during the pandemic was key in providing a lifeline to essential workers who became ill with Covid-19 and had to miss work. She also got Public Works to bring back some of the Missionโs trash cans.
The supervisor leaves the district with more than a dozen 100 percent affordable housing projects: Seven completed, two under construction and four in pre-development. It wasnโt the 5,000 new units she pledged in 2016, “but it’s pretty damn good,โ said Ronen.
In an exit interview with Mission Local, she reflected on the last eight years and spoke about housing, the vending ban and her future plans.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Mission Local: What do you make of your last eight years?
Hillary Ronen: Oh, gosh, I have so many feelings. My original entrance into professional life was El Centro Legal, mostly being an organizer more than a lawyer because the law doesn’t really work for undocumented people. But I’ve been in City Hall for 15 years, as a legislative aide for David Campos, and then a supervisor myself. I kind of grew up in this job. Iโve become such a more sophisticated advocate in my ability to produce results and get material gains for poor people, which has been my life’s work.
It feels like the end of an era to me. I had my daughter while I was there โ I had morning sickness every day in the bathroom across from the office โ so there’s just so many places in that gorgeous, amazing building that mean so much to me. I have all this nostalgia, but I have to say, it’s time for me to go.
I’ve given everything I had to District 9, to the people of San Francisco and to the changes I wanted to create. And now it’s time for me to focus my energy somewhere else.
ML: What were the priorities for Supervisor Campos โ and you, as his legislative aide โ and what were your priorities as a supervisor?
HR: When I was with David, the street conditions in the Mission weren’t that bad, so we worked on bigger policies for the whole city. We made Muni free for youth. We tightened up the laws to make sure that workers were getting all the money in their healthcare accounts from employers. We made the strongest sanctuary laws in the city. We saved St. Lukeโs [Hospital]. Being a legislative aide is the best job I’ve ever had. Legislative aides write the laws, do the organizing, and talk to the people in the community โ all the fun work. I loved that job.
Becoming supervisor was not nearly as fun, thoughtful, or intellectual as being a legislative aide. What dominated my time in office, other than Covid, was street conditions. It was all I could do, because it was absolutely the most important thing for District 9. I had to strike this balance of working on the root causes of why there were such horrible street conditions, while simultaneously trying to fix them. None of us should be living in the midst of so much chaos on the streets.
Right after the Super Bowl, Mayor Ed Lee moved all the people from the Embarcadero into the Mission who were homeless. All of a sudden, we went from a neighborhood with a few encampments here and there to absolutely just blanketed in encampments. We worked so hard, and I partnered, ironically, with Mohammed Nuru and Ed Lee. I spent my whole campaign criticizing Ed Lee and then I ended up, to his credit, partnering with him. I cut this deal with Lennar, who had owned 1515 South Van Ness. They gave us the land and the building for free, and we turned it into a navigation center. I have so much to say about that, but we fixed it. We got down to 30 tents. We held that for a good eight months to a year, and then we started losing ground.
When Covid started, the whole fencing phenomenon started happening in the Mission. Trying to fix that has pretty much dominated my second term in office; it has been an absolute nightmare.
ML: How did you decide on a street-vending ban?
HR: At first, I didn’t want there to be a ban. I was like, “These are poor folks who are selling stolen goods to survive, and I don’t want to punish them further, but I want them gone. I don’t want to create chaos in the streets and an unlawful feeling for everyone.” I thought, as long as Public Works can take their stuff and confiscate it, that’ll be enough and they’ll leave because they can’t sell their stuff here. But it didn’t work at all. They couldn’t have cared less that we were taking their things, because it just was a bigger operation.
Not only did that happen, but there were a couple of killings. The extortion was horrible. Public Works employees were being insulted. I begged the city attorney, but I was told I couldnโt do anything, because street vending is legal and you canโt ban it.
So, I put up the fences [at both 16th Street and 24th Street BART stations]. A group who didn’t even live in the Mission came from out of town, tagged my house and took down the fences. Public Works employees came to a board meeting, crying and saying, “We’re going to our union begging to be reassigned, because we’re scared,โ”and Santi [former Ronen legislative aide Santiago Lerma] was threatened. At that point, I said, “There has to be a way, under the law, that we can ban this.”
