Mayoral Priorities

Since the pandemic, Mayor Breed has made numerous investments to support San Francisco’s economy and downtown core, which includes Downtown, South of Market, Union Square, Civic Center, Yerba Buena, and Mission Bay. In June 2022, Mayor Breed launched the City’s Economic Core Recovery Initiative which is a partnership between the city and the private sector with a goal of driving people back to the core faster, so that the small businesses, service workers, and others that depended on the activity that tourists and office workers generate can stabilize and begin to recover.

Mayor Breed continues to create more housing and shelter to help make homelessness rare, brief, and one-time only. While there remains a lot of work to do, San Francisco is making progress on this goal. Between 2022 and 2019, San Francisco saw a 15% decrease in the number of unsheltered residents on city streets, and a 3.5% decrease in overall homelessness among individuals, youth, and families.

Under the Mayor’s Homelessness Recovery Plan, launched in July 2020, the City set a goal of creating 1,500 new units of permanent supportive housing over two years. As of June 2022, the City has exceeded this goal by creating almost 3,000 new units as well as just under 1,500 prevention and rental assistance slots. This is the greatest expansion of permanent, supportive housing in 20 years. Building on the success of Shelter in Place hotels, Mayor Breed has also created new non-congregate shelter through cabins, vehicle triage sites, and opened shelters with shared bathrooms and single or double rooms. Additionally, Mayor Breed has invested in resources to ensure that existing housing has adequate operational and services support so that people can thrive once they exit homelessness.  

As part of her initiative to help those suffering from mental health and substance use disorders on City streets, Mayor Breed has added hundreds of mental health stabilization beds, authored conservatorship legislation to help those who are unable to help themselves, supported state law changes to reform mental health laws, opened the City’s first drug sobering center, and launched a Street Crisis Response Team, which has responded to over 10,000 crisis calls since the program launched in November 2020.

Mayor Breed recognizes that law enforcement and the communities they serve must work together to build a safer city. Since becoming Mayor, she has launched targeted efforts to address the public safety needs of residents, including increasing police foot patrols, re-hiring retired officers and community ambassadors to patrol high-traffic locations, creating multi-racial neighborhood safety patrols, and continuing to promote responsible, effective criminal legal reform.

Understanding that economic inequity, substance disorder, and behavioral health crises are often at the root of criminal activity, the Mayor has made intentional investments to create economic opportunity for residents from birth to adulthood, reconstitute the mental health system of care, and improve the efficacy of diversion from the criminal legal system.

In addition, in June 2022, Mayor Breed announced her investments to expand community-based outreach teams to improve upon San Francisco’s response to non-emergency and non-medical calls. The Street Crisis Response Teams (SCRT), Street Wellness Response Teams (SWRT), and Street Overdose Response Teams (SORT) are all deployed to provide a non-law enforcement response to those struggling with behavioral health issues on the street.  

To make San Francisco more affordable in a time of increased housing costs, Mayor Breed is focused on adding more housing at all income levels by streamlining bureaucracy and cutting permitting times to get housing approved and built faster. To this end, she has proposed legislation to streamline the approval of affordable and mixed-income housing projects and has supported state legislation aimed at removing local obstructions to new housing being built across the entire state.

Mayor Breed has also supported the investment of more than $1 billion in affordable housing, including successfully passing a $600 million affordable housing bond. Thousands of units of affordable housing have been constructed under Mayor Breed’s leadership in partnership.

Mayor Breed is pushing to make San Francisco a cleaner and more resilient City, addressing the urgent threat of climate change by moving forward ambitious environmental goals through her Climate Action Plan. To reach these ambitious targets, San Francisco is addressing climate change from all angles: housing, transportation and land use, energy, buildings, zero waste, and healthy ecosystems This includes transitioning to 100% renewable electricity by 2025 and reaching net-zero emissions by 2040. In addition to reducing emissions and harmful pollution, policies in the Climate Action Plan promote economic recovery, workforce development, racial and social equity, public health, and resilience.

