Meet the D5 supervisor candidates

Incumbent District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston faces four challengers as he seeks a second full term in office in the November election.

State of play: District 5 includes areas around the Panhandle, the Haight-Ashbury, Lower Haight, Japantown, Western Addition, Hayes Valley and parts of the Tenderloin.

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• Preston, a staunch progressive, has drawn the ire of GrowSF , the moderate political organizing group backed by local tech billionaires and millionaires.
• Last week, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed Preston, while the San Francisco Democratic Party endorsed challenger Bilal Mahmood.

By the numbers: Preston leads the fundraising race, with a little over $320,000 raised (about $163,000 in public financing ), followed by Mahmood, who has raised over $318,000 ($255,000 in public financing), according to the city's ethics commission .

• Grow SF 's PAC has raised nearly $300,000 in opposition to Preston.

Meet the candidates: Axios asked each D5 candidate the same question: If you had a magic wand, what housing policy would you implement or overhaul if elected and why? These were their responses.

Dean Preston, incumbent D5 supervisor

Supervisor Dean Preston at a Board of Supervisors meeting in December 2023. Photo: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

Preston said he would repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, which limits rent-control ordinances, so he could "immediately legislate lower rents in San Francisco."

• He'd then create 50,000 units of "social housing to house low-income, working-class, and formerly homeless people," as well as "fill the tens of thousands of empty homes across our city."
• Of note: An empty homes tax , championed by Preston, is slated to go into effect next April to incentivize landlords to rent their empty properties.

Bilal Mahmood, private and philanthropic organization founder

Bilal Mahmood at an election watch party in 2022. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Mahmood said he'd "fix San Francisco's broken permitting system" because "there's too much red tape" in building affordable or middle-income housing, which drives up the cost of development and rent.

• He said he would make investments in technology to speed up the application approval process and would help build affordable housing more quickly by limiting the process that allows neighbors to weigh in on home building.

Scotty Jacobs, former brand management director

Scotty Jacobs. Photo: Courtesy of Scotty Jacobs

Jacobs said he would eliminate certain "cumbersome" and "inefficient" processes for building zoning-compliant affordable and market-rate housing developments.

• That would include discretionary review, environmental impact review and public comments, he said.
• "City Hall must get out of the way to ensure the cost of completion comes down, more units come online, and that we build higher, denser, and faster."

Allen Jones, activist

Allen Jones. Photo: Courtesy of Allen Jones

"Our housing policy is so convoluted/screwed up, it is hard to pick through the various policies to figure out what is good and what needs to change," Jones said.

• "Therefore, I would use my magic wand to make a trash can appear for San Francisco's entire housing policies."

Autumn Hope Looijen, community organizer

Autumn Hope Looijen. Photo: Courtesy of Autumn Hope Looijen

Looijen said she'd address what she calls the No. 1 barrier to building housing: financing.

• "I'd like to finance construction costs for middle-income housing by using future rents," she said. "This is a realistic strategy to build housing for teachers and essential workers."
• She noted that District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin suggested a similar plan that would finance homes using tax-exempt bonds and thinks "it's worth a serious look."

What's next: The election is Nov. 5, with vote-by-mail ballots expected to arrive by early October.