The San Francisco playgrounds hitsvery dates back to 1927 when the area where the present playground and center is today was purchased by the city for 27,000. In the 1950s, the sen consider was expanded by then mayor robinson and the old gym was built. Thanks to the passage of the 2008 clean and safe Neighborhood Parks bond, the Sunset Playground has undergone extensive renovation to its four acres of fields, courts, play grounds, community rooms, and historic gymnasium. Here we are. 60 years and 14 million later, and we have got this beautiful, brandnew rec center completely accessible to the entire neighborhood. The new rec center houses multipurpose rooms for all kinds of activities including basketball, line dancing, playing pingpong and arts can crafts. You can use it for whatever you want to do, you can do it here. On friday, november 16, the dedication and Ribbon Cutting took place at the Sunset Playground and recreation center, celebrating its renovation. It was raining, but the rain clearly did not dampen the spirits of the dignitaries, Community Members and children in attendance. [cheering and applauding] democracy, and our leaders would not be where we are today without the career leader of ruth bader ginsburg. The league of women voters is a San Francisco nonpartisan political nonprofit. The league never endorses candidates, however, we do take stands on issues. We are committed to providing the resources that voters need to exercise this most fund amountal right of our democracy and be assured that our votes will be counted. Please remember that you must be registered to vote by october 19. All registered voters will receive a mail ballot in early october, and options for inperson voting will be available, as well, both early and also on election day, november 3. Please visit our website at lwvsf. Org vote where you will find all of the resources that we offer. The league of women voters is a nonprofit organization. If you would like to get involved, please contact us or go to our website. I would like to introduce our moderator tonight, [inaudible] she was appointed by Governor Newsom as the chief of staff to the California PublicUtilities Commission in 2019. Well come, luong. Thank you, and welcome, candidat candidates, to the forum for district 11 board of supervisors candidates forum. First, id like to remind you of our ground rules. Responses should be on the issues and policyrelated. Candidates are expected to be respectful of other candidates and asked to not make personal attacks on other individuals. Here are the procedures for this evenings forum. The candidates will have the opportunity to make 90second opening and closing statements. Opening statements will be in alphabetical order by first name. Closing statements will be in reverse alphabetical order by first name. Each candidate will have 90 seconds to answer questions. Each candidate will have the opportunity to answer the same number of questions. Any rebuttals may be included in the candidates closing statement, which will be 90 seconds. A count downtimer will be displayed with a visual indication. The aspect of the forum will be equally fair to all candidates. Thank you to our attendees tonight. You are in listenonly mode. The q a and chat features are not active. This forum will be ordered and made recorded and made available on our website, lwvsf. Org, our youtube channel, and sfgovtv channel. Tonights forum will give you an opportunity to learn before you vote on november 3. Now, lets begin. You will start off with 90second statements in alphabetical order. [inaudible], and thank you for participating in this forum. Please introduce yourself, tell us which neighborhood you live in, and why you are running for district 11 supervisor. Well start with ahsha safai. Youre on mute. Okay. Sorry. My name is supervisor ahsha safai. Thank you to the San Francisco league of women voters for having me tonight. Ive proudly represented this district for the last four years. When i first ran for office, i had just been working with organized labor for almost a decade and cared deeply about being a strong voice for working families. Distri district 11 has one of the highest concentration of children and people under 19. We are the backbone of this city, the people that get up and make San Francisco work fore every single day, and for the last four years, ive been a strong voice for those families every day. Whether it was our green jobs legislation, whether it was ensuring we chad accessible affordable child care or a woman chief of staff when i was elected board of supervisors. This week honoring justice ginsburg, im very proud to say that the San Francisco political womens committee, along with planned parenthood of Northern California has given me their sole endorsements. Ive been a fighter and working hard for my district. Im very proud, and i look forward to another four years. Thank you. John avalos. Good evening. Its really great to be here. Im john avalos, and im a 22year resident of district 11. I live in the excelsior neighborhood of district 11. Im a father of two, fiance to raquel redondiez, and living with her. Have a senior at balboa high, and a balboa graduate living with us in this neighborhood. Im very honored to have this opportunity to experience representing people in district 11, minorities, people of color, working class, people who are teachers restaurant workers, a lot of people who are dealing with unemployment at this time. We are in a real difficult situation with the pandemic and the economic crisis that were in, and