PRIORITIES | Dean Preston SF

DEAN'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS

DEAN has been standing up for our neighbors and neighborhoods and getting results for twenty years. Since becoming Supervisor in December of 2019, Dean has already fought to to secure affordable housing, tackle homelessness, protect small business and help victims of car break-ins.

PROP D VACANCY TAX TO HELP SMALL BUSINESS

San Francisco is the least affordable city in the nation. It has only gotten worse in recent years as we exceed luxury housing production goals while consistently missing our goals for creating affordable housing. As Supervisor, Dean will fight to preserve the affordable housing we already have to prevent further displacement, require more affordable housing from developers, and push for bold steps to create at least 10,000 units of affordable, social housing.

SOCIAL HOUSING. Dean will work to create 10,000 units of municipally-owned social housing, on public land, with innovative resident-controlled governance.

VACANCY TAX. In the midst of a housing crunch, an estimated 33,000 units in San Francisco may be currently vacant. A vacancy tax would encourage owners to put their vacant units back on the market.

100% AFFORDABLE HOUSING ON PUBLIC LAND. Any housing built on public land in San Francisco must be 100% affordable.

SAVING MIDTOWN. Dean has been working with the residents of Midtown Apartments, a District 5 city-owned housing complex that was designed to be resident owned, cooperative housing, to save their homes from demolition and them from displacement. He will continue this effort as Supervisor and work to protect and improve all public, subsidized, and co-op housing.

JOBS-HOUSING LINKAGE FEE This per square foot fee on office developers for affordable housing hasn’t been increased in over a decade. Dean supports updating the fee to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for affordable housing.

PASSING THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING BOND (Prop. A) and teacher housing (Prop. E) in November. These measures are critical to stop San Francisco from falling further and further behind.

TENANTS' RIGHTS

Renters are being driven out of our City by rising rents and unfair evictions. Dean’s been on the frontlines fighting for renters for twenty years. He believes everyone should have a right to an affordable, safe, and secure home. He founded California’s only statewide tenant rights organization, Tenants Together, which led the fight to save rent control, and in 2018 he wrote Proposition F – the landmark measure that gives renters facing eviction the right to an attorney, free of charge.

FULL IMPLEMENTATION OF PROP F, THE RIGHT TO COUNSEL FOR TENANTS FACING EVICTION. Thousands of tenants are evicted from San Francisco every year. The only other right to counsel law in the nation reduced evictions by nearly half in a year. This measure will stop more evictions than anything our city has done in a generation.

LICENSING LANDLORDS and getting rid of the bad apples. SF’s worst landlords abuse tenants, get caught, but are free to keep buying buildings and victimizing more tenants. Real estate agents, lawyers, bar owners, and drivers are licensed, but landlords are not. We need to license SF’s biggest landlords to make sure they follow the law.

PASSTHROUGH REFORM to protect tenants from excessive bond and seismic costs. Right now, tenants pay 100% of their landlords’ seismic retrofit costs, and 50% of their landlords’ costs to service voter approved bonds. Dean will lead long overdue efforts to protect tenants from these charges.

REPEALING COSTA HAWKINS & ELLIS ACT at the state level. As founder of Tenants Together, Dean has spent over a decade building the statewide movement to topple state laws that fuel mass evictions. San Francisco has a crucial role to play in this effort. Dean will continue to bring advocates together to win statewide change.

HOMELESSNESS

San Francisco is in the midst of a homelessness crisis. We have a budget of over $12 billion per year, yet we still have thousands of people living on the streets. The City’s ineffective, inhumane, and expensive sweeps of people from one corner to the next must end, and we must focus on real, effective solutions to our homelessness crisis. Dean was an early and strong backer of the landmark Prop. C in 2018, a tax on SF’s biggest corporations to fund solutions to homelessness.

FULL FUNDING of 2018’s PROP. C! Community organizations wrote and passed Prop. C in 2018 after the city’s failure to address our homelessness crisis. Now, big corporations that don’t want to pay their fair share sued to block the measure in court. Dean will stand up to these corporations and do everything possible to ensure full and prompt funding of prop. C.

