Prior to being elected by voters in an historic June 2018 election, Mayor Breed served as Acting Mayor, guiding and leading San Francisco following the sudden and tragic passing of Mayor Edwin M. Lee.
Mayor Breed first entered public office when she was elected by voters to the Board of Supervisors in November 2012 representing District 5, which includes the Fillmore/Western Addition, Hayes Valley, Lower Haight, Haight-Ashbury, Japantown, Alamo Square, North of Panhandle, Cole Valley, and Inner Sunset neighborhoods. In January of 2015, her colleagues elected her President of the Board of Supervisors. She was re-elected to represent District 5 as Supervisor in November 2016 and unanimously re-elected as Board President two months later.
As the President of the Board of Supervisors, Mayor Breed served as the 2nd-highest ranking official in San Francisco, leading the legislative body of the city and overseeing a $10 billion budget with more than 30,000 employees
As Supervisor, Mayor Breed passed legislation to increase housing along transit corridors and landmark legislation prioritizing neighborhood residents for affordable homes built in their communities. She helped secure critical funding needed to transform unused public housing units into permanent housing for 179 homeless families and led the effort to renovate thousands more. Most recently, she successfully negotiated and passed legislation acquiring the blighted McDonald’s site on Haight and Stanyan Streets which will be used to build 100% affordable housing.
Mayor Breed also fought for more Navigation Centers to help reduce homelessness and launched the Safe Injection Services Taskforce to study and evaluate innovate approaches to helping those struggling with IV drug use, an effort which when implemented has the potential to save lives and get individuals into needed treatment. She has also been a strong advocate for reforms to San Francisco’s conservatorship programs to ensure those struggling with severe mental illness have the services and help they need.
Mayor Breed has worked diligently on improving public safety for all San Franciscans. In 2014, Mayor Breed addressed the City’s ambulance response crisis, improving safety for everyone and cutting ambulance response times by more than 26 percent. She helped put hundreds of new officers on our streets, advocated for key reforms to our police department, and passed a comprehensive overhaul of the City’s graffiti policies.
Mayor Breed enacted the strongest Styrofoam ban in the country, as well as drug take-back legislation which has kept more than 40 tons of medical waste and prescription medicines out of our Bay and landfills. Additionally, she pushed forward San Francisco’s clean electrical energy program, CleanPowerSF, which is the single most important thing San Francisco can to do combat climate change. Mayor Breed passed legislation to replace hundreds of Muni buses and the entire fleet of Muni trains, creating a more reliable, quieter and efficient public transportation network.
Mayor Breed is a native San Franciscan, raised by her grandmother in Plaza East Public Housing in the Western Addition. She graduated with honors from Galileo High School and attended the University of California, Davis, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science/Public Service with a minor in African American Studies. She went on to earn a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of San Francisco.
Before her election as Supervisor, Mayor Breed London served as Executive Director of the African American Art & Culture Complex in the Western Addition for more than over a decade, transforming the center into a vital, financially-stable community resource that provides after school arts and cultural programs for youth and seniors. She also served as a San Francisco Redevelopment Agency Commissioner for five years and in 2010 was appointed by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom to be a San Francisco Fire Commissioner, where she served until her election to the Board of Supervisors.