Access to clean, affordable electricity is at the heart of San Francisco’s strategy for reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions and improving the health and well-being of communities across the city. Under Mayor Breed’s leadership, San Francisco has advanced programs that reduce carbon emissions and promote equitable access to clean energy in San Francisco, including discounts for 100% renewable energy for low-income customers, rebates to replace fossil fuel powered appliances, and incentives for installing electric vehicle charging infrastructure. To reduce pollution from transportation, Mayor Breed has committed to increasing low-carbon trips to at least 80% and electrifying all vehicles that remain on the road by 2040. To accelerate the adoption of zero emission vehicles and expand public charging infrastructure, she has passed legislation that requires parking garages and lots to install charging infrastructure, and another ordinance that makes it easier to open standalone charging locations.

People in San Francisco should be able to get around our city safely, reliably and comfortably, regardless of whether they walk, bike, take Muni or drive. Since her time in office, Mayor Breed has championed a transportation system that supports the city’s economy and our workforce. During the pandemic, Mayor Breed oversaw the transformation of Muni to prioritize service for essential workers and healthcare hubs. At the onset of the pandemic, Mayor Breed created the Shared Spaces program, rethinking how we use our parking spaces to revitalize the city's commercial corridors and support our local businesses. In addition to Shared Spaces, the Mayor has directed SFMTA to implement major efficiency and reliability improvements for Muni. Major lines like the 22-Fillmore and 14-Mission are operating faster, more frequently and more reliably than they have in decades, and as a result have ridership levels that exceed pre-COVID numbers.

Even as Muni had to reduce services levels due to its hiring freeze, Mayor Breed ensured that Muni’s Equity Priority Neighborhoods received the highest level of service – including adding the new 15-Bayview Hunters Point Express, which dramatically reduced commute times for essential workers. Mayor Breed has also directed staff to implement all audit findings to ensure SFMTA projects are delivered on time and on budget. As a result, SFMTA has made dramatic changes to their project development, procurement and management processes, with most projects begun in the last two years now being on-time and on-budget.

Mayor Breed champions the City’s Vision Zero Policy that aims to eliminate traffic fatalities from our streets. She oversaw the SFMTA’s quick-build program that delivers street projects at one-tenth the cost of traditional projects in one-fifth the time. The program has delivered over 27 street safety projects, including over 20 miles of new protected bike lanes, to help make our streets safer for everyone on our streets. And, in Spring 2022, Mayor Breed spearheaded the legislation to convert JFK Drive into a promenade to expand our City's access to open, recreational space.

Advancing equity has been at the forefront of all Mayor Breed’s investments to address the City’s most pressing issues. Across economic recovery, housing, homelessness, public safety, climate change, and COVID-19 recovery, Mayor Breed’s programs center the needs of San Francisco’s most marginalized communities.

To ensure that all San Franciscans have access to a thriving economy, Mayor Breed has invested in workforce development opportunities for local residents. This includes her Opportunities for All initiative, which is providing more than 4,000 paid internships for youth to gain the skills and experience that will propel them into their future careers, with a special focus on youth of color, who make up 95% of participants. Mayor Breed’s Dream Keeper Initiative is investing $60 million annually to address economic and other disparities facing San Francisco’s diverse Black communities. The Dream Keeper Initiative supports City and community-led programs that ensure that Black leaders, entrepreneurs, and professionals continue to thrive in our city. Mayor Breed has also been committed to ensuring that low-income San Franciscans have access to crucial safety net programs and public benefits to meet their basic needs regardless of their socioeconomic status.

San Francisco’s housing and homelessness crises have disproportionately impacted our lowest income residents and our communities of color. Mayor Breed’s investments in her Homelessness Recovery Plan, as well as her efforts to build housing at all levels of affordability are in direct response to the racial and social disparities that have come to define our housing market and conditions on our streets.