Welcome back to our “Meet the Candidates” series, where District 6 supervisor candidates respond to a question in 100 words or fewer. Answers are published every Tuesday.
District 6 includes SoMa, Mission Bay, Treasure Island and Yerba Buena. Its current supervisor, Matt Dorsey, was appointed by Mayor London Breed on May 9, 2022. He is up for re-election this November against one challenger, Alex Behrend.
Mission Local previously excluded Behrend from this series because he did not meet our candidate-coverage guidelines. He has since qualified for Meet the Candidates coverage after receiving endorsements from former District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston and Juanita More, an activist and drag queen.
District 6 has become a center of San Francisco’s artificial-intelligence boom.
Since 2020, AI companies have signed hundreds of office leases totaling nearly 7 million square feet across San Francisco. Some of the largest concentrations are in Yerba Buena, SoMa, South Beach and Mission Bay. OpenAI’s Mission Bay footprint surpassed 1 million square feet this year, while Anthropic has amassed nearly as much space in and around SoMa.
The expansion has coincided with another surge in housing costs. In September, Mayor Daniel Lurie declared a “rent emergency,” as median rents had risen 26 percent over the previous year. Eviction notices were up 44 percent in the same period. Tenant advocates have warned that an influx of highly paid AI workers could again put pressure on lower- and middle-income residents to leave the city, echoing the displacement concerns of earlier technology booms.
The AI industry is not the only force pushing rents upward. San Francisco continues to build housing slowly. The city added 2,669 net units in 2025, about 26 percent below its 10-year average at a time when San Francisco Chief Economist Ted Egan said tech workers appear to be moving back to San Francisco. This is the case, Egan said, even though the city has lost more than 30,000 tech jobs over the past three years.
City Hall has responded to rising rents with a mix of tenant protections and efforts to increase housing production. Lurie’s rent-emergency plan included additional money for eviction defense and increased relocation payments for some displaced tenants. Supervisors have also introduced legislation aimed at limiting large rent increases and making existing state protections easier for tenants to understand and enforce. At the same time, California’s Costa-Hawkins law generally prevents San Francisco from applying its local rent-control rules to housing built after Feb. 1, 1995.
So, this week, we asked the candidates: How should San Francisco address rising rents and the risk of displacement as the AI industry expands in District 6?
Matt Dorsey
- Job: Current District 6 Supervisor
- Age: 61
- Residency: Renter, living in District 6 since 2008, has lived in San Francisco since 1990 (except for four years in Washington, D.C.).
- Transportation: Public transit, walking, biking
- Education: Bachelor’s degree from Emerson College
- Languages: English
- Website: Reelect Matt Dorsey 2026
We need the full panoply of near- and long-term solutions — but above all, to BUILD MORE HOUSING at every income level.
Immediately, let’s protect renters from excessive passthroughs and rent-gouging — including my legislation to better enforce statewide rent caps. Let’s keep funding eviction defense to safeguard against predatory landlords, too.
Near-term, let’s expand incentives for developers to subject new housing to rent control, while pushing Sacramento to extend and expand California’s Tenant Protection Act.
Long-term, let’s reform Costa-Hawkins to protect tenants from demand shocks in supply-starved rental markets, and acknowledge the moral imperative housing providers owe to stabilize residential communities.
Endorsed by: Mayor Daniel Lurie, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, Senator Scott Wiener … read more here.
Alex Behrend
- Job: No current job, formerly a voter organizer for Dean Preston’s 2024 campaign, a Safeway checker and a housekeeper at the San Francisco Zen Center
- Age: 54
- Residency: Renter living in District 6 since April 2026, and in San Francisco since 2011, with a previous stint in 1990-91 while attending the University of San Francisco
- Transportation: Public transit, walking
- Education: Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, San Diego
- Languages: English
- Website: Alex for All
AI/data centers have a financial foundation less stable than Marina bayfill.
We cannot allow San Franciscans to be displaced by AI firms that could become another Enron or Countrywide Financial.
And a data center must not be built at Westfield Mall.
As Supervisor, I’ll demand Board votes for additional fees on AI companies to prevent displacement. I’ll also do whatever I can to get every SFERS dollar out of financial instruments connected to overextended AI/data center investments. [SFERS is the city employees’ pension system.]
Lastly, I’ll aggressively investigate evidence of rent price-fixing because tenants must never be gouged by those cashing-in during a tech bubble.
Endorsed by: Former Supervisor Dean Preston, Juanita More, Arab Resource and Organizing Center Action.
Answers may be lightly edited for formatting, spelling and grammar. If you have questions for the candidates, please let us know at sarah@missionlocal.com // io@missionlocal.com.
You can register to vote via the sf.gov website.
“I’ll aggressively investigate evidence of rent price-fixing because tenants must never be gouged by those cashing-in during a tech bubble.”
What evidence is that? Landlords of course engage in price discovery in order to determine what is the optimal rent to ask for in any market. And so they will naturally look at what other landlords are successfully getting in comparable markets. But in what sense can that be called “price fixing”?