Bilal Mahmood
- Office: Board of Supervisors, District 5
- Election Date: November 5, 2024
- Candidate: Bilal Mahmood
- Due Date: February 28, 2024
- Printable Version
Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the November 5, 2024 election! GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous city via common sense solutions and effective government. Our work includes running public opinion polls to understand what voters want, advocating for those changes, and ensuring that the SF government represents the people.
The GrowSF endorsement committee will review all completed questionnaires and seek consensus on which candidates best align with our vision for San Francisco.
Please complete this questionnaire by February 28, 2024 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.
Your Goals
We'd like to get some details about your high-level goals and how you intend to use your elected office to achieve them.
Why are you running for Board of Supervisors, District 5?
District 5 is the heart of our city. From the Tenderloin to Hayes Valley to the Haight - we are a hub for immigrants and refugees, innovation and transit, and housing and small business.
But after 4 years of Dean Preston as our Supervisor, the outcomes of our district have gotten significantly worse. A 20% rise in opioid deaths in the Tenderloin. Over 1000 businesses closed in Hayes Valley and the Haight. Housing developments sitting completely empty - on parking lots to car washes - because Dean failed to act.
We need a Supervisor who will get results for District 5, not make excuses for their policy failures. And I have a decade of experience in getting results. When our financial crisis hit, I worked as a policy analyst for the Obama Administration getting results for small businesses. When the wildfires hit, I started a climate nonprofit to help homes reduce their emissions. And when the pandemic hit, I started a fund to help hundreds of immigrant families pay their rent and get bystander training to combat anti-Asian hate.
We need a Supervisor who will bridge communities towards these results. While Dean has been engaging in combative rhetoric with both his colleagues and constituents, I have been focused on bridging coalitions across our political lines. That is what District 5 deserves - a progressive that gets results on tackling the bureaucracy and corruption endemic to City Hall.
What is your #1 policy goal?
Housing. I have been a renter for nearly 10 years in San Francisco and proudly live in the Tenderloin. Workers, nurses, teachers cannot live here unless we build not just affordable and market rate, but also middle-income housing. We are the slowest city to approve new buildings in the entire state. It’s not progressive, it’s embarrassing. We must tackle the bureaucracy holding us back - 87 permits, $500K in fees, 1000 days of meetings - and I will advocate for initiatives from parallel permitting to technological investments to the reduction of discretionary permits to cut the time to build housing in half.
How will you build the coalition and political capital to enact your #1 goal?
I have a record of building coalitions across San Francisco’s political lines to get results. I have collaborated with Assemblymember Matt Haney on building decarbonization legislation through my nonprofit Electric Action, wherein the legislation we worked on
AB593 was simultaneously endorsed by environmental justice, pro housing, and labor unions. We built a coalition amongst partners who don’t always align, because we identified problems that have universal consensus and built a coalition through compromise on innovative solutions. That is the same approach I will take to addressing housing in our Board of Supervisors - innovation and collaboration.
Will the power of the office of Board of Supervisors, District 5 be enough to achieve this goal?
The Board of Supervisors is necessary to make progress on housing. Many of the permits and fees that are inhibiting the development of housing - from remodeling a home to building affordable teacher housing - can be amended by legislation through the Board of Supervisors.
But the Board of Supervisors by itself is insufficient to make progress on this goal. The Office of the Mayor has an equally important role on many of these same permits and fees, and must be worked with in partnership if we are to achieve results on housing. Unfortunately, Dean Preston as Supervisor has failed to collaborate with the Mayor, which has put our Housing Element at risk. He has consistently put political tribes over political outcomes, which has put our District at risk. I am committed to work collaboratively with our Mayor - whomever it is and regardless of ideological differences - to ensure we make progress on housing. Because these issues are too important to let fail.
What are your #2 and #3 policy goals?
Public Safety. No city can become truly vibrant if we don't address the public safety crises on our streets. I wrote the SF Chronicle investigation that uncovered that a primary cause for the crisis is that over 20% of police and healthcare jobs are sitting vacant, with over $500 million going unspent every year because of bureaucratic systems that take 255 days to hire a single first responder. We are missing 1000 police officers, dispatchers, nurses, ambulance drivers, and we must rapidly hire them to support those suffering on our streets and arrest the drug dealers who exploit them.
