Nicholas Berg

• Office: Supervisor, District 2
• Election Date: November 3, 2026
• Candidate: Nicholas Berg
• Due Date: July 22, 2026
• Printable Version

Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the November 2026 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 July 22, 2026 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.

• Your Policy Goals
• Your Leadership
• The Issues
• Public Safety
• Substance abuse
• Mental Health
• Small Business
• Housing
• Transit Infrastructure
• Budget
• Personal
• Thank you

Your Policy 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.

What policies do you hope to change or preserve by running for Supervisor? Please be specific, and list them in order of priority.

1. Ensure public safety. Fully staff SFPD to its recommended level, return officers to proactive beat policing, end cite-and-release for repeat misdemeanor offenders, and shut down the open-air drug markets by arresting and prosecuting fentanyl dealers at every level – from street sellers to cartel-connected ringleaders.

2. End the street homelessness and addiction crisis. Replace the Housing First monoculture with a shelter-first, treatment-first approach: enough shelter beds for everyone on the street, mandatory treatment for those in crisis (full implementation of SB 43 conservatorship reform and CARE Court), sober housing options, and earned permanent housing based on sobriety and care of the property.

3. Attract Better Schools Through Choice. SFUSD has a near-monopoly on free education in this city, and families are voting with their feet – enrollment keeps falling while math and reading outcomes lag. Competition raises standards everywhere else; education is no exception. I'll champion approving more high-quality charter schools and fair access to facilities, so every family in District 2 has a real choice - not just families who can afford private tuition.

4. Restore fiscal accountability. San Francisco's budget has roughly doubled in a decade while core services declined. That's not a revenue problem – it's an accountability problem. As a business executive, I know what operational discipline looks like. I'll demand independent audits, sunset programs that can't demonstrate results, and put public safety, clean streets, and infrastructure ahead of bureaucratic pet projects.

Why those policies?

Because they address the reasons San Franciscans are frustrated, and in too many cases leaving: they don't feel safe, they see addiction that the City spends billions enabling, they can't afford to live here, and they see a $15+ billion government on a path to insolvency.

Explain why your #1 goal is your #1 goal.

Protecting people from crime is the most fundamental role of government. If people's basic safety needs aren't met, they won't raise families here, they won't open businesses here, workers won't come downtown, and tourists won't visit. Public safety is the necessary condition for civilization.

How will you build the coalition and political capital to enact your #1 goal? What obstacles will you face, and how will you overcome them? Will the power of the office of Supervisor be enough to achieve this goal?

The coalition already exists – the voters built it. Large majorities of San Franciscans across every neighborhood and demographic say crime has gotten worse and want more police. The recalls of 2022 and recent elections showed this is a durable, cross-partisan majority. My job is to give it a relentless voice on the Board: partnering with the Mayor's office on recruitment and staffing budgets, working with like-minded supervisors, backing the District Attorney when she holds repeat offenders accountable, and using oversight hearings to expose what isn't working.

Will the power of the office of Supervisor be enough to achieve the other goals?

Mostly, yes – with allies. I'm clear-eyed that a supervisor is a legislator, not a mayor, and I'll focus the office where it has real leverage.

San Francisco has areas of procedural and legislative bloat, making it hard for the city to serve its residents effectively. Give three examples of legislation that should be repealed.

1. The 2022 high-rise sprinkler retrofit mandate (Fire Code Section 1103.5.4). A well-intentioned ordinance passed with no cost study and almost no notice to the people it affects. It orders roughly 9,800 homes in 126 older buildings – most of them in Districts 2 and 3 – to install full sprinkler systems at costs residents estimate at $200,000 to $300,000 per unit, with months or years of displacement during construction. Teachers, retirees, and seniors on fixed incomes are being told to come up with six figures or sell their homes.

2. The Empty Homes Tax (Prop M, 2022). It's intrusive, it raises little, it's been tied up in litigation, and it punishes property owners instead of fixing the actual problem – that we make it too hard to build and rent housing. Taxing vacancy discourages the very investment in housing we need.