looking to bring back all of my work i did at the board of supervisors, working citywide to make sure we could have the resources for the entire city, but also working with residents here in district 11 so make sure we can build our parks and commercial corridors, making sure we have child care for our families, that we have families, support for our schoolworkers. Thank you. Marcella marcello colusi. Thank you. My name is marcello colusi, and i am running for district 11 supervisor. I am running because i was a worker in peoples homes at one time, and they were shocked about whats going on in our city. I think we need to not do politics in between and do what is the most efficient for our residents. Thats actually why im running for supervisor district 11 San Francisco. Thank you. Now well move onto our questions for tonight. Well start with ahsha. How do you define Affordable Housing, and what specific steps will you take to increase Affordable Housing in district 11 . Thank you. When i first got on the board of supervisors, we were able to engage on the Inclusionary Housing Program on the city. Its where we asked project sponsors to set aside a certain amount of housing as affordable. But the question was affordable for who . Affordable for so long has been defined as extremely lowincome. And what that meant was teachers, janitors, nonprofit workers could afford to live in district 11, working class neighborhood, could no longer afford to live in San Francisco. So im very proud to say we were able to expand the definition slightly, and prior to me coming into office, probably about 17 upts nits of Affordable Housing. We have built 600 units, with 2,000 in the pipeline. We have worked with the mayor to purchase the citys largest acquisition in history, making 25 units affordable in perpetuity. Thank you. Marcello, same question. Youre on mute. Thank you. Affordable housing for me is the people that work in our neighborhoods for minimum wage can afford here. I dont think thats going to end until the city of San Francisco does what [inaudible] when you think about it, they have 40,000 employees, they have 12 billion budget. The only reason that the housing is so expensive, the only reason the housing is so expensive is the builders are trying to make a profit. The moment you cut profits in between, it will be stop. The city needs to it will not stop. The city needs to open their own nonprofit. They have the opportunity, and they have everything to do it. John . Thank you. Affordable housing, to me, is where our housing costs no more than what a household of 120 area Median Income can afford, where theyre paying no more than 30 of their income for housing. I also believe that we need to be building housing no more than that, that rate, but also a large the largest amount of housing that is deeply affordable. Here in district 11, we have a lot of households that are bundled up into single homes and need relief. A lot of them are very lowincome and would benefit from having deeply Affordable Housing. For me, ive been working for years to expand finances for housing, Affordable Housing in San Francisco, looking at various sources from our general fund to housing bond. I actually wrote the housing bond on 2015, and i wrote with the mayor of San Francisco the Housing Trust fund in 2012. Im excited about propositions i and propositions k that are on the ballot that are going to tax real estate transfers to bring in money for creation of municipal housing. Pr prop k would allow the city to create Public Housing, and i want to create a public bank that would shape how we create Public Housing to benefit all of San Francisco. Thank you. For the next question, well start with marcello. How about you ensure that the current residents of district 11 will be able to remain in their homes given the increased cost of living in San Francisco and the economic downturn due to the covid19 pandemic . Its going to have to involve everyone the landlords, the tenants, the city. You have landlords that are making money on the properties, you have landlords that are barely making it or going on the rent, and because of that, you have to go case by case to figure out who can do it and who is in deep trouble so that the moment that those landlords are going to lose their homes to [inaudible] and the same issue. The banking industry, as soon as they get a foreclosure theyre going to start kicking people out. Were going to have a huge crisis, and we cannot have that. We have to work [inaudible] political issues trying to work for our residents and actually give our people, keep our residents at home. Thank you. John . Its really tough to see whats happening right now for a lot of People Living in the city and, of course, in district 11 households who are unemployed or getting less unemployment money are now making difficult choices, whether to pay rent or mortgage or the food on the table. These are reallife issues and have a lot to do with what weve been experiencing for years but are now heightened during the pandemic and this economic crisis. As supervisor, i created and worked on various methods to allow people to stay in their homes. Advancing tenant protections, we need to expand in that. As supervisor, i made it illegal to destroy rental housing, and that has protected thousands of units here in San Francisco and district 11. Ive also made it easier to set up a. D. U. S and accessory dwelling units are able to stay up and running. We have funding available through the city and d. B. I. For people who want to modify those. Ive worked