Q&A: Mayor London Breed on her 2024 reelection bid

Still, as she looks toward next November, Breed might have the most uphill battle of any incumbent in recent history.

Voters have repeatedly expressed their displeasure with city government in opinion polls and at the ballot box last year when they recalled former District Attorney Chesa Boudin and unseated incumbent Supervisor Gordon Mar.

The Examiner talked to Breed about the state of city politics, her record in office, the perception of San Francisco and who’s to blame for some of its shortcomings in a one-on-one interview last week.

The Examiner also interviewed the two other major candidates in the race, nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Ahsha Safai.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and condensed for brevity.

You have what appears to be, in so many ways, a pretty terrible job and a really hard job. Why do you want four more years of it? First of all, it’s not a terrible job, but it is definitely a really hard job. This job really is a blessing. It’s not something I ever thought would be possible for someone who grew up in the circumstances that I grew up in. So, as difficult as it is, The City is worth fighting for because someone like me was able to overcome some of the challenging circumstances and obstacles and not only become mayor, but use those experiences to invest in communities that typically would never get the kind of support from The City that we’re providing.

I’ll give you a perfect example. So, Third and Newcomb. You know about Third and Newcomb?

No, school me. So Third and Newcomb in the Bayview-Hunters Point Community; when I was younger ... we were dealing with the height of a lot of the gun violence. This was a notorious block, a lot of businesses shuttered. It wasn’t a place for community.

But now the neighborhood in and around the area is different because we went from an over 70% vacancy rate of those various businesses ... and it’s now down to 10% within that three-block area.

Almost all of those businesses are filled with people ... like Lawanda [Dickerson], who has a fitness training place, and she works with the community on health initiatives to try and have people in the community, despite what the challenges are, looking at healthy solutions. And I, in fact, work out with her.

What is going on right now and transforming this area fills me with so much pride and joy that it makes all of the challenges that I deal with worth it.

What you’re describing is a picture of growth and continuous improvement and broadly positive energy. That’s not necessarily a narrative that we see reflected locally or nationally all the time in the media. I’m wondering how you overcome the perception of San Francisco, both from outside of San Francisco and within it. Part of what’s important is to start with listening to people in San Francisco and understanding what the challenges are, and then for The City to start focusing on real solutions that are going to help make significant changes.

How many years have we been asking for beat cops in neighborhoods, especially where there are commercial corridors? So what I did is first understand why it had been so challenging, and looking at, sadly, the significant decline of the number of police that we have recruited and retained over the years has shifted.

The solution is not just we need to hire more police. It’s how do we shift some of the police responsibility?

For example, someone who’s mentally challenged — our street Crisis Response Team, which includes a clinician and folks who are equipped to deal with those struggling with mental illness, could be the response. The response doesn’t need to be a police officer unless violence is a part of the equation.

I think the dissatisfaction and what you see sometimes in the headlines is unfair because it’s not just happening in San Francisco. We sometimes get the blame for things happening in the entire Bay Area because San Francisco is such a well-known city in comparison.

And when you look at the data, we see most crime stats going down, but that doesn’t matter if something happens to you — it’s the perception and how people feel. And so that’s really why we are ramping up our responses to some of the areas that are the most problematic.

And I’ll give you a perfect example: retail theft. We received a grant from the state to tackle retail theft a lot more aggressively and add some more undercover units, which led to significant arrests.

The advance delegation for APEC, we took them to all kinds of neighborhoods in San Francisco, including the Tenderloin and the South of Market area. And almost every last one of them, without me asking them, walked up and said, “Mayor, we thought things were going to be a lot worse, but these are the same problems we’re dealing with in our neighborhoods.”

So I think part of it is, yes, we have problems, but at the same time, so do many other major cities in the country and the world.

That response to many of the issues you just touched on is different from what you would have articulated a year, two years, three years ago. Has your approach to these issues shifted? I grew up in a neighborhood [where] crack cocaine was the thing. Back then, heroin, people would inject it ... and at that time, treatment was very rare ... Most of the time, people who ended up in Delancey Street would [have been] arrested. And Walden House, people would stumble on Walden House, and sometimes they would end up clean and sober and other times they may not.

