Pools by Supervisor District

How are San Francisco’s public pools distributed across the city? 

To take a closer look, Kid Swim SF has created a map of San Francisco public pools by Supervisor districts. Since Supervisor districts are continually remapped to reflect population distribution and Supervisors are a key way the City of San Francisco responds to residents' needs, this makes for an interesting exercise in understanding the political reality of making San Francisco a better place for family swimming.

Let's start by looking at a map:

Here is another map that shows child density by neighborhoods. 

Right away, we can see that analyzing SF public pool distribution by Supervisor districts is an imperfect, simplified view. Many pools lie close to supervisor district borders, which change every 10 years. For example, before 2022, Mission Pool was part of District 8 but is now in District 9. This is just one of many challenges in this singular perspective. Other factors, such as socioeconomic conditions, transit density, park development timing, ever-changing city budgets, and plain luck, have impacted which districts end up with pools. With all this in mind, let's make some observations:

District 9 has the best pool-to-population ratio: 1 pool for every 33,664 residents. It's worth noting that one of its two pools is outdoors therefore closed part of the year, which has unique advantages and disadvantages (we’ll do an whole article on mission pool soon). District 10 also has 2 pools coming to a pool per 38957 residents.

Districts 1, 3, 4, 5, and 11 each have 1 pool for roughly 70,000 residents.

Districts 2, 6, 7, and 8 have 0 pools meaning 278,120 residents don’t have a pool in their districts.

Looking at the map geographically, we should note that District 6 includes Treasure Island, and families living there have to put in the most effort to access a public pool. Generally, the east side of the city has more pools than the west side.

So what conclusions could we draw from this data:

1. Pools serve large populations:

   1. We need more pools! (why should we not state an obvious if nearly impossible goal?)

   2. We need to maximize pool hours 

2. Pools are a city-wide resource and shared beyond districts and neighborhood communities

3. Some districts/communities have done a better job of stewarding pools into existence, let’s recognize and celebrate that

4. We should start asking Supervisors in districts without pools WHY and how are they going to prioritize the long term effort it takes to provide pool access ?

Thanks for your support!,
SF Kids Swim Team

P.S. Don’t forget to share SF Kids Swim with interested families!