{"id":30621,"date":"2023-12-15T21:02:49","date_gmt":"2023-12-16T05:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=30621"},"modified":"2023-12-15T21:04:54","modified_gmt":"2023-12-16T05:04:54","slug":"s-f-supervisor-dean-preston-blames-capitalism-for-san-franciscos-homelessness-and-drug-crises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/12\/15\/s-f-supervisor-dean-preston-blames-capitalism-for-san-franciscos-homelessness-and-drug-crises\/","title":{"rendered":"S.F. Supervisor Dean Preston blames capitalism for San Francisco\u2019s homelessness and drug crises"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Aldo Toledo<\/a> Dec 12, 2023 (SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Supervisor Dean Preston speaks during Board of Supervisors meeting at City Hall in San Francisco. Preston is interviewed in a new documentary about San Francisco\u2019s homelessness and drug crises.Scott Strazzante\/The Chronicle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Supervisor Dean Preston argues in a new documentary that capitalism is to blame for San Francisco\u2019s ills including rampant drug use, homelessness and crime in the Tenderloin, prompting critics to question the logic of the supervisor, who\u2019s the only Democratic Socialist on the board. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new investigative documentary by the British outlet UnHerd \u2014 founded by British Conservative Party political activist Tim Montgomerie \u2014 explores how San Francisco has failed to deal with its homelessness, drug use and crime problems and how the Tenderloin is ground zero for the city\u2019s ills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preston said in the film that the neighborhood\u2019s problems are \u201cabsolutely the result of capitalism and what happens in capitalism to the people at the bottom rungs\u201d of society.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe biggest driver of why folks are on the street is because they lost their jobs, income, or were evicted from their homes, usually for not being able to pay rent,\u201d Preston told the UnHerd interviewer. \u201cSo, you have major landlords literally causing folks to lose their homes, and real estate speculation making it impossible for folks to find an affordable place to live.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics of Preston point out that San Francisco\u2019s housing crisis has helped drive the homelessness crisis by driving up rent. The city has been deemed the toughest place to build homes in California. <\/a>They point out that San Francisco has some of the toughest renter protections in the country, making it more difficult for speculators to push out vulnerable tenants.  

Since the documentary aired, Preston\u2019s face and quotes have been plastered over conservative outlets like Fox News, the Daily Mail and Daily Wire. Preston is up for reelection in 2024 and moderate groups are trying to unseat him, including the political action group GrowSF, which is running the \u201cDump Dean Preston\u201d campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDean Preston votes against building more housing, votes against businesses, and he doesn\u2019t care about crime that\u2019s affecting our residents and our small business community,\u201d the Dump Dean website says before listing \u201c31 Reasons to Dump Dean Preston.\u201d

Preston, who represents District 5 \u2014 which encompasses the Tenderloin, Japantown, Western Addition and Haight-Ashbury \u2014 has consistently criticized Mayor London Breed and other lawmakers for leaning on law enforcement to address open-air drug use and rampant drug dealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe approach that we\u2019ve taken is very inconsistent as a city \u2014 ramping up enforcement activities, whether it\u2019s sweeps of homeless people or drug users, doing a series of arrests usually tied with some news cycle \u2014 and then, a few days later, a few weeks later, a few months later, the same thing happens,\u201d Preston said in the film. \u201cArresting drug users has not made our city any safer. It\u2019s actually made it less safe: it increases overdoses.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

UnHerd has been\u00a0criticized for its often conservative-leaning bias<\/a>\u00a0in the way it reports certain stories. Montgomerie has been a longtime conservative political commentator and worked in the administration of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He also has promoted far-right, antisemitic views in the past that misrepresent Marxist scholarship,\u00a0according to the Independent,<\/a>\u00a0a United Kingdom news outlet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview with the Chronicle, Preston said it was \u201cpretty clear\u201d to him that UnHerd has a \u201cstrong bias\u201d about him and his policies when he began the interview for the documentary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that homelessness is a \u201cprime example\u201d of what happens when \u201cyou turn the basic needs of human beings over to private interests,\u201d which is \u201cthe heart of the approach under capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked why other cities have been able to deal with problems that San Francisco can\u2019t seem to address, Preston said cities across the U.S. are also facing affordability crises, and that San Francisco is not unique. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said a UCSF study<\/a> that noted that 90% of unhoused people in California are from the state \u201cshows how economic pressures, people losing income, and losing their jobs\u201d is one of the \u201cbiggest drivers of homelessness in California.\u201d He said people can\u2019t exit homelessness because of \u201crunaway housing prices\u201d due to \u201cvery wealthy owners who continue to profit from our cities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a more socialist society, Preston said, San Francisco would look like Vienna, Austria,<\/a> where about 60% of people live in \u201csocial housing\u201d \u2014 public housing and other limited-profit housing. If the state were to repeal the Costa-Hawkins act \u2014 which limits a city\u2019s ability to impose controls on rent prices \u2014 and the Ellis Act \u2014 which allows landlords to give just-cause reasons for evicting tenants \u2014 and then invest in permanently affordable housing options, San Francisco could start to look more like Vienna, which has all but eliminated homelessness.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he said the \u201cproblematic combination\u201d of capitalism and its \u201ccorporate Democrat\u201d defenders are making that goal nearly impossible. He criticized Mayor London Breed for her refusal to spend money raised from property sales over $10 million<\/a> to buy more land for affordable housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the folks who argue that more capitalism and less regulation is a solution to San Francisco\u2019s housing costs, I would argue it\u2019s the exact opposite: It\u2019s only the market interventions around rents, around creating affordable housing, that continue to allow any low-income or working-class people to exist here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reach Aldo Toledo: Aldo.Toledo@sfchronicle.com<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dec 12, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Aldo Toledo<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adalberto \u201cAldo\u201d Toledo is a city hall reporter with The San Francisco Chronicle covering the mayor and Board of Supervisors. He is a Venezuelan American from a family of longtime journalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before joining the Chronicle in 2023, he reported on Peninsula governments and breaking news for the San Jose Mercury News. He also has bylines in the Dallas Morning News, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Champaign, Illinois News-Gazette.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raised in Texas, he studied journalism with a print news focus at the University of North Texas Mayborn School of Journalism, where he worked as News Editor for the North Texas Daily student newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He can be reached at Aldo.Toledo@sfchronicle.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Aldo Toledo Dec 12, 2023 (SFChronicle.com) Supervisor Dean Preston argues in a new documentary that capitalism is to blame for San Francisco\u2019s ills including rampant drug use, homelessness and crime in the Tenderloin, prompting critics to question the logic of the supervisor, who\u2019s the only Democratic Socialist on the board. … Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[712],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30621"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30626,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30621\/revisions\/30626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}