HOMELESSNESS COMMISSION to oversee departments and spending. With hundreds of millions of dollars at issue, a commission is essential to provide transparency and accountability. Dean’s opponent cast the deciding vote to kill the proposed commission. If elected, Dean will partner with Supervisor Haney to create the Commission.

BAN ON HOMELESS SWEEPS. Despite City denials, homeless advocates confirm that sweeps continue in San Francisco. These sweeps are expensive, inhumane, and ineffective at solving our homelessness crisis.

NAVIGATION CENTER IN DISTRICT 5 and in every district. The last two D5 Supervisors have promised a D5 navigation center since Dean first raised the issue in 2016, but nothing has come of their promises. For Dean, a navigation center in D5 is a top priority. He’ll convene the neighborhood meetings to make it happen.

MUNI, BIKES, PEDESTRIANS

As an everyday MUNI rider for over 20 years, Dean understands the frustration of commuters in San Francisco. Far too often, buses run late or are too crowded to get on and have an overall on-time performance of only 55%. Our streets are congested like never before, and pedestrians and cyclists face increasing risks of injury or death. Dean believes we need to make major changes to get the world-class transportation system San Francisco so desperately needs.

EXPANDING AND IMPROVING MUNI SERVICE TO GUARANTEE 30 MINUTE TRIPS within the city, as proposed by SF Transit Riders. We must make riding MUNI superior to car travel in San Francisco.

REDUCING MUNI FARES NOW; FREE MUNI BY 2025. Dean’s proposing a 2020 ballot measure to tax the biggest corporations to raise the funds needed to cut fares in half and put us on the path to free public transportation. At a time when Uber has admitted its business plan is to get commuters off public transit and into private vehicles, Free MUNI is essential for the future of public transportation and our environment

SEPARATED BIKE LANES, SEPARATED INTERSECTIONS, AND A NETWORK OF CAR-FREE STREETS, including Market Street. Bicycles and pedestrians should be able to travel in San Francisco without fear of collisions with high speed vehicles.

GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT ACHIEVING VISION ZERO. We’re five years into the 10 year plan to eliminate pedestrian and cyclist deaths and serious injury, and yet fatalities are rising. Seniors are disproportionately impacted. Dean supports the Vision Zero Coalition’s call for a declaration of emergency and immediate action, including speed reduction efforts.

STANDING UP TO THE UBER TAKEOVER OF OUR STREETS– supporting an Uber Tax and more! City Hall has sat by while tens of thousands of unregulated vehicles have taken over our streets, with resulting congestion citywide. We need to enforce our traffic laws against Uber at the corporate level and demand geo-fencing to combat congestion.

RACIAL EQUITY & JUSTICE

With increasingly racist rhetoric and policies at the national level, San Francisco needs to take the lead in addressing all forms of racism head on. Our schools are deeply segregated, and the black and brown population of our City has plummeted, and our criminal justice system disproportionately targets people of color. In a city where under 4% of residents are African American, 50% of those in jail are African American. Meanwhile, employment and housing discrimination are rampant.

ENSURING INDEPENDENCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY for the recently created Office of Racial Equity.

LOCAL RIGHT TO RETURN LEGISLATION. for those who were displaced by redevelopment, eviction, and gentrification. Portland just launched a program of this kind which included down payment assistance for those who seek to return. Expanding San Francisco’s program to cover displaced tenants will help reverse decades of displacement of people of color.

CLOSING SF JAILS AND MAKING OUR CITY A LEADER IN ENDING MASS INCARCERATION. With the African American community bearing a disproportionate burden of our system of mass incarceration, Dean supports fundamental criminal justice reform that focuses on transformation rather than incarceration. Dean supports current efforts to close the Juvenile Detention Center.

SMALL BUSINESS

Small businesses are an essential part of the economy and our neighborhoods. Today, most are barely surviving in San Francisco. As a former small business owner himself, Dean knows what local businesses are facing in our neighborhoods. Dean will listen to small businesses and take action to help alleviate some of the burdens that they face.

