41 Facts About Dean Preston

Dean E Preston was born on 1969 and is an American attorney and former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

In November 2019, Preston won a special election to finish Mayor London Breed's term on the Board of Supervisors.

Dean Preston was re-elected in 2020 but lost to Bilal Mahmood in 2024.

Dean Preston graduated with a JD from UC Hastings College of the Law and was staff attorney for the Tenderloin Housing Clinic from 2000 to 2008, after which he founded and led Tenants Together, a tenant advocacy organization.

Dean Preston is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Dean Preston was born in New York City to a Jewish family.

Dean Preston attended Horace Mann School, a prestigious Ivy League preparatory, which he graduated from in 1987.

Dean Preston attended Bowdoin College, where he met his future wife, Jenckyn Goosby.

Dean Preston graduated in 1991 with a major in anthropology and economics.

Dean Preston studied law at UC Hastings College of the Law, where he was classmates with Molly McKay.

Dean Preston studied international human rights law, completed an externship at the Hague, and interned for the California Rural Legal Assistance.

Dean Preston joined the non-profit Tenderloin Housing Clinic in 2000 and transitioned to tenant rights law.

Dean Preston was a co-owner of the bar and nightclub Cafe du Nord in the Castro District of San Francisco.

In 2008, Dean Preston founded Tenants Together, a coalition of more than 50 local tenant rights organizations in California.

Dean Preston served as Executive Director of the organization which advocated for state legislation and helped form local tenant unions to push for rent control and tenants rights laws in several cities in California.

Dean Preston ran as a democratic socialist and won the election by a narrow margin, becoming the first democratic socialist elected to the board since Harry Britt stepped down in 1993.

Dean Preston ran as an incumbent in the November 2020 election, with Brown campaigning for her former seat.

Dean Preston authored San Francisco's 2018 Proposition F, which directs the city to establish a universal right to counsel for tenants facing eviction.

Dean Preston again introduced legislation to extend eviction protections in May 2021 as the state-wide eviction moratorium in effect at the time was due to expire.

Dean Preston led a successful effort in August 2022 to stop the eviction of several Black residents of the King-Marcus Garvey Apartments in Western Addition who were being evicted due to a technicality in the regulations.

Dean Preston raised the funds to rent 30 rooms at the Oasis Inn near City Hall to house homeless people.

In September 2021, Dean Preston questioned the proposed acquisition of a tourist hotel in Japantown for use as permanent supportive housing.

The owners of the Kimpton Buchanan Hotel backed out of the deal but the Board, including Dean Preston, approved the purchase of the three other hotels in October 2021.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that, according to YIMBYs critical of his housing policies, Dean Preston opposed development plans and legislative proposals that could have housed more than 28,000 people, including affordable housing for nearly 8,500 people, from December 2019 to November 2021.

In 2021, Dean Preston blocked discussion of a proposal that would have required 50 signatures to invoke the California Environmental Quality Act to block housing projects, rather than just one person complaining.

Dean Preston called for a "race and equity study" of the project.

Dean Preston introduced two ballot initiatives approved by voters in the November 2020 election.

In March 2020, Dean Preston successfully proposed in the Board of Supervisors to appropriate $10 million from the funds raised by Proposition I to fund rent relief and $10 million to fund additional affordable housing.

In November 2021, Dean Preston led a successful proposal to allocate $64 million from Proposition I to fund the Small Sites Program, which subsidizes about half the cost to allow nonprofit organizations to purchase small apartment buildings with residents at risk of displacement.

In October 2021, Dean Preston voted against the construction of a 495-unit apartment complex on a parking lot next to a BART station.

In January 2021, Dean Preston introduced an ordinance, co-sponsored by five other supervisors, to start the process of establishing a public bank in San Francisco after the 2019 passage of California's Public Banking Act.

Dean Preston's legislation creates a working group to generate a business and governance plan for a public bank to be presented to the Board of Supervisors.

The Board of Supervisors approved the resolution in April 2020 and Dean Preston called on the San Francisco Attorney's Office to investigate if the proposed fare increase violated California statute forbidding price increases more than 10 percent during a declaration of an emergency.

In December 2021, Dean Preston proposed a resolution which passed unanimously calling an end to street parking at about 1,000 of the city's bus stops.

In July 2021, Dean Preston was the sole dissenting vote against the city's budget, citing increases in police spending and a lack of investment in social housing as the reasons for his vote.

Dean Preston again was the sole dissenting vote on the budget in July 2022, citing the $50 million increase to the police budget.

Dean Preston introduced ballot measure Proposition H in May 2022 to shift local elections from odd-numbered to even-numbered years in an effort to increase voter participation.

The home was valued at $2.5 million in 2024, three times as much as Dean Preston paid for it in 1999.

The family trust of Dean Preston's wife owns several buildings in San Francisco.

Dean Preston has been on the board of the Alamo Square Neighborhood Association.

Dean Preston owns stock shares valued between $400,000 and $4 million in Apple, Microsoft, IBM and Cisco.