SF Mayor London Breed and the Board of Supervisors announced Wednesday that they had reached a deal on a $13 billion budget for the new fiscal year which begins Thursday, July 1 — and it includes another $32 million for the city's rent-relief program.

"I’m proud that we’ve reached an agreement on a budget that will tackle the challenges confronting this city — to make historic investments in homelessness and mental health, to support our most vulnerable, to keep people safe, and to prioritize our economic recovery with a focus on lifting up all San Franciscans,” Breed said in a statement. "I’m proud that we were able to work with the Board of Supervisors to put forward a budget that will benefit our city and our residents as we emerge from this pandemic."

"This past year has been incredibly hard for our residents, small businesses and workers," said Supervisor Matt Haney, who chairs the board's Budget Committee, in his own statement. "This budget agreement will prioritize their recovery, safety, health, and wellbeing and put our city on a path to come back even better."

Supervisor Dean Preston told KPIX that it was down to the wire in Tuesday's budget negotiations that they hammered out a deal to fund the rent-relief program for another 3,500 renters behind on rent. There is also an additional $16 million in the budget to fund the city's tenants' right-to-counsel program.

"We got a brief reprieve, but we are three months from another eviction cliff," Preston said, referring to the new September sunsetting of the state's eviction moratorium — though the city has extended its eviction moratorium through December 31.

The new budget includes Breed's previously announced $1 billion allocation for homeless services and housing — and it continues the city's investments in the COVID-19 response and recovery, including public safety, mental health care, housing, and homelessness prevention and transitional housing programs.

The $13.6 billion FY2020-2021 budget that runs out on June 30 was not ultimately signed by Mayor Breed until October of last year, and it included a $120 million disinvestment in law enforcement, with that money being reinvested in the city's African American community. It is not clear whether any more funds have been allocated to the SFPD in the new budget, after Breed has announced new programs in recent months to increase police foot patrols in the Tenderloin and downtown — in addition to adding new crisis and non-crisis response teams made up of unarmed EMTs and social-work professionals.

City officials had previously announced that anticipated budget cuts did not have to occur thanks to a surprise $157 million budget surplus thanks to better-than-expected property and transfer-tax revenue.

Photo: Gordon Mak