Image from It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)

London Breed Hates Your City

By Elim Geary

Are you voting in the mayoral election? Do you live in San Francisco? Do you love San Francisco? Would you prefer a beautiful, multicultural city to a grim Ayn Rand dystopia?

If so, then London Breed is going to disagree with you. Unless you are super-rich, London Breed is not on your side — and here is her record of saying so, through both words and actions.

Getting evicted?

London Breed thinks our tenant protections are too strong: “The other thing that we’re dealing with is that there are a lot of small property owners who won’t rent their properties out, not just because of rent control, but because of the laws that protect renters.” -London Breed

Breed has actively worked to eliminate rent-controlled units from SF housing stock

• Pushed to remove the limit on TIC conversions 2013, which destroys rent-controlled housing stock. Those efforts were almost certainly part of a promise to an organization known as Plan C, a “homeowner advocacy group” that spent over $100,000 on her behalf in her Supervisor election (that’s a lot for a Supervisor race!). Then, Breed did her best to remove any tenant protections in the final bill.

Breed supported landlords over the tenants they would be evicting

• Made sure that people getting evicted under the Ellis act don’t get payouts if their landlords fall into an exempt category.

Breed makes it easier for real estate speculators to profit off our housing misery

• Opposed Prop G (2014), a measure to tax property speculation (Here is more on Prop G from The Bold Italic)

Breed ignores the needs of some of the most vulnerable renters in the city: her own constituents

• Breed has done nothing for her constituents living in the Midtown complex. They are facing eviction by the city, and have repeatedly protested Breed’s inaction. You can read more of our coverage of Midtown and of London Breed’s role in it, here in the SF Phoenix.

Is your rent too damn high? London Breed will not help you.

London Breed hates immigrants: “And sometimes, the people who are in these different public housing developments — and I’m not discriminating against anyone, but sometimes they’re not even U.S. citizens” -London Breed

Breed worked to lower the amount of affordable housing in new construction

• Sponsored legislation to reduce the affordable housing requirements in new housing from 25% to 18%.

Breed accelerated gentrification and a reduction in affordable housing in her own district

• Breed’s legislation gave huge density increases to developers on Divisadero. As a result, the amount of affordable housing in her district actually declined during her tenure.

Breed made it easier for Airbnb to throttle our available housing stock

• Opposed Airbnb regulations, decreasing San Francisco’s housing supply by as many as 4,800 rental units — almost the total amount of market-rate housing that she wants to add in the next year. (Breed’s opposition to this is notorious.)

Homeless?

Breed supports criminalizing being homeless: “I still think we can make it work, because Sit/Lie was never about punishing anyone, it was about making streets safer, and we’re making strides in that direction. We all have the right to feel safe, and we need City government to put procedures in place to make sure that we do.” -London Breed

Breed supported sit/lie legislation:

• Supported sit/lie legislation in her 2012 campaign for Supervisor, claiming that increased enforcement would merely call attention to the problem.

Breed’s version of compassion is wanting to see more homeless people in jail

• Openly supports more police prosecution of the city’s homeless, claiming that the real problem is how hard they are to arrest.
• Supported anti-homeless Sit/Lie legislation when running for supervisor in 2012.

Breed makes empty promises on homelessness

• Campaigned for Supervisor on the promise of a navigation center in the Haight. Three years later, no center has been announced, despite calls from the local youth-oriented non-profits.

Breed doesn’t think health and human service workers — who provide support to the homeless — deserve a tiny, TINY raise

• Voted against a 1% wage increase for nonprofit health and human services workers.

Don’t want to get shot?

Breed blames the victims for police brutality: “If we are going to change the problems, we have to look inside our own homes and see if we have problems with our own children.” -London Breed

Breed supported a racist, murderous police force

• Amid police killings and a racist text scandal, refused to call for former Police Chief Greg Suhr to resign, despite community demands.

Breed doesn’t think it’s worth opposing police bias

• Called the post-Ferguson resolution recognizing racial bias in Police Departments “divisive” and voted against it.

Breed wants more of the same cops on the streets

• Supported a ballot measure in 2012 to increase police presence on the streets of San Francisco. Cast the deciding vote in 2015 to increase it further, without conditioning the funding on any anti-brutality reforms.

Breed supports criminalization of sex work and graffiti

• Refused to support decriminalization of sex work and prides herself on instituting up to 6-figure fines for graffiti.

Breed wants cops to be armed with additional lethal weapons, not trained in de-escalation

• Supports the use of tasers, even though evidence states that tasers cause more injuries: tasers kill people, while the police will still shoot the same number of people with guns and bullets. (You can read more about tasers here.)

Can’t drive?

Breed never even uses our public transit system

• In the SF Blog 22 day MUNI challenge, Breed rode the MUNI exactly once, despite the official city policy requiring SF Supervisors to ride the MUNI at least twice a week. By the way, the N-Judah line goes directly from her house to her workplace.

Breed thinks bicyclists are the problem

• Claims that bicyclists are the biggest obstacle to creating safe streets for biking. Fact check: it is actually the cars (that kill bicyclists). Unsurprisingly, the SF Bike coalition has endorsed Kim and Leno.

Breed REALLY hates bicycles

• Personally called Ed Reiskin, director of transportation at the SFMTA to force him to remove a bike share station on her block. Clearly, bikers will not be a problem if you keep them off the street altogether.

Breed siphoned money from public transit in order to build… more offices

• Denied public transit up to 30 million dollars in funding in order to increase construction of office space (which further creates demand for both housing, and transit) in the city.

Breed hates transportation sustainability solutions

• Will not support increasing the Transportation Sustainability Fee (TSF) by $5/square foot on commercial property.

Breed adores private tech shuttles

• Voted to allow private tech shuttles in public bus stops in violation of state law, putting more strain on our (underfunded!) transit infrastructure, and ignoring the resulting increase in evictions and rent hikes increase in the blocks near tech-shuttle stops.

Breed makes driving more perilous for our undocumented neighbors

• Opposes letting undocumented immigrants get driver’s licenses.

Believe in democracy?

London Breed responds to criticism: “Wow Tim, you are really a piece of work! Honesty? […] bullshit ass blog!” -London Breed, called out on her conservative leanings

Breed wants conservatives to make decisions for the city

• Packed the most influential committees, such as Land Use, with the most conservative members of the Board Of Supervisors, including putting Mark Farrell — the current interim mayor — in charge of Land Use.
• In fact, she has been actively courting San Francisco Republicans for their vote in the 2018 election. Do we really want someone who seeks the backing of Trump supporters in City Hall?

Breed doesn’t want to empower the citizens of the city

• In 2016, voted against Prop H in 2016 that would have create an independent watchdog Office of Public Advocate and Prop D that would have let people decide who should represent them when there’s a vacant Supervisor seat.

Breed loves to take money from sketchy billionaires, like Ron Conway

• Previously made, and delivered on promises to an organization known as Plan C, a “homeowner advocacy group” for the $100,000 spent on her behalf in the 2012 Supervisor election.
• Both openly, and covertly supported by Ron Conway, a billionaire tech mogul pouring money into the race through unlimited independent-expenditure committees.
• Had Ron Conway broker a meeting between her and the mayor of New York, Bill De Blasio, just a few days after Ed Lee’s death. Were you wondering why she has the support of so many national organizations? Follow the Conway.

Breed hates transparency

• Refuses to obey sunshine legislation, to the point where the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force asked the District Attorney for help. She was previously the only supervisor to vote against sunshine legislation requiring supervisors to keep and release work calendars.
• Breed has missed the most mayoral forums organized by community groups, preferring the company of her millionaire sponsors.

Breed’s campaign is riddled of ethics violations

• Violated campaign laws banning candidates from placing political advertisements on Muni shelters.
• Failed to register her campaign consultant with the city, despite providing payment more than twice in excess of the city’s limit. That’s an understandable failure, since $2,583 is nothing for a campaign operated from Ron Conway’s pockets.
• That is only the tip of ethics complaints against London Breed that have been filed with the SF Ethics commission in the last couple of months. Unfortunately, we are unlikely to see a ruling before the election is done.

This is our city. It belongs to all of us: immigrants, community activists, drug users, bicyclists, journalists, people of color, renters, transit riders, the homeless, the working class. London Breed and Ron Conway have been selling us out since 2012, and they don’t want to stop.

Is San Francisco better now than it was 6 years ago?

Elim Geary is waiting for the Bell Riots. They like cheap whiskey and strong protections for renters. Follow them online @gothracoon.