Downtown Recovery. Our downtown economy is struggling due to vacant office space and a reduction in office workers, which has led to a devastating lack of patronage to local businesses and a feeling that our streets are less safe. So let’s do something different: let’s convert downtown into an academic village, with a dozen university campuses, and 10,000 students permanently living here. I started the movement to bring a university to downtown San Francisco, and I will collaborate with city and state officials to pass legislation to streamline office to housing conversions that can support students and teachers to live here. Transforming our downtown into an academic village will bring patronage to the small
businesses and nightlife, employ thousands of local workers, and help keep San Francisco a hub for technology, healthcare, and the arts.
Will the power of the office of Board of Supervisors, District 5 be enough to achieve these goals?
The Board can make a significant impact on both safety and our economic crises. Through its mandate on our budget allocations, we can reallocate funding towards underfunded human resources divisions to hire more outbound recruiters who can help build a pipeline of candidates, and via process improvements to the hiring process we can reduce the time to hire for those who do apply. This can make a significant difference in growing the pool of candidates for our missing 911 dispatchers, paramedics, mental health workers, and police officers.
Towards economic recovery however, the Board of Supervisors need to work collaboratively with both the public and private sector. One law isn’t going to convince workers to return to downtown. Instead of fighting the private and technology sectors, our government needs to
bridge coalitions between our technology, nonprofit, and public sectors towards a holistic and collaborative vision for the city. Collaborations like the public-private partnerships I have led in rebuilding a computer lab in Chinatown to bridge the digital divide through my 13 Fund initiative, or the initiative to invite UC Berkeley to build student housing in downtown SF.
What is an existing policy you would like to reform?
The hiring process in City Hall is fundamentally broken and needs to be reformed. The reason it takes over 255 days on average to hire a single worker in the San Francisco government - from ambulance drivers to nurses to police officers - is because for many of these positions we still make applicants take a paper exam that is proctored in person, once per month. A pilot study by the Mayor’s Department of Human Resources found that if they shifted the exam to a “continuous online on-demand testing” platform, the time to hire could be reduced to 100 days. In the tech capital of the world, we should be striving to ensure that our government services are being run as effectively as the software companies we are host to. I would focus on increasing funding for this initiative, so we can rapidly fill the missing 1000 first responders our city so desperately needs.
What is an "out there" change that you would make to state/local government policy, if you could? (For example: adding at-large supervisors, changing how elections work, creating a Bay Area regional government, etc.)
Tell us one thing you think needs to change in SF that the average voter wouldn't know about.
A majority of theft in San Francisco isn’t from car break ins or store robberies. The largest form of theft is actually wage theft - workers having their hours misreported, not being paid overtime, being misclassified, to straight up being underpaid. In fact, by some estimates, $110 million were stolen in wages in San Francisco, more than vehicle theft, burglary, robbery, and larceny combined.
The reason wage theft persists is because of bureaucracy. If a worker seeks state action from the CA Labor Commissioner’s office, it can take upwards of 505 days of meetings and bureaucratic milestones to see action or a dime returned. In San Francisco, the District Attorney has made progress towards prosecuting such crimes, but there is still only 1 ADA handling all wage theft cases. We must increase funding for those departments responsible for prosecuting wage theft, if we are to make progress on this issue that affects so many of our trades, workers, and laborers.
The Issues
Next, we will cover the issues that voters tell us they care about. We hope to gain a better understanding of your policy positions, and we hope that you use this opportunity to communicate with voters.
Public Safety
What is the #1 public safety issue today?
Addressing our fentanyl epidemic will be a priority of my office once elected.
Living in the Tenderloin personally, and walking through the open air drug market nearly every night along McAllister Street - I have seen first hand how this crisis affects our community. There is a gang related mass shooting nearly every month. The 3500 children who live in the Tenderloin, alongside the immigrants, refugees, and elders do not feel safe in their own neighborhood.
Existing policies have failed to work. We need new initiatives based on evidence and data to get results for our district. I am advocating for a Drug Market Intervention (DMI) that has been deployed in cities across the country by the DOJ, and has led to a double digit reduction in drug dealing. As an approach it mixes elements of restorative and punitive justice - introducing a community intervention on a first offense, while ensuring prosecution on a second offense.
