Kate Stoia
- Office: Supervisor, District 8
- Election Date: November 8, 2022
- Candidate: Kate Stoia
- Due Date: Tuesday, July 12
- Printable Version
Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the November 2022 General Election! GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous city via common-sense solutions and effective government.
The GrowSF endorsement committee will review all completed questionnaires and seek consensus on which candidates best align with our vision for San Francisco and have the expertise to enact meaningful policy changes.
We ask that you please complete this questionnaire by Tuesday, July 12 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.
Table of Contents
Topical questions
A Place For All legislation
Supervisor Mandelman's "A Place For All" legislation requires that the city make a plan to end unsheltered homelessness.
- If you are a sitting Supervisor, did you vote for it? Why or why not?
- If you are not in office, do you support it?
As many have already pointed out in the news and online, A Place for All is nothing more than a plan to make a plan. This is also something the city departments tasked with addressing homelessness should already be doing. In my opinion, the focus should be on creating more housing. APA not only does not do that, but its sponsor, Supervisor Mandelman, has several problematic takes on housing, including:
-
the new fourplex zoning, exempting all of SF from SB9 while not creating actual density, as per the report to the SF Supervisors on May 6, 2022, noting that no developer can afford to create new housing under the new scheme;
-
His support of discretionary review and NIMBY input on proposed new housing development; and
-
his vote on the 469 Stevenson project.
JFK Promenade
Do you support making JFK Drive accessible only to people walking, biking, using personal mobility devices like wheelchairs, and other non-automotive uses?
I do support this and would add that I would like the city to be more proactive about providing mobility devices, including scooters and bikes, to anyone who needs/wants them to explore the park.
Great Highway
The Great Highway is currently open to cars on weekdays and open to people walking, biking, using personal mobility devices like wheelchairs, and other non-automotive uses on weekends. Do you support this compromise position?
I don't see a problem with permanently closing the Great Highway to traffic. It is blocked so often by sand that it's not very useful as a road anyway. And during the pandemic families came out to use it in droves. Anything we can do to make San Francisco more family friendly is a positive.
As with JFK drive, I would like the City to be more proactive in providing accessibility devices to those that need them. And bring back the food trucks!
Affordable Homes Now ballot initiative
GrowSF is running a charter amendment ballot initiative alongside the Housing Action Coalition, YIMBY Action, SPUR, Habitat for Humanity, Greenbelt Alliance, and the NorCal Carpenters Union. This ballot measure will make it faster and cheaper to build housing. Do you support it? Learn more at Affordable Homes Now.
YES 100%. I believe many of San Francisco's problems stem from our lack of housing and from the procedures and interest groups in place who actively block new housing and new density.
Board of Education recall
In February San Franciscans recalled three members of the Board of Education. Did you support these recalls? Why or why not?
I strongly supported and advocated for these recalls. I had kids in public schools at the time (and do now as well) and was incredibly frustrated by the way the Board of Education Commissioners failed to meet the moment of the pandemic. Their performative grandstanding on issues such as the renaming of schools and their hours-long meetings which accomplished absolutely nothing were the final straws that broke the camel's back for me. I think I am among many San Franciscans who is frustrated by the endless rhetoric around who can be the most liberal while the true problems of the city go unaddressed.
District Attorney Chesa Boudin recall
In June San Franciscans recalled District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Did you support this recall? Why or why not?
I was neutral on this recall. I think DA Boudin was doing what he promised to do when he ran. It does appear that he was not very good at running the DA's office, and I can't fault people who wanted him recalled. I empathize with people who are scared and fed up with crime right now. I feel this especially as a woman and as a mom to three kids. Walking the streets alone as a woman or as a child is very different from anything that DA Boudin himself will ever experience and I think his response to people who were feeling scared was tone-deaf at best. Finally, a close friend of mine was a victim of anti-Asian hateful rhetoric while walking in Noe Valley and I do feel that the increase in anti-Asian and other crimes and lack of accountability emboldened additional bad actors. My opposition to this recall was purely financial – with an election coming up in November, I question whether this was money well spent. But either way I support the democratic process and recalls are an important part of it.
