District 6 candidates vying for a tough job
San Francisco’s District Six has as many personalities as it has problems. The Tenderloin and Civic Center streets are filled with used needles, human waste and a big portion of the city’s homeless population. A few blocks away in SoMa, well-paid tech employees live and work in sparkling new towers. In Mission Bay, where the Warriors’ arena is rising, a new neighborhood has taken hold among a cluster of biotech companies.
One of three candidates — Christine Johnson, Matt Haney or Sonja Trauss — for the open supervisor seat to be decided in November will have to manage all of these disparate neighborhood personalities as supervisor.
On the surface, the candidates’ solutions sound similar: Divert more resources to street cleaning, increase police presence and, most importantly, build more housing. Their differences come down more to personality and style.
Matt Haney
Who he is: Haney, 36, is a Tenderloin resident who has been elected to the Board of Education twice. Before he started campaigning full time in June, Haney was the policy director of Dream Corps, a nonprofit focused on social justice issues. He also works as a pro bono attorney representing tenants facing eviction. Agenda: Stacked up next to Trauss and Johnson, Haney is considered the progressive in this race. If elected, Haney said he would focus on immediate solutions to the district’s blight, like increasing the number of street cleaners, shelter beds, Navigation Centers and services for the mentally ill. He would also increase pressure on police officers to arrest more drug dealers.
Money and endorsements: Haney had raised $288,048 by the latest Ethics Commission’s filing deadline in September. An independent expenditure committee called the San Francisco Labor Council Labor & Neighbor Independent Expenditure Committee has spent at least $19,455 supporting his run for office. His endorsements include Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic County Central Committee, seven of the 11 sitting supervisors members, and the Building and Construction Trades Council. In his words: “Mayor (London) Breed should have come forward by now to say we need shared sacrifice and say we need everyone to come forward and say they will support a Navigation Center in their district. I would encourage and work with Breed to build that coalition.”
Christine Johnson
Who she is: Johnson, 36, is a former planning commissioner with an engineering degree and several years of experience working in public finance. She was director of San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, known as SPUR. Johnson has lived in San Francisco for 14 years, first on Treasure Island and now in Mission Bay with her husband and toddler.
Agenda: She has a very specific agenda: She doesn’t just want to build housing — she wants to put time limits on development entitlements to ensure that an owner either builds or gives up those rights. She doesn’t want to just add more police officers to the area — she wants to have a homeless outreach team dedicated to the grimiest stretch of Market Street. She would support a safe injection site — but only if it included services to get people off drugs. Money and endorsements: As of the latest filing deadline, Johnson had raised $156,262, which is about half the money her competitors have raised. But her campaign was given a boost last month when Progress San Francisco, a political action committee that generally supports moderate candidates, funneled at least $237,866 into a committee supporting her and Trauss. Her pro-development stance earned her endorsements from politicians like Assemblyman David Chiu and Breed. In her words: “People want to see results. They want to see things be different on the streets, and they want people in office who have an idea of how they are going to get there. And they get that from me.”
Sonja Trauss
Who she is: Trauss, 37, is a figurehead for the international YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard) movement, which advocates for building more housing — any kind of housing — as the answer to the sky-high prices and rampant homelessness in cities like San Francisco. Trauss is often described as tenacious, outspoken and blunt. Whether people think those qualities are good for City Hall depends on whom you ask. Agenda: If Trauss is elected, building more housing both inside and outside District Six will be her main objective. First, she’d try to change zoning so it would be easier to build affordable housing around the city, then she’d pressure other supervisorial districts to build that housing. Money and endorsements: Trauss has a tremendous base of support from her YIMBY followers and has raised, as of the latest filing deadline, $209,625. The Progress San Francisco PAC also donated at least $237,866 to a PAC supporting her and Johnson’s joint campaign. Her positions on housing earned her the endorsements of Chiu, Breed, state Sen. Scott Wiener and, of course, the YIMBY organization. In her words: “Homelessness is literally the lack of housing. The reason people have problems are very complicated. But there’s not any life situation that is made better by not having housing. Or by having housing that you can’t afford.”