All about San Francisco’s DV right to counsel pilot ballot initiative

In June 2022, San Francisco voters enacted Proposition D with 60% of the vote.  The measure created the Office of Victim and Witness Rights and required the Director of the Office to introduce an ordinance proposing a one-year domestic violence right to counsel counsel pilot program to provide legal services to any DV victim.  The City’s fiscal investment in the pilot was limited to the cost of staff support for program coordination among the City, the Superior Court, non-profit organizations, and others involved in the Pilot Program”, so the legal services component was not funded, but the pilot had an evaluation component.  According to the ordinance statement, there are over 7,000 DV complaints every year in San Francisco.  Previously, a DV survivor penned a piece to SFGate explaining why the City needed to pass Prop D.

In January 2025, ABC 7 News reported that the Office of Victim and Witness Rights had “just opened” and that the Director conceded the right was not yet being fulfilled due to a lack of government funding.  Alexis Collentine of Open Door Legal estimated that the program needs $2 million to get started on a pilot level.  Then in September 2025, the San Francisco Standard reported that no attorney has been hired pursuant to Proposition D (although the CIty is separately spending $1 million on DV legal services, which is far from enough).  The City did finally establish the Mayor’s Office for Victims’ Rights as required by Prop D, but that office does not provide legal services.  The story notes that “A survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 48% of California women have experienced intimate partner violence. In San Francisco, that would be roughly 200,000 women”, and that half of the homeless population in San Francisco have experienced domestic violence.