to create principle reduction programs in San Francisco so that we can actually ensure that a wide variety of people, homeowners and renters can stay in San Francisco and not be threatened by the crisis that were in and actually have faith that we can keep our residents here in the city. Thank you. Ahsha . Thank you. I think theres a this is a very good question. Its about the immediate. Its about what we are going to do right now, today, because people are being he ievicted. Theyre getting sick and losing their jobs . One of the things we were able to do as supervisors were creating an eviction moratorium, so no one will be evicted during this Health Crisis. Myself and dean preston and others put that forward. But we also need to have rental assistance. If people have rental assistance, they will be able to pay their rent and the help they need to pay their mortgages. District 11, 94112, has the highest number of requests for rental assistance, and weve helped to facilitate that working with the q foundation. On a daily basis, people are calling us for assistance paying their rent. The other thing we need to do is open up our economy back in a safe manner. Weve moved to orange. Myself and supervisor peskin worked on legislation thats called our healthy and hotel ordinance. That will allow people to go back to work. When people go back to work, they have to go that they will be safe in their job, so we created 80 hours of sick leave to help them. Thank you. So the next question will start with john. What are your plans to bring equity and jobs, education, and Economic Development to the black communities in district 11, especially in the lakeview and sunnydale neighborhoods . Thank you. Im proud to have worked on the local hiring ordinance. Back in 2010, i was the sponsor of it and worked closely with the African American community, with mike brown, who is the director of inner city youth at that time, to make sure that we were creating jobs with our public funds when we actuality built actually built municipal buildings. Thats resulted in people being able to find jobs in the Building Trades here in San Francisco. And as supervisor are, ive actually worked over the years to develop the Lakeview Community collaborative, the Lakeview Community collaborative that is a number of organizations working together for a budget that serves them, that keeps programs running and going. Its been great to see that the work is ongoing, and based on that organization that we initiated back in 2010, that its a Workforce Center now on broad street. And as supervisor, i want to do much more to actually look at the private sector and how we can do local hiring in the private sector, and anyone that wants to be doing setting up shop here at the office of economic and workforce development, to be able to provide Small Business support to hire local residents. Thank you. Ahsha . Thank you. Its a great question. If the folks in district 11 have felt ignored and not given the help they need, the blake families in lakeview felt even more like that. We looked at where the incarceration rate, drop out rate, homeless rate was, and based on those statistics from day one, we asked for and advocated for resources to go into black lakeview. We opened up the first jobs center in the district in that regard, right there on broad and capital. The mayor and i cut the ribbon on that last year. We are building a brandnew library in that area of town. We have invested in blackled organizations. I. T. Book man, inner city youth, and i. T. First, all of which are invested in, promoting, and assisting the black community and youth. I think thats what equity looks like. We didnt wait until the recent movement of black lives matter, weve been doing that from day one. Another thing is empowering and uplifting folks from the black community to lead and advocate for themselves. Thats what happened in a movement we called invest black. Many folks in the Community Led that. They put their stamp on broad street, and were very, very proud of that work. Thank you. Marcelo . I personally think that [inaudible] and what we have to do is train people to actually [inaudible] and to train them to work with their own businesses, even if it [inaudible] when somebody can have a Small Business in their house, they will not have to commute. They will be producing money on a daily basis, and part of my idea is yujust to have Small Businesses over the place who can support each other. When you have Small Businesses working for corporations, and those corporations close down shop, and they leave, and those peoples are out of work. When you have a Small Business thats owned by the residents of the neighborhood, those Small Businesses survive, and they they thrive, and thats when the economy comes back. The idea is to push it, as much as we can, to train and to actually work with the residents to be able to open their own businesses. Thank you. For the next question, well start with marcelo. What do you consider to be the most important Infrastructure Improvements and projects needed for district 11 . How did ywill you advocate fore projects . I think safe streets, to be able to walk to the store. [inaudible] i think that part is huge for our community basically because, like, the other candidates say, we have the most children most children will be able to say in their houses. They will be able to go to Public Schools, and the Public Schools [inaudible] well actually give that allocation to our kids, and those kids will be able to [inaudible] coming from all over the place in