Mayor London Breed was all smiles throughout a packed major celebration on Tuesday in Hayes Valley, a boutique neighborhood a couple of half mile from Metropolis Corridor, stopping for selfies and congratulations as she navigated the crowded bar towards a microphone.
“Change is coming!” Breed shouted to thundering applause from the patio on the hip cocktail bar Anina.
Early outcomes confirmed promise for a slate of native candidates operating on a extra centrist agenda, and for poll measures that will remodel downtown with new growth and known as on the town college board to reinstate Algebra I as an providing for center college college students.
However the focus of Breed’s pleasure that night was two poll measures she championed to broaden police surveillance powers and impose drug therapy mandates that had been garnering overwhelming voter help — a shocking rightward shift for a metropolis identified nationally for its progressive politics.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed rallies supporters throughout an election night time celebration.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Related Press)
The primary measure, Proposition E, bolsters police powers within the metropolis. The second, Proposition F, would require drug screening and therapy for folks receiving county welfare advantages who’re suspected of drug use.
The measures give tooth to efforts to deal with the town’s open-air drug habit disaster — and the road crime and rampant homelessness that include it. Taken collectively, they offer credence to Breed’s message that San Francisco isn’t the bastion of lawlessness its critics love to say.
“Sufficient is sufficient,” Breed mentioned. “We’d like change.”
Breed faces a tough reelection marketing campaign in November as she seeks a second full time period in workplace. Two of her opponents — Levi Strauss inheritor and nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie, and enterprise capitalist Mark Farrell, a former district supervisor and interim mayor — are thought-about moderates by San Francisco requirements, and have blasted the mayor for the town’s road situations and the lagging post-pandemic financial restoration.
A 3rd opponent, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, is a well known progressive prone to garner help amongst stalwart liberals involved with the town’s latest shift towards the middle.
As she navigates a center path ahead, Breed’s supporters hope the poll victories inject her reelection bid with a jolt of power and chart a clearer path ahead for a metropolis that has struggled to get homeless folks off the streets and to rebound from the pandemic-related exodus of its downtown tech sector.
“This can be a actually good night time for London Breed, Madam Mayor,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) advised the group. “This metropolis has been getting overwhelmed up for the previous few years, and San Francisco is coming again, and it’s going to be even higher than ever.”
The poll measures accredited Tuesday construct on a number of initiatives Breed has spearheaded over the previous yr to place tooth to the town’s efforts to stem drug habit and overdose deaths, including punitive elements to insurance policies that lengthy have centered on a gentler treatment-focused method.
Final fall, metropolis officers introduced plans for a legislation enforcement activity pressure, set to launch in spring, that can examine opioid deaths and illicit drug dealing within the metropolis as potential murder circumstances. Months earlier than, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom deployed the California Nationwide Guard and California Freeway Patrol to focus on drug-trafficking networks funneling fentanyl into the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods, an operation that has led to lots of of arrests.
Breed contends these efforts are paying off: During the last six months, property crime has fallen by 30% and violent crime by 4%, in response to the mayor’s workplace.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed says the poll measures voters accredited this week give wanted tooth to efforts to deal with the town’s drug disaster.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Related Press)
Breed mentioned the drug-screening initiative will construct on these efforts by compelling extra folks with substance-use dysfunction into therapy.
Proposition F, set to enter impact in January 2025, will modify the County Grownup Help Packages, which gives money advantages to low-income single adults 65 and beneath with out dependent youngsters. Recipients will now be required to bear a drug-screening evaluation if there’s “affordable suspicion” they wrestle with substance-use dysfunction, and to enter into therapy if warranted.
Proponents say the change will safeguard metropolis sources towards a road drug tradition that’s ballooned due to San Francisco’s lenient insurance policies and beneficiant advantages.
This system assisted about 5,700 folks month-to-month within the 2022-23 fiscal yr, in response to the town controller’s workplace, with some recipients receiving as much as $712 per thirty days. Between March 30, 2023, and the beginning of February, 141 individuals who had been cited for public drug use had been additionally receiving the county help, in response to the mayor’s workplace. Of these, 33% didn’t really dwell in San Francisco.