Vision
GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous San Francisco. We work to propose and pass laws that align incentives of private businesses and individuals to promote shared prosperity for every San Franciscan.
This section of our questionnaire seeks to help us gain an understanding of your alignment with our vision for San Francisco. Note that some of the questions may be outside the scope of the office you're running for.
Short-form questions
Please mark the box that best aligns with your position. You may explain any position if you so desire, but this section is designed to be a quick overview of your governing philosophy and view of the city's problems.
Small Business
| In general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open a new business | X | ||
| Run a business in the city | X | ||
| Hire staff at a living wage | X | ||
| Obtain various licenses & permits (liquor, entertainment, etc.) | X |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Recently, a friend and I looked into opening a new business in D8. We wrote a business plan, sought community input, and secured funding. Our business is not open, however. Why? We were too fearful of SF bureaucracy. Rents are expensive and every space we looked at would require some customizing and that customizing would require permitting. With all the news stories about business owners sinking years and hundreds of thousands of dollars into trying to open a new business, we knew that we could not afford such a situation when it's already so hard and expensive to live here.
As Supervisor, one of my top priorities would be streamlining business permitting requirements and working with the Mayor's office and the Office of Small Business Development to encourage new businesses to open in the many storefronts in D8 and across the city that remain shuttered after Covid.
Housing
| In general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expand your home (adding new stories, rooms, decks, etc.) | X | ||
| Demolish your home and redevelop it into multifamily housing | X | ||
| Redevelop things like parking lots and single-story commercial buildings into multifamily housing | X | ||
| Build subsidized Affordable housing | X | ||
| Build market-rate housing | X | ||
| Build homeless shelters (including navigation centers and "tiny homes") | X |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
My husband and I have been very small scale "developers" for the last twenty-five years. We generally work on one project at a time, often living in the project before, after, and sometimes while we work on it. The maze of regulations, public hearings, discretionary review, and Planning and Building Department discretion is absurd. We have had an inspector refuse to pass a project because he just "didn't like" the materials we used – in that case, it was a wooden floor in a downstairs bathroom. His supervisor was responsive when we called to complain but it shouldn't come to that. We have had inspectors who didn't even get out of their cars to check the work, and others who won't pass work that has a small defect that can be remedied on the spot.
It is appalling that the role of "permit expediter" actually exists in San Francisco. It is no wonder that so many leaders of DBI have been arrested for corruption. In practice, where there is discretion and too much neighborhood/neighbor input, the only logical result is corruption because getting a building permit or passing an inspection becomes a question of who you know, not the quality of work done. How to fix this? San Francisco must move toward:
-
Building by right
-
Incentivizing density
-
The Fake 4Plex legislation is, as described by the SF Chronicle, a "cheap lie" and should be repealed as soon as possible
-
SB9 already provides the upzoning needed for increased density and removes bureaucratic roadblocks that impede the creation of new housing
-
-
Adopting a customer-service mindset for city offices like DBI and the Planning Department – they need to work with us and not against us.
Public Safety
| In general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| File a police report | X | ||
| Recover a stolen item like a bike or laptop computer | X | ||
| Arrest & prosecute criminals | X | ||
| File a domestic violence or rape report | |||
| Charge & prosecute domestic violence or rape |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
I don't feel qualified to answer the questions on domestic violence or rape but I would like to hear from advocates on these issues. I do think that domestic violence and rape victims require extra attention and careful crafting of policies which empower them.
As far as recovering stolen items, like many other San Franciscans, we have been the victims of auto theft repeatedly in the past year (my husband's truck is a heavy-duty Ford, apparently a fan favorite with truck thieves). The first time it was stolen, the police recovered it in Novato, CA several weeks later. Wanting to avoid another incident, we hid a tracker in the truck bed. When the truck was (perhaps inevitably) stolen again a few weeks later, we were able to see exactly where it was. Now the farce began: My husband drove to where the truck was located (near Candlestick) and called the SFPD. They told him when they arrived that due to SFPD policy, they could not chase the thief if he refused to pull over and that auto thieves are aware of this so generally they just don't pull over and then SFPD needs to leave to respond to other calls.
