As I talk to voters in District 9, what I’ve heard the most from other longtime residents is how disconnected they feel and how little ownership they feel over our neighborhoods. This makes sense to me because COVID, an economic recession in the neighborhood, and gentrification have hurt us. The reality is that the Mission, Bernal, and Portola are still in recovery mode. So far, the City’s recovery efforts, as rolled out by the Mayor, have focused almost exclusively on downtown, stunting the healing that we need throughout the rest of the city. I will focus on ensuring that workers and small business owners get the support, attention, and resources needed for us to bounce back and move District 9 to a better place. This will not only strengthen our local economy. It will instill a sense of pride in our community, ensuring that the Mission, Bernal, and Portola – our beautiful, diverse, and loving neighborhoods – shine again and remain a part of what makes San Francisco special.

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As Supervisor, I will:

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• Advocate for legislation to protect commercial tenants. Protections will help keep independent small business owners in the Mission, Bernal, and Portola. This is especially important as state and municipal regulations get further streamlined to benefit large corporate developers. Legislation can ensure that longtime legacy businesses continue to thrive in District 9 because prioritizing community over unchecked greed is the only way we can keep the cultural heritage of our neighborhoods vibrant.

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• Create a fair system that supports street vendors and existing brick and mortars through the creation of large-scale public markets. Public markets were once the norm in the Mission and SF at large, just as they still are in many other major international cities like Seattle, Los Angeles, Mexico City and Tokyo. We can bring back municipal public markets by acquiring space on the Mission and 24th Street corridors among others. These markets will provide stalls for street vendors and opportunities for new businesses to pop up before growing into their own brick and mortar locations. These markets will ensure licensed street vendors have a consistent presence to sell their wares and the public has access to fresh food, all while creating new vibrant tourist destinations in the Mission.

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• Strengthen enforcement of the storefront vacancy tax to reduce the number of empty commercial spaces. Revenue from the vacancy tax should be directed to subsidies to support new small businesses and public market vendors, especially for food and medicine vendors.

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• Support our local restaurants by resisting chainstore encroachment and limiting the fees that app-based food delivery companies can charge restaurants. Our restaurants in District 9 face numerous headwinds, and City Hall should be making it easier for them to thrive, not harder. By reinforcing our local controls on formula retail (chain stores), we can make sure independent small businesses are competing for affordable commercial leases on a fair playing ground. By reducing the 30% commission that apps like DoorDash and UberEats can charge restaurants, we can put more revenue back into our beloved food establishments and help keep their doors open.

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• Allocate funding to local nonprofit microlenders like MEDA to support low-cost - or even 0% - flexible loans to our neighborhood small businesses. The City deployed this strategy during the pandemic to great impact, and it provided a lifeline to thousands of small businesses across San Francisco. We should double down on strategies like this one that have proven effective in getting affordable capital to businesses that can’t easily get financing from their bank.

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• Advocate for protections, resources and education for street vendors and city workers. As late as this past year, DPH identified that all enforcement employ multilingual education, professionalism, and respect. We should expand upon this and ensure that documented and undocumented vendors alike know their rights and resources and that only those who are properly trained and skilled in culturally competent engagement are detailed in coordinated departmental enforcement. Provide multilingual education and resources in advance and in tandem with enforcement to make lasting changes.

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• Invest in more job readiness training services, especially for transitional aged youth, through organizations like Family Connections Centers, Arriba Juntos and Dev/Mission. This should include more funding for the ladder of services that place high school and City College students in internships with local employers, particularly in technology, healthcare, and biosciences. This funding will help better coordinate efforts and ensure that we are supporting all our students to access the good paying local jobs of today and tomorrow.

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• Dedicate funding for community-based artists to produce art, murals, and events that promote the cultural heritage of the Mission, Bernal, and Portola. This can include funding for institutions like the American Indian Cultural District, Galería de la Raza, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, Brava Theater, Portola Neighborhood Association,  and Calle 24 Cultural District.

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• Expand & support cultural vibrancy work already begun through the work of neighborhood cultural organizations and the American Indian and Calle 24 Latino Cultural Districts.  This includes expansion and funding of new entertainment zones; street activations like night markets, micro markets, and block parties; legacy cultural events like Carnaval, Las Noches de los Muertos, Fiesta on the Hill, and the Autumn Moon Festival; uplifting legacy LGBTQ corridors like 16th and Valencia Streets; and programs for youth during spring, winter and holiday breaks.

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• Connect our vibrant corridors by working collaboratively with City departments and community orgs to cross pollinate these valuable neighborhood ecosystems through outreach, coalition programming, and public safety and commercial connectors like nightlife and public space jitneys for community members and workers.

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• Advocate and create better representation and protections for our service workers through legislation and advocacy informed by workers and labor. San Francisco has been made famous by thousands of service and hospitality workers who are often unrepresented, undocumented, and fall prey to exploitation and injury.

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• Expand subsidies and waivers of onerous costs related to vandalism, parklets, and code compliance for small businesses.