Supervisor Joel Engardio’s Views on San Francisco Issues
I still believe in San Francisco. I know there’s a lot to fix and it can feel daunting. But the city we love can realize its full potential — if we are willing to address today's problems with equal doses of innovation and common sense.
As supervisor, I’m focused on getting the basics right: safer streets, better schools, more middle-income housing, and vibrant small businesses.
We deserve to live in a city that works.
I’m a forward-thinking and sensible Democrat. I will always listen to your concerns and fight for common sense solutions to your problems. I embrace innovation and I’m focused on results.
Let’s create our best San Francisco.
Joel supports criminal justice reform. For it to succeed, residents must feel safe and victims cannot be ignored. Reform and safety go together.
That’s why Joel believes we must:
— Prosecute serious crimes and repeat offenders while pursuing criminal justice reform and police accountability. Put victims first.
— Arrest and prosecute the dealers of deadly fentanyl. Open air drug markets cannot be tolerated in San Francisco.
— Fund crime prevention community programs and give severely mentally ill and drug-addicted people the treatment they need. Offer both harm reduction and recovery services for users suffering from addiction, and compel it when necessary to save lives.
— Recruit a new generation of reform-minded police officers to re-staff the SFPD shortage.
Every resident of San Francisco should care about schools because our city’s future depends on keeping families here.
Families leave San Francisco for many reasons: cost of housing, quality of life — and schools. Well-run public schools are essential for a city to function and thrive. Good public schools are possible only when we give teachers what they need for success.
Better teacher and paraprofessional pay is a must. To attract and retain the most qualified and motivated educators, we must pay a living wage so teachers can live in the city where they teach. We also need to provide the basics. We have elementary schools that lack heat, soap, and chairs that fit 1st graders.
Academics should be a top priority while acknowledging the social and emotional needs of students. Today’s kids have experienced a level of trauma from pandemic closures to school shootings that their parents and grandparents never had to contend with. Learning for the current generation will require feeling safe and secure. They will need extra support to heal.
We must treat parents like partners and offer the courses and programs that will make parents want to choose public schools. This includes advanced classes for high-performing students — and 8th grade algebra. Parents want more public magnet schools in language, arts and sciences. We need permanent merit-based admissions at Lowell High School and the creation of more Lowells across the city. We also need a school assignment system that lets more kids attend their neighborhood school.
This is the equation we must follow: Support teachers + center students + partner with parents = good schools.
Joel is a westside homeowner. He knows many westside residents are looking for new types of housing to meet their needs. Young families want affordable apartments that will allow them to stay in San Francisco. Seniors want the option to downsize to an apartment in an elevator building where they can safely age in place without leaving their neighborhood. Building multi-family housing will help grandparents remain close to their grandkids.
Our future depends on being able to keep seniors, young adults, and middle-income families in San Francisco — along with welcoming newcomers who bring their talents and diversity to our city. We can do this by embracing more multi-family housing that can coexist with single-family homes and complement the westside neighborhoods we love.
Joel also knows housing is an equity and environmental issue. Improving San Francisco’s diversity depends on building new housing that a middle income family can afford — and ensuring that enough of our existing housing stock remains rent controlled. To address climate change, we need to drive less and reduce suburban sprawl. This requires building more housing near public transit.
Housing is essential for addressing homelessness. We must also address the underlying causes of human suffering on our streets, including mental illness and drug addiction. Successful treatment is dependent on having a safe place to get well.
For people suffering from mental illness, we need enough beds for every level of care: acute, subacute, and community residential. We’re woefully lacking in subacute and community residential facilities. Addressing this will require making it a state and federal priority. We must expand conservatorship laws and support Governor Newsom’s statewide Mental Health Care Court, while also investing in a new generation of mental health facilities that can provide compassionate treatment.
We need to offer enough beds in shelters and navigation centers so people always have a safe place to sleep, while we build more units of permanent housing of all types. Tent encampments blocking sidewalks are not a viable option. In addition to shelter beds, we need transitional housing combined with supportive programs. The “tiny homes” concept is a good example.
[Click to read Joel's full platform on homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction]
Small businesses were closing in San Francisco long before the pandemic. The reason was City Hall’s excessive fees and regulations.
Starting a business in San Francisco can range from maddening to impossible because City Hall bureaucracy is designed to stifle good ideas. It’s time to cut the red tape and roll out the red carpet for entrepreneurs and artisans who want to open businesses. We can’t afford to hinder the new ideas that will revolutionize our merchant corridors in a post-pandemic world.