Long story short, my husband followed this car thief for hours, calling the SFPD every time the thief stopped and got out of the car (where he could be arrested). When cops approached, the thief simply got back in the car and went on his way. Finally, knowing that he was being followed/tracked, the thief dumped the car. SFPD declined to take fingerprints or any evidence from the car (it was actually filled with garbage and what seemed to be the products of other thefts, such as a woman's license from Tennessee, etc.). The officers told my husband that they do not know the thief's identity but that he is suspected of multiple auto thefts.
What a waste of SFPD resources (at various times, at least 8 patrol cars responded). I know that the policy of refraining from high-speed chases has solid reasons behind it but surely there is more that can be done than simply waiting for a thief to dump a car (now broken and filled with garbage) and not even bothering to check for fingerprints or other information which might identify the thief.
Education
| In general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attend a school of your choosing | X | ||
| Transport children to school | X | ||
| Hire teachers | X | ||
| Fire teachers | X | ||
| Evaluate performance of schools | X |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
I raised children in San Francisco (now 21 and 19) and am currently a foster parent to a teenager. As stated above, I strongly advocated for the recall of the school board members in February 2022.
I was happy to see the Mayor appoint new members to the Board of Education who seem to be focused more appropriately on strengthening our schools and less on performative ideology.
My master's thesis at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy was actually on education in San Francisco: specifically, how to remedy the decades-long flight from public to private schools. I can provide a copy if you are interested, but the upshot is that there are steps that SFUSD can take to stem the outflow of students from the public schools. Both the schools and the students (and, by extension, the entire city) benefit when students of all levels and backgrounds are in public school together. But to achieve that end, SFUSD must affirmatively attract students from all backgrounds, income, and parental education levels. For a long time, SFUSD has penalized students from higher socio-economic and parental education levels by putting them last in the lottery system. The result has been that San Francisco is the most childless city in the US, because families with children leave to seek public school options in Marin or on the Peninsula when their kids approach kindergarten age. Among the families who have stayed to raise kids in the city, San Francisco has the highest opt-out rate from public to private school. I have sent my kids to both private and public schools in San Francisco and, to my surprise, much preferred the public schools. But SFUSD cannot keep doing what it has done for years and hope to shame or guilt parents into sending their kids to public school. SFUSD must focus on making public schools stronger and easier to access, and the rest of city government must support these efforts.
Budget
| Do you think San Francisco spends too little, too much, or just enough on… | Too little | Just enough | Enough, but badly | Too much |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Police and public safety | X | |||
| Street cleanliness | X | |||
| Homeless services | X | |||
| Affordable housing | ||||
| Parks | X | |||
| Roads | X | |||
| Bus, bike, train, and other public transit infrastructure | X | |||
| Schools | X | |||
| Medical facilities | X | |||
| Drug prevention and treatment | X | |||
| Arts | X |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
What are the top three issues facing San Francisco, and what would you like to see change?
-
Housing
a) Establish permitting for new construction as of right and get rid of the Planning and Building Department discretion that has led to so much corruption and stifled growth;
b) Repeal the Fake 4-Plex legislation and let SB9 set the parameters for density; and
c) Establish timelines for the Planning and Building Departments to approve new permits with incentives to hit those timelines and disincentives for delays.
-
Homelessness/Mental health/drug addiction crises
a) First, create more housing at all levels and for all needs – loosening the housing market will mean that fewer people and families will face looming or actual homelessness;
b) We need a statewide right to shelter and SF needs to work with other California counties to address homelessness/mental health/drug abuse;
c) Establish and enforce a public camping ban.
-
Good governance/Eliminating Corruption
a) San Franciscans are justifiably frustrated with and distrustful of city government. The numerous arrests of city employees on federal corruption charges last year illuminated what many already knew: there has long been something wrong with the way this city is run. San Franciscans need to see a government-wide effort to run better and be better: more responsive to citizens and less performatively empty.
Tell us one thing you think needs to change in SF that the average voter wouldn't know about.
