Over 35 Years of Results for San Francisco
Congresswoman Pelosi attends the groundbreaking ceremony for the Presidio Parkway in October 2009
“Pelosi has used her power for public benefit, nationally and locally. Her many San Francisco accomplishments include her role in securing AIDS/HIV funding and the transition of the Presidio into a national park. Her leadership helped de- liver the Affordable Care Act. The list goes on and on.” – San Francisco Chronicle Editorial, Oct. 2012
From Bayview Hunters Point to Bernal Heights, Chinatown to the Castro, the Mission to the Marina, and North Beach to Noe Valley, Congresswoman Pelosi’s leadership has transformed San Francisco in her 35 years of service: creating good-paying jobs; addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis, and making health care more affordable; expanding transit and preserving public lands and parks; protecting the Bay and the environment; and fighting to ensure quality, affordable housing for all.
Throughout her entire service in the Congress, Pelosi has championed smart, job-creating investments in San Francisco’s neighborhoods and worked to ensure that every San Franciscan has access to quality, affordable health care. Following the devastation of the Loma Prieta earthquake and a series of Bay Area military base closures, Pelosi orchestrated a surge of federal resources to transform and uplift our infrastructure, refurbish our landmarks, and create new spaces for affordable housing.
Combatting HIV/AIDS
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Taylor Testifying Before the House Budget Committee on HIV-AIDS Funding in March 1990
Since her first day in Congress, combating HIV and AIDS has been a priority for Congresswoman Pelosi. Armed with the lessons of San Francisco’s model of community-based care, Congresswoman Pelosi worked to expand access to Medicaid for people living with HIV and secured billions of dollars for the Ryan White CARE program, the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), the Minority HIV/AIDS Initiative and other research, care, treatment, prevention and search for a vaccine and cure initiatives vital to people living with or at risk for HIV/AIDS
Pelosi was an early supporter of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and its display on the National Mall; as well as its recent return to San Francisco. In 1989, Pelosi helped fight to create the HOPWA program to ensure stable, affordable housing for low-income people living with HIV/AIDS, and more recently secured record levels of HOPWA funding. Pelosi passed legislation designating San Francisco’s AIDS Memorial Grove as the only National Memorial in the United States dedicated to those lost to HIV/AIDS, survivors and activists. Internationally, Pelosi helped lead the effort to contribute to the Global Fund and worked with President Bush to create PEPFAR. Domestically, Pelosi has helped secure billions for HIV prevention, care, treatment and research. As a crowning achievement, Pelosi spearheaded the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which has provided significant benefits for those with HIV/AIDS. Most recently, Pelosi secured $600,000 for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation to provide mental health & substance use services for long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS.
Preserving the Presidio,
Protecting Our Parks
Nancy Pelosi and President Clinton at the Presidio in June 1996, supporting the Presidio Trust Act
When the Army closed the Presidio of San Francisco – a military post from 1776 to 1994 – Congresswoman Pelosi led the fight to preserve the Presidio for the people of San Francisco against those planning to sell-off this treasured asset to the highest bidder. After years of work, in 1996, Congresswoman Pelosi passed a law creating the Presidio Trust, an innovative public-private partnership with the twin goals of preserving the essence of a magnificent national park and providing a cost-effective structure for the American taxpayer.
Over the course of the transition from DoD and Park Service to the Presidio Trust, Pelosi secured nearly $400 million in federal funding for the transition and environmental remediation. Under the Presidio Trust Act, Pelosi secured $326 million in federal funds directly to the Presidio Trust.
Pelosi's work in the Presidio can be seen from the trails and overlooks to the Main Parade Ground, with the Walt Disney Family Museum, Futures Without Violence, the soon to open Courage Museum, the Letterman Digital Arts Center and the Japanese American Historical Society’s Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center. Thanks to Pelosi’s success securing federal funds and the support of local philanthropy, the barren, broken asphalt of Crissy Field Air Field became the Presidio’s spectacular front window to the Bay – with public walkways, restored dunes and wetlands, the Crissy Field Center and spectacular spaces for recreation.