That’s why Joel helped organize the effort to make outdoor dining permanent — a lifeline to small businesses that kept our favorite restaurants alive. He also started the first-ever Sunset Night Market to give local merchants a boost.
While the tech industry is an important driver of San Francisco's economy, small business is the backbone of our neighborhoods. City Hall needs to streamline the approval process for new businesses, waive fees, and reward entrepreneurs. We need public servants who will foster creativity and innovation. City Hall must get out of the way and let every idea have a chance to be the one that saves our local economy.
[Click to read Joel's full platform on saving small businesses]
San Francisco’s budget is gigantic: $14 billion. It doubled the past decade, far outpacing population growth. If $14 billion isn’t enough to have twice-as-clean sidewalks and twice-as-fast Muni, we need to change how the money is being spent.
City Hall must stop treating residents like an ATM and focus on getting basic services right. We must audit every city-run program and only pay for what works.
We deserve an innovative city government that is fiscally responsible, free from corruption, and fully transparent.
[Click to read Joel's full platform on fiscal responsibility]
We face climate change and a massive pivot from gasoline to electric (and self-driving) cars. It’s time to invest in many different modes of transportation that fit everyone’s needs while saving the environment:
— A citywide network of protected bike lanes. Safe passage will make biking a viable option for people of all ages, especially with electric and pedal assist bikes.
— A more efficient, robust, and solvent Muni. Not everyone can ride a bike and public transit is a lifeline for many.
— Build more subway tunnels and bus rapid transit lanes, while ensuring infrastructure projects don’t become boondoggles.
We live in an urban setting and parks are essential for our wellbeing. San Francisco is a 49-square-mile peninsula with more than 800,000 residents. We can’t take open space for granted. That’s why our parks must prioritize recreational activities and access for everyone.
We must protect our open spaces, mitigate the effects of climate change, and reduce carbon emissions to zero. Local actions matter when it comes to global concerns about the health of our planet.
Small actions are important. There are many mini-parks and patches of neglected land sprinkled throughout our neighborhoods. Improving and maintaining these areas is a cost-effective way to create the additional space residents need. Every spot that can fit a picnic, a yoga pose, or a nap under a tree helps.
We can do big things, too. Like creating an iconic oceanside park at the Great Highway. The weekend pilot has brought joy to three million visitors in a short time. Now voters will decide in November 2024 whether to make it full time and official. We could call it the Great Sunset Park.
We also have the opportunity to create an Emerald Necklace for San Francisco — a continuous path of green space from Lake Merced, along Sunset Boulevard, to Golden Gate Park, to an oceanside park on the Great Highway, to the bluffs at Fort Funston, and connecting back to Lake Merced.
The 2.5 miles of parkland on either side of Sunset Boulevard is key. This open space is underutilized and poorly maintained. There is potential for recreation on one side (including bike and running paths) and a biodiversity corridor on the other side for native flowers and migrating butterflies.
[Click to read Joel's full platform on parks and environment]
The tech community is an important contributor to San Francisco’s dynamic economy and culture. Tech workers are creators and artists. They are our colleagues, friends, neighbors and family members. They contribute to San Francisco’s vibrancy and diversity, continuing a long history of newcomers transforming the city for the better.
We must ensure City Hall embraces innovation and is free from corruption.
The definition of progress is forward movement and continuous improvement. We won’t solve San Francisco's challenges by being stagnant, looking backward or shouting at history to stop happening.
Creating our best San Francisco will take innovation. We need to embrace the future, embrace change and manage it with common sense solutions.
As a gay man, Joel arrived in San Francisco looking for a better life — just like many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people who came before him.
When Joel met his husband in San Francisco, they didn't believe they would ever be allowed to get legally married. For Joel and Lionel, it was a triumph to walk down the aisle. But in many parts of the world marriage equality still does not exist for same-sex couples.
In the United States, LGBTQ people can still be denied housing and healthcare in many states. Transgender people continue to face terrible discrimination and violence. Some states have passed laws that try to erase the mention of LGBTQ people in public schools, which will hurt both LGBTQ youth and the kids who have LGBTQ parents.
There is still much work ahead to ensure that all LGBTQ people can live fully and equally, and Joel is committed to leading the fight.
Joel is a dog person and he knows that dogs are loved as members of many families. Dogs are good for kids, seniors and our souls. They bring neighbors together and help build community.
We need more shared, open space for families and responsible dog owners to safely play and relax together. This includes areas where dogs can run off-leash and areas for people who do not want to interact with dogs.
We can also be good stewards of the environment without overly restricting where people and pets can go in our parks.
[Click to read Joel's full platform on dogs]