New mayor knows San Francisco’s issues
London Breed, the first black woman elected mayor of the city, knows the wealth gap from experience.
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco’s incoming mayor knows the yawning gap between rich and poor firsthand, having been raised by her grandmother in the city’s drug- and violence-riddled projects.
It is now the job of London Breed — the first black woman elected mayor of the city — to unite a wealthy but frustrated San Francisco, where the hightech economy has sent the median price of a home soaring to $1.3 million and where homeless tents and human waste fester on sidewalks.
People who know her say the 43-year-old Breed has the grit, drive and deep love for her hometown to tackle its problems.
“I know where she comes from. I know where she is currently,” said high school classmate Adonne Loggins. “It’s not an easy way to come up. A lot of people fall by the wayside, and she didn’t. That’s a tribute to her character and her willingness to fight.”
Lobbyist P.J. Johnston first met Breed in 1997, when they were working for then-Mayor Willie Brown.
“One of the things that always struck me about London is her drive is very much rooted in this life she’s chosen for herself, which is public service,” Johnston said.
Breed, currently president of the 11-member Board of Supervisors, was declared the winner Wednesday of this month’s eight-way mayoral election. The Democrat takes office next month.
She is only the second woman to become mayor of San Francisco. The other was Dianne Feinstein, now a senator.
Breed wants the technology sector to work with youngsters so that they have a real shot at sharing in the city’s immense wealth. She wants to build more housing more quickly and supports the use of legal conservatorships to get mentally ill people and drug users off the street and into treatment.
She has also promised to end long-term homeless tent camps within a year of taking office.
Breed has a blunt way of speaking and a down-toearth demeanor. She lives in a rent-controlled apartment in the city’s fashionably dilapidated Lower Haight neighborhood, blocks from the traditionally black Western Addition and Fillmore neighborhoods where she grew up.
Like many other residents of the city, she has been unable to afford a house. That may change; as mayor, she will be paid $326,527 a year.
Breed was raised by her grandmother Comelia Brown, a house cleaner who told a young London to make her bed, clean the kitchen and not even think about skipping school if she wanted to continue living in her house.
She drank powdered milk, and Christmas toys came from the firefighters’ annual giveaway. Her grandmother died in 2016 after a long struggle with dementia.
A brother ended up in prison, and a younger sister died of a drug overdose in 2006, but Breed earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis, and then a master’s in public administration from the University of San Francisco.
Loggins, a classmate at Galileo High, recalls an outspoken, stubborn girl active in school politics and the black student union who was itching to improve the system.
She was voted the girl in her senior class most likely to succeed.
For more than a decade, she headed the African American Art & Culture Complex, beefing up programs for at-risk youth and the elderly.
Amelia Ashley-Ward, publisher of the San Francisco Sun-Reporter, called Breed an example to “every young girl everywhere who wants to be something.”