With Doyle Drive structurally and seismically deficient, Pelosi helped secure $297 million in federal support to transform the roadway into the new Presidio Parkway. While Doyle Drive had separated the Presidio’s historic Main Post from the highly popular waterfront below, including Crissy Field and Crissy Marsh, the tunneled Presidio Parkway allowed for the newly opened 14-acre Presidio Tunnel Tops project which features gathering and picnic areas, overlooks, play spaces for kids, a campfire circle, and places to walk in nature. Pelosi also helped negotiate a conflict between the Presidio Trust and Caltrans regarding the cost of the Tunnel Tops development, quality of soil, and right of way issues.
In the last two years, Pelosi has secured $70 million in Treasury Department loans for the Presidio, giving the Trust the capital it needs to continue rehabilitation of all the remaining historic buildings and, and is currently fighting to secure additional federal funding to tackle deferred maintenance needs.
Nancy Pelosi with President Clinton as he signs the Presidio Trust Act in November 1996
Pelosi joins schoolchildren at the C.A. Thayer before it departed for restoration in December 2003.
The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, located in Yosemite National Park, is the key drinking water source for 2.7 million Bay Area residents. Since the reservoir’s creation in 1923, boating has been prohibited to prevent the introduction of contaminants, and the quality of the water from Hetch Hetchy is so pristine that it does not require filtration. When Trump Interior Secretary David Bernhardt considered rolling back this prohibition on boats, Pelosi was successful in securing language maintaining the longstanding prohibition to protect Hetch Hetchy’s crucial drinking water.
Nancy Pelosi at Kelly Cullen Community January 2011
Creating Affordable Housing,
Combatting Homelessness
Congresswoman Pelosi’s commitment to and success in advocating for combating homelessness, improving public housing and creating new affordable housing is unparalleled.
Congresswoman Pelosi’s commitment to and success in advocating for combating homelessness, improving public housing and creating new affordable housing is unparalleled. Pelosi has been a decades-long champion of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), fighting for key changes over the years that have expanded and strengthened this credit, which has created 17,250 units of housing in San Francisco since it was enacted. In 2015, Pelosi was successful in fixing HUD's harmful formula change for Difficult to Develop Areas to ensure more areas of the city can receive a LIHTC funding bonus. Following the 2017 GOP Tax Scam, which reduced LIHTC development, Pelosi secured a fix for an additional 12.5% increase in allocations for in new construction allocations of the credit for 2018-21, along with “income averaging” that ensures that relatively lower income people can get LIHTC units. In the December 2020 omnibus bill, Pelosi helped pass a permanent 4% credit rate for low-income housing tax credits used in bond deals or rehab projects.
As an advocate for affordable housing, Congresswoman Pelosi has been instrumental in securing federal funds for HOPE SF - transforming San Francisco's most distressed public housing sites into vibrant, thriving communities. Pelosi secured millions of dollars, including a $30.5 million federal Choice Neighborhood grant, to revitalize and preserve severely-distressed public housing units at Hunters View and Alice Griffith. This model to create vibrant mixed-use communities will soon be replicated at Sunnydale and Potrero.
With thousands of San Franciscans living in distressed, deteriorating public housing, Pelosi worked with then-Mayor Ed Lee to transition 3,500 units to community-based affordable housing providers through the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration Program (RAD) to rebuild these public housing sites and to revitalize them with new management and supportive services so their residents can live in safe, clean, affordable housing.
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi joins Anita Lee, widow of Ed Lee, Mayor London Breed and resident Margie Talavera at the grand opening ceremony of the Edwin M. Lee apartments, named in honor of our late Mayor. The complex includes 119 units of affordable rental housing for low-income families and veterans who formerly experienced homelessness in the Mission Bay neighborhood, built with federal, state and local funds.
Pelosi was successful in securing funds for Veterans Commons supportive housing at 150 Otis Street, the renovation of Nihonmachi Terrace senior housing in Japantown, secured clarification of LIHTC regulations to help veterans housing including Mateo May Apartments on Treasure Island and secured $54 million – more than half the funding – for the Kelly Cullen Community and clinic for the chronically homeless at 220 Golden Gate Avenue.