We tried to work with the permitted vendors, because we knew we were drastically affecting their lives, and it was horrible. At the same time, John Jacobo and Kevin Ortiz were organizing them to fight us.
ML: Did the ban work?
HR: The ban helped a lot. But to this day, it only works if there’s visible enforcement on the street. We had to fight to get more money for Public Works. I can’t tell you how many arguments I had with Police Chief Bill Scott. DPW would only work if the police were there, and the police constantly got pulled, and then it would be a nightmare again. I spent a ton of my time trying to get consistency so that at least people felt like there was an improvement from nine or 10 a.m. until 7 or 8 p.m., seven days a week. We know it was bad before and after that, but at least there would be improvement.
We went to Sacramento to try to change the law. We convinced all the Mission nonprofits that we were doing the right thing. We convinced the authors of the law. We convinced insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara, who legalized street vending, and all the advocates in L.A. because that’s where it started.
[Under SB 925, the Board of Supervisors would have created a list of items often obtained through retail theft. Any street vendor in possession of goods on the list would have needed a permit proving those items had been obtained lawfully. The bill would have also allowed police officers to directly interact with vendors without the presence of a Public Works employee, as is currently required following the passage of SB 946 in 2018, which decriminalized street vending.]
We got it through the legislature. The vendor association went to speak in favor of the law to Sacramento, and it was going to come to a floor vote and, I still don’t know why, Speaker [Robert] Rivas put it on suspense. I was devastated. My biggest goal, and I didn’t care who won the District 9 seat, was to do everything I could to fix it for them, so they didn’t have to start out their time as supervisor dealing with literally one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever dealt with in my life. It’s still not fixed. Jackie [Fielder] is gonna have to deal with it, first thing.
ML: At the beginning, permitted vendors’ perspective was much different than what it is now. They were against the moratorium, and thought it was unjust. A few months later, now they think it’s a good thing. What do you think created that conflict at the beginning where they didn’t trust the law?
HR: Jon Jacobo and Kevin Ortiz were trying to gain political favor for themselves and were exploiting poor people in order to do it. It was really frustrating. They never sat down with us and asked us how we were trying to help the vendors. Jon Jacobo was trying to mount his political comeback, and that’s just the way Kevin Ortiz rolls. He never tries to find out how to fix things.
The vendors were advocating for themselves; I had no problem with that. I would sit down and I would say, “IโlI care about you and about your economic interests, but I also care about the immigrant business owners that own the storefronts and are losing all business and on the verge of shutting down.” I care about the abuelas and kids who want to use the BART station, and public transportation is crumbling under our feet and people wouldn’t use the 24th Street BART station anymore, or the bus there.
They would admit, “Yes, we’re being extorted, but we can pay the extortion and still make more money at the BART station.” I was so grateful to CLECHA [a Mission nonprofit that works with street vendors, among others]. They were totally on the side of the vendors, but they were trying to problem-solve with us, as opposed to attacking us.
[Kevin Ortiz, for his part, disagreed, saying in a statement that โRonenโs legacy will be whining and blaming advocates for the messes she created.โ Jon Jacobo felt similarly: โThis was never about me or about โpolitical comebacks,โ this was about what was morally correct, and more importantly about the agenda requested by the vendors themselves.โ]
ML: What do you think made the Mission the center for 100-percent affordable housing?
HR: I feel very proud of that. We created about 3,700 units โ my goal was 5,000 โ and then we created around 350 temporary shelter beds or tiny homes.
Calle 24 fought tooth and nail, and not just them but also others like Our Mission No Eviction, Plaza 16. No other neighborhood has all this like grassroots groundswell of activism saying we don’t want market-rate, but we want all of the homeless shelters. It’s the opposite of NIMBY: “Yes, in My Backyard, but only for poor and working-class people.”