A VACANT STOREFRONT TAX to address prolonged vacancies that are plaguing our neighborhood commercial corridors. The City already requires vacant storefronts to be registered with the Department of Building Inspection, but there are no penalties for prolonged vacancies. A vacancy tax will encourage commercial landlords to rent to small businesses rather than leaving their properties empty.

A PUBLIC BANK TO MAKE LOW-INTEREST LOANS to small businesses. Momentum for a municipal bank is growing. Once in place, the bank can prioritize loans to emerging and struggling small businesses.

MENTORSHIP AND TRAINING PROGRAM to connect experienced business owners with struggling businesses and new entrepreneurs. Modeled after the SCORE program of the Small Business Administration, San Francisco needs a program for experienced business owners to provide one-on-one pro bono counseling to struggling businesses. As a volunteer program, the costs would be minimal, and in many cases, this would help save businesses from closure.

REGULAR MEETINGS WITH D5 MERCHANTS to learn and strategize with small business owners.

PUBLIC SAFETY

District 5 is suffering from an uptick in gun violence in recent months, including fatal shootings within a block of the Northern police station. Meanwhile, car windows are smashed daily, and property crime is on the rise. We must not fall into the usual, failed political response of calling for increasing police budgets and tougher policing. Too often, our criminal justice system is a cause, not a solution, for crime. Dean believes we need to fundamentally change our approach to crime and criminal justice, prioritizing harm reduction, prevention, restorative justice, decarceration, and victim compensation.

CREATING AN INDEPENDENT OFFICE OF NEIGHBORHOOD SAFETY. Prevent crime and reduce gun violence without armed police intervention using an innovative and effective community-based model tested in Richmond, CA

SPEARHEADING A COMMUNITY CAR BREAK-IN PREVENTION & RESPONSE PROGRAM. Prevent break-ins before they happen by organizing a mutual-aid program of community representatives, and help victims with mobile clean up, window replacement, and victim reimbursement

DECLARE PEDESTRIAN AND BICYCLIST STATE OF EMERGENCY. Jumpstart pedestrian safety efforts and accelerate creation of safer bike lanes and intersections.

LGBTQ

Dean has been battling the displacement crisis that has disproportionately targeted queer San Franciscans and will work tirelessly to prevent and tackle our homelessness crisis. Dean will always stand with vulnerable and marginalized residents, especially the LGBTQ community. Dean is the sole endorsed candidate of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, as well as LGBTQ leaders like Tom Ammiano, Harry Britt, Raphael Mandelman, Mark Leno and Cleve Jones.

IMPLEMENTING PROP. F WITH OUTREACH TO THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY to assert their new right to counsel against evictions.

PROTECTING LGBTQ YOUTH, INCLUDING SERVICES FOR HOMELESS LGBTQ YOUTH IN THE HAIGHT. Inexplicably, City Hall has failed to help the Homeless Youth Alliance re-establish a permanent space for a drop-in center in the Haight.

BATHROOMS WELCOMING TO ALL, INCLUDING FOLKS WHO ARE TRANS OR NONBINARY. San Francisco should set a clear example for the nation for what inclusivity looks like.

IMMIGRATION

With increasing anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies at the national level, San Francisco needs to stand stronger than ever for protecting the rights of immigrants. Dean is from a family of refugees–his father and grandparents narrowly escaped Nazi Germany. He will always stand up to discrimination against immigrants and fight to make sure immigrants are treated with respect.

Defending San Francisco’s Sanctuary City law, no matter what. Dean will stand up to the Trump-inspired narrative on immigration and proudly defend our Sanctuary City law.

Right to Counsel in deportation proceedings. San Francisco took a big step two years ago in expanding our legal services for detained immigrants facing deportation, but 68% remain unrepresented. Dean believes everyone deserves representation when critical human needs are at issue, including eviction, child custody, and deportation proceedings. Dean will work with the Public Defenders’ Office and nonprofit organizations to ensure that all immigrants facing deportation get a lawyer.

