City of San FranciscoCandidate for Mayor

Homelessness is the biggest concern in this upcoming Mayoral election, and it should be. I am the candidate with the most successful record on the issue. The homeless crisis affects our government and our residents. It diverts money and resources away from their primary purposes, while shifting spending and staffing priorities away from where they should be.

Police Officers spend their day acting as social workers, when they should be policing.

In one week, the Department of Public Works picked up 55 thousand pounds of debris from a homeless encampment, including 4000 needles, as well as commercial and household waste, discarded clothing, furniture, medical supplies, and human waste. The DPW spent 8.4 million for labor and supplies cleaning up after the estimated 8000 homeless in the annual 2014-15 budget. They have the resources and workforce to clean our streets, but they are diverted to monitoring homeless camps, which is not their job. Their primary focus should be cleaning and maintaining our streets

We have poor, mentally unstable, addicted human beings living on our streets, it’s costing our city hundreds and hundreds of millions of a dollars a year, and we are still failing to fix the problem. All of us have had enough.

Resolving the homeless crisis would result in significant improvement to problems of crime and clean streets, which are the other two major concerns I’m hearing from people all around the City.

As Chair of the Ten Year Plan on Homelessness from 2003 - 2011, we housed over 11,000 individuals in permanent supportive housing with a 94% retention rate. That’s what’s missing from our current homeless solution - we cannot continue to invest in programs that take in our most vulnerable, help them get their situations resolved and then return them to the same toxic environment 120 days later. Navigation centers are a vital part of that mix but only when they lead to a sustainable exit plan, preferably into permanent, supportive housing.

My current plan, ALL IN FOR HOUSING, is the beginning phase of a fully comprehensive 5 Year Plan to fully address the housing crisis, that has plagued the City of San Francisco for decades. The R.A.P.I.D. Homeless Plan provides immediate housing to address the moral crisis taking place on the streets of San Francisco. But we also understand that long term low-income housing is needed immediately for the potential future homeless, to truly and finally address the housing crisis taking place in San Francisco.

We have tried for decades to deal with both problems separately. Business as usual is not working. The housing for low-income San Franciscans and the permanent supportive housing for the homeless, have often been piecemeal ideas, supported by piecemeal funding commitments, and all have basically failed. While we successfully housed 11,643 in permanent supportive housing, while working with then Mayor Gavin Newsom, through my 10-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness, unfortunately, the lack of commitment to the plan and cutting the funding precipitated an upsurge of the problem on our streets.

I am a Civil Rights trial attorney who has fought for equality my entire life.

I have a history of working for positive social change. I have proudly served the City in many roles: through Commission and Task Force appointments, by working with Department Directors and by representing communities on citywide bodies. I understand City government both as an insider and as an activist working to change City politics. Among the positions I’ve held in City government are President, Board of Supervisors, Vice-President, Building Inspection Commission; Vice-Chair, Mayor and Board of Supervisors’ Joint Task Force on the HIV Epidemic; Co-Founder, People’s Budget Collaborative; Co-Chair, Political Action Committee, and Co-Chair, HIV/Health Care Committee Chair of the Ten Year plan to abolish Chronic Homelessness.....an issue I still deal with daily.