The model’s efficacy shows that the solutions to our most pressing crises are not mutually exclusive between the city’s respective ideological frameworks. In fact, to get towards actual results, we need to be building on the best of both worlds.
San Francisco currently has about 1,500 sworn police officers. Some have argued that the City should try to match the per-capita staffing levels that other large cities have. If we matched cities like New York or Paris, we would need to have about 3,400 sworn officers. What do you think of this idea? If you support it, how would the City fund recruitment at SFPD to achieve this staffing level? If you don’t support it, what would you propose to do instead?
My focus is on working within our existing budget framework, and fully staffing our budgeted 2,100 police officers at this time. Being 600 officers short, we have available budget to in the short term reallocate existing police budget towards recruiting and marketing efforts. Currently we have less than 5 recruiters on staff, when experts estimate we need at least 20 recruiters to build an outbound pipeline of police candidates. Paired with process improvements to the hiring process, we can make significant progress on actually increasing the number of police officers on staff - faster and within budget.
What solutions might exist to improve public safety that don’t involve expanding the size of SFPD?
Streamlining the hiring of our 911 dispatcher hiring. Over the past 3 years we have lost 20% of our 911 dispatchers. As a result fewer than 20% of 911 calls were answered within 15 seconds, a violation of California law mandating 911 calls be answered within that time frame. Unsurprisingly, this has contributed to police response time being down 88%.
It can take up to a year to hire a 911 dispatcher, and an additional year to train them. Focusing on streamlining the hiring process for our dispatchers can enable us to have a direct impact on filling the staff we already have budgeted for, and in turn directly impact 911 response times leading to better public safety outcomes for the city.
What three things would you change about how SFPD operates?
In my role as a board member of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District (TLCBD), I have heard three things consistently from the community - there is a lack of beat officers, high captain turnover, and too much red tape impeding arresting of fentanyl dealers.
Beat officers are needed to walk patrols at day and night. Countless reports and evidence have shown that beat officers who build relationships with community and small business, and walk regular patrols have a double digit reduction in crime. However, we have 0 beat officers in nearly all precincts in the Tenderloin.
Part of the problem is high captain turnover in the Tenderloin as well. We have experienced a change in leadership nearly every 2 years. This has resulted in changing priorities, lack of consistent direction, and detrimental impacts on staff morale and long term officer retention. We need incentives and structural changes in SFPD that ensure longer retention of our captains in their stations.
Third, we need to address the red tape that is impeding our officers ability to arrest drug dealers. Officers have noted it can take 3-5 hours of paperwork per arrest for fentanyl dealing. Through a mix of technology and streamlining, there are opportunities to hasten this process so we can better address the open air drug market affecting our community every day.
Do you support policies commonly referred to as “defund the police”? Why or why not?
No.
Please explain why you did or did not support the recall of DA Chesa Boudin. If you were ineligible to vote in that election, please explain how you would have voted.
| Should San Francisco… | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|
| Try to achieve “full staffing” for SFPD? (Defined as about 2,100 officers, according to the City) | X | |
| Change the cite-and-release policy so officers can arrest suspects of misdemeanors like shoplifting and car break-ins? | ||
| Arrest and prosecute street-level fentanyl dealers? | X | |
| Prioritize diversion instead of incarceration for street-level fentanyl dealers? | ||
| Investigate, arrest, and prosecute fentanyl distribution ringleaders (like organized crime and cartel members)? | X | |
| Arrest and prosecute street-level vendors of suspected stolen goods? | ||
| Investigate, arrest, and prosecute the leaders of theft rings and fencing operations? | X | |
| Arrest and prosecute street food vendors operating without a permit? | ||
| Fine street food vendors operating without a permit? |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Drugs
In general, how should the City handle people who are abusing drugs on City sidewalks?
While I feel we need to aggressively ensure accountability for drug dealers, our approach to those suffering on our streets should be coming from a place of compassion. A lot of the challenges we face on our streets is due to the understaffing of our essential workers and first responders - shortage of nurses, mental health workers, paramedics - all of whom we are understaffed by 20-25%. We need to solve the staffing crisis to first stop our most vulnerable from dying, and provide them with the ongoing support they need to help them through recovery.