Discretionary review/public hearings on new housing or on remodels. Development of new housing and remodels should be as of right, meaning the use of fixed standards or objective measurements, and public officials cannot use personal, subjective judgment in deciding whether or how the project should be carried out. That their neighbors are encouraged to weigh in on and influence their housing decisions does not occur to most people before they find themselves caught in the web of procedural mess that we have created here.
So many problems come from our lack of housing here. One that many people would be surprised to learn about is the fact that San Francisco cannot place approximately 50% of the kids that go into foster care here. But good luck getting the Human Services Agency to even return your phone call if you would like to foster kids here. Although we became foster parents in 2017, my husband and I had several phone calls go unreturned to the HSA before we finally managed to get certified through a foster family agency.
Long-form questions
This section is optional.
We know your time is short, so please feel free to respond to the questions below which you think are most relevant to the position you're running for (but you are, of course, welcome to answer all of them). It is not necessary to answer these questions to secure our endorsement, but more context always helps us make better decisions.
Public health
Do you support the creation of safe consumption sites in San Francisco?
I am aware of the research that demonstrates that the careful use of these sites can improve outcomes for people with addiction. I think we need to be very careful about where we situate such sites if we do use them.
Do you support our current laissez-faire approach to open-air drug usage? What would you change?
No.
I am working with Helen Yu, a Harvard and UCSF-trained psychiatrist to develop a better approach to addiction and mental health care in San Francisco. We believe that the current approach is cruel and destructive. In the name of "civil rights," San Francisco has abandoned hundreds of San Franciscans to their pain and personal demons. The stories of parents coming to San Francisco to try to rescue their children from life on the streets here are heartbreaking. San Francisco's current approach is not compassionate and it is not working.
Dr. Yu and I believe that San Francisco can and should lead the way in compassionate care for people with addiction and mental health struggles. We must develop a tiered approach such that people who need care get it, and are compelled into it when they are unable to make competent and healthy decisions for themselves.
Education
How should the Board of Education be reformed to bring more accountability and better performance to the Board?
I support the suggestion that control over the Board of Education be returned to the Mayor.
Should the ban on middle school algebra be reversed?
Yes.
Should charter schools be allowed to operate in San Francisco?
Yes.
Urbanism
Do you support raising the price of parking and driving in San Francisco?
I would support this only if the City improved the reliability, safety, and timeliness of public transportation. There are numerous ways to improve accessibility to all areas of the city but simply restricting people's ability to use their cars without viable alternatives is frustrating and annoying for San Franciscans.
Do you support banning cars from central downtown areas and certain retail or residential corridors?
This has worked well in other cities around the world but again requires San Francisco to improve its public transportation options.
Do you support congestion pricing?
Yes. Again with the caveat that we need to give people viable other options, including public transportation, electric bikes and scooters,
Should San Francisco expand its protected bike lane network?
Yes.
Should San Francisco prioritize buses over car traffic by creating more bus-only lanes and directing traffic enforcement to ticket drivers who ignore the restrictions?
We should only do this if other publicly-accessible options are enhanced.
Should Uber, Lyft, and other ride-share services be banned?
No.
Should San Francisco allow more bike share and scooter share companies?
Yes.
Should San Francisco allow bike and scooter share companies to operate with fewer restrictions on the number of vehicles they offer for rent, and in more places (including inside Golden Gate Park)?
Yes.
Do you support keeping JFK Drive and the Great Highway car-free permanently?
Yes.
Should Muni be free for everyone? If so, what other programs would you take money from in order to fund this change?
I think Muni should be free to anyone under 18, as is done in London. But we need to make sure Muni is safe and reliable. We must entice people toward using public transportation rather than making everything else so frustrating that it is the only option.
Taxes
Would you repeal Prop 13, if you had the authority to do so? Or, if not repeal it, how would you change it?
Large businesses should not benefit from Prop 13 assessments. I am also a fan of limiting the Prop 13 benefits for inherited property.
Are taxes and fees on small businesses too low, just right, or too high? .
Should San Francisco pursue any and all avenues to impose parcel taxes that could bypass Prop 13, which keeps property taxes on multi-million dollar property artificially low?
I am a fan of looking at how to reform Prop 13. Prop 13 was meant to insulate homeowners from property tax spikes but many businesses currently benefit from outdated assessments.
