David Campos
What major steps would you take or support to address the digital divide in San Francisco and throughout California?
We have always needed universal broadband in San Francisco, and the pandemic only made that more clear. While middle and high income students were able to continue their studies relatively uninterrupted, the lack of internet access or even computer access at home caused our low income students to fall even further behind. When we came to this country, the resources I had at my public high school were what allowed me to study hard and eventually earn a spot at Stanford. I can only imagine how different my life would be if I didn’t have access to those resources. We must invest in closing the digital divide so that every student in San Francisco and in California is given a chance to succeed.
California and the Bay Area are set to receive millions of dollars in funding for transportation related projects—what projects would you like to see prioritized?
In the short term, we must restore service at all of our transit agencies to pre-pandemic levels, and even increase service in areas where people’s commute patterns have changed. In the long term, locally we should focus on a second transbay tube, and statewide we must prioritize high speed rail and make sure we extend the service all the way into downtown San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The exodus from San Francisco has been well documented since March 2020. Does this migration out of San Francisco worry you and what policies would you support to revitalize the City?
Most of the attention on the “migration” out of San Francisco has been about wealthier, white collar workers opting to move. While I am concerned about that, I am also concerned with the number of working class families who have been forced out of our city and even the entire Bay Area after losing their jobs. We must invest in housing at all levels, including affordable housing, in transit as mentioned above, and in order to truly welcome back everyone to San Francisco we must invest in tackling our homelessness and behavioral health crises at the state level, not just the local level.
Matt Haney
What major steps would you take or support to address the digital divide in San Francisco and throughout California?
The pandemic highlighted and led to overdue urgency to address the digital divide in our city. With over 100,000 San Franciscans who either lack broadband internet service at home or basic digital skills, we need to expand affordable internet in homes, citywide 5G, high quality computer access, and digital skill literacy and skill development. Each of these pillars is a major step we need to take to build equity in access to the digital world.
California and the Bay Area are set to receive millions of dollars in funding for transportation related projects—what projects would you like to see prioritized?
We need to prioritize high speed rail across California, a second transbay tunnel for BART, and a downtown extension into SF. We need to use these projects to make progress in expanding and aligning fast trains across our region so we're better connected, and can reduce emissions and congestion.
The exodus from San Francisco has been well documented since March 2020. Does this migration out of San Francisco worry you and what policies would you support to revitalize the City?
In 2020, San Francisco had a concerning number of residents leave the city. What makes these numbers even more stark is the drastically lower number of people entering the city during the pandemic. In addition to continuing to respond to COVID-19 and keeping our city healthy and open, we need to urgently tackle our housing crisis, skyrocketing rents, and quality of life issues that have been exacerbated by the socioeconomic impacts of the virus. I am supportive of policies that address these issues.
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