We recommend voting for Bilal Mahmood for Supervisor in District 5 as your #1 choice. He pairs a strong track record of community service with a deep understanding of the issues facing the district. His priorities are public safety, ending the fentanyl markets plaguing the Tenderloin, streamlining government permitting for small business, and reforming San Francisco's anti-housing laws so the city can build many more homes.

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.

Bilal MahmoodCandidate for Supervisor; Climate Nonprofit Director

On the issues

Here's where the top candidates stand on the issues that matter most to residents of District 5:

Read our deep-dive on the candidates' fentanyl crisis plans here.

Why vote for Bilal Mahmood?

Bilal's experience in the public sector makes us confident that he will do a great job as Supervisor. He was a policy analyst in the Obama administration at the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, founded and sold a company, and now serves as a member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, where he has been a strong advocate for affordable housing, public safety, and economic development.

Bilal's top three policy goals are:

1. Housing

Bilal will address the housing shortage by slashing red tape that slows down homebuilding. Unlike his opponents, he wants to speed up all types of housing: homeless shelters, subsidized homes, and the market-rate homes that over 90% of people live in. He wants to make the permitting process clearer and based on clearly defined rules, not arbitrary decisions by political appointees, activists, and bureaucrats. He wants to enable more design and permitting approvals to happen simultaneously instead of one after another, and use technology to make it easier for residents to work with city departments. These changes will help San Francisco build more subsidized low-income, market-rate, and middle-income homes to ensure that regular people can afford to live in the city.

2. Public Safety

Bilal prioritizes addressing the fentanyl crisis and filling emergency first responder vacancies. For addressing the Tenderloin's drug markets, he supports the Drug Market Intervention (DMI) approach, which combines these three approaches:

1. Law enforcement, community members, and social service providers form a partnership to carry out a DMI on a specific drug market.

2. Law enforcement arrests violent dealers, and notifies nonviolent dealers to attend a "call-in," a face-to-face meeting with law enforcement officers, social service providers, and community members where they are issued an ultimatum. Either they continue dealing drugs and go to jail, or they stop and are given a second chance.

3. Social service providers provide help to dealers and users willing to accept it.

Bilal also emphasizes the need for more officers walking in neighborhoods, building relationships and increasing visibility, retaining police captains for longer periods, and reducing red tape that hinders police effectiveness. It's the right balance of compassion and enforcement for District 5.

3. Economic Recovery

To help revitalize downtown, Bilal plans to make it easier, faster, and cheaper to launch a new business. He favors creating incentives for startups and small businesses to set up shop in the many vacant office spaces, which is critical to shoring up our tax base and bringing life back to our downtown core. The increased foot traffic from more businesses will rejuvenate the downtown area, create jobs, and support the city's transit systems through higher ridership.

The other candidates

Other candidates, like Autumn Looijen and Scotty Jacobs also have many good ideas and often align with GrowSF's policy goals. If you choose to rank them, be sure to rank Bilal Mahmood as well.