Recognizing the importance of maintaining San Francisco’s vibrant diversity, Pelosi worked with then-Board of Supervisors President London Breed to create a HUD housing displacement preference so that 40 percent of new affordable housing units are set-aside for those in areas at highest risk of displacement.
Pelosi was instrumental in the creation of Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS (HOPWA), and negotiated new record high funding levels for HOPWA each of the last three years, ensuring San Francisco avoided funding cuts that would have occurred due to formula changes.
In 2008, Pelosi sponsored and enacted the Housing and Economic Recovery Act. Two of its key provisions were the Neighborhood Stabilization Program for purchase and rehab of abandoned properties, and the National Housing Trust Fund, dedicated to preserving, building and rehabilitating housing for very low-income persons.
Pelosi’s leadership on San Francisco housing priorities has been critical during the COVID-19 pandemic: She secured over $90 million in rental assistance in San Francisco in the December Omnibus and the American Rescue Plan; as well as $49 million for the city to combat homelessness in the CARES Act, and $18.7 million for homelessness along with 906 emergency housing vouchers for people experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness in the American Rescue Plan.
In the recent fiscal year 2022 appropriations funding bill, Pelosi secured $2.5 million for Chinatown Community Development Center to seismically upgrade the TOWER Hotel SRO building in Chinatown; and $2 million for Mission Economic Development Agency to build out neighborhood-serving nonprofit spaces in two new affordable housing building in the Mission.
Rebuilding Our Infrastructure
Nancy Pelosi at the groundbreaking for the new Transbay Transit Center in August 2010
Pelosi is responsible for many bold job-creating investments in San Francisco’s public transportation infrastructure. She has been instrumental in extending BART to the SFO Airport; creating the Third Street Light Rail; fighting for nearly $1 billion in federal funds for the Central Subway; securing $639 million for the Salesforce Transit Center; and re-envisioning the structurally and seismically-deficient Doyle Drive into the new Presidio Parkway through a public-private partnership with $297 million in federal support.
Pelosi also helped enable the seismic upgrade of the Golden Gate Bridge, secured funds for the new moveable median barrier and changed the law to allow funds for the suicide prevention barrier now under construction.
Pelosi worked with Senator Dianne Feinstein and Bay Area Congresswomen Anna Eshoo, Jackie Speier, and Zoe Lofgren to secure the release of $647 million in federal funding to begin Caltrain electrification which will transition a fleet of aging diesel engines to high-performance electric trains that will operate cleaner, quieter, and more frequently.
In 2020, Pelosi was successful in securing a $1.2 billion federal funding commitment for BART’s Transbay Core Capacity initiative, will be able to increase the frequency of trains between San Francisco and the East Bay as well as grow capacity by 45 percent, improve service for millions of riders every year and maintain its position as a leading public transportation network.
When the COVID pandemic decimated transit revenues and ridership, Pelosi was instrumental in securing $4 billion to Bay Area transit providers in emergency transit assistance as part of the COVID relief bills and American Rescue Plan, protecting thousands of transit jobs from furloughs and layoffs, while preserving transit service vital for essential workers.
Pelosi led the effort to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law through the House, which will provide massive resources to rebuild California, including California would expect to receive $28.2 billion to improve and repair our highways and bridges, $10.3 billion to increase public transit options, $3.5 billion for clean, safe water infrastructure, $1.5 billion for airports including SFO, at least $384 million for EV charging, and significant funds to protect against wildfires and improve broadband access and affordability.
Over a century old, San Francisco’s Embarcadero Seawall underpins many of our most iconic and popular destinations, with millions of annual visitors and more than $100 billion in assets and economic activity. Pelosi succeeding in obtaining highly competitive Army Corps of Engineers study authority and millions in funding to investigate a Corps project to repair and seismically upgrade the Embarcadero Seawall to withstand the next major earthquake and provide vital flood protection from sea level rise. She also secured language to ensure that flood risk initiatives in seismic hazard zones are not penalized in benefit-cost ratios and to guarantee that the Corps uses the best available, peer-reviewed science as they develop the San Francisco Seawall study.