We had that amazing day when the Mission took over City Hall, demanding affordable housing. For the first time ever, Ed Lee put, in the housing bond, $50 million just for the Mission. I got to also benefit from things David Campos did. He got the Municipal Transportation Commission, for the first time, to give money. And I think that allowed us to buy 1515 South Van Ness. It was really a joint effort between the community, activists, myself and really receptive mayors.
ML: Merchants and neighbors in the Portola told me they feel like they’re not a priority within District 9.
HR: It’s totally legitimate. The Mission takes so much life out of the District 9 supervisor that Portola and Bernal end up getting less attention. There’s just no way around it. The needs, the constant crisis, the street conditions. The reality of the ultra-wealthy living next door to the ultra-poor. Crime issues. Probably both Bernal and Portola feel like they didn’t get as much time out of me as the Mission did, and that’s true.
An important part of the job that I never really fulfilled is being there, just being seen. Making people feel important. Going to everyone’s thing. Many of my colleagues go to several events every single night of their life. When I ran for supervisor, my daughter was four. I was like, “I’m not going to miss every dinner of my childโs life. If you want a mother in office, this is one of the things that has to go.” I don’t think I ran on that, necessarily. I don’t think I understood it fully at the time.
I will always be sad about โ we were this close to rebuilding the greenhouses in the Portola, and turning that into a farm that would have been an education center around urban agriculture and food issues in the heart of the garden district. I worked so hard on it, and the thing that killed it was a poorly written legal contract between the Greenhouse Project and the owner of the land.
If Portola had gotten that, I don’t think they would feel the same about me. That was not my fault. In fact, I was devastated.
ML: What are you working on next?
HR: Artificial intelligence and how it’s impacting poor people. I’m so excited, and I feel like I’m getting my full vibe and energy back. We need to build a framework and a movement and awareness among justice fighters about how serious these revolutionary changes in society are. How different our world is going to look in the next couple decades, and how powerful these seven big tech companies are getting in the fact that they’re going to own all the infrastructure.
That’s the basis of how our entire world is going to function, and there’s not nearly enough people on the sort of justice side who are thinking about these issues from the viewpoint of poor folks.
ML: You’re going back to your law background?
HR: I don’t want to practice law, but it’s sort of policy. The only way we’re regulating, because the feds aren’t regulating AI at all, is through regulatory law and constitutional law in the courts. Our amazing, soon-to-be-gone Federal Trade Commission chair [Lina Khan] has been doing quite a lot of work in this area, but that’s done. You have Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen, who are at the right hand of [Donald] Trump in D.C., and you have Sam Altman at the right hand of [Daniel] Lurie, locally. It’s just everywhere, and it’s scary. I’m not scared of killer robots. I’m scared of billion-dollar corporations being more powerful than the state.
ML: You’re ready to move on to the next thing because being a supervisor is a tiring job โฆ
HR: It’s not just a tiring job, it’s a very tiring job. I feel like I’m not fresh enough for what the district needs. The district needs someone with full energy who has new eyes and new ideas.
ML: How long have you felt this way?
HR: I’ve been feeling this way for probably a good two years. I’ve fought through it. I’ve been working really hard the whole time.
I’ve grown up a lot in this job. When I started, I was a fighter. Then I realized I wasn’t making positive change for the district. I changed my strategy, and I started working much more collaboratively with the mayor’s office. Ed Lee taught me a lot about that when we did 1515 South Van Ness. I was like, โLook how much we got done by working together and not fighting each other.โ
I never wanted to be a politician. I don’t think I will run for office again. I kind of fell into this role, and I am so glad I did.
This article sheds light on how the Mission became such a problematic area under Supervisor Ronenโs leadership. It’s clear from this interview that her primary focus was on advocating for “poor people,” but this approach often misguided. When I first raised my concerns to her about the rampant fencing at 24th and Mission, her response was, “I don’t want poor people to go to jail.” This revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation, which led to delays in addressing the real issues. Unfortunately, this pattern persisted throughout her tenure.