3. Discretionary Review. San Francisco is nearly alone in letting any individual drag a fully code-compliant home renovation or addition into a Planning Commission hearing. It adds months and tens of thousands of dollars to ordinary projects. If a project complies with the code, approve it.

What is an "out there" change that you would make to state/local government policy, if you could? For the purpose of this question, you are not constrained to the office of Supervisor.

End sanctuary protections for fentanyl dealers. I'm a Republican, so I won't pretend to be a fan of sanctuary policies - but here's the reform I'd make tomorrow: amend the Administrative Code so that anyone convicted of felony fentanyl distribution can be handed over to federal immigration authorities. Dealers know San Francisco will shield them from deportation, and it's one reason the cartel-supplied drug markets operate here so openly. A sanctuary ordinance written to protect immigrant families should never have become a shield for the traffickers poisoning them. When a supervisor proposed this exact fix, City Hall refused to even take it up. It’s shameful.

Your Leadership

We’d like to learn more about your leadership style and plan to execute effectively once you assume office.

When in office, how would you balance the needs of the electorate with the demands of special interests? Where do you foresee this being the biggest challenge?

The biggest special interest in San Francisco is the multi-billion-dollar contractor and nonprofit complex that profits from enabling homelessness and addiction. When I push for audits and performance-based contracts, that lobby will push back hard, and it is deeply wired into City Hall. That's where I expect the biggest fight.

When in office, how would you balance the needs of your district with the needs of the city? Where do you anticipate this being the biggest challenge?

District 2 residents want the same things the rest of the city wants — safe streets, clean parks, a government that works - so on most issues there's no conflict.

How do you think the day-to-day management of a Supervisor’s office can be improved? How do you plan to run your office?

I would run a Supervisor’s office like a well-managed small business. Every constituent contact gets a response within 24 hours and a tracked case number; we publish our response-time and case-resolution metrics quarterly so residents can hold us accountable. I'll hold regular open office hours in the district.

If you could measure the success of your term by 1 metric, and 1 metric only, what would that metric be?

The number of people living unsheltered on San Francisco's streets.

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? Why do you believe this is the #1 issue?

The open-air fentanyl markets. They kill hundreds of San Franciscans a year - more than homicides and traffic deaths combined - and they are the engine of everything around them: the retail theft that feeds addiction, the encampments, the violence between dealing crews, and the sense of lawlessness that empties downtown.

What power would you have to solve this issue?

The budget: fund full academy classes, recruitment bonuses, retention pay, and dedicated narcotics enforcement. Legislation: end policies that let repeat offenders cycle through with citations. Oversight: hearings that force Public Health to show their numbers in public. Appointments: the Board confirms Police Commission members, and I'll only support commissioners who let officers do their jobs. And advocacy: pushing state and federal partners to prosecute the trafficking organizations behind the street dealers, including supporting cooperation with federal authorities on fentanyl trafficking cases.

What three things would you change about how SFPD operates?

1. Staffing and recruitment: get to full staffing with competitive pay, lateral-hire and retention bonuses, a streamlined hiring pipeline, and recruitment outreach to bilingual candidates who reflect the communities they'll serve. Civilianize desk functions so sworn officers are on the street.
2. Proactive policing: restore foot and bike beats in commercial corridors and residential neighborhoods, rebuild the traffic enforcement unit, and set clear expectations that officers respond to and investigate property crime — not just take reports.
3. Cut the bureaucratic drag: pare back the paperwork and Police Commission micromanagement that keeps officers off the street, and modernize with technology - drones, automated license plate readers, real-time crime center capabilities - with sensible privacy guardrails.

What small change do you think would have the biggest impact?

Change the cite-and-release policy so officers can actually book suspects for misdemeanors like shoplifting and car break-ins. Today, offenders learn there is no consequence, and the same people commit hundreds of offenses. The moment arrests have consequences again, the calculus changes for the small number of prolific offenders driving most of the problem.

