Public Correspondence: Neighborhood Equity and Police Boundaries
The following letters were sent to public officials on July 31, 2025 by the Board of the Soma West Neighborhood Association.
Subject: Neighborhood Equity
July 31, 2025
Supervisor Bilal Mahmood
Board of Supervisors
Supervisor Mahmood,
Thank you for your leadership in advancing the Neighborhood Equity Ordinance. A number of members of the SOMA West Neighborhood Association were at the recent budget hearing, speaking, and hearing your eloquent presentation and elegant handling of amendments. We write to offer our support for the ordinance’s intent, and to offer recommendations to help it better achieve its goals.
We are particularly concerned about the provision that calls for services and solutions to be distributed in direct proportion to the challenges present in each district. While we understand the motivation behind this approach, this could inadvertently reinforce existing disparities.
A number of districts have historically had elevated levels of policing, such that someone even taking a moment’s rest to sit on the sidewalk is moved along, while in other districts open drug use on the sidewalk can be left unchallenged.
Relying solely on point-in-time counts and existing shelter bed data can produce misleading results and offer perverse incentives. For instance, Outer Richmond—with under 1% of the city's shelter beds—would receive the same exclusion status as SOMA and the Tenderloin, which currently host approximately 26% and 34% of the city’s shelter beds, respectively.
Using visible homelessness or point-in-time counts as the primary data source also encourages districts to reduce their visible unhoused population — not through meaningful service delivery, but by use of enforcement or displacement. This would not only be counterproductive, but inhumane.
We respectfully offer three suggestions to strengthen the ordinance:
1. Use broad indicators of need and impact. In addition to residence and point-in-time data, include metrics such as 311 calls, police responses, and street outreach encounters. These reflect where public pressure and service gaps actually exist.
2. Only take proportionality into account when a district already has a minimum of support, such as at least 50 shelter beds.
3. Construct the ordinance such that districts are encouraged to offer provision of at least some services, particularly those that are less problematic or that do not originate in any specific district - such as housing young adults exiting foster care.
We were especially encouraged to hear public commenters — both supporters and critics of the ordinance — agree that services must be expanded and more equitably distributed across the city. We urge the city to capitalize on this unusual unanimity, and develop the shelter beds and services, and get the city on the way to making a qualitative improvement in this long-standing problem, by having enough beds so that no one sleeps on the street.
Thank you, and thank you to Supervisor Dorsey. We look forward to an improved SOMA in an improved city.
SOMA West Neighborhood Association
www.somawestneighbors.org
cc:
Board President Rafael Mandelman
Supervisor Matt Dorsey
Subject: Police Station Boundaries
July 31, 2025
President C. Don Clay
San Francisco Police Commission
President Clay,
Our new organization, the SOMA West Neighborhood Association, came into existence over the course of the last two years for community fellowship and to address a number of urgent issues in our district.
Further, it also formed specifically due to escalated public safety concerns, expanded criminal activities and ongoing open air illegal drug markets which were not being properly addressed by the Police Department’s capacity constraints.
As we witnessed in the recent Police Commission meeting of July 16th, there was a change of perspective from Commissioners towards adjusting the Final Map, which had been developed over two years of hearings and community input, in order to move the boundary of the Southern Station to Market for the needs and priorities of the Tenderloin.
Our neighborhood association supports addressing the public safety needs of the Tenderloin as well as SOMA West. We welcome finding ways to support our neighboring community and its public safety needs. SOMA West and the Tenderloin both have public safety crises that the City as a whole must address. Our two communities have the highest percentage of city services that take a great toll on our neighborhoods. We have worked together with the Tenderloin in supporting legislation to secure greater geographic equity throughout the City for public services so as to not add further challenges to our neighborhoods.
With that said, should the Commission move forward with such proposed changes to the boundaries of the Southern and Tenderloin stations, we urge the Commission to consider the ramifications on police security for SOMA West. The Southern Station already needs more officers, operating currently with 46 officers below capacity while seeing an increase of 41.7% in crime. SOMA West itself has grown in population over 40% in the last decade. The corridor of Market to Mission in SOMA West has one of the highest levels of drug crime in the City and would greatly add to the already-stretched-thin limits of Southern Station’s capacity. In fact, the SF Chronicle recently reported that the Southern District has the highest ratio of violent crime to officers in San Francisco.
With Southern Station already unable to cover the needs of the residents and businesses it currently oversees, adding further requirements for coverage cannot be done without responding in kind with the additional support that will be required. Southern Station’s jurisdiction is already so broad that it has to provide required staffing for Treasure Island as well as oversee major venues like the Moscone Convention Center, Chase Center, Oracle Park, and other large-scale events which bring visitors throughout SOMA and Mission Bay. These circumstances leave Southern Station without adequate resources and staffing for the actual residents and businesses throughout SOMA West.
The SOMA West Neighborhood Association requests that the Southern Station be fully staffed and provided with the resources it needs to cover its already-existing boundaries. Further, with any potential addition of such large populations and high-crime levels via the newly proposed boundaries, Southern Station must receive the increased levels of staffing and resources for an appropriate response to public safety concerns in SOMA West. Supporting the Tenderloin’s needs for public safety cannot come at the expense of the public safety needs for SOMA West. We are in this struggle for public safety together and SOMA West must also have adequate support from the City.
SOMA West Neighborhood Association
www.somawestneighbors.org
cc:
Mayor Daniel Lurie
San Francisco Board President Rafael Mandelman
San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey
San Francisco Supervisor Bilal Mahmood
San Francisco Police Commission
San Francisco Police Chief Paul Yep
Southern Station Captain Amy Hurwitz
Tenderloin Station Captain Matthew Sullivan