So what’s different now? Back then, I don’t think I would have ever been okay with saying in order to get city general assistance, that you would need to be in treatment. I mean, my sister died from a drug overdose, my brother still has a drug problem. I mean, my whole family, that’s kind of been an unfortunate part of my life ...

I brought this legislation and now ballot measure to the voters to say if you want general assistance from The City, then you need to be in a treatment program — not that you need to be clean and sober, you need to be in a treatment program. This did not come from me deciding that this is what I’m going to do. This came from people that I grew up with, who suffer from addiction, who are now working in the community and trying to get people clean, who are calling me in the middle of the day, they’re running into people that we grew up with who they’re trying to get clean and sober. This is coming from that community.

I never would have thought this would ever have been something that I would have done or proposed had I not been working with this community for a long time.

What you just described [is that] 30 or 40 years ago, maybe treatment was not as readily available — and what you’re implying is you feel comfortable with this because now it is [readily available]. And I think if I Googled treatment in San Francisco right now, a slew of articles would pop up describing the challenges people face in obtaining treatment. So there seems to be a disconnect ... I would throw shelter into the mix. Every time I read about this lawsuit in the news, I see city officials saying that shelter is available, and yet, I also see articles describing how challenging it can be ... So, if there is a disconnect, how can The City improve? There are definitely a lot of layers to this, and I can only speak from The City side. We don’t go out to encampments unless we have a place for people to go. So I’ll tell you that we’re not going to go out there and say, “You have to move” unless we offer someone a place to go. And we do have options for people that don’t just include shelter beds. We, in fact, have transitioned people directly into housing as well.

What I’ve heard from some people who suffer from addiction is it’s too hard. Ask people who suffer from addiction — would they go to Delancey right now? I know it’s not a one-size-fits-all all (solution). But I also feel as though there are a lot of excuses for what is working or isn’t working.

But maybe you want to ask some of those same people who are making up those excuses. Number one, do they even get city funding? And what’s their responsibility in all of this? And are they delivering based on what they’re claiming they are supposed to be doing to help this population?

If The City is funding some of these programs, isn’t it inherently your and city officials’ responsibility to ensure that services are being delivered as promised — and if not, end that service or contract? We are definitely doing that work. We’re holding people accountable, not just for spending the money, how they say they’re going to spend it, but deliverable results have to be a part of the equation. That is something we are currently working on.

But the point is, you know, it’s not about excuses. It’s about making sure that we, as a city, are being as aggressive as we can to deliver the results necessary to help people get into treatment, to help people get into shelter, to ensure the success of all of our residents.

Since 2018, we helped over 10,000 people exit homelessness, and that is not (just into) shelter beds, that is (out of) homelessness. And on any given night, we’re housing about 16,000 people in our shelters and are permanently supportive housing and all of the things that we’re doing.

There used to be major tent encampments in so many parts of San Francisco that no longer exist because of the work that we’ve been doing. Is it perfect? No, it is not. Do we have work to do? Of course we do.

I’ll ask you to distinguish yourself between at least the folks who have jumped into the race so far. Well, I would say that the big difference between me and the others is courageous leadership. At the end of the day, you want a mayor who’s going to make the hard decisions during COVID.

Despite all of the pushback, all the complaints from members of the Board of Supervisors and others, I made the hard decision to not only declare a state of emergency before we had the first case, but to shut The City down when no one else was talking about doing anything of that nature, including the state of California and the rest of the United States.

I made the hard decisions. And when you look at the data, the lives that we saved, San Francisco is now being used as a model and is being discussed in universities all over the country. Like, what did San Francisco do differently? It took a courageous leader to make hard decisions.

And at the end of the day, San Francisco is a major city that needs someone willing to make those hard decisions in order to ensure the safety of the residents of The City. And that is the big difference between me and the rest of the folks that might be in this race.