2024 San Francisco Mayoral Candidate Statements
Photo by Maritza Gonzalez: maritzzaglezphoto.com
We invited candidates for the San Francisco mayor position to join us on October 1, 2024 for a mayoral forum on foster care and juvenile justice, co-hosted by Safe & Sound.
Thank you to all of our co-sponsors:
3rd St Youth Center and Clinic, Alternative Family Services, APA Family Support Services, Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, Community Works, Compass Family Services, Edgewood Center, Freedom Forward, Hamilton Families, Homeless Prenatal Program, Huckleberry Youth Programs, Instituto Familiar de la Raza, Larkin Street Youth Services, Occupational TP, SF Black Wall Street, Sunset Youth Services, The Salvation Army, Urban Services YMCA, and Young Women’s Freedom Center.
We requested the candidates to share statements in response to the following questions:
As Mayor of San Francisco, what would be your broad vision for investing in families, particularly those experiencing poverty and/or housing instability, to prevent crises, including contact with the child welfare and juvenile justice systems?
When crises do happen, what is your vision for supporting children in foster care (particularly as ⅔ are placed out of county), foster families, guardians, birth families, and transitional-age youth?
London Breed
Advancing equity has been at the forefront of all my investments to address the City’s most pressing issues. Across economic recovery, housing, homelessness, public safety, climate change, and COVID-19 recovery, the programs I’ve introduced and implemented center the needs of San Francisco’s most marginalized communities, especially families and youth.
My vision for investing in families is informed by the fact that I was a part of one of those families that experienced poverty and housing instability, having been raised by my grandmother in public housing. Not having resources impacts you in ways that you cannot fully understand if you have not experienced it. That is why I have invested in opportunity creation from birth to adulthood with paid internships, workforce development, job training and continuous skill development programs and apprenticeships that lead directly into good-paying jobs; eviction prevention, neighborhood preference, and prioritizing building housing for all San Franciscans; universal access to reproductive care; equity as a driving priority for all city services so the most vulnerable folks can get the help that they need to thrive; universal childcare to allow parents to be able to be a part of the workforce; universal basic income initiatives for underserved populations such as Black and Pacific Islander mothers and their children, artists, the transgender community; and diversion, rehabilitation, and re-entry support within the criminal legal system whenever possible.
I grew up in a community that did not have a good relationship with the police. I believe in building bridges by focusing on community policing and I have also launched alternatives to policing, which helps reduce unnecessary contacts with the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Too often we have relied on police to answer every call for service, even those not related to crime, such as when parents call because their child is having a tantrum and refuses to unlock their bedroom door. Rather than automatically sending the police, we can connect the parents with an expert from our child crisis services to help de-escalate the situation and engage in long-term parent-child counseling.
The feeling of disenfranchisement from the world around you can be an incredibly strong factor in becoming justice-involved. We can absolutely take action to mitigate and even prevent this social alienation that results in harm to the person experiencing it, as well as those around them. That is what I have prioritized in my years as a public servant and I look forward to continuing that work as Mayor.
Every family, no matter its make up, deserves to be supported and to be happy and healthy. I know what it means to grow up in poverty, in a community with gun violence and addiction. I want what is best for children, youth, and families, which is why I have and will continue to invest in wraparound services for families to heal and be strengthened when crises happen. I support mental health services at schools through wellness centers and Beacon programs, as well as mental health services for young people in the community through DCYF. When any crisis happens, it causes trauma, so after a violent incident, it is essential to make sure that individuals and communities get the services they need: the Street Violence Response Team (SVRT) responds to violent incidents and reaches out to victims.
I also support survivors of violence by investing in community-based and community-led programs and organizations such as the Street Violence Intervention Program and the Community Youth Center of San Francisco that directly serve victims of crimes and which support high-risk and at-risk youth and families through crisis intervention, information, linkages, mental health referrals, individual and family counseling, parenting classes, case management services, court advocacy, conflict intervention, support groups, and linkages to culturally appropriate wraparound services. My partner in juvenile justice, Juvenile Probation Chief Katy Miller, helps young people and their families to thrive and connect them to community services, including through CARC, the Community Assessment & Resource Center, which works with youth aged 11 to 17 taken into custody by the police for either felony and misdemeanor offenses. CARC connects these youth with appropriate, individualized services that prevent recidivism or further involvement in the Juvenile Justice System. CARC believes that in order for youth to mature into healthy and whole individuals, they require compassion, guidance, and opportunities to make wrongs right and learn from their mistakes.
