London Breed reflects on her tenure as San Francisco mayor
SAN FRANCISCO — London Breed's path to becoming San Francisco's first Black female mayor was as "bumpy," as she would say, as her upbringing.
Growing up in public housing just blocks from City Hall, she rose to the city's highest office, serving as a trailblazer for the community she calls home.
Breed was elevated to the mayor's office in 2017 after the sudden passing of Ed Lee. She later won a special election to complete his term and secured a full term in 2019.
"I think that early Mayor London Breed was probably a little bit more optimistic back then about what I was going to do. I was going to conquer the world," Breed told CBS News Bay Area's Lauren Toms. "We were going to make all these great things happen, and I was ready to go despite the bumpiness. I mean, my whole life has been bumpy. My whole time in elected office has been bumpy, crisis after crisis, issue after issue. So, it's not something that is unfamiliar to me."
The COVID-19 pandemic marked an unprecedented challenge for Breed's administration. Under her leadership, San Francisco earned praise for its low mortality rate during the crisis.
However, the pandemic also exposed the city's vulnerabilities. While it managed to curb COVID-related deaths, San Francisco faced a surge in drug overdoses, as residents — and pundits nationwide — criticized the city's response to the drug crisis as slow and overly permissive.
"Fentanyl was not anything that we were prepared for, and it was very complicated, and it was very frustrating," Breed acknowledged. "Our laws were different then than they are now. I put Proposition F on the ballot that says, 'if you want money from the city and you struggle with addiction, you need to be in treatment.' And that came from the recovery community, that came from people who used to be on drugs in the Tenderloin, who are now a part of the solution and working to help people change their lives."
The pandemic's ripple effects extended to San Francisco's economy, leaving downtown eerily quiet as major retailers shut their doors — from Westfield Mall to the looming closure of Macy's in Union Square. Crime and shifting consumer habits only exacerbated the problem.
"Downtown should have, a long time ago, been a place that's a 24/7 neighborhood," Breed said. "With online shopping, with all of the different dynamics that come into play, it was only a matter of time before we got to a place like this. If we weren't prepared to pivot, the pandemic forced us to pivot."
As San Francisco grappled with rising retail theft and open-air drug markets, Breed adopted a tougher stance by late 2021. Her strong rhetoric during a December speech drew national attention.
"It's time to start being less tolerant of all the bulls—t that has destroyed our city," she declared at the time.
Reflecting on the decision, Breed says, "I said what I said, and as a result, I made a hard decision that people were surprised I made: to arrest dealers and to arrest users again, to put Proposition E on the ballot in 2023. It says, 'If you want money from the city, you got to be in treatment.' These kinds of decisions are not easy, and there was a lot of pushback. But it did not matter to me, because it was necessary in order to combat the issues we were facing."
Despite the challenges, Breed sought to bring joy and unity to the city, bringing live DJ sets to the steps of City Hall.
"San Francisco has always brought that joy," she says, recalling a particularly memorable performance. "Skrillex and Fred Again, I had never been to a concert with that many people, where it was just a DJ set, and it was the best ever."
"I definitely tried to make this fun, even the serious issue, sometimes as fun as I could, because everything just can't be about being mad all the time or upset about something all the time," she continued. "If you're not smiling when someone's playing some great music, or when you see let's glow, or when you're able to have a block party in the middle of downtown San Francisco, then you know, look, I don't know what to tell you."
As her tenure concludes, Breed is uncertain about her next steps but says she does plan to take a long-awaited vacation.
"Maybe take that two-week vacation," she joked. "I might not come back," she said with a laugh.
Reflecting on her journey, Breed said, "What I'm most proud of is being able to live my life the way I want to live it, to make something of myself despite my challenging circumstances growing up. This has been such a privilege to serve as mayor, and it's really been the honor of my life."