Do you support the creation of safe consumption sites in San Francisco? If so, please detail how they should be run. If not, please explain a viable alternative.’
Yes, but as part of a holistic approach. We need to support the ability to operate both safe consumption sites and abstinence based treatment, so modalities are available for those that are ready for it.
And more importantly, we need to make sure that more districts are doing their fair share to address the drug epidemic on our streets. District 5 can not, and should not, be the containment zone for the city.
Some have argued that safe consumption sites (or sobering centers) are only viable if they are paired with implementing zero-tolerance for public consumption of illegal drugs like fentanyl and heroin. Do you agree or disagree with this view?
My focus is on a zero tolerance policy for fentanyl dealing. Cut off the supply, and the demand will diminish.
Should fentanyl dealing be penalized differently from dealing other drugs?
Yes. Fentanyl in my opinion is effectively equivalent to manslaughter. Over 70% of overdoses in San Francisco involve fentanyl, often when mixed in with other drugs unbeknownst to the individual taking it. Given fentanyl is 10X as potent as other opioids, it is often fatal for those who are unaware they are taking it. An unintentional murder is - by definition - manslaughter.
Mental Health
Should San Francisco amend our current laws around mental health crisis intervention to better help people suffering on the streets? If yes, why and how? If not, why not?
Our city does not have a money problem in addressing its mental health and homeless crises. We have a bureaucracy and implementation problem.
I will advocate for a Built for Zero System - a data driven public-private partnership that centralizes fragmented government departments into a coordinated effort, and has helped 14 US cities reach a level of functional zero homelessness.
At the core of the system is reducing bureaucracy, consolidating services, and personalizing care. It will ensure we have guaranteed shelter to build the thousands of missing shelter beds we need to support those that are unhoused. It will implement a real-time data collection and consolidated support services structure delivered via Managed Care Hubs - one-stop mobile-shops that bring housing, jobs, and healthcare services to those who need them where they need them.
We have the resources to address the crises on our streets, and it's time to deploy those resources with accountability so we can finally start to measure results.
What is the role of government in providing care for those who cannot care for themselves?
Some have argued that San Francisco should place people who are experiencing mental health crises on the streets into involuntary mental health holds at psychiatric facilities. Do you agree or disagree with this view? Please explain why or why not.
We must reform our conservatorship laws to ensure those who are unable to care for themselves or may be a risk to others get the help they need. These laws need to be changed at the state level, but also within San Francisco - as there is too much bureaucratic red tape holding back the implementation of existing frameworks that they are largely unenforceable. This needs to change.
If you agree with this view, please outline some guardrails and oversight the City must provide to prevent abuse.
If you disagree with this view, please outline your preferred alternative solution as well as any drawbacks it might have and oversight it might need.
Education
Should the Board of Education be reformed to bring more accountability and better performance to the Board, and boost public school performance? If so, how; if not, why not?
One of the major issues with our Board of Education, and a broader impediment to our city’s progress, is the lack of experience with technology. Over the last several years, the teachers in SFUSD haven’t been regularly paid because of a failure to implement a new payroll system. I wrote the investigative report which ascertained the failure (64 software bugs and a ballooned $15.8 million budget) was the result of a lack of parallel testing in the payroll transition process - a testing paradigm familiar to most in the technology sector.
Accordingly, I would reform our government infrastructure - including the Board of Education - to be paired with an SF Digital Service. The SF Digital Service would be modeled on our national Digital Service and Presidential Innovation Fellow programs, where tech employees can volunteer their time to give back to our city as consultants, developers, or project managers. In turn they could be paired on future projects with our School Board that require software expertise, including the next impending payroll transition process.
Some parents prefer their children attend religious schools, others prefer magnet schools for specific skills (like the Ruth Asawa School for the Arts or Lowell), and others prefer charter schools with nontraditional curricula. Do you think all of these educational options should be available to students in San Francisco?
Did you support the recall of Board of Education members Collins, López, and Moliga? Please explain why you did or did not support the recall of each member.
