San Francisco is about to get a new jail while the city slashes funding for housing, food assistance, legal aid, reentry support, and more.
Here’s what’s happening: the Mayor’s budget pours millions into keeping Jail Annex #3 open—a facility that was supposed to be temporary. Now, they’re turning it into a permanent jail.
San Francisco should be funding our communities, not expanding incarceration. The People’s Budget Coalition is demanding a budget that invests in what really keeps us safe: housing, food, legal aid, and violence prevention, not jail cells.
ON TUESDAY JUNE 17 & WEDNESDAY JUNE 18
CALL THE BUDGET COMMITTEE OF THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS!
Connie Chan (D1) – 415-554-7410
Matt Dorsey (D6) – 415-554-7970
Joel Engardio (D4) – 415-554-7460
Rafael Mandelman (D8) – 415-554-6968
Shamann Walton (D10) – 415-554-7670
No Jail Expansion Talking Points
County Jail #3 Annex #3 Overview
• The Sheriff’s Department reopened Jail #3 Annex in San Bruno in Fall 2023 to respond to a rising jail population. Originally framed as a temporary measure, the annex – now housing up to 372 people – is being budgeted as a long-term facility, effectively turning it into a new permanent jail.
• This (re)opening has driven a major overtime expense: the budget increases sheriff overtime by 222%, roughly $30 million.
Key Messaging Points
Fund SF Communities Not a New Jail
• The Mayor’s budget effectively opens a new jail by keeping Jail Annex #3 running indefinitely—while slashing funding for the very programs that keep people safe and housed. Nonprofits that provide legal aid, reentry support, housing assistance, and violence prevention are being gutted.
Cutting Prevention Is Not Public Safety
• This budget isn’t pro–public safety, it’s pro–incarceration.
• Programs that prevent violence, mediate gang conflict, protect workers from wage theft, and support survivors of domestic violence are all on the chopping block. That doesn’t reduce harm. It increases it. You don’t make communities safer by cutting the services that help people exit cycles of poverty, abuse, and criminalization.
Community Services Are Public Safety
• Decades of research prove that stable housing, youth support, mental health care, and accessible legal aid reduce crime far more effectively—and far more cheaply—than jails and massive increases to overtime pay.
• It costs over $130,000 a year to jail someone in California. But programs like community-based violence interruption or housing-first models deliver safety for individuals and the public at a fraction of the cost.
Demands For Supervisors:
Supervisors must reject a budget that grows jail infrastructure while starving public safety programs that actually work.
That means defending Prop C, restoring cost-of-doing-business increases for nonprofits, and reallocating law enforcement funding to programs that prevent harm before it happens.
A jail is not a safety net. It’s time to invest in what really keeps San Francisco safe.
1 min Video Script: SFPBC No New Jail Script
Connie Chan (D1) – 415-554-7410
Matt Dorsey (D6) – 415-554-7970
Joel Engardio (D4) – 415-554-7460
Rafael Mandelman (D8) – 415-554-6968
Shamann Walton (D10) – 415-554-7670
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