I also announced the creation of the Office of Victim and Witness Rights, which is charged with improving systems and address challenges for survivors and witnesses of violent, such as difficulty navigating the criminal legal process, lack of housing, unmet emotional and mental health support needs, access to emergency financial relief after a traumatic or violent event, and inadequate support for individuals providing services as they are often survivors themselves.
Specifically for foster families, I have invested $150,000 to SF CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) to support foster youth and implement community innovation strategies including supporting justice-involved TAY who are impacted by the justice system to address barriers to education, career and housing. I know and have seen how youth and families can thrive, even after crises and traumas, with enough support.
Mark Farrell
I was lucky enough to be born and raised in San Francisco, and I’m raising my three kids here with my wife, Liz, because San Francisco was the best place in the world to grow up. I’m running for Mayor because I know San Francisco can be a welcoming, safe, and affordable place for families again with new leadership in City Hall.
That starts by finally making our public schools work at a foundational level. What’s happening with SFUSD right now––reeling from crisis to crisis over the past decade, with no end in sight––is beyond unacceptable, and Mayor Breed’s so-called rescue team is more than a day late and a dollar short. I’ll get SFUSD back on track by focusing like a laser on key metrics of student success, including third-grade literacy rates and eighth-grade algebra. I’ll provide new funding for preschool, summer instruction, and kindergarten through third grade teacher support to ensure that our students have the tools they need to succeed from an early age. And I’ll implement proven accountability measures, including public reporting, to track performance and ensure results.
But supporting public school families goes beyond what happens in the classroom. That’s why I’ll make Muni permanently free for all youth and direct the SFMTA to work with SFUSD to align bus routes with school start times. It’s also why I’ll establish a zero-tolerance policy for harmful street behavior near our schools, including by creating a new high-priority 311 code for illegal activities within one block of any educational facility and directing City agencies to address these reports the same day they receive complaints, rather than allowing them to fester and worsen.
More broadly, as a dad I know that raising a family has become far too expensive for far too many San Franciscans. As a result, many parents—especially mothers—end up forced to choose between pursuing their careers or raising their children. My plan for universal childcare addresses this beginning on Day One as Mayor. I’ll offer new, flexible childcare subsidies for low- and middle-income families, partner with SFUSD to identify staffing and infrastructure opportunities to expand childcare services across the City, establish long-term recruitment pipelines with local colleges, increase capacity by raising wages for childcare workers, and more.
We already know that investing in kids early on vastly improves their chances at leading healthy, successful lives as adults. By taking a whole-of-government approach to childcare and early education, San Francisco can finally work for all families. That’s my commitment as Mayor.
Protecting our city’s children, including those in foster care, is incredibly important to me as a father of three. The top priority, of course, is making sure that kids can be safe and healthy with their families, without any harmful disruptions. In part, that means continuing to support anti-violence measures, like the City-funded domestic violence survivors’ right to counsel through the new Office of Victim and Witness Rights. It means ensuring San Francisco has enough stable, affordable housing for parents and families at every income level, which my housing plan will ensure through targeted rezoning and providing financing incentives to help projects actually get built. And it means taking the steps I’ve outlined to guarantee universal childcare and finally make SFUSD deliver for our families.
But when remaining with family is not possible and the foster system has to step in, we need to make it possible for kids and young adults to thrive, not just survive. That includes drastically increasing the availability of mental health assistance, improving wages and working conditions for those who provide key wellness and educational services, providing bridge support to transitional age youth and young adults aging out of the system, and always keeping our actions’ concrete effects at the forefront. Sadly, California has repeated many of the past failures of deinstitutionalization in its haphazard approach to reforming the child welfare system. As Mayor, I’ll be a strong advocate for common-sense policy changes that improve outcomes and increase investment from all levels of government.
Daniel Lurie
Children and youth are our shared joy and our shared responsibility. My vision for San Francisco is to build a city where every child and family can thrive, regardless of their economic situation or background. I believe that investing in families is the best way to prevent the kinds of crises that lead to involvement with the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. This means we must tackle the root causes of poverty and housing instability head-on.