A supervisor’s role is to represent all members of the community, not just one specific class or ethnicity. As an educator and artist who lives in the Mission, my own quality of life and sense of safetyโas well as that of my neighborsโwere significantly impacted. By focusing only on the most down trodden, Ronen failed to take into consideration the working middle class, including many of my neighbors who are immigrants. Instead of fostering innovation and allowing all cultures to flourish, she seemed determined to keep the Mission isolated in a bubble, disconnected from the realities and challenges of the 21st century.
A supervisor’s role is to consider the needs of all constituents and then strike a balance that ensures the smooth and equitable functioning of society. Ronen did not do this. She often touted the 1515 South Van Ness project as a success, but the impact on the surrounding street was far from positive. Thanks to her anti-market-rate housing stance and her successful efforts to block development at this site (which should have been completed in 2017), residents like myself were left to endure eight years of uncontrolled encampments, open-air drug use, rising crime, and urban blight.
Ronen’s failure to govern responsibly and her reluctance to listen to all voices in the Mission have caused significant harm to our community. I hope weโve learned an important lesson: for our neighborhoods to truly thrive, we need responsible governance that prioritizes clean streets, enforcement of illegal activity, and a comprehensive approach that considers entrepreneurs, the working class, artists, innovators, diverse cultures, and vulnerable residents. Ultimately, we all want the same thing: a safe, vibrant, and inclusive community where everyone has a voice and everyone can prosper.
As someone who also considers themselves “working middle class,” I recognize the privilege I have as someone who is housed and employed. But I also realize how close I am to being homeless as well.
The issue comes down to the question of, “is the problem with homelessness and poverty that you and I have to see it? Or is the problem that people are suffering from homelessness and poverty?”
If the problem is *visibility*, the only solutions on offer are carceral– ie. sweeps, criminalization, limited “shelters,” whatever gets people off the streets. Even if we house every currently homeless person, our economic conditions will create more.
Addressing the economic conditions, by eliminating the issues that cause people to become homeless in the first place, you solve both. It’s of course a harder thing to do, politically, but it’s the only way it will work.
I specifically said she needs to balance the needs of everyone. It is critical that all of us, including the most vulnerable, have clean streets and a healthy environment. Itโs unfortunate for District 9 that she did not know herself well enough to not run for supervisor. And why would she run again knowing she disliked the job? It is a tragic chapter in district 9 history that we had to suffer under her misguided ideology. I hope Fielder is a smarter and less ideological supervisor who is more civic minded and less ego driven. Letโs hope she understands that the health of communities depends on creating the groundwork for a healthy and safe place to live and do business. Letโs hope she empowers all of us to live up to our potential, not just a select few.
> I hope Fielder is a smarter and less ideological supervisor who is more civic minded
I have bad news for you. Fielder might be even dumber than Ronen, who was in tough competition with Chan and Walton for dumbest board member.
It is laughable that the well-heeled need empowering to live up to their potential.
You not feeling safe serves a function. Chaos serves a function. The function for the poor should be evident, but the function for elites is enshrouded.
Ask yourself: why would SF FinTech entrepreneur Chris Larsen be interested in crime and surveillance? Why is Musk clamoring about immigration? Why is Altman interested in politics?
I don’t know, but don’t forget to sign up for your CA digital ID, now available via the Apple Wallet app.
It is not a privilege to have food, water, healthcare and housing. It is violent oppression that people are deprived of necessities.
Under the Democrat urban political machine, addressing the root causes of poverty is off of the agenda. All that is allowed are poverty maintenance organizations.
Left and right are not so important in these times as up and down are. Merely being secure and comfortable does not make one “up” as those at the top and getting paid by those at the top would have one believe.
Apparently supervisor Ronen never heard the saying “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Good riddance to this non-San Franciscan who came to town, helped make life here worse, and with her good work completed is now moving on to someplace else. Perhaps she can take her mentor Campos with her.
i live in the Mission..you were basically a no show and an utter failure..but don’t worry, that is the norm in the city..I hope you learnt a lot about maths during your trip to Japan on taxpayers money.
Clearly, the one thing Hilary and all of us needed on her way out the door was a puff piece celebrating her tenure. Thank you.
