Mayor London Breed Says She’s Just Getting Started

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

Mayor London Breed, a San Francisco native who steered the city during the COVID-19 pandemic, is promising voters she’ll see through the work she started in a second term.

Here are five key takeaways from our interview.

Personal ties to the overdose crisis motivate her public service

Growing up in the city’s public housing, Breed said she learned to “balance pride with the real problems” she witnessed, such as violence and drug addiction.

“My sister suffered from addiction. She lost her battle with drugs and lost her life,” Breed told KQED. “When I think about why I’m in public service in the first place, it’s because I’m trying to make sure this city makes the right kinds of investments to stop that kind of thing from happening again.”

That’s partly why she appointed Matt Dorsey, who is in recovery and drug addiction, to the Board of Supervisors. Together, the two have pushed for tougher consequences for drug dealers and users, including passing Proposition F in March, a controversial measure that requires drug screening and treatment for welfare recipients in order to receive cash assistance.

“When I’ve made hard decisions that I know people have criticized, including the arrest of people suffering from addiction to get them into treatment, or Prop F… that’s coming from people in recovery,” Breed said.

She wants the mayor to have more power

While her opponents for mayor have made promises to ax department heads such as the Chief of Police or the Director of Public Health, Breed said that firing department heads is “easier said than done.”

The incumbent has sparred with the police commission, which provides citizen oversight for the police department and would make recommendations for a new chief.

“I’m not interested in any names they would send me,” Breed said. “This has been a rogue commission. I don’t have the support I need to do anything right now.”

She accused her opponent, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, of pushing legislation over the years that has increased checks and balances between the mayor and the Board of Supervisors.

“Willie Brown could appoint any police commissioner or MTA commissioner without going through the Board of Supervisors,” Breed said.

“I’m not suggesting that the mayor doesn’t have a lot of authority. I am saying there are things the public would expect the mayor can do but we need to make changes so the mayor can do it.”

She says she’s rooting out corruption that predated her time in City Hall

Throughout Breed’s first term, multiple city officials and department heads were convicted for corruption and are now serving time in prison, including Mohammed Nuru, former head of the Director of Public Works, and former Public Utilities Commission General Manager Harlan Kelly, who was appointed by her predecessor, Mayor Ed Lee.

“Back when I first became mayor, it was very devastating. I was just coming in as mayor, and I had to make some really hard decisions, and I did that,” Breed said.

However, new corruption allegations have continued to follow Breed’s tenure, like the recent scandal at the Dreamkeeper Initiative, Breed’s hallmark program for the Black community, which is facing allegations of misspending and other ethics violations.

“We took the action to freeze funding, to do investigations, and ask for her resignation,” Breed said, referring to Sheryl Davis, who led the city’s Human Rights Commission until resigning in September.

“I am extremely hurt and disappointed by what has transpired. As a leader of the city, when you hire people, you put a lot of trust in them,” Breed said. “Even though I didn’t hire any of them, they still worked under my administration and I have to take responsibility.”

She vows to get more aggressive in clearing homeless encampments

Breed received accolades for her handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, the city faced increased criticism for an increase in overall homelessness, even as the number of sidewalk encampments has decreased. Breed touted her administration’s expansion of shelter capacity by 60% while also adding more units to the city’s permanent supportive housing stock.

After a Supreme Court ruling in June that allowed cities to enforce anti-camping laws even if there was no available shelter, Breed directed city crews to become more aggressive with issuing citations and removing encampments.

“We aren’t saying this is an option. We are saying this is the option,” Breed said. “It’s not to imply that it’s gone away, but we have better tools to combat it. And we are trying to reconnect people with the places that they came from.”

However, the majority of people (69%) who are homeless in San Francisco were living in the city at the time that they lost their housing, according to 2024 federal data.

She says challenges like homelessness are not ‘what defines us as a city’

Breed was raised by her grandmother in San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood before moving to attend the University of California, Davis.

There, she said, she experienced real “culture shock.”

“I didn’t know much about college until 10th grade. I didn’t understand what a higher education option looked like. It was about graduating from high school. That’s what my grandma pushed,” Breed said. “Then a recruiter came to my class, and I thought, ‘This is my way out of poverty.’ So from that point forward, I really worked hard and went above and beyond and tried to improve my grades.”

That experience showed her that while San Francisco struggles with unaffordability, homelessness, and overdoses, these problems “shouldn’t be completely what defines us as a city,” Breed said.

“What place would someone grow up in the most challenging of circumstances and grow up to be mayor? San Francisco is where, and I take a lot of pride in that.”