Is San Francisco to be a suburb of San Jose or Walnut Creek? I hope not and I want to do everything I can to keep The City the center of the area. We have so much, all the cultural opportunities, retail and restaurants, recreation etc. If we don’t plan on growth we stand to lose all of that the new centers of the area.

Density will have to rise. There is no other way to accommodate the increase in population that is clamoring to live here. I hear of the desire to live in the city all the time. I hear it from families with kids that have issues with school choice and high cost but still want to raise the kids in this sophisticated city. I hear it from the parents, and the children, that want their kids to live in the City they grew up in. I hear it from the young new professionals that want the opportunity to live and work in Biotech or high tech and our hospitals and financial centers. All of them want to have the experience of living in this world class city.

This demand has driven our prices to the stratosphere. Many people talk about the how we are becoming a city of the haves and have not’s. Usually they are referring to the rich and the poor, or the market rate and below market rate housing or the dividing line of the area medium income. I think the haves include all the people that already have a place to live in San Francisco. If you are a person that owns a property or a person that has a rent controlled apartment you are one of the haves. Too often the haves are taking a very strong NIMBY attitude on development. Nothing can change if it will affect what I already have.

I sit and listen to community groups plan to block everything they don’t like without putting anything else on the table for discussion. Where are the truly progressive groups?  Where are the groups that stand for real progress.

The so called “progressives” in San Francisco’s political spectrum have vested interests in conserving their constituencies, their own slice of the “have” pie. Rent control is a device to conserve the long term renter in their “have” position. Creating ever greater percentages of below market housing conserve constituents for a power base of the “have mine”. I don’t see them as any different from the Telegraph Hill dweller or Pacific Heights mansion owner that doesn’t want a restaurant to grow or traffic to increase. They all have theirs and they don’t want to progress into the future.

San Francisco has got to create more housing. We need rental housing, starter home ownership housing, family rental and home ownership, and we need senior housing. We have trophy housing and I don’t think we need to worry about creating that it will happen all by itself. But we, the people that live here now, have got to see the need and address it. Higher density in areas that can absorb it is the place to start. The Market Octavia plan and the Eastern Neighborhood Plan are perfect places to start. The Coalition of San Francisco Neighborhoods is fighting the Market Octavia plan and the progressives are trying to keep their slices of the pie in the Western SoMa area.

The neighborhoods don’t want new transit zoning enacted because of the fear that it will move into their neighborhoods. The Chris Daly district continues to try to keep home ownership opportunities out of his district by limiting the development of residential property to only replace existing residential property in the Western SoMa plan and to increase the percentage of BMR properties. Smacks of gerrymandering and what could be more blatant than not letting any new housing be built except to replace existing. “I have mine and I don’t want anyone else to have what I have”.

Market Octavia is a perfect location for a transit village. Hayes Street is incredibly vibrant now and will only improve. The corner of Market and Van Ness has been nothing more than an intersection.  Buildings of 9 and 10m stories with housing above and retail on the ground all the way from actually Valencia or Dolores and Market would be a huge improvement over what is there now. Do away with the blight that is Mid-Market from Van Ness to 5th Street. New retail, services, restaurants, office space and residential above will be a grand improvement over the existing.

Does that mean that the neighborhoods on the West side of the city will inevitably have higher density? