Three challengers are running against Supervisor Vallie Brown, who previously served as Mayor London Breed’s aide and was appointed by the mayor in July. We conducted interviews with Brown, candidate Dean Preston, a tenants rights advocate, and candidate Ryan Lam, running as a Republican. Candidate Nomvula O’Meara was not available for an interview by the time of this posting.
Vallie Brown
District 5 Supervisor Vallie Brown, the incumbent running in November, talks about her work as a public servant, her vision for housing policy, and growing up living intermittently out of a van.
Editor’s Note: Since this interview was recorded on Oct. 3, multiple news outlets have reported that Vallie Brown, along with several friends, evicted low-income tenants in 1994 from the building they owned in the Lower Haight. When SF Weekly broke the story, Brown responded by saying she had attempted to negotiate a rent amount with the tenants that they could pay, and said some in the building hadn’t paid rent in years. Mission Local revealed that the tenants dispute these claims, and the San Francisco Examiner reported that one tenant had threatened a defamation lawsuit. Brown subsequently apologized for the claim that the tenant had not payed rent, and retracted it. You can hear our conversation with Mission Local managing editor Joe Eskenazi about his reporting on this issue below.
Ryan Lam
District 5 Supervisor candidate Ryan Lam, the youngest candidate in the race, on how he envisions better tenant protections might work, concerns about business taxes, and what could help address traffic deaths in the district.
Nomvula O’Meara
Candidate Nomvula O’Meara was unable to schedule an interview as of posting time.
Dean Preston
District 5 Supervisor candidate and tenant advocate Dean Preston lays out his priorities for addressing housing affordability in San Francisco and looks back on his work as the founder of Tenants Together.
