Wondering why your rent is exorbitant, you have to search for months to find a home you can afford, and homelessness is rising? It all comes down to one major issue: San Francisco is way behind on housing construction. The city needs to build 82,000 homes by 2031 to meet our Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) goal, or an average of roughly 13,000 new homes each year. Here’s how we’re doing on that goal: in 2024, San Francisco built just a little more than 1,000 homes.

The results are in. San Francisco has a new mayor, the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors has changed for the first time in recent memory, common sense has returned to the school board, our elected officials are committed to enacting commission reform, and solving the fentanyl epidemic is at the top of the city’s agenda. This edition of City Hall Digest digs into exactly what happened in an historic election.

With just two weeks to go until the November 5 election, it’s been a chaotic week in San Francisco. There are massive changes at San Francisco’s public schools, and the Dream Keeper Initiative scandal keeps getting bigger. The latest City Hall Digest digs into the latest scandal at San Francisco City Hall, and the changes in store with a new SFUSD Superintendent.

Supervisor Myrna Melgar’s time in office has been inconsistent and chaotic, as she swings between rejecting and embracing the extremes on both sides of major issues.  It’s a frustrating situation for San Francisco’s District 7 residents, who have been asking for some pretty basic things from City Hall for years, with no real results from Supervisor Melgar. An ideal supervisor is able to find solutions and build coalitions to get sh*t done. Myrna Melgar hasn’t found that balance. Her failure to remain consistently in touch with her constituents’ needs ultimately prevents us from endorsing her. 

We’re officially one month away from the next election. New political stories are dropping daily, and candidates for San Francisco mayor are scrambling to gain a last-minute advantage. The latest edition of City Hall Digest gives you the insight you need about the latest developments in San Francisco.

Dean Preston has served one term as District 5 Supervisor—in that time he’s been an uncompromising ideologue who puts his own personal values ahead of San Francisco’s wellbeing. He’s the only Democratic Socialist on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, and he’s not doing the organization any favors. So far, his primary accomplishments as an elected official have been calling for studies and yelling at people on X (formerly known as Twitter) before finally logging off for good last year. Instead of advancing genuinely progressive policy that improves people’s lives, he uses populist language to empower himself at the expense of his constituents.