Josh Wolf for Mayor

1. As mayor I will make affordable housing a top priority and focus especially on creating affordable housing units for families. In addition to fighting for affordable units to make up a greater percentage of all San Francisco developments, I will work to see that a significant portion of these are made available to working families. I see the greatest opportunity for increasing our housing stock at Treasure Island but we need a greater emphasis on creating affordable housing for all.

2. The Milk Club’s plan to develop a comprehensive queer housing plan through collaboration with other interested organizations is an inspired approach and should serve as a model for approaching many of the issues facing our city. As mayor I would implement this plan as much as possible. Those who are ill are in urgent need of housing

3. We have made standards for creating affordable housing but these standards have not been met. The mayor has played an integral part in allowing for these exemptions and if elected I will do everything in my power to see that these standards are not only met but are expanded further. As mayor, I would also explore what the city can do to encourage cooperative housing alternatives as I see cooperatives as a promising alternative to renting when affordable home ownership isn’t possible.

4. As I see it, the homeless mostly fall into two groups. Those who are able and willing to work and those who unable to join the work force due to physical and mental health problems. For those who are able to work, I feel that the city needs to develop a work corps focused on city beautification as well as creating entrepreneurial opportunities for those who are in need of employment. For those in need of support, I will propose a caucus which will bring together the plethora of organizations focused on assisting the homeless with the City government in order to craft a comprehensive solution in which the government creates a true partnership with the existing resources while providing those resources which are needed. I support establishing a series of community centers throughout the city that serve each neighborhood with the means to obtain medical services, substance abuse treatment programs, and mental health services for both the homeless and those with housing who find themselves in need.

5. Victims of the Ellis Act must be provided for when facing evictions, and at minimum legislation must be enacted to ensure that they are not forced out of their homes prior to securing new housing. I do support an increase in allocations, but will look to The Milk Club and other organizations to determine what the appropriate compensation should be. Seniors and others on a fixed income obviously are in need of larger displacement payments.

6. First and foremost we need to increase educational opportunities for people in this city. The high school dropout rate in our city and nationwide is deplorable and No Child Left Behind and the educational shift towards teaching standardized tests are contributing factors. I support creating an entrepreneurial program to aid underserved youth in starting their own businesses and will make use of my initiative for creating numerous community centers as a means to establish a one-stop shop where people can go to find out about job placement opportunities, recreational programs, and substance abuse programs and vocational training as well as offering these programs on-site whenever possible.

7. I support a creating a progressive tax structure for the city of San Francisco. Corporate welfare must stop, and those businesses who have reaped the benefits of our system owe something to the rest of the community and should be taxed accordingly. I’m in favor of establishing a tax on all businesses that net over $1 million in profit each year and establishing a property tax on all parcels valued at over $1.5 million dollars to fund City services.

8. Healthcare is a right and until we establish full universal health care the City needs to bolster funding for the Department of Public Health not cut it.

9. The City should foster new industries and the arts while offering incentives for companies to hire San Franciscan’s first. These incentives need to be significant enough that companies like Providan and TransAmerica stop outsourcing jobs and hire locally. I’m also in favor of additional incentives for companies committed to hiring young people from the community.

10. Within the past year, Gavin Newsom has directed raids against Asian Massage Parlors, after the SF Chronicle did a series on international sex trafficing. While the exploitation of women, or anyone else for that matter, is something we oppose across the board, we need to look at what we are really doing, how people are ultimately affected by it, and not confuse stopping exploitation with becoming morality police. The petition presented by the Erotic Servers Providers Union to the board of Supervisors represents a more thoughtful, more reasonable and ultimately beneficial set of actions and principles than Newsom's reactive responses to the Chronicle series. Willie Brown's measure of 2004 with respect to the massage industry, both therapeutic and erotic in SF was a half-step in the right direction. The city needs to work directly with sex workers to build comprehensive programs that protect our sex workers without criminalizing them.

11. I firmly believe that sex work should be decriminalized. As mayor I will work with the Board of Supervisors to see that sex workers are not arrested, and hold the police chief accountable if this is not followed. I support collective bargaining for sex workers, am opposed to stage fees for dancers, and am in favor of worker-owned cooperatives as an ideal business model for those engaged in sex work. Everyone should be entitled to full health benefits.

12. A citywide public health campaign on crystal meth must focus on education and make in-depth fact-driven information available as opposed to propaganda. Substance abuse programs should go beyond the twelve-step model and made accessible through hotlines, and the community centers I’ve outlined previously.

13. Yes.

14. I really like this suggestion; I’m uncertain whether the entire sum of the money should be budgeted for this purpose. There are many people who are barely able to survive in this city though they aren’t homeless, yet. Before dedicating all of this windfall for homeless housing, I think it’s important to look into whether some portion of the $187 million should be put towards those who are poor but are not homeless.

15. Yes, there should be a fiscal cost imposed upon landlords who sit on vacant parcels as they wait for the next economic boom.

16. I would be willing to put a proposition on the ballot mandating that vacant downtown office space be appropriated for the homeless, but I am uncertain whether the corporate owners should also bear the costs for the necessary support services.

17. The Google/Earthlink plan for municipal wireless Internet does nothing to resolve the digital divide in our city. At minimum, the City should have insisted that the corporate partnership establish public Internet terminals throughout the city at all bus stops. I think that one approach to lessoning the divide is through the establishment of numerous 24 -hour community centers that, in addition to providing everything I’ve outline above, would also offer free computer access and training in basic and more advanced computer skills.