We recommend voting for Theo Ellington for Supervisor, District 10.

Ellington has spent more than fifteen years working on District 10's problems. As a City Commissioner at the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, he oversaw the redevelopment plans for the Shipyard, Mission Bay, and Transbay. As the Warriors' Director of Public Affairs, he managed the Chase Center partnership that delivered 3,000 jobs. As homelessness director at the Salvation Army, he built a 50-bed mental health respite center and recovery housing. Today he runs the Bayview Opera House.

I'm not running to study these problems. I'm running to solve them.

— Theo Ellington, GrowSF questionnaire

GrowSF didn't exist yet when Theo ran for Supervisor the last time, but our co-founder endorsed Ellington in 2018 as the most pro-housing candidate in that race. Eight years later, he still is.

Why vote for Theo Ellington?

1. Get the 20,000 homes built

District 10 has roughly 20,000 homes approved but unbuilt. They're stuck in the "planning pipeline" at Pier 70, the Potrero Power Station, India Basin, the Hunters Point Shipyard, Candlestick Point, and the former Schlage Lock factory, and Bayview's Third Street corridor has not seen a new home built in over a decade.

Ellington's number one commitment is turning that pipeline into actual homes. "Not approved. Not entitled. Built," as he put it in our questionnaire. He wants public timelines with consequences for developers who get approval and don't build. At Candlestick Point, where the Board approved the final map in June and infrastructure work finally breaks ground this summer after more than a decade of delay, he says that if the project stalls again the city should enforce penalties and look at recapturing or reassigning the land.

He supports letting small apartment buildings up to six stories be built with one staircase instead of two to make them cheaper to build, setting fees at levels that maximize homebuilding, and negotiating local hiring and community benefits up front instead of letting them become excuses to block development. He also wants round two of the Family Zoning Plan to include District 10, which was left out of the first round, and to add housing capacity along Third Street, Evans, and 16th Street.

2. Public safety

District 10 has the highest gun violence rate in the city, and for Ellington it's personal: his 13-year-old cousin was shot and killed in Bayview. He wants both enforcement and prevention. He supports full SFPD staffing and consistent foot patrols on commercial corridors, which the district does not have today. Unlike his opponent DJ Brookter, Theo Ellington supports arresting and prosecuting fentanyl dealers and the leaders of theft rings. And he wants violence prevention and youth programs fully funded, with D10-specific response times, clearance rates, and trust metrics published so residents can see it's working.

3. Finish the Shipyard cleanup

Decades of power plants, freeways, and contaminated Shipyard land have left Bayview-Hunters Point with some of the city's highest rates of cancer and asthma. This hit Ellington's family personally. After he and his wife bought a home at the Shipyard, they learned the soil was not safe, because the contractor hired to certify it had lied. The Ellingtons were one of the two families who brought the 2018 case, which won a $6.3M settlement from the developers for failing to warn buyers. Claims against the contractor itself ended on August 4, 2026, when a federal judge ruled that a nuclear-liability law bars homeowners from recovering for lost property value. As Supervisor he wants full retesting of the fraudulently certified parcels with independent oversight, a proper clean up, permanent public air-quality monitors in Bayview and Visitacion Valley, and real enforcement against illegal dumping.

4. Treatment that leads somewhere

At the Salvation Army, Ellington built the kind of recovery infrastructure the city keeps saying it needs: a 50-bed mental health respite center and recovery-based transitional housing. His rule is simple: never release someone from treatment back onto the street without a stable next step. He would end the distribution of pipes and foil while keeping evidence-backed public health interventions like clean needles, and he supports citations for public drug use paired with a treatment offer at every point of contact.

Where the candidates stand

On other issues

Transit: He wants the T-Third running every 10 minutes at peak with signal priority, a fix for the Islais Creek Bridge closure, restored late-night service for workers, and an additional Caltrain station with expanded water transit. He is honest that Bayview and Visitacion Valley remain car-dependent, and says bike infrastructure should be built where it genuinely connects people to destinations rather than as a blanket mandate.

Small business: His plan for Third Street and Evans includes guaranteed permits for code-compliant businesses, letting multiple small businesses share storefronts, pop-ups in vacant spaces, and a District 10 Small Business Investment Fund. As he told us, "Opening a business should not feel harder than running one."

Why not the other candidates?

J.R. Eppler is trying to sell himself as a pro-housing candidate, but his record tells the real story. As president of the Potrero Boosters he appealed a 127-home building at 88 Arkansas on a unit-mix technicality the Board of Appeals rejected 4-0. He opposed 450 homes at 300 De Haro, objecting that the project used state pro-housing law. He would also exempt shelters and affordable housing from CEQA but not market-rate housing, which leaves the appeals process intact for most of what District 10 needs. In a district with 20,000 approved but unbuilt homes, a supervisor who supports housing in principle and appeals it in practice is the wrong fit.