Yes. The School Board’s lack of prioritization in reopening schools during the pandemic, and gross mismanagement of our budget, bordered on malfeasance. By not focusing on re-opening the schools, the School Board caused irreparable damage to the well-being of our students, with educational outcomes for communities of color affected the most. Recalling the School Board was necessary to make forward progress on educational outcomes in our city.
| Should San Francisco… | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|
| Offer Algebra in 8th grade to students who want it? | X | |
| Offer Algebra in 7th grade to students who want it? | X | |
| Offer AP courses to high school students who want them? | X | |
| Require schools to improve student performance, and fire teachers who consistently underperform? |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Small Business
What would you change about the process of new retail business formation in San Francisco?
Bureaucracy is one of the primary impediments to small business formation. During my tenure in the Obama Administration working on small business policy, our team recommended changes to our grant application processes to streamline access to capital. The realized benefits showed the importance of cutting red tape in achieving outcomes for small businesses.
In San Francisco, we need to similarly transform our Department of Building Inspection (DBI). Much of the application processes for small business involve manual or paper applications and forms with DBI. We must lead a digital transformation of DBI, reduce the number of permits to new small business formation, and ensure transparency in the fees. Small business is the medium for upward mobility for immigrants, migrants, and the middle class, and we have to ensure it is as easy as possible to start one.
Should all businesses be permitted by-right? If not, which business categories do you think should require special government approval?
Yes
Some in the Small Business community have argued that San Francisco should increase the number of available ABC permits (also known as a liquor license) to lower the cost of running a business and increase customer revenues from alcohol sales. Others have argued against increasing the number of permits because they don’t want more competition, or have already paid a lot of money for their liquor license. What do you think the City should do?
We should increase the number of permits.
Similarly, some in the legal cannabis retailer community have lobbied to reduce the number of available permits. Economists have argued that this reduces competition, raises prices for consumers, and raises profits for retailers. What do you think the City should do?
We should increase the number of permits.
| Should San Francisco… | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|
| Reduce the time to obtain all permits to open a new business to no more than 3 months | X | |
| Reduce the cost of obtaining permits to open a new business | X | |
| Reduce the number of activities which must obtain permits, and expand the number of by-right activities | X | |
| Try to attract businesses of all sizes to the City? | X |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Housing
Do you believe that San Francisco has a shortage of homes? Why or why not?
Yes. Especially middle income housing.
Too much of the debate in San Francisco is centered around whether we have enough affordable or market rate housing (the answer: we don’t have enough of either). But lost in this debate is a lack of prioritization for middle income housing.
Teachers, firefighters, laborers, first responders - the essential workers who form the backbone of our city make too much to qualify for below-market-rate housing and not enough to afford market rate housing. Politicians like Dean Preston who will only approve affordable housing are directly harming the ability for our essential workers to live in San Francisco.
We must build housing at all levels. And we do that by tackling the bureaucracy and corruption at the heart of our housing crisis.
Do you believe that housing prices are set by supply and demand constraints? Why or why not?
Yes.
San Francisco will almost certainly fail its Housing Element certification, which will cause the State to take over local land use regulation. What should we do now?
We must tackle the bureaucracy and corruption endemic to San Francisco’s housing development process to ensure we do not fail our Housing Element certification.
With respect to bureaucracy, I will advocate for initiatives that accelerate our permitting process - from investments in technology to speed up application approvals, allowing parallel permitting and planning approvals, and the reduction of discretionary permits to effectively cut the time to build affordable housing in half.
With respect to corruption, I will focus on reform in the Department of Building Inspection (DBI) - a department that is still issuing permits to restaurants and housing developments on paper, while forcing applicants to pay bribes for expedited processing. The path forward is at the intersection of technology and good governance, and I will advocate for a complete digitization of DBI to an online permitting system to bring transparency to the process, and routine third-party audits to ensure accountability.
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.
Should San Francisco retain, loosen, or even abolish the existing limits on height, density, and bulk for residential buildings? (ie taller, denser, and fewer/reduced setbacks)
Loosen.
San Francisco Planning requires that new street-facing windows comply with City-imposed design requirements that both raise the price of windows while lowering their thermal and noise insulation. Should the City abolish these requirements?
