If there’s anything Mayor London Breed has learned in office, it’s that compassion has its limits.
So when she talks about her steady tack right in recent years on issues such as retail crime and homelessness, she’s direct and unapologetic. Sitting at the helm of one of America’s most celebrated cities and trying to keep that city on course, she said, has opened her eyes to some hard truths. Among them: That without guardrails, there are people who will take advantage of San Francisco’s generous spirit and behave in ways that drag the city down.
“We’ve gone too far in just letting people get away with things,” Breed said. “And as a result, people have been getting away with things.”
Breed, 50, made history six years ago when she became the city’s first Black female mayor. She was president of the powerful Board of Supervisors when then-Mayor Ed Lee died of a heart attack in December 2017. She won a special election to fill his seat the following June and was elected to a full term in 2019.