Are sales taxes too low, just right, or too high?
Small Business & Entrepreneurship
What would you change about the process of new business formation?
The city government must partner with small businesses especially to encourage them to open and make the process as easy, frictionless, and inexpensive as possible. The culture of this city is very much based on its thriving small business community and encouraging small businesses builds the San Francisco of tomorrow by incentivizing people to stay here, raise their families here, and connect with their communities deeply. Permitting can and should be streamlined and limited to 30 days – that is, where the small business owner has complied with city rules and regulations, necessary permits should be issued as of right with no input from neighbors or other businesses. Let people experiment with new business models and see whether they have what the neighborhood needs and wants!
Should San Francisco welcome all businesses, regardless of size?
Yes there should be a place for all businesses in San Francisco.
Do you think the government should decide which businesses can and cannot open in San Francisco?
No.
Should all businesses be permitted by-right? If not, which business categories do you think should not be by-right?
Yes, with the exception that I believe it is appropriate to limit large chain businesses such as Chipotle, Nike, or Banana Republic to a downtown commercial area.
Housing & Homelessness
Do you believe that San Francisco has a shortage of homes?
Yes.
Do you believe that housing prices are set by supply and demand constraints?
Yes.
Should San Francisco upzone? If so, where and how?
Yes, everywhere.
Should homeless shelters be exempt from CEQA, Discretionary Review, and Conditional Use permits?
Yes.
Should subsidized Affordable housing be exempt from CEQA, Discretionary Review, and Conditional Use permits?
Yes.
Should market-rate housing be exempt from CEQA, Discretionary Review, and Conditional Use permits?
Yes.
Policy
Now that we know where you align and differ from our vision for San Francisco, we'd like to get some details about how you intend to use your elected office to achieve your goals.
Why are you running for Supervisor?
I am a 30+ year resident of San Francisco. I have raised kids (and a foster kid) here who now cannot afford to live here. I have also been frustrated over the years with the bureaucracy, corruption, and lack of coherent planning and objectives in this city. I am action-oriented and want to help make a difference.
I decided to run in this race because I have been disappointed with Supervisor Mandelman's tenure on the Board. Although I think we share a lot of the same values, he has been at best an ineffective advocate and at worst, an obstruction to progress on everything from housing to homelessness, to clean streets to good governance. To fix the problems in San Francisco and make it the best it can be, we need a D8 Supervisor who can commit to making real change, not someone who pushes through policies that the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board accurately describes as a "cheap lie" or who votes against creating hundreds of units of new housing – with many of them below market rate – in the Tenderloin where the need is so great. We need a Supervisor who is committed to actual progress and not just paying lip service to these values and hoping voters don't notice.
What is your #1 policy goal?
Housing – because it's at the root of many of our current problems.
How will you build the coalition and political capital to enact your #1 goal?
Many people have already reached out to me to support my campaign. In my first candidate forum I raised many of these issues and have begun building what I know can be a winning coalition.
Will the power of the office of Supervisor be enough to achieve this goal?
If it were just one person coming to the Board with these ideas, no. But I think the Board of Education and DA recall elections have signaled a turning point in San Francisco politics. Voters are sick of the direction the city is moving in and are letting the politicians know that they will be held to account. Further, our representation at the state level is behind the creation of new housing and the elimination of NIMBY control.
What are your #2 and #3 policy goals?
Streamlining small business permitting
Ensuring that city government partners with San Franciscans rather than working against us.
Will the power of the office of Supervisor be enough to achieve these goals?
What is an existing policy you would like to reform?
What is an "out there" change that you would make to local or regional government policy, if you could? (For example: adding at-large supervisors, changing how elections work, creating a Bay Area regional government, etc.)
Personal
Tell us a bit about yourself!
How long have you lived in San Francisco? What brought you here and what keeps you here?