Wow! Fantastic interview.
Wish we’d known more at the time about the many ways Ronen tried to stop the fencing of stolen goods at the BART stations. I especially wish we’d known that Jacobo and Ortiz were major obstacles. Perhaps some of us could have found ways to support her efforts.
I met Ronen once: She accepted my invitation to attend a local school event. She dug in, fully participating in the day’s activity with genuine warmth and engagement. I was surprised: I’ve met other local politicians, several of whom struck me as phony and arrogant.
I’m wishing Jackie Fielder luck. Nothing will make a bigger difference in the Mission District than reducing homelessness and ending the unregulated flea markets. I’d be all for people selling homemade food and their own crafts. As long as such vendors agreed to work on a plan to keep the area CLEAN, it wouldn’t interfere with local businesses. In fact, it might attract more people to spend money in the Mission. There’s no excuse for us to accept the current dismal squalor.
โ Itโs the opposite of NIMBY: โYes, in My Backyard, but only for poor and working-class people.โ โ
I have never seen Ronenโs philosophy described so succinctly and accurately:
Importing the entire cityโs poverty, homelessness and crime into District 9, and begging City Hall to let her. Of course they did.
Seven brand new developments will now be a dumping ground for every addict, thief, drug dealer, and indigent migrant SF can attract. Ronen is proud of this, because she is not a politician, but a bizarre zealot and activist.
D9 deserved Campos/Ronen (and now Fielder) the same way the nation deserves Trump.
Enjoy!
Itโs unfortunate for District 9 that Ronen did not know herself well enough to not run for supervisor. And why would she run again knowing she disliked the job? It is a tragic chapter in district 9 history that we had to suffer under her misguided ideology. I hope Fielder is a smarter and less ideological supervisor who is more civic minded and less ego driven. Letโs hope she understands that the health of communities depends on creating the groundwork for a healthy and safe place to live and do business. Letโs hope she empowers all of us to live up to our potential, not just a select few.
You mean alleged repeat SA perpetrator Jon Jacobo? Innocent until proven guilty of course!
Being evoked in her 8 year look back was weird. I wish my entire statement would have made it to the article:
Hillaryโs statement shows how disconnected sheโs been from the reality of her own district.
This was never about me or about โpolitical comebacksโ this was about what was morally correct, AND more importantly about the agenda requested by the vendors themselves. As an organizer and technical expert it was an honor to volunteer my time and little resources I had to help organize and form the Mission Street Vendors Association. To help empower those directly impacted, to lead for themselves.
What the vendors stated then was clear, and was told to Hillary and her staff numerous times over several weeks. The vendors were open to working with the Supervisors office on a temporary ban when she brought it to them end of October โ23, but asked to wait to start it in January โ24 as the holiday season is their busiest time of the year.
That was it. That was the ask from more than 100 permitted vendors directly. The organizing only happened as a response to the abrupt, wasteful, and misguided policy decision that impacted peopleโs real lives. Families losing homes, clients, income, and a community losing a cultural asset, etc. The end result shows how ineffective of a policy push it was. The vendors lost MONTHS of income, and the streets remained largely the same.
Truthfully, her actions then, and statements now just highlight the disconnect, and why the district has been in disarray for years. No one will sincerely tell you that the district is better off today than it was eight years ago.
Fortunately, there is a new chapter for the district and this city, and the vendors have learned and established themselves as a force.
> As an organizer and technical expert it was an honor to volunteer my time and little resources I had to help organize and form the Mission Street Vendors Association.
This is a bit misleading. Your job is a professional volunteer: you get do-nothing jobs and opportunities from city grants to ingratiate yourself in the community in exchange for backroom deals and preferred access when you use that public presence to win political office. Unfortunately you were not able to keep your loins under control for long enough to cash in on all that investment others made in your career.
-> “As an organizer and technical expert it was an honor to volunteer my time and little resources I had to help organize and form the Mission Street Vendors Association. To help empower those directly impacted, to lead for themselves.”
There’s some aggrandizing and infantilizing here. The genuinely altruistic and humble move would have been to find an actual vendor who was up for being spokesperson, work with that person behind the scenes in making them the face.
