Dean Preston, who represents the city and county of San Francisco, acknowledged that the city was facing a homelessness problem, though blamed capitalism for the city's crisis.
Preston, who oversees San Francisco's Tenderloin district, made his remarks during an interview with UnHeard's Freddie Sayers which premiered Monday.
“I think what you’re seeing in the Tenderloin is absolutely the result of capitalism and what happens in capitalism to the people at the bottom rungs,” Preston told Sayers.
“The biggest driver of why folks are on the street is because they lost their jobs, income or were evicted from their homes, usually for not being able to pay the rent,” the supervisor added, per The New York Post. “So you have major landlords literally causing folks to lose their homes, and real estate speculation making it impossible for folks to find an affordable place to live.”
WATCH:
The San Francisco supervisor said the city's approach to arresting people engaging in drug usage in public was "inconsistent." In August, San Francisco reported 84 deaths from overdoses and is scheduled to exceed 800 deaths in 2023.
“I think it’s completely counterproductive to be arresting people for doing drugs,” Preston said. “Like, what’s the objective?”
The UnHeard reporter questioned Preston on how homelessness could be solved if he was opposed to enforcing laws against homeless encampments and drug usage in the city.
“The thing is, it has gotten worse, right? Because the approach that we’ve taken is very inconsistent as a city,” Preston responded. “Ramping up enforcement activities, whether it’s … sweeps of homeless people or drug use, doing a series of arrests, usually timed with some news cycle and then a few days later, a few weeks later, a few months later, the same thing happens.”
Preston has also expressed interest in cutting $100 million of funding from San Francisco's "very bloated police budget." In 2020, San Francisco Mayor London Breed similarly vowed to remove $120 million from the city's police budget in support of social justice demands in the wake of George Floyd's death.
Earlier this year, Preston suggested San Francisco residents and tourists keep belongings out of their cars in an effort to curb car break-ins.
X owner and tech mogul Elon Musk criticized Preston and pledged to donate $100,000 to unseat the city supervisor.
"Dean Preston needs to be fired," Musk wrote in a September X post. "He is arguably the person most responsible for the destruction of San Francisco."
