City of San FranciscoCandidate for Mayor

I was born and raised in San Francisco in public housing, and I am a product of our local public schools. I have dedicated my entire adult life to public service. After graduating from UC Davis I returned home to serve the city and the community I love. I earned my Master’s in Public Administration from the University of San Francisco. I served as the Executive Director of the African American Art & Culture Complex, a non-profit dedicated to helping young people. I served as a Fire Commissioner, Redevelopment Agency Commissioner, and a development specialist with the Treasure Island Development Authority. I am also the twice-elected President of our legislative body - the Board of Supervisors.

I have a strong track record of working on issues including housing, transportation, public safety, homelessness, and the environment. I’m not afraid of addressing tough challenges.

As Supervisor I have worked to tackle our housing challenges. I introduced legislation creating a right to civil counsel for tenants facing eviction. I passed groundbreaking Neighborhood Preference legislation that prioritizes neighborhood residents for the affordable housing units built in their communities, and as a result we are seeing an increase in local residents moving into new affordable housing units.  When I was told we had empty public housing units and homeless families waiting months for a shelter bed, I secured $2 million to rehabilitate those public housing units for 179 formerly homeless families who now have a safe place to call home.

I have also been a fierce advocate for improvements to public transportation. I carried legislation enabling Muni to buy hundreds of cleaner, more reliable buses, and replace and expand its entire fleet of light rail vehicles. This investment in our fleet, will allow us to expand and improve service, and reliability.

Growing up in a community which experienced violence, public safety has been a key priority of mine. As Supervisor, I worked with Mayor Lee to put 400 new police officers on our streets, including bilingual officers. I wrote legislation to curb car break-ins in tourist hot spots and commercial corridors, through collaboration with rental car companies. I stood up for our residents and first responders during the ambulance crisis in 2014. I fought for more ambulances, more staffing, and more resources, and I delivered with $47.3 million to hire Emergency Medical Technicians, paramedics, firefighters, and 911 dispatchers, to buy new ambulances and fire equipment, to improve facilities, and to invest in new technology.

We have too many individuals struggling on our streets with severe mental health and substance abuse issues, and I have been a leader on the Board of Supervisors working to address these challenges. I created the Safe injection Services Task Force to help get IV drug users off the streets and into treatment. I consulted with medical professionals and visited safe injection facilities in Vancouver, Canada, and I am leading the effort to bring these services to San Francisco. These facilities don’t just help get the needles off our streets, they also help us save lives, and city resources.  I have also advocated for reforms to our conservatorship programs, which allow a court to appoint a guardian for someone who cannot care for themselves. I passed legislation to reform and decriminalize our conservatorship program so that public health officials can get people who are struggling with mental illness on our streets stabilized, healthy, and housed for the long term.

My strong environmental track record speaks for itself; I passed the strongest styrofoam ban in the country and ensured that the city moved forward on launching its clean energy program, CleanPowerSF, which is the single-most important thing San Francisco can do to fight climate change. I also passed legislation to provide for the safe and convenient disposal of unwanted medications, which has kept more than 32 tons of pharmaceuticals out of the San Francisco Bay and landfills.

Following the tragic death of Mayor Lee, I served as Acting Mayor. It was a difficult time for the entire city, during which I sought to lead a stable transition and housing challenges.

My policy positions have been consistent, based on the needs of San Franciscans, and informed by my upbringing in San Francisco -- not what is politically popular. My dedication to affordable housing, reducing homelessness, public safety, and economic justice makes me an ideal Mayor.

The greatest challenges facing our city are homelessness, housing affordability, and public safety.

We are in one of the greatest urban economic booms in a century, yet right at our doorsteps, thousands battle homelessness and mental illness. We have created one new unit of housing for every eight jobs resulting in an increasingly expensive city where too many low income, immigrant, and working families can no longer afford to live.  And where many of the people I went to high school with can't afford to stay. Housing issues impacting residents in San Francisco are not abstract policy issues for me, I’ve lived them. I have been a renter all of my life. I’ve seen generations of my family, friends, and classmates leave San Francisco. We also have increasing property crime making our residents feel unsafe in their own communities.

When it comes to homelessness, I am focused on keeping people in their homes, taking street behavior seriously and addressing mental health and substance abuse issues, and building more housing. I have committed to ending long term tent encampments within my first year of office. Keeping people housed is one of the most cost effective ways to address homelessness. I will pass and fund my right to civil counsel legislation to ensure residents have legal support when facing eviction, acquire and stabilize rent controlled housing units, and expand rent subsidy programs to help those struggling stay in their homes. I will also take street behavior seriously and invest in mental health and substance abuse treatment services. I will also invest in more housing for those existing homelessness including expanding hours at our shelters, creating a supportive in-law housing program, and working to pass Proposition D which will generate $1 billion for housing in our city.

Creating more affordable housing for everyone is critical. As a renter myself, I understand the need for more housing at all income levels. My housing platform at www.londonformayor.com details my comprehensive approach to tackling our housing challenges and includes: protecting and expanding our affordable and rent-controlled housing stock, increasing funding for all types of housing preservation and creation, building at least 5,000 units per year, funding the construction of modular homes for those individuals exiting homelessness, building on underutilized sites, and reforming our housing approvals process to build housing faster in San Francisco.

Finally, I know what it’s like to have your car broken into, we can and must do more to address property crimes in our city. There must be real consequences for those who commit crimes in our neighborhoods.  As Mayor, I will add 200 more police officers by the end of 2019, and ensure we have neighborhood prosecutors working at every police district focused on property and quality of life crimes. I  will also introduce legislation empowering the City Attorney to pursue repeat offenders in Civil Court, so that if the criminal justice system doesn’t stop them, a lawsuit will. I did this already with repeat graffiti offenders and it is working.