SF Mayor’s Race: Supervisor Ahsha Safaí Talks Homelessness, Accountability and Iranian Roots

San Francisco voters will choose their next mayor this November, and KQED’s Political Breakdown is bringing you interviews with all the top candidates.

Kicking things off is District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who was elected to represent portions of the Excelsior and Outer Mission neighborhoods in 2016.

Here are five key takeaways from our interview.

Backgrounds in labor and city planning underpin his approach to government

Safaí earned a master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he said he specifically sought to study how to run a city as mayor. (The Excelsior supervisor met his wife during his time at MIT, and the two moved together to her hometown of San Francisco in 2000.)

In practice, his city planning education has involved both top-level management, like spearheading audits of the city’s contracts and advocating for everyday workers.

Previously, Safaí served as the political director for the labor union representing janitors — an experience he said shaped his trajectory in politics to support working and middle-class families like the one he grew up in.

“This is a city that’s grown in a very strong dichotomy. We have the most billionaires in one location, and we have a lot of extreme poverty and low-income families,” he said. “The voices of everyday San Franciscans and making sure this is a city for everyone has been missing.”

Safaí is the only immigrant in the race

Raised by a single mom, Safaí moved to Massachusetts from Iran following the Iranian Revolution and is the only mayoral candidate not born in the U.S. He recalled difficult memories of growing up in the Middle East, including rolling power blackouts, gun violence and cultural erasure in schools. But, he said, the experience allows him to better represent the more than 30% of San Franciscans who are immigrants.

“The mayor has been catering to real wealthy interests and downtown,” Safaí said. “I knocked on thousands of doors and heard people’s stories of why they want new representation.”

Says we can’t “arrest our way out” of the drug and homelessness crises

A moderate Democrat, Safaí has attempted to contrast himself from some of his opponents who have come down harshly on street homelessness and drug-related issues. Safaí said the city needs to hold drug dealers accountable but criticized Mayor London Breed and candidate Mark Farrell for relying too heavily on sweeping encampments and arresting drug users as a solution.

Safaí pointed to overcrowding in the city’s jail population, which he said has been amplified by the renewed push to arrest drug users and people experiencing homelessness.

“The mayor’s approach has been ‘let’s arrest our way out of this drug and overdose crisis,’” Safaí said, calling the approach ineffective. “They are arrested, they clog the jails, then they are released.”

He advocates for more sober living options citywide and suggests increasing measures like offering bus tickets out of the city, a program San Francisco began in 2005. He also emphasized the need for more behavioral health beds, drug treatment facilities and overdose prevention sites.

“We can’t arrest our way out of this crisis,” Safaí said, deeming it “a public health crisis.”

Firing the SFMTA head is a “top priority”

If elected, the supervisor said one of his first priorities would be appointing a new head for San Francisco’s Municipal Transit Authority, a position currently held by Jeffrey Tumlin. He said riders have been frustrated by poorly communicated changes in service, while business owners, along with transit coordinators, are frustrated over delayed projects affecting foot traffic and sales.

“You can’t let department heads be there in perpetuity,” Safaí told KQED.

Safaí is campaigning on promises to better hold department heads accountable across the board. He helped kickstart audits of the city’s contracts with nonprofits, the first of which led to an FBI investigation finding that the group was illegally selling housing vouchers to friends and family.

He is also open to the idea of replacing San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott.

“He is the longest serving Chief of Police in the last 50 years,” he said. “It’s time to bring in some new leadership, and I think we can have that conversation about many, many departments.”

Willie Brown’s legacy shaped his pathway in San Francisco politics

Safaí got his start in city government, working as an intern to a city councilor in his hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts. That later helped launch his career in San Francisco’s City Hall, where he worked under former Mayors Gavin Newsom and Willie Brown, who was particularly influential on his leadership style, Safaí said.

“That experience, talking about working families and people that are trying to survive, gang violence and how it impacts every day, that was my beginning, and I got that start under Mayor Brown.”