John Avalos

Avalos is Mexican-American/Chicano, and was born in Wilmington, California. Along with histhree brothers and two sisters, he was raised by his mother Erlinda, an office worker, and hisfather Hector, a longshoreman and member of the International Longshore and WarehouseUnion.^[2] His parents divorced when he was young, and his mother cared for them on her own. Avalos moved to Andover, Massachusetts as a teenager and graduated from Andover High School in 1982.^[4]

After graduating from Andover, Avalos moved back to California, where he soon attended theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara and earned a bachelor’s degree in English. In 1989,Avalos moved to San Francisco, California where he later earned a Masters in Social Work fromSan Francisco State University.

Before being elected to the Board of Supervisors, Avalos was legislativeaide for supervisor Chris Daly.^[5]

On November 4, 2008, Avalos was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Under the City’s instant-runoff voting system, Avalos won the election for District 11 supervisor with28.23% of the total votes in round one and 52.93% in round four.^[6]

Budgeting and municipal finance

In 2010, Avalos passed legislation to set a 5-cent fee per serving of alcohol to raise funding foremergency services in response to alcohol consumption. MayorGavin Newsom vetoed the bill and Avalos failed to garner the eight votes to override the veto.^[7]

In 2010, Avalos crafted an increase to San Francisco’s Real Estate Transfer Tax for propertiesvalued over $5,000,000 and $10,000,000. Voters approved his proposal, Proposition N, onNovember 2, 2010.^[8] Prop N has since raised hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for theCity.^[9]

In 2012, Avalos worked with Mayor Ed Lee to update the City’s business tax by creating aprogressive gross receipts tax that included an exemption for small and low-profit businesses.The final ordinance that the Board of Supervisors placed on the ballot generated millions more in new revenue than the Mayor’s revenue-neutral measure, raising $32 million annually subject to the consumer price index.^[10] The new revenues ensured funding for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund that passed on the same ballot.^[11]

In 2015, Avalos challenged Mayor Lee’s $250 million housing bond by crafting a measurewhich resulted in the Mayor increasing his bond to $310 million. The larger bond enabledaffordable housing projects to be financed in greater amounts in District 11 and District 9 thanunder Mayor Lee’s original plan. The new revenues ensured funding for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund that passed on the same ballot.^[12]

Employment and local hiring

In December 2010, working with a coalition of labor and Black, Brown, and Asian communityorganizations, Avalos passed the strongest Local Hiring Ordinance in the country.^[13] Theordinance was crafted during the great recession years at a time when San Francisco had one of its highest unemployment rates in decades.^[14] Since the 1990’s, the City relied on a nonbinding local hiring ordinance called First Source, which never achieved measurable success.^[15] Avalos’ Local Hiring Ordinance is based on the principle that public spending and development should benefit local residents and disadvantaged workers. The ordinance targeted neighborhoods with the highest rates of unemployment.^[16]

The Local Hiring Ordinance required publicly funded contractors to hire local residents startingat a rate of 20% for each trade working on a project, rising by 5% each year up to 50%. Despiteearly opposition from the Building Trades Council, the ordinance went to a local resident hiringrate of more than 50% after six years.^[17] Avalos later expanded the ordinance to apply to private development on public land.^[18]

Criminal and environmental justice

In his second term in office and in his role as a director of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Avalos championed environmental initiatives such as Clean Power SF, the City’s renewable power program, and worked to adopt the BAAQMD’s 10 Point Climate Action Program.^[19][20][21]

In 2013, Avalos initiated an effort to convince the San Francisco Employees Retirement System Board to divest from fossil fuel corporations.^[22] Avalos also worked on opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline and rulemaking to limit emissions from petroleum refineries, particularly around working class communities of color.^[23]

In 2016, Avalos sponsored and passed the Keep It in the Ground Ordinance banning the use of San Francisco public land for fossil fuel extraction and setting in motion the closure of Chevron oil drilling on City-owned land in Kern River Oil Field in Kern County, California.^[24]

Immigrants rights

In 2013 Avalos updated the City’s Sanctuary City status by passing the Due Process for AllOrdinance in response to the Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency’s SecureCommunities or S-Comm program.^[25] The measure sought to prohibit unconstitutional detention of any person in San Francisco law enforcement custody beyond his or her release date at the request of immigration officials. The measure also sought to limit involvement by local law enforcement with S-Comm, which has resulted in thousands of deportations nationwide, dividing families and fracturing communities. The Secure Communities Program was criticized for creating a dragnet wherein even U.S. citizens were detained, and was finally terminated in 2014 and replaced with the Priority Enforcement Program.^[26] In 2016, Avalos introduced legislation to set a common standard between San Francisco’s landmark Sanctuary City Ordinance and the Due Process for All Ordinance.^[27]

Community development and municipal banking

His office funded neighborhood planning efforts that led to the City setting aside land for transit-oriented affordable housing.^[28] Avalos’ efforts to address community workforce development needs led to the creation of a workforce center in District 11 focusing on employment development and enforcement of workers’ rights.Avalos supported District 11 community efforts to develop urban agriculture and community gardening projects.^[29][30]In other district initiatives, Avalos helped foster community-led grant making programs; neighborhood art projects in which neighborhood artists created murals, public plazas, and sculptures; and new walkways, stairs, and pathways in neighborhood parks and open spaces.^[31][32]

In 2010, Avalos passed legislation affirming the Ocean Avenue Community Benefit Initiative, supporting years of community effort and setting Ocean Ave on a stronger trajectory of sustainable neighborhood serving economic growth.^[33][34] Despite limited economic growth in the southern neighborhoods of District 11, in 2015 Avalos succeeded in bringing a branch of the San Francisco Federal Credit Union to the Excelsior District.^[35]

During the Great Recession years and afterwards, rates of mortgage defaults and foreclosures were particularly high in San Francisco’s south and southeastern neighborhoods. Avalos worked with the Association of California Communities for Empowerment (ACCE) to occupy homes where households face evictions after struggling to modify their mortgages.^[36] With ACCE, Avalos advocated at local and federal levels to create home loan principal reduction programs,and to strengthen community development financial institutions’ leverage to address foreclosure and enable households to modify their mortgage with principal reduction.^{[37] [38]}

Following the 2008-09 recession and the home loan crisis, starting in 2011, Avalos championedthe idea of a Municipal Bank for San Francisco.^[39] In 2012, Avalos began the city’s process ofstudying the creation of a public bank.^[40][41]In 2016, San Francisco supervisors unanimouslypassed legislation by Avalos cutting ties with Wells Fargo, following the bank’s “phonyaccounts” scandal.^[42] San Francisco supervisors approved a resolution in 2019 urging California lawmakers to allow the city to create its own public bank.^[43]

On April 18, 2011, Avalos filed to run for mayor of San Francisco as a progressive candidate.^[44] Avalos placed second in the race after incumbent Mayor Ed Lee.^[45]

On January 18, 2019, the San Francisco Ethics Commission fined Avalos $12,146 for failing to properly disclose campaign finances from his unsuccessful run for mayor in 2011.^[46] According to the Ethics Commission, Avalos’ campaign committee improperly reported $26,506 — or 11 percent — of his total contributions. The committee also failed to maintain complete records for $391,594 worth of expenditures, 60 percent of the total amount of money spent.^[46] Avalos accepted the settlement in front of the commission.^[46]

Avalos was married to Karen Zapata, a public-school teacher, and they have two children. They separated in 2014, after Avalos revealed he had had an affair with his legislative aide, Raquel Redondiez. Avalos and Zapata divorced in 2017. They continue to co-parent their children. Avalos married Raquel Redondiez in June 2022.