Twenty years ago, San Francisco asked a radical question: What if city government could be designed to put more money in the pockets of the people who need it most?
The San Francisco Treasurer’s Office chose to answer that question with action. Through our Office of Financial Empowerment and the Financial Justice Project, we got to work.
We launched Bank On San Francisco so that no one has to pay a check-cashing fee just to access their own money. Today tens of thousands of San Franciscans, and millions more across the country, have a safe, affordable bank account and access to free one on one financial counseling.
We created Kindergarten to College, the nation’s first municipal children’s college savings program, and today every child who walks through the doors of a San Francisco public school starts with a savings account and the real expectation that college is within reach.
We built the Financial Justice Project, and today more than $100 million in fines, fees, and debt no longer stands between San Francisco families and a fresh start.
And we kept going: We expanded SF Museums for All — now used more than 200,000 times a year by low-income San Franciscans to visit our city’s world-class museums. We launched Be The Jury, raising daily pay for low-income jurors from $15 to $100 — so that serving your community doesn’t mean you can’t pay your bills. First-in-the-nation programs, built here in San Francisco, proving what is possible when local government stands fully on the side of the people it serves.
Together, these programs have reached hundreds of thousands of San Franciscans and helped shape policy in cities across the country.
Today, we take the next step.
Treasurer José Cisneros on why this moment matters, and why the urgency of this work has never been greater:
