John Avalos

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American politician

title: "John Avalos" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["san-francisco-board-of-supervisors-members", "american-politicians-of-mexican-descent", "hispanic-and-latino-american-people-in-california-politics", "1964-births", "living-people", "21st-century-california-politicians", "california-democrats", "people-from-wilmington,-los-angeles", "university-of-california,-santa-barbara-alumni", "san-francisco-state-university-alumni"] description: "American politician" topic_path: "politics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Avalos" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American politician ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox officeholder"]

FieldValue
nameJohn Avalos
smallimageFile:SupervisorJohnAvalos.jpg
captionOfficial portrait, 2015
officeMember of the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
from District 11
term_startJanuary 8, 2009
term_endJanuary 8, 2017
predecessorGerardo Sandoval
successorAhsha Safaí
1blanknameMayor
1namedataGavin Newsom
Ed Lee
birth_date{{Cite news
lastSabatini
firstJoshua
titleOut with the old, in with new
newspaperSan Francisco Examiner
dateJanuary 2, 2008
urlhttp://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Out_with_the_old_in_with_new.html
}}{{dead linkdate
birth_placeWilmington, California, U.S.
partyDemocratic
residenceSan Francisco, California
alma_materUniversity of California, Santa Barbara (BA)
San Francisco State University (MA)
occupationPolitician
websiteSupervisor John Avalos
::

| name = John Avalos | smallimage = File:SupervisorJohnAvalos.jpg | imagesize = | caption = Official portrait, 2015 | order = | office = Member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from District 11 | term_start = January 8, 2009 | term_end = January 8, 2017 | predecessor = Gerardo Sandoval | successor = Ahsha Safaí | 1blankname = Mayor | 1namedata = Gavin Newsom Ed Lee | birth_date = {{Cite news |last=Sabatini |first=Joshua |title=Out with the old, in with new |newspaper=San Francisco Examiner |date=January 2, 2008 |url=http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Out_with_the_old_in_with_new.html | birth_place = Wilmington, California, U.S. | death_date = | death_place = | party = Democratic | spouse = | relations = | children = | residence = San Francisco, California | alma_mater = University of California, Santa Barbara (BA) San Francisco State University (MA) | occupation = Politician | profession = | religion = | signature = | website = Supervisor John Avalos | footnotes =

John Avalos (born March 11, 1964) is an American politician. He served two terms as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2008 to 2016. Avalos represented District 11 in San Francisco, consisting of the Crocker-Amazon, Excelsior, Ingleside, Oceanview, and Outer Mission districts. Avalos was elected on November 4, 2008, in the 2008 San Francisco election and took office on January 8, 2009. He was re-elected in the 2012 San Francisco election with 94 percent of the vote, and termed out of office in January 2017.

Early life and education

Avalos is Mexican-American/Chicano and was born in Wilmington, California. Along with his three brothers and two sisters, he was raised by his mother Erlinda, an office worker, and his father Hector, a longshoreman and member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. 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.

After graduating from Andover, Avalos moved back to California, where he soon attended the University 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 from San Francisco State University.

Career

San Francisco supervisor

Before being elected to the Board of Supervisors, Avalos was a legislative aide for supervisor Chris Daly.

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 with 28.23% of the total votes in round one and 52.93% in round four.

Budgeting and municipal finance

In 2010, Avalos passed legislation to set a 5-cent fee per serving of alcohol to raise funding for emergency services in response to alcohol consumption. Mayor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill and Avalos failed to garner the eight votes to override the veto.

In 2010, Avalos crafted an increase to San Francisco's Real Estate Transfer Tax for properties valued over $5,000,000 and $10,000,000. Voters approved his proposal, Proposition N, on November 2, 2010. Prop N has since raised hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the City.

In 2012, Avalos worked with Mayor Ed Lee to update the City's business tax by creating a progressive gross receipts tax that included an exemption for small and low-profit businesses. The final ordinance 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. The new revenues ensured funding for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund that passed on the same ballot.

In 2015, Avalos challenged Mayor Lee's $250 million housing bond by crafting a measure which resulted in the Mayor increasing his bond to $310 million. The larger bond enabled affordable housing projects to be financed in greater amounts in District 11 and District 9 than under Mayor Lee's original plan. The new revenues ensured funding for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund which passed on the same ballot.

Employment and local hiring

In December 2010, working with a coalition of labor and Black, Brown, and Asian community organizations, Avalos passed the strongest Local Hiring Ordinance in the country. The ordinance was crafted during the great recession years at a time when San Francisco had one of its highest unemployment rates in decades. Since the 1990s, the City relied on a nonbinding local hiring ordinance called First Source, which never achieved measurable success. 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.

The Local Hiring Ordinance required publicly funded contractors to hire local residents starting at a rate of 20% for each trade working on a project, rising by 5% each year up to 50%. Despite early opposition from the Building Trades Council, the ordinance went to a local resident-hiring rate of more than 50% after six years. Avalos later expanded the ordinance to apply to private development on public land.

Criminal and environmental justice

In his second term in office and 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.

In 2013, Avalos initiated an effort to convince the San Francisco Employees Retirement System Board to divest from fossil fuel corporations. 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.

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.

Immigrants rights

In 2013 Avalos updated the City's Sanctuary City status by passing the Due Process for All Ordinance in response to the Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency's Secure Communities or S-Comm program. 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. 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.

Community development and municipal banking

His office funded neighborhood planning efforts that led to the City setting aside land for transit-oriented affordable housing. 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. In other district initiatives, Avalos helped foster community-led grantmaking 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.

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. 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.

During the Great Recession years and afterward, mortgage defaults and foreclosure rates 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. 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.