When you were quoted as vendor rep in the ML article some year plus ago, I read it and perceived the move the same way Ronen has described it here. You say the move was about doing what was morally correct, but to quote a shitty theory by a shitty political philosopher: “politics has no relation to morals.”
Mr. Jacobo, you are, as others have mentioned here, innocent until proven guilty of the multiple allegations against you. But Iโm not sure anyone here is interested in hearing you weigh in on city politics anymore either.
Ronen allowed mayors to pin her down with “street conditions” in the Mission, conditions that the Mayors allowed to happen and which they could eradicate with one phone call. Instead, Mayors waved the red cape over and again and Ronen could not help but charge it, bereft of strategy, with little to show for it and no energy left over to legislate.
Mayors already provide city services above and beyond nonprofit funding to Bernal and The Portola because they are outside of the Containment Zone. Celebrating unelected, unaccountable single issue “community activists” as the Mission neighborhood remains a containment zone exemplifies the disconnect.
If the best we’re getting out of the city funded nonprofit dominated cartel is Ronen, Jacobo and Ortiz performing the narcissism of small differences, then that model must be dismantled and replaced with a resident centered politics. We dodged some risky #metoo bullets this cycle.
District 9 deserves better than someone who “fell into” the roll of supervisor with the “dedo” of city funded nonprofits and public sector unions with claims on public revenue streams, who then managed to move from the Mission up to Bernal back when it was the most desirable neighborhood in the US, at the top of the market, during a housing crisis.
Let’s not forget when Ronen called out her political operation, including the unions that funded her successor’s campaign, on the DSA Afrosocialists when they marched on her home during the pandemic to petition our elected supervisor to defund the police and then said her family was traumatized by peaceful demonstrators, many of color.
This is a progressive version of a self perpetuating ruling class.
One phone call? Batman?
The containment zone is a discretionary policy choice where SFPD contain socially undesirable public conduct, not poor people, in a few neighborhoods. A mayor could order staff to undo that containment policy with a phone call.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I can’t recall you realistically addressing how the aftermath of such an action would play out, and I’m skeptical you could lay out any result – which includes broad considerations – that isn’t eye roll worthy.
Being a supervisor is a hard job, that’s for sure, and I’ll take someone who works hard all day for the district and skips out on “being seen” at events to be home with their kid any day over someone who goes to events and wants to be a supervisor for the prestige and the profile. Hilary never wanted profile or prestige and as a legislative aide, she knew how to write legislation and work to improve her district. I think she did a great job overall and I’m grateful for the nuance she brought to the position. She understood that there are no easy solutions to some of these issues and she didn’t act like there were. And when I called her office because I needed something in the district, she was responsive and her staff helped us out. So I salute you Hilary and I thank you for your service to the Mission District and the City!
“Iโm scared of billion-dollar corporations being more powerful than the state.”
More to the point, the AI and SV oligarchs are partnering with the State. They are covering every base from finance and health, to defense and intelligence. Dominance, control, and profit are to be the end goals.
On this front, the differences between political parties is minor, and largely a matter of packaging and framing. Tech democrats, tech republicans, tech libertarians, tech independents … same shit, different day.
The oligarchs use hot-button, politically divisive issues as a smoke-screen. That’s what we gobble up. I recently watched Piers Morgan interview Peter Thiel for a fucking hour and a half. Did Morgan ask one single question about Palantir and government contracts?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=luTHVKFi3dc&pp=ygUYUGllcnMgbW9yZ2FuIHBldGVyIHRoaWVs
Ps. Good luck Ms. Ronen.
I was a supporter of Ronen, but she lost me with the carceral fencing of the BART stations, criminalization of street vendors, and also blocking Capp street, displacing sex workers at the behest of rich newcomers to the neighborhood.
I enjoyed this interview because it reminded me of some of the really good things she was able to accomplish. I hope she has success regulating AI, I really share those concerns.
It’s pretty rude to compare putting up a fence that slightly discourages people from committing crimes to incarceration.