Yes.
| 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 | ||
| Renovate your home (update bathroom, kitchen, etc) | X | ||
| Demolish your home and redevelop it into multifamily housing | X | ||
| Redevelop things like parking lots and single-story commercial into multifamily housing | X | ||
| Build subsidized 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:
Transit Infrastructure
Should Muni be free for everyone? If so, what other programs would you take money from in order to fund this change, or what new tax would you propose to fund it?
Free muni is an admirable long term goal, but amidst a fiscal budget crisis we must focus on outcomes now - especially towards service reliability and safety.
Having worked on the Let’s Talk About Us campaign, an initiative run in partnership with the Asian Women’s Shelter and BART to raise awareness for domestic violence and harassment on transit, it was clear that improving safety on all modes of public transit is paramount to ensuring equity in our city infrastructure. And in meeting residents throughout the Tenderloin in my capacity as a board member of the TLCBD, it is clear lack of reliable bus
access makes it difficult for residents to reliably access grocery stores and essential services.
We must focus on improving our transit infrastructure accordingly. That starts with solving the staffing crisis affecting MTA drivers and bus operators, reducing the time to hire and bureaucracy impeding their hiring. Without sufficient staffing, we can not ensure regular service operation hours of our buses and BART cars. Simultaneously, we must ensure increased safety and security on public transit, so that women, children, and communities of color can safely ride to and from school, work, or the stores.
Some have argued that the cost of fare enforcement exceeds the benefit. Others have argued that not enforcing fare payment starves the Muni and BART systems of revenue, lowers quality of service, and makes the systems less safe. What is your position?
Recent State funding requires Muni and BART to enforce fare payments in order to receive that funding; do you agree with this requirement?
Yes.
Should it be the policy of San Francisco to build a citywide protected bike lane network? Why or why not?
Yes.
| Should San Francisco… | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|
| Do you support banning cars from central downtown areas and certain retail or residential corridors? | X | |
| Do you support congestion pricing? | ||
| Should San Francisco prioritize buses over car traffic by creating more bus-only lanes and directing traffic enforcement officers to ticket drivers who ignore the restrictions? | X | |
| Should Uber, Lyft, Waymo, and other ride-share services be permitted to operate in San Francisco? | X | |
| Should San Francisco allow more bike share and scooter share companies? | X | |
| 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)? | X |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Budget
San Francisco is facing a large budget deficit due to declining tax revenues from our struggling downtown. What will your approach be to fix this?
| 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 | X | |||
| 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:
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 am the child of immigrants who moved to the Bay Area nearly 40 years ago. Growing up, we would visit San Francisco just to visit Shalimar in the Tenderloin, the first Pakistani restaurant in the area. It gave my family a taste of a home away from home.
This story of immigration, small business, and community is what the Tenderloin means to me. It's what District 5 means to me. It’s what represents the spirit of San Francisco.
I have accordingly lived in San Francisco for nearly 10 years. I live and rent in the Tenderloin today - because it reminds me every day of the dream this neighborhood gave my parents when they came to this country. A dream of upward mobility and community. A dream only possible in San Francisco.
What do you love most about San Francisco?
The small business restaurants. They form the fabric of our culture - they employ our workers, serve incredible food, and provide a pathway to the middle class for so many immigrants and refugees to our city.
What do you dislike the most about San Francisco?
The division in our politics. So much of our political discourse is focused on tribalism and us vs them dynamics that we are unable to collaborate even on the most basic of issues affecting our city. It’s time for us to focus on collaboration, compromise, and consensus building again - because the problems facing our city are far too great to leave unaddressed.
Tell us about your current involvement in the community (e.g., volunteer groups, neighborhood associations, civic and professional organizations, etc.)
I am honored to serve on the board of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District (TLCBD) at this time to serve my neighborhood, and also have served on the board of SF YIMBY to advance pro housing initiatives. In my capacity as a cofounder of 13 Fund, I have also supported nonprofits such the Oakland Workers Fund to provide a guaranteed income for workers during the pandemic, Right to Be to advance bystander training in the AAPI community, and and historic organizations to rebuild a computer lab in Chinatown..
Thank you
Thank you for giving us your time and answering our questionnaire. We look forward to reading your answers and considering your candidacy!
If you see any errors on this page, please let us know at contact@growsf.org.