I moved here in 1989 – because it was cheap! I was living in New York at the time and had just graduated from college. I wanted someplace friendly and inexpensive where I could afford to work in a nonprofit. My first job here was with an AIDS education organization (the STOP AIDS Project) where I worked for two years alongside such great San Francisco activists as Ken Jones, who we lost during the pandemic and who was a longtime friend and mentor to me. I moved to D8 in 1991 and pretty much never left although I've lived all over D8: in Noe, Glen Park and the Castro. I was a renter for many years and bought my first house in 1998.
I went to law school at UC Berkeley and clerked for a federal judge for a year after that. Then I practiced law for the next five years, working as a litigator on a range of cases from employment disputes to civil rights actions. In 1999 I helped represent a transgender woman who had been misgendered by police and wrongfully strip searched by the San Francisco Sheriff. After a federal jury trial, we won and our client was awarded compensation and punitive damages.
My son was born in 2001 and my daughter in 2003. In order to spend time with my kids, I turned my energy to volunteering. I wrote for the Glen Park News, I organized park clean-ups, volunteered at Glide Church in their children's program, and at my kids' schools. My husband, who is a contractor, and I also sold our first house, which we had lived in – or more accurately camped out in – during our remodel. Over the years, we have remodeled 5 more properties, often adding units where we can, always taking abandoned or derelict properties and turning them into beautiful and livable spaces. I am proud of the work we have done and the contributions that we have made to the City of San Francisco. We have kept workers and craftspeople employed, even during the pandemic, and we have expanded and updated San Francisco's housing supply. Our most recent project was the restoration of a beautiful Mission district Victorian which had been stuccoed over, abandoned by its owners, and occupied for years by squatters. After the raw sewage was cleared out of the basement, we added a unit and eventually sold all 4 apartments to first-time homeowners, including a teacher and a city employee.
But this work has also given me insight into the bureaucracy and corruption that is holding San Francisco back. City agencies seem tasked with creating as many obstacles for ordinary citizens as possible, rather than supporting us. Guidelines and even building codes are enforced arbitrarily. This kind of discretion leads to corruption and influence peddling. I was shocked but not surprised to learn that there is a whole group of people whose "job" in San Francisco is "permit expediter," which generally means that they know people in the planning or building department and can grease the wheels and sometimes cut the line for their clients. This is no way to structure development in a city as dense as San Francisco and with such a huge need. It is no wonder we have such an enormous housing crisis and that there have been numerous arrests of multiple heads of SF departments as well as permit expediters and building inspectors with fraud, corruption, and lying to federal authorities.
I have a long commitment to serving my community. I have served on the Boards of three nonprofits – one the nation's first educational farm, one a theatre group formed by two young gay men of color here in San Francisco, and now on the Mission High Foundation. I am just starting work at MHF but at the other ones, I was part of turning around the financial fortunes of these organizations, taking them from the verge of failure to strong and successful. In 2017 my husband and I became foster parents to a great kid who I think is on this call, is currently heading into his junior year at Mission High and spending the summer working at Rec & Park camps. The experience of dealing with yet another city agency, however, in this case the Human Services Agency, prompted me to exclaim over and over, "There must be a better way to do this!" and my googling of solutions led me to UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. I went back to school in 2021 and got a Master's degree in public policy to learn how to approach and address issues like foster care and local politics!
A friend of mine put it best – I am a person of action. I love to meet people from different backgrounds and cultures, I love to dig into policy issues and really understand them and I believe that the role of government is to help make people's lives better.
What do you love most about San Francisco?
That we – at our best – are a welcoming refuge and a shining beacon to people the world over who believe in human rights and the dignity of human life and existence. I remember bringing my kids to their first day at a new school and them being worried about what clothes they should wear. I told them, "This is San Francisco – you can be whoever you want to be here!"
What do you dislike the most about San Francisco?
Government corruption and dysfunction that keeps us from being the best we can be.
Tell us about your current involvement in the community (e.g., volunteer groups, neighborhood associations, civic and professional organizations, etc.)
Please see above.
Thank you
Thank you for giving us your time and answering our questionnaire. We look forward to reading your answers and considering your candidacy!
In case you are interested, here is a link to a candidate forum that we held for D8 voters last week: https://youtu.be/zl9w_XVGTLQ
Thanks! ar
If you see any errors on this page, please let us know at contact@growsf.org.