Could a new mayor bring SF’s workers back to the office?

Mayor London Breed believes downtown is forever changed by the shift to remote work, and San Francisco needs to adapt rather than attempt to turn back the clock. But Mark Farrell — one of her leading challengers in the mayoral race — believes the story might’ve been different had someone else been in charge.

“The blame lies squarely with Mayor Breed,” Farrell said in an October interview of the candidates conducted by The Standard and ABC7 News. “Her scattershot, ‘throw spaghetti at the wall’ approach to downtown recovery is not only embarrassing, but it also makes our city look unserious on the global stage.” 

Four years after the wide-scale retreat of the largest employers, San Francisco still lags behind nearly every other major city in terms of in-person office recovery. 

Office attendance this year in San Francisco averages 43% of pre-pandemic levels, according to data from access-card company Kastle Systems. That figure has barely inched up from 2023. The stalled return of workers has had cascading effects on restaurants, retailers, and transit agencies.

The issue has become a key topic in the mayoral race as the candidates debate the best path to reviving a languishing downtown core.

Breed argues that because hybrid work is here to stay, the best strategy is to make downtown a place that everyone — not just office workers — wants to frequent.

“Downtown needs to evolve into a 24/7 nightlife- and entertainment-focused neighborhood,” Joe Arellano, the mayor’s campaign spokesperson, told The Standard. “The best way to incentivize workers to come back to the office is to make our downtown more enticing and fun, so workers choose that over working remotely from home.” 

That includes making the area safer and cleaner, according to Breed’s team. They point to more visible law enforcement, community ambassadors, and street programming as evidence of progress.

Speaking at the interview with The Standard and ABC7 News, Breed highlighted the need for wider tax reform to make the city more business-friendly. Asked if city employees should be in the office five days a week, Breed said, “Definitely, and that’s something we have consistently tried to work on.” But she admitted that employee recruiting and retention have been issues for  some city departments.

About three-quarters of city workers are currently back in the office, according to a spokesperson for the city administrator. 

There’s no love lost between Breed and Farrell when it comes to blame for the city’s slow post-pandemic recovery. 

“Public safety and clean streets are non-negotiable,” Farrell said. “Employers repeatedly tell me the biggest barrier to them coming back is the unsafe and unsanitary conditions downtown.” 

Step one if he’s elected, he said, will be calling city employees back into the office five days a week, although he’ll likely face pushback from some public-sector unions on a universal mandate. 

For private employers, Farrell said, he would introduce a tax credit for employers willing to relocate to the Financial District, Mid-Market, SoMa, and Union Square and another for those who bring in workers at least four days a week. 

How to enforce that requirement is an open question. In the interview, Farrell said badge swipes are the likely way to measure compliance, but his priority is getting legislation passed to offer employers incentives. 

Supervisor Ahsha Safaí agreed that the city should lead by example if it’s going to ask private employers to return downtown. 

He said that, if elected, he would personally negotiate with unions and ask them to target a return to office of five days a week, but with greater flexibility within that structure.

“I understand there’s a lot of people that are caring for family members or children, so having a flexible schedule, I think, is the right way to start,” Safaí said. 

Supervisor Aaron Peskin said he strongly encourages businesses to bring their employees back to the office and is doing his best to attract companies to the city. He touted his efforts to ease conversions of vacant office buildings into housing and a policy to use public financing to kickstart stalled housing developments. 

However, he is against Farrell’s idea of tax breaks for companies that mandate a return to the office, saying the city “can’t afford” the policy in its current economic state. 

Peskin teamed up with Breed and several business-friendly interest groups to put Proposition M on the November ballot. The measure would cut taxes on small businesses and put more of an emphasis on sales in determining a company’s tax bill.

Proponents of Prop. M say the current system, which heavily weighs the portion of a company’s workforce located in the city, effectively deters employers from bringing workers back to the office and may even incentivize  them to relocate to other cities.

Mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie, along with Peskin, did not specify whether he would aim to require city employees to come back to work five days a week. 

“The key to getting people back to in-person work is making them want to return, not trying to force them,” Lurie said. “That means making our streets safe and clean, closing the drug markets, supporting our small businesses, and setting the conditions for arts and cultural events to flourish downtown.”

Employees of Tipping Point Community, the anti-poverty nonprofit Lurie founded and makes up the bulk of his professional experience, work under a hybrid schedule, with three days a week in the office.