Cleaning & Converting former Military Bases
Nancy Pelosi and Senator Feinstein watch as Navy Secretary England and Mayor Brown sign an agreement for the cleanup and transfer of Hunters Point to San Francisco in January 2002
Since its closure by the U.S. Navy in 1974, the Hunters Point Shipyard has been a neglected and contaminated neighbor to the Bayview Community. Pelosi has helped secure $1.3 billion in federal funding to clean up contamination and transform the former shipyard into a source of jobs, parks and affordable housing for the community. At completion, the Hunters View/ Candlestick Point redevelopment will create 12,100 units of needed housing – with 32 percent below-market rate.
After fraud was discovered by a Navy contractor at Hunters Point, Pelosi secured a commitment for rework to be done on every parcel touched by the contractor; immediate testing for the homes on the Shipyard by the third-party California Department of Public Health; and called for an Inspector General investigation into the Navy’s oversight of their cleanup and testing process. Pelosi is fighting to ensure the health and safety of Bayview-Hunters Point residents; require a transparent cleanup process that involves the community; hold the fraudulent contractor accountable; and insist the Navy fulfill its responsibility to fully clean up the Shipyard.
Nancy Pelosi, Navy Secretary Mabus and Mayor Newsom signing the transfer of Treasure Island to San Francisco in August 2010
At Treasure Island – a man-made island in the Bay between San Francisco and Oakland – the Navy’s plans to sell it to San Francisco languished for over a dozen years after the Navy base had closed. Pelosi was crucial in finding a path forward to re- developing Treasure Island, helping to secure an agreement and $361 million in federal clean-up funds to quickly move forward with a sustainable, transit-oriented development including almost 300 acres of parks and open space and 8,000 housing units, with 27 percent below-market rate.
Recovering from the Loma Prieta Earthquake
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Mayor Art Agnos, and President George H.W. Bush view damage and discuss recovery efforts at Crissy Field days after the Loma Prieta earthquake in October 1989.
After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Congresswoman Pelosi worked to ensure her constituents received timely assistance, joining her California colleagues to secure a $3.45 billion earthquake relief package. In the aftermath, Pelosi worked to raise the SBA loan cap, and led efforts to restore City Hall and the Geary Theater, home of the American Conservatory Theater.
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi joined community leaders at City College of San Francisco’s Chinatown/North Beach Campus in 2014 and emphasized the vital impact CCSF’s open doors have on our community.
Saving City College,
Supporting Public Education
When City College of San Francisco was threatened with losing its accreditation and thus federal funding, Pelosi mobilized the U.S. Department of Education to intervene in an unfair and opaque accreditation process, succeeding in giving CCSF more time, tools, and resources that led to unprecedented change at the college. By striking a delicate balance, Congresswoman Pelosi helped CCSF keep its doors open for the future and preserve its storied legacy of delivering a high-quality, academically rigorous education to thousands of San Franciscans.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Pelosi fought and secured significant federal funding as part of the Biden-Harris American Rescue Plan safely reopen schools and make up for lost learning time in the classroom. Locally, the American Rescue Plan included $106 million to San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD); $83 million to San Francisco State University (SFSU); $28 million to City College of San Francisco (CCSF), $19 million the University of San Francisco (USF) and $2 million to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF.)
Congresswoman Pelosi at the ribbon-cutting for the newly renovated 50 UN Plaza in 2013.
Fighting for Federal Workers
Pelosi protected local federal workers against Trump-Administration efforts to move federal offices away from San Francisco. She prevented the National Park Service from moving the Pacific West Regional Office, housing approximately 150 federal workers who oversee 60 parks in eight states and the Pacific territories, from its current location in San Francisco. She also worked alongside California Senators Feinstein and Harris to successfully protect the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division San Francisco field office from closure.
Pelosi secured federal authorization and funding for a new San Francisco Federal Building, which she has supported since her first days in Congress, resulting in one of the greenest federal government buildings when it opened in 2007. Thanks to the Recovery Act passed under Speaker Pelosi, $121 million in federal funding was made available to renovate and modernize the historic federal office building at 50 United Nations Plaza, which reopened in 2013.