First, we need to ensure that families have access to safe and affordable housing. No child should grow up in an environment of constant uncertainty about where they will sleep at night. I will push for bold housing policies that prioritize low-income families and ensure more affordable housing is built across the city. As the only candidate in this race who has actually built affordable housing (on time, under-budget, with good-paying union labor and an innovative funding model), increasing the affordability of San Francisco is a key priority for my administration.
Second, we must invest in comprehensive, connected family support services. This includes access to affordable childcare, mental health services, substance abuse treatment, and parenting programs. Early interventions can prevent small challenges from turning into larger crises that impact children and families. I believe in a city where we strengthen families rather than separate them.
But when crises do happen, we must be there for our children, especially those in foster care. The fact that two-thirds of San Francisco’s foster children are placed out-of-county is unacceptable. It distances them from their communities, their support systems, and makes an already traumatic experience even harder. As mayor, I will work to increase the number of local foster homes by investing in support for foster families, making it easier to keep children within San Francisco. This means better access to resources like housing assistance, counseling and respite care, and ongoing training to help them navigate the challenges of fostering.
We also need to prioritize support for those aging out of the foster system and preparing for adulthood. This population is particularly vulnerable to homelessness, unemployment, and involvement with the justice system. My administration will expand transitional housing options and work to ensure that foster youth have access to job training, mentorship, and educational opportunities.
Personally, I’ve seen the impact of these systems through my work founding and leading Tipping Point Community, where we’ve invested over half a billion dollars to break cycles of poverty and support at-risk youth. Professionally, my experience has shown me that neither nonprofits nor government can do it alone—we must work together to fix the broken system that fractures our city’s safety net for families and children in need. It’s not enough to step in when families are already in crisis. We need to be proactive, not reactive, in our approach.
San Francisco deserves a mayor who sees these issues not as isolated problems but as part of a broader vision for equity and opportunity. Together, we can build a San Francisco where no child is placed far from home, where families are supported before they break, and where every young person has the chance to thrive.
Aaron Peskin
As Mayor of San Francisco, my vision for investing in families—especially those experiencing poverty and housing instability—would center on a prevention-first approach that creates a foundation for family stability, reduces inequality, and prevents crises that too often lead to contact with the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.
As mayor, preventing evictions and investing in affordable housing to stabilize our working and low-income communities will be my number one priority. I’ll expand on pandemic-era rental assistance programs and eviction protections to keep families housed, and authored Proposition G on this November’s ballot to provide rental subsidies for extremely low income families to aid in that effort. I led the passage of Prop A in march to house 5,000 working San Franciscans, and my middle-income housing plan will provide housing for an additional 15,000 middle-class San Franciscans at no cost to taxpayers. I’m the only major candidate committed to expanding rent control to prevent struggling families from winding up on our streets.
All the data shows that housing stability is key to preventing crises and youth interactions with the justice system, one of the many reasons why I’ve pledged to focus on ending student homelessness for the 1,800 unhoused SFUSD students. I opened the city’s first (and only) transitional-age youth shelter in my district, and will work to expand on the successes of the Lower-Polk TAY Navigation Center to provide guaranteed housing for young people facing crises in our city. We also need to invest in programs that prevent at-risk youth in our city from becoming involved in the justice system. In 2008 when our homicide rate hit almost 100, as Board President I led the way in investing in gang prevention and violence intervention programs, internship and job training programs, and it worked - homicide rates dropped by more than half the next year. As mayor I’ve pledged to increase funding for these programs, especially job training and placement programs that move beyond just the building trades and help young people in our city become equipped for jobs in the healthcare, technology, and finance industries.
In addition to addressing immediate housing and economic needs, investing in early childhood education and services is crucial for breaking the cycle of poverty and providing long-term stability for San Francisco's most vulnerable families. Along with former Board President Yee, I supported and helped pass “Baby Prop C.” While Mark Farrell authored a poison pill and our current mayor refuses to spend the money in the way voters intended, I will spend those funds exactly the way the voters intended: on early childhood education and services. I secured funding for distance learning supplies, food pantries, and many other basics for struggling families during the pandemic, and believe that expanding on programs like these - along with finally spending our Baby C dollars - can build the safetynet of services and stability that youth and families in our city deserve.
Photos by Maritza Gonzalez: maritzzaglezphoto.com
