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District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder requested more police foot patrols, more community ambassadors, and more street cleaning on Mission Street, in response to what Fielder described as “disappointing” data from a new dashboard that is intended to track the progress of efforts to improve conditions on Mission, particularly near the 16th and 24th Street BART plazas.
Fielder’s office made the request in a Sept. 28 letter addressed to Mayor Daniel Lurie, his chief of public safety Steven Betz and policy chief Alicia John-Baptiste and shared with Mission Local.
The dashboard, released last week, shows information on illegal fencing, drug use and arrests, and street cleaning requests, among other metrics. Some categories, like a drop in 911 calls about drug activity, show some improvement.
But, writes Fielder, the dashboard does not reflect what she described as “the uptick of complaints we’ve gotten this year about open drug use on Mission Street and surrounding areas, and especially around 16th Street, San Carlos, Caledonia, Stevenson, and South Van Ness streets.”
Fielder’s constituents have reached out to her office expressing confusion over whether to report drug use to 911, 311 or to the police non-emergency line.
Fielder asked the city to make it possible to report public drug use through 311 (by phone or on the 311 app) by creating a category for it, and to “share the city’s full standard protocol for responding to reports of open drug use–whether that response is led by the SFPD, Department of Public Health, Department of Emergency Services, or some other entity.”
In recent months, the city has quietly reorganized its Street Crisis Behavioral Response Teams by, among other things, replacing peer counselors with paramedics or EMTs. One of the reasons given for the change: too much pressure on the 911 response system.
Fielder also requested that more community ambassadors be assigned to Mission and neighboring streets, something that she had previously asked for in a July 27 letter to Lurie. That request was denied.
As of publication, Fielder has yet to receive a response.
State Senator Scott Wiener and Assembly Member Matt Haney announced a one-time allocation of $2.5 million from the 2026-27 California budget for two Mission nonprofits that serve low-income children and families.
The two legislators made the announcement at a resource fair hosted by Mission Neighborhood Center on Capp and 19th Street. The center received $1.5 million from the state, and Mission Promise Neighborhood got $1 million.
Both organizations say the money will help them continue serving low-income Mission families, many of them immigrants.
Mission Neighborhood Center provides multi-generational services to families, ranging from early education programs to aging and disability services.
Mission Promise Neighborhood provides childcare for working families, assistance with tax returns, affordable housing, and support for small businesses in the community.
“The federal government is attacking this community,” said Wiener, who is running for Congress. “It was a priority for me to support the Mission and working families in the Mission during a period of time where it’s extremely expensive to live as a family,” he said.
Florecita Panaderia’s new location, at 3349 23rd St. at Bartlett St., the former Shuggies pizzeria, had its soft opening on Sept 27.
A video shared via the bakery’s Instagram showed a line that went past the front door and down to Mission Street. “People just kept coming,” said Ximena Williams, the bakery’s co-founder.
Customers waited in line for nearly an hour, she added, and had to be limited to 3 conchas per customer.
Williams, who co-founded Florecita with her partner, Jared, said she wasn’t sure what to expect, and was shocked by the overwhelming amount of support.
“I’m so over the moon about how everything went,’ Williams said. “Coming from such a smaller space, we didn’t expect to see such a line.”
Unlike the grab-and-go model of Florecita’s former location at 2050 Bryant St., the new location has a dining room and an outdoor seating area where customers can hang out and enjoy their conchas with coffee.
Williams says she doesn’t know much about coffee, so Florecita is collaborating with Calaca Coffee, a Crockett-based coffee company that does occasional pop-ups in San Francisco, to add beverages to the menu.
Florecita will be open Thursdays through Mondays from 8 a.m to 2 p.m.
Jackie Fielder is so out of it that she needs a “dashboard” to tell her how things are doing at the plazas.
It has not occurred to her to simply hang out there once and a while.
Or perhaps just walk to work down Mission St.
Yes, we know, setting up a public bank and pushing the big picture national DSA agenda is so much more important.
At least Ronen was spotted cleaning up the 16th plaza way back in 2018.