Following the 2008–09 recession and the home loan crisis, starting in 2011, Avalos championed the idea of a Municipal Bank for San Francisco. In 2012, Avalos began the city's process of studying the creation of a public bank. In 2016, San Francisco supervisors unanimously passed legislation by Avalos cutting ties with Wells Fargo, following the bank's "phony accounts" scandal. San Francisco supervisors approved a resolution in 2019 urging California lawmakers to allow the city to create its own public bank.

2011 San Francisco mayoral campaign

Main article: 2011 San Francisco mayoral election

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

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. 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 in expenditures, 60 percent of the total money spent. Avalos accepted the settlement in front of the commission.

Personal life

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.

References

References

  1. "Former Supervisor John Avalos – District 11". City and County of San Francisco.
  2. "San Francisco 2012 Election Final Certified Results". San Francisco Department of Elections.
  3. "Smart Voter: Full Biography for John Avalos". Smart Voter.
  4. (September 22, 2010). "S.F. Mayor Newsom vetoes fee on alcohol". SF Gate.
  5. "San Francisco Real Property Transfer Tax, Proposition N (November 2010)". Ballotpedia.
  6. (October 4, 2017). "Will Oakland Adopt a Mansion Tax?: Councilmember Dan Kalb is developing a tiered property transfer tax that could raise rates on expensive homes and generate millions in new revenue.". East Bay Express.
  7. "San Francisco Gross Receipts Tax on Businesses, Proposition E (November 2012)". Ballotpedia.
  8. (June 20, 2012). "Dueling real estate taxes submitted for November ballot by Lee and Avalos.". San Francisco Examiner.
  9. "San Francisco 2015 Nonpartisan Election Guide". San Francisco Public Press.
  10. (December 15, 2010). "Board of Supervisors gives veto-proof approval to local hiring mandate". San Francisco Examiner.
  11. (December 9, 2010). "San Francisco's New Hiring Ordinance Aims to Keep Workers, and Their Wages, Local". In These Times.
  12. (January 15, 2013). "San Francisco's local hire ordinance could be expanded". San Francisco Examiner.
  13. (December 9, 2010). "San Francisco's New Hiring Ordinance Aims to Keep Workers, and Their Wages, Local". In These Times.
  14. "San Francisco's 5-Year-Old Local Hire Policy a Huge Success". Emerald Cities Collaborative.
  15. (January 15, 2013). "San Francisco's local hire ordinance could be expanded". San Francisco Examiner.
  16. Avalos, John. "No need to delay clean power in San Francisco". The San Francisco Chronicle.
  17. "BayCAP Campaign Archive". 350 Bay Area.
  18. "Summary of Board of Directors Climate Protection Committee Meeting: Thursday, July 18, 2013". Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
  19. Staff, Examiner. "San Francisco retirement fund board could vote to divest from fossil fuel companies". The San Francisco Examiner.
  20. "In San Francisco, Thousands Rally to Urge Action on Climate Change". Earth Island Journal.
  21. "SF's "Keep It in the Ground" ordinance will transition Kern County oil field into solar fields". Sierra Club, San Francisco Club.
  22. Avalos, John. "San Francisco retirement fund board could vote to divest from fossil fuel companies". USA Today.
  23. "Priority Enforcement Program: Why 'PEP' Doesn't Fix S-Comm's Failings". National Immigration Law Center.
  24. Rivano Barros, Joe. "San Francisco Updates Sanctuary City Law". Mission Local.
  25. "Home is Where the Heart Is: A People-Powered Community Vision for the Balboa Park Upper Yard, Excelsior District". Communities United for Health & Justice.
  26. Lee, Stephanie. "2014 resolution: S.F. urban garden expansion". SF Gate.
  27. "Ingleside-Excelsior Light — Community Garden 'Sisterhood Farms' Breaks Ground in the Ocean View". Chinese Progressive Association.
  28. "Ridge Lane, SF's Newest Street Park". Livable City, Non-Profit.
  29. "Excelsior will unveil ever upward neighborhoods first sculpture". Excelsior Action Group.
  30. "San Francisco Board of Supervisors Minutes: October 26, 2010". City and County of San Francisco.
  31. "OMI Service Providers Planning & Capacity-Building Process 2009–2010". City and County of San Francisco.
  32. "San Francisco Federal Credit Union celebrates Excelsior branch grand opening". CUInsight.
  33. Staff, CBS. "San Francisco Supes Approve Measure Supporting Occupy Protest". CBS Bay Area.
  34. Rodriguez, Raquel. "Bay Area unites to fight foreclosures, as Supervisor Avalos calls for foreclosure moratorium in San Francisco". San Francisco Bay View.
  35. Wilkey, Robin. "San Francisco Foreclosures Protested By State Officials: Supervisor Avalos Calls For Moratorium". HuffPost.
  36. Kernan, Holly. "Radical Idea: The public bank of San Francisco". KALW.
  37. "SF Public Banking Lit Review for Task Force Members". City and County of San Francisco.
  38. "San Francisco Board of Supervisors, October 24, 2011, Item 2". City and County of San Francisco.
  39. Iovino, Nicholas. "San Francisco Cuts Ties to Wells Fargo Amid Scandal". Courthouse News Service.
  40. Redmond, Tim. "Another step toward a public bankl". 48 Hills.
  41. (April 18, 2011). "Progressive Avalos enlivens S.F. mayor's race". San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, CA.
  42. "S.F. Supervisor Avalos admits affair with top staffer". SFGate.
  43. "SF Ethics Commission fines former Supe John Avalos $12,000 over campaign finances". San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, CA.

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