Local Candidate Questionnaire: Christine Johnson, 2018 Candidate for San Francisco Board of Supervisors
Here at TechEquity, we believe that voting down the ballot is crucial for active, local citizenship. While a lot of the national spotlight is on congressional races, there are a multitude of local candidates that have the potential to make significant impacts on your communities.
We’ve reached out to candidates for San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Oakland Mayor, City Councillors of Oakland and Berkeley, and CA State Assemblymembers to answer our five-part questionnaire. Check out our index of the seats on the ballot and the candidates who have responded to our questionnaire.
Below are the questionnaire responses from Christine Johnson, 2018 candidate for San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Disclaimer:
We’re a nonpartisan 501c3 non-profit, which means we cannot and do not endorse candidates. With that in mind, we gave every candidate that we could reach an opportunity to fill out our questionnaire.
Displayed are the unedited answers from each candidate as they came to us. We are publishing these questionnaires to educate voters on candidates’ positions; we do not endorse their positions nor statements.
Candidate’s Name:
Christine Johnson
Office for which Candidate is Seeking Election:
Board of Supervisors
Jurisdiction in which Candidate is Seeking Election:
San Francisco District 6
Candidate’s Website:
www.christineford6supervisor.com
Ed Lee will be remembered in large part for his work to grow San Francisco’s tech economy by creating incentives to attract tech businesses to the city. What elements of his policies would you retain and what would you change?
The growth of the tech economy in San Francisco has allowed us to become a global center of innovation and more than doubled our annual general fund size in the past 10 years. However, we have not seen commensurate innovation in the public sector to take advantage of the growth. Many of the policies that Mayor Ed Lee introduced may be in need of reconsideration because we are in a different place in San Francisco’s growth. When the Mid-Market tax incentive was introduced, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that major tech companies would want to locate here. When the private shuttle policies allowing vehicles to use public bus stops was implemented, many of the larger companies still didn’t have major SF offices. The move from the payroll tax to the gross receipts tax was an acknowledgement that many tech companies did not employ as many people per dollar of revenue as other industries. Therefore, I am supportive of having fresh conversations on the necessity and structure of these types of policies in San Francisco. My goal would be to maintain the growth and success of the tech economy while accounting for the issues of today.
Beyond policies that directly impact companies in the tech sector, I am focused on improving the environment for all San Francisco residents and companies. I have the experience and specific strategies to get moving on accelerating housing development with the BHAG goal that no one pay more than 30% of their income towards housing. This is a key issue for everyone but for the tech sector I am highly concerned we are becoming a city where only the top executives of tech companies can afford to live here.
San Francisco needs a middle class to survive. I am also hyper-focused on improving quality of life for everyone by tackling homelessness and advocating for enforcing our laws that relate to drug use on the streets, property crime and violent crime. Finally, I will seek to make the government accountable for the state of our public spaces so we can truly have clean, safe streets.
The housing crisis is the most urgent issue for our members, and it is TechEquity’s top advocacy priority this year. What is your view on how we can solve the housing crisis and make the Bay Area an affordable place to live for people at all income levels?
We need to build more housing of all kinds, full stop. It will take money, public will and a re-envisioning of the approval process not just in San Francisco but in other parts of the Bay Area/California. A selection of potential changes are below.
In San Francisco:
- I want to San Francisco to comply with State Law that allows for by-right development of ADUs. Most ADUs in San Francisco will be built in existing multi-family buildings. I would also provide financial support for property owners who are willing to add Additional Dwelling Units (ADUs) to their properties. Many property owners are already working to finance required soft story earthquake retrofit work — adding ADUs should be a natural extension of that work.
- I will commence overhauling the Planning Code and General Plan to make requirements for residential development objective so we can have true by- right development. The biggest impediments to expanding by-right project approval in San Francisco are (1) the lack of specificity in our Planning Code and General Plan and (2) overly broad definition of discretion that allows for too much uncertainty in too many points in the housing production process.
- I will strengthen our Planning Code and General Plan to encourage property owners to maximize current density. More than 60% of housing land area in San Francisco hosts single family homes but only 38% of our land area is actually zoned for single family homes. As a Planning Commissioner, I promoted the concept of requiring that building permits for extensive work demonstrate that the property has maximized the lot zoning to gain approval. This would be a smart, low-impact way to help produce more housing while we work on more extensive changes. Long term, I believe that more of the City needs to be rezoned to allow for multi-family development in every neighborhood.
Regionally:
- Support legislation such as AB 2923 to allow development on publicly owned land such as BART property.