If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:

None.

Substance abuse

In general, how should the City handle people who are abusing drugs on City sidewalks?

Enforce the law. Public drug use should trigger an intervention every single time: a genuine offer of same-day treatment and shelter, and for those who refuse repeatedly, arrest with the option of treatment as the alternative to jail. What we cannot do is what we've done for a decade — walk past people killing themselves in public and call it compassion or civil liberty. It is neither. For many addicts, an arrest is the intervention that saves their life, because it's the moment the system finally says: you cannot keep doing this, and here is help.

If someone is passed out from drugs on the sidewalk, how should the City respond?

Of course, the City should continue to provide an immediate medical response. But, people repeatedly found unconscious in public should trigger an evaluation for a psychiatric or 5150 hold and conservatorship proceedings where warranted. Being revived from an overdose is a medical emergency and a screaming signal that the person cannot care for themselves.

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.

I do not support free-standing sites where the City supervises people injecting fentanyl in perpetuity - that's not treatment, it's enablement with staff, and it anchors drug markets in the surrounding neighborhood. What I support instead is medically supervised stabilization and treatment clinics: facilities where people in active addiction are medically managed while being weaned off drugs.

Do you support sober housing? Why or why not?

Strongly. It's a scandal that a San Franciscan trying to get clean can be placed by the City in housing where fentanyl is used openly in the hallways. Recovery is nearly impossible in that environment. We should offer sober housing as a protected option throughout the supportive housing portfolio, and I support the broader principle of earned permanent housing - where sobriety and proper care of the property are rewarded with a path to stable, permanent homes.

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?

Yes! In particular, we should aggressively implement SB 43's expanded conservatorship standard (which includes severe substance use disorder), fully utilize CARE Court, and add treatment capacity. We should also direct our street crisis teams to initiate holds when the legal standard is met instead of walking away. The state laws have improved; the City's willingness to use them hasn't.

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. 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.

I agree. A person in florid psychosis on a sidewalk is not exercising freedom - they are dying in public of an untreated illness, and leaving them there is abandonment dressed up as respect for autonomy. Involuntary treatment, done right, is the compassionate response and the one every functioning society uses.

Small Business

What would you change about the process of new retail business formation in San Francisco?

Non-vice businesses should open by right in commercial districts — no conditional use hearings, no neighbor veto over a bakery. One application, one portal, one point of contact, with a hard 30-day shot clock for over-the-counter approvals and 90 days maximum for everything else, after which permits are deemed approved. Cut permit fees, waive first-year fees for new small businesses, and rewrite every application in plain language.

If San Francisco adopted policies that allowed all non-vice businesses to open without special hearings, what would you do to help local small businesses compete?

Help them by cutting their costs and fixing their environment, not by banning their competitors. A mom-and-pop shop with safe streets, low fees, and fast permits can compete with anyone.

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, unambiguously. We've built a fraction of the housing our job and population growth demanded for decades, and the state's requirement that we plan for 82,000 units by 2031 simply quantifies the hole we dug.

Do you believe that housing prices are set by supply and demand constraints? Why or why not?

Yes. Housing prices obey the laws of supply and demand like everything else. San Francisco has enormous demand and, by deliberate policy, severely restricted supply — the predictable result is the highest prices in the country. The best way to stabilize the cost of housing is to allow more housing creation at every income level.

Do you think Mayor Lurie’s Family zoning plan is too ambitious or not ambitious enough? Why?

There are many reasons that housing development projects don’t pencil out (permitting, discretionary review, CEQA abuse, construction costs, etc.). Simply upzoning corridors of the city might create housing capacity on paper, but I am not convinced that it will result in new housing production.

Do you believe that building more housing is the #1 way to reduce the cost of living in San Francisco? Why or why not?

Over the long run, yes — housing is the largest line in every family's budget, and supply is the only durable way to bring it down.