“That is simply including one other degree of accountability of screening, and hopefully what is going to result in the type of outcomes we wish to see: people who find themselves in therapy and individuals who find yourself getting clear and sober,” Breed mentioned.
Critics of Proposition F dismiss it as a poorly crafted proposal that fails to repair the roots of the town’s homeless disaster: a lack of reasonably priced housing and high quality therapy choices. They echoed a preferred progressive tenet that forcing folks into drug therapy doesn’t work, and mentioned the coverage adjustments can have devastating penalties on low-income residents who depend on the help to for housing and different needed bills.
“It’s simply going to make therapy much less accessible for everybody in San Francisco,” mentioned Jeannette Zanipatin, state director for the left-leaning nonprofit Drug Coverage Alliance. “To promote an initiative with false guarantees is simply actually the mayor and her workplace selecting political comfort over actually making an attempt to roll up their sleeves and discover actual options which are really going to have an effect on the overdose disaster.”
The measure wasn’t drafted with particular guidelines round how the drug screening will probably be administered or how therapy will probably be enforced. Breed has directed the town’s Human Companies Company to create an “motion plan” for implementation, which means it may very well be months earlier than official tips can be found.
Breed’s workplace has mentioned the measure was deliberately designed to be versatile on the therapy part. Remedy choices may vary from out-patient providers to a prescription for buprenorphine, a drugs used to deal with habit. They famous it doesn’t embrace a requirement for members to stay sober, recognizing that folks usually lapse in restoration and shouldn’t be kicked out of this system for a slip-up.
“I don’t suppose Proposition F is as dangerous as its critics say it’s, and it’s most likely not going to be a panacea as a few of its extra fervent supporters mentioned it was both,” mentioned Supervisor Matt Dorsey, a reasonable Democrat who’s been candid about his personal habit restoration journey. “However I do suppose on stability, it’s a step in the fitting path.
Wiener, one of many state Capitol’s main progressives, didn’t help Proposition F however mentioned he understands why folks voted for it. “Solely by San Francisco requirements would this be thought-about reasonable,” he mentioned. “As in lots of cities proper now, there’s a concern about public security and public drug use and other people need their neighborhoods and their metropolis to be pretty much as good as it may be.”
Proposition E, the measure that bolsters police powers, additionally handed handily. The measure weakens sure oversight authority by the Police Fee, which has been a voice for clamping down on police use of pressure.
The measure additionally eases restrictions which have been blamed for fostering a lax police response to retail and property crimes. It supplies extra leeway for police to pursue suspects by automobile and permits officers to make use of drones for sure pursuits. The adjustments additionally loosen necessities for documenting suspect confrontations that result in police use-of-force and authorize physique digital camera footage to face in for sure paperwork.
Supporters of Proposition E mentioned it’s going to reduce the period of time police spend behind desks on administrative duties and guarantee they’re correctly outfitted with expertise to combat crime. Opponents see a troubling retrenchment towards diminished transparency and oversight.
“It made it simpler for SFPD to cover police violence and makes it more durable for the general public to carry law enforcement officials accountable,” mentioned Yoel Haile, director of the Felony Justice Program on the ACLU of Northern California. “What we’re seeing proper now occur is politicians who’re providing the general public these tried and failed options because the magic bullet to actual frustrations that folks have about crime and public security.”
Breed is providing no apologies.
On Thursday, she delivered her State of the Metropolis handle at Pier 27, a waterfront venue with a shimmering view of the town’s skyline as her backdrop. She sharply rebutted the narrative that San Francisco had misplaced its progressive manner, as an alternative positing that Tuesday’s election outcomes had been in alignment with the town’s liberal values to deal with and deal with these affected by habit and supply communities with high quality policing.
All through her speech, she doubled down on the message that San Francisco is popping a nook, proclaiming it a “metropolis on the rise.”
“San Francisco isn’t sporting the shackles of your negativity any longer,” she mentioned because the room echoed with applause.