- Strengthen regional agencies such as MTA to have more authority over regional housing development.
How will you address the homelessness crisis? Do you think the City’s current budget allocation for homelessness is adequate? What solutions do you think are working, and what else would you implement?
To date homelessness has seemed intractable because there are multiple causes: high housing prices, the ravages of the opioid crisis, lack of supportive housing for seniors, disabled and the mentally ill and lack of shelter beds. As a City, we have to stop being overwhelmed by the complexity of the issue and start taking steps forward.
The number one action we need to take is to make sure we are providing an adequate number of shelter/Navigation Center beds. San Francisco has been effective in producing more long-term supportive housing units over the past 10 years. However, we need more transitional facilities, such as Navigation Centers. The nightly wait list for a shelter bed is 900–1000 people long. When outreach teams, the police and other first responders reach someone who is homeless, most times they can’t offer any real help. This must end — not only so we can get people out of crisis situations but also so we can begin enforcing our quality of life laws such as Sit/Lie and the Tent Encampment ordinance. Enforcing these laws will improve the state of our streets and public spaces for everyone and allow us to tackle other issues with our street life including violence and property crime.
For those who are homeless and experience other complex issues such as mental illness and/or severe addiction, I believe we need to (1) pass a local conservatorship ordinance and (2) fund appropriate facilities such as locked in-patient medical facilities and detox centers.
The current annual budget for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing is approximately $290 MM. San Francisco spends much more than that on homelessness generally when all costs are accounted for. The city currently lacks a true accounting of the full costs. It is one reason why I support an audit of all Health and Human Service spending in San Francisco — which comprises more than 50% of general fund spending. That said, I support Prop C, on the ballot in November. We need a general restructuring of our budget and spending priorities — but we also need revenue now to fund thousands of Navigation Center beds, detox beds and supportive housing units.
How would you create more stability for renters in our city, especially for low- and middle-income renters?
As a legislator, I will have two goals related to helping renters (1) ensuring equal access to all types of rental housing (market rate, inclusionary, public housing, rent-control) regardless of status including income, disability, family status, etc. and (2) creating stability for renters in their current housing. San Francisco has some of the strongest tenant protection laws in the country but there are still blind spots. I will be devoted to closing these gaps through legislative and administrative changes. Potential changes I would immediately look into include:
- Updates to the inclusionary housing lottery system to make it less opaque and inequitable. A required report to HUD on impediments to fair housing in San Francisco noted that the Inclusionary Housing Lottery System was an impediment to fair housing access;
- Better tracking of the disposition of rent controlled housing stock to make sure this stock is occupied by primary occupants (rather than sub-leased) and that there is better advertising of available rent-controlled housing. This can be accomplished through a better process with the Rent Board and the Assessor-Recorder’s office;
- Right to universal counsel to combat abusive techniques to force tenants out of housing without legal eviction. Proposition F, which passed locally in June 2018 provided legal counsel in cases of eviction — when a tenant may already be in court and out of options;
- Potential for growing our Housing Trust Fund to better fund universal rental subsidies to assist rent burdened families with housing affordability.
How do we modernize the city’s transit and mobility system to accommodate the rapidly-changing needs of the city’s residents?
I am committed to the true vision of a Transit First San Francisco. It is the only way that we will achieve our greenhouse gas emissions goals, Vision Zero goals, reduce congestion, improve air quality and help reduce inequity. However, since the Transit First policy was introduced into the City Charter in the 1970’s, we have evolved in our understanding of transit and mobility. As Supervisor, I want the City to embrace private services, properly fund and expand mass transit and begin reorienting our curb space to accommodate how our public spaces are used today. Changes I would like to see include:
- Continued implementation of the San Francisco Bicycle Network strategy. Class 1 protected bike paths can serve cyclists and those who use shared scooter services.
- Implementing universal use of Clipper Card for all mobility methods.
- Work with partners regionally and across the State to finance the capital budget gap so we can fully implement our mass transit strategy.
- Push forward real planning of BART and Muni rail expansions to the North and West side of San Francisco.
A longer-term goal is to implement congestion pricing. Congestion pricing implemented at minimum on our downtown area would help to reduce traffic and raise revenue that can fill our capital budget gap. A 2017 report from the SF County Transportation Authority demonstrated that only 29% of TNC drivers regularly driving in the city were from San Francisco. This same report found that nearly 60,000 additional vehicles were added to our roads daily from TNC traffic. Changing this ratio would decrease overall GHG emissions and vehicle miles travelled in the region without meaningfully reducing TNC service in San Francisco.
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