If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:

Transit Infrastructure

Do you believe the MUNI funding crisis should be solved by taxes alone? Why or why not?

No. Asking taxpayers for more money before fixing the agency is backwards. SFMTA should first: enforce fares (evasion costs tens of millions a year and signals lawlessness on the system), reform work rules and overtime practices that inflate costs, prioritize service on high-ridership lines over low-performing ones, and cut administrative overhead. Riders should also feel safe — many people abandoned Muni over safety and cleanliness, and winning them back is a revenue strategy.

Should it be the policy of San Francisco to build a citywide protected bike lane network? Why or why not?

Not as a blanket citywide mandate. I support well-designed protected lanes on corridors where demand, geometry, and safety data justify them — and I want them built properly, with real merchant and neighborhood input on loading, parking, and access.

Is Vision Zero the right goal? Why or why not?

Getting traffic fatalities per capita as low as possible is a worthy goal. Making real improvements requires enforcement of traffic rules and engineering. In Hong Kong, they’ve vastly improved pedestrian safety using elevated walkways and pedestrian subways at the busiest and most dangerous intersections. You can walk for miles in the Central district without having to cross a car’s path. I also think that autonomous vehicles will lead to a significant reduction in traffic fatalities.

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?

No. We don’t need more dedicated bus lanes. The Van Ness and Geary bus lanes are expensive and underutilized, and they further narrowed vital traffic arteries. Frankly, these should have been subway projects. People in the western and northern neighborhoods, seniors, families, and the disabled still need to drive, and until transit is genuinely excellent, making driving miserable doesn't get people on buses.

Budget

San Francisco is facing a large budget deficit due to declining tax revenues from our struggling downtown. What would your approach be to fix this?

On growth: downtown's decline is an existential threat to the entire budget, so revitalization is fiscal policy. That means public safety and clean streets so workers and visitors return; incentives for office-to-residential conversions; recruiting a university campus downtown; and revisiting taxes that actively push employers out, like the structure that penalizes companies for having workers in the office. On spending: independent annual audits of the nonprofit contracts that consume billions with little accountability; performance-based budgeting where programs that can't show results lose funding; and right-sizing City Hall headcount through attrition and consolidation. We do not have a revenue problem so much as a results problem — the City spends more per capita than almost any city in America and gets less.

City Hall staffing has grown 27% while the city’s population has stayed stagnant. Would you support right sizing city government to rebalance the budget? Why or why not?

Yes. City headcount has grown by thousands while population stagnated and core services deteriorated — that combination is indefensible. I'd support a hiring freeze on non-essential positions, elimination of long-vacant ghost positions, consolidation of duplicative departments and some of our 100-plus commissions, and attrition-based reductions guided by a genuine performance-management process — the kind any well-run organization uses. The goal isn't a smaller government for its own sake; it's a government sized to what it does well, with the savings redirected to the basics: police, fire, streets, parks, and Muni.

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’ve been in San Francisco for over 20 years. I came to USF for graduate school (Go Dons!). I love the people and the natural beauty.

What do you love most about San Francisco?

People who come here from everywhere in the world to build something. San Franciscans are off the charts in their general knowledge, skill, motivation, and compassion.

What do you dislike the most about San Francisco?

We are one of the worst governed major cities in America. Our institutions suffer from one-party rule without any real competitive pressure.

Tell us about your current involvement in the community (e.g., volunteer groups, neighborhood associations, civic and professional organizations, etc.)

I was one of the volunteers in the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin. I am a Board Member of The Briones Society, a club advancing a practical, moderate conservatism built for cities and the people who live in them. I am also the Chairman of the San Francisco Republican Party.

Why do you want to run for public office?

I believe that I can do good work for the City of San Francisco. In my current day job, I do the unglamorous work of making things run: budgets that balance, vendors that deliver, problems that get fixed instead of studied.

Thank you

Thank you for giving us your time and answering our questionnaire. We look forward to reading your answers and considering your candidacy!