Stop the displacement of our immigrant communities by real estate speculators. Dean has led efforts to confront Ellis Act evictions which have forced so many immigrant families out of the Mission, Chinatown, and other neighborhoods. On the board, he will support legislation to strictly limit condo conversions and expand opportunities for Community Land Trusts and other efforts to save affordable housing.

ENVIRONMENT

We are facing a climate emergency, with scientists saying we have a decade to act to avoid catastrophe. San Francisco needs to take urgent action and serve as a model for the nation. Dean is proud to be endorsed by the Sierra Club, and he is ready to fight for our future. As Supervisor, Dean Preston will push for a Green New Deal for San Francisco to shift from fossil fuels to clean energy and prioritize overhauling our failing public transportation system.

Green New Deal for San Francisco. Like national efforts led by AOC, San Francisco needs a local green new deal to move us to 100% renewable energy

Municipalizing PG&E for public power. The decades long struggle for public power has gained mainstream support. Dean supports SF’s effort to buy PG&E, so long as we don’t overpay and effectively bail out the company.

Protect Parks and Open Space. Dean will work to protect our parks, prevent privatization, expand car-free days in Golden Gate Park, and keep our open spaces natural and beautiful.

Free MUNI and a network of Car-Free Streets, including Market Street. Transportation is a top source of pollution in the bay area and in San Francisco. Acting locally to reverse climate change means getting as many people as possible on MUNI and out of private vehicles.

HEALTH and HEALTH CARE

With the cost of health care skyrocketing and treatment centers reaching capacity, the demand for accessible health care options in San Francisco is higher than ever. Dean is committed to supporting solutions like Mental Health SF, a measure that would provide thousands of San Francisco residents with necessary mental health care and substance use treatment. Moved by the high costs and serious medical issues for individuals and families arising from inadequate dental care, Dean also intends to move forward with the nation’s first municipal dental health program by expanding Healthy SF to cover dental costs.

Supporting national movement for Medicare for All. Dean is endorsed by the lead House sponsor of Medicare for All, Congressmember Pramila Jayapal. Dean is a longtime supporter of efforts at the state level sponsored by CNA to pass Medicare for All in California.

Launching the nation’s first Municipal Dental Health Program. It makes no sense that our health care covers a broken bone but not a broken tooth. Families and seniors suffer disproportionately the health and financial consequences of a failed system that does not include necessary dental work as part of healthcare. Dean will champion legislation to expand Healthy SF to cover necessary dental work.

Passing Mental Health SF. Dean was an early supporter of Mental Health SF and is working closely with the authors to place this crucial measure on the March 2020 ballot.

PUBLIC EDUCATION

As a public school parent, Dean understands the importance of public education for our city’s future. Dean is the sole endorsed candidate of the United Educators of San Francisco (K-12 educators) and the American Federation of Teachers Local 2121 (City College educators). He championed groundbreaking legislation to stop evictions of teachers during the school year, the only law of its kind in the nation. Dean will fight against public school privatization and will always stand with teachers, students, and families.

Standing firm against the diversion of public funds to new charter schools. The charter school movement is trying to gain a foothold in cities across the state. Dean pledged to not take their campaign donations and will continue to resist this privatization of education.

Fully funding teacher pay increases authorized by Prop. G. Educators are underpaid in our society. Prop. G brought some essential increases. Dean supports educator demands for better compensation. Ultimately, Dean sees no reason our educators should be paid at least as much as firefighters and police.

Supporting Proposition E, which includes housing for educators on public land. Educators should be able to live in the city where they work. We should prioritize housing for educators on public land. That’s why Dean fully supports Prop. E.

Reversing ongoing racial segregation in SF schools. Dean’s extended family includes the late Dr. Zuretti Goosby, the first African American School Board president who fought for school integration during the civil rights era, and Dean will do everything within his power to continue that fight and reverse segregation in our schools.

EMPLOYMENT & LABOR

San Francisco’s economy has grown at a monumental pace during the past decade, but not everyone has reaped the benefits. Small businesses are being pushed out, income inequality is growing, and the gig economy is replacing stable, long term employment. Meanwhile, city workers and programs face threats of privatization in everything from healthcare to education. Dean believes that there is power in numbers and that labor organizing is the only thing that can shift the power dynamic and improves the lives of workers. That is why Dean is a regular on picket lines and will always stand with workers. Dean is committed to making sure our local economy works for all, not just those at the top.

Enforce AB 5 to stop unfair misclassification of workers. Dean will stand up to companies like Uber that have already made clear that they will violate AB 5 by continuing to treat employees as contractors, in violation of the law.

Citywide municipal green jobs program and standing against outsourcing of municipal jobs. Dean has been on the frontlines with workers protesting the DPH’s downsizing of the Adult Resource Facility (ARF) and staff cuts at Laguna Honda.

Repealing City Charter’s ban on right to strike for City workers. Currently, the San Francisco Charter prohibits city workers from striking and requires new employees to sign off on their waiver of this right. It’s unfair and wrong, and strips workers of bargaining power.

Supporting Union organizing efforts and demanding employer neutrality and card check in all industries -- breweries, hospitals, pet care clinics, ferries, hotels, airline caterers, etc. Dean will continue to be there for workers striking or rallying for better pay, benefits, and safe staffing.

Reforming Hotel Tax Revenue for more stable funding for the arts. District 5 has key music and art venues, so arts funding is particularly important for our district.

Expanding art and music offerings for youth. Music and arts funding for school and after-school programs has been slashed. Dean supports statewide reform -- including the 2020 Prop. 13 commercial property tax reform measure -- to recapture lost revenue for our schools.

Regular music/art Gathering in the D5 Supervisors office!

ARTS

San Francisco has been a haven for artists, musicians, and writers, but the affordability crisis is threatening our vibrant arts culture like never before. We must do better to protect our artists, musicians, and all those who have made SF a center for creativity and expression. As a former owner of a local music venue, Dean is a strong supporter of the arts. He supports Hotel Tax Revenue - funded by visitors drawn to SF - being used to fund the arts. Come by the D5 office (after the election!) for monthly music/art gatherings - a great way to support our local artists.

Reforming Hotel Tax Revenue for more stable funding for the arts. District 5 has key music and art venues, so arts funding is particularly important for our district.

Expanding local art and music offerings for youth. Music and arts funding for school and after-school programs has been slashed. Dean supports statewide reform -- including the 2020 Prop. 13 commercial property tax reform measure -- to recapture lost revenue for our local schools.

Regular music/art Gathering in the D5 Supervisors office!

CAMPAIGN FINANCE & LOCAL DEMOCRACY

With the green light from the Supreme Court in Citizens United, corporate money is overwhelming our democracy. Dean believes we need to fight back at the local level while we push for change nationally. Dean supports the Sunlight on Dark Money Ballot Measure, and, once in office, he wants to ban developer contributions to supervisor candidates. He also plans on launching a Democracy Voucher Program so that all voters -- not just those with money -- can donate to campaigns. Dean wants to expand voting rights in municipal elections to the greatest extent possible.

Passing Sunlight on Dark Money Ballot Measure this November. Dean was an early supporter and is committed to plugging up loopholes through legislation at the board and through this ballot measure.

Banning developer contributions to supervisor candidates. Los Angeles is doing this, and San Francisco should as well. We should not have developers donating to officials who will be making decisions on their developments.

Launching Democracy Voucher program (like Seattle’s) in which voters get “democracy dollars” that they can give to the candidate of their choice. Dean will launch this innovative program which will give a greater voice to low-income voters and communities of color in our elections.

Expanding voting rights to noncitizens, parolees, and youth in municipal elections.

YOUTH

Now more than ever, we need our youth engaged to solve the problems adults have failed to solve over the decades. Youth are inheriting a climate crisis, an affordability nightmare, and staggering inequality and debt burdens. They deserve a greater voice in the decisions that impact them.

Voting rights for youth in municipal elections -- Vote 16!

Investing in public schools and after-school programs.

Finding a permanent home for the Homeless Youth Alliance and other services for homeless youth in D5 and across the city.

Dean’s platform is a living document that has evolved throughout the campaign thanks to input from supporters like you. Please email us your ideas!