Alan Wong

Alan Wong was appointed by Mayor Lurie and grew up in the Sunset. His top priorities are public safety (including filling SF's 500 police officer shortage), responsive constituent services, small business relief, and supporting families. His first act as Supervisor was pushing to reopen the Great Highway — reflecting majority D4 opinion. He supports the Family Zoning Plan to create starter homes. Opponents Natalie Gee and Albert Chow declined to answer key policy questions on the GrowSF questionnaire.

Alan Wong was appointed to his seat by Mayor Lurie, and then voted in favor of the Mayor’s upzoning plan. I am not naive and I suspect these two things were connected. Wong’s reasoning is sound: he supports it because he understands the reality that if the city doesn’t implement a state-compliant zoning plan, it loses permitting power entirely along with a lot of state funding. Natalie Gee, on the other hand, is happy to pander to the nimby’s of the sunset. She says she wants to expand affordable housing, but even that is far afield of her constituents: sites like 2550 Irving, which is 100% affordable housing, were opposed by neighbors. Her constituents don’t want any kind of housing and she’ll eventually find herself taking that position as well. Of the two, I think Alan Wong is the right choice here. Wong recognizes the difficulties of dealing with the city and has committed to make constituent service (read “fighting city hall red tape for his voters”) a priority. He’s likely to continue to be more yimby than any other candidate, and he’s interested in addressing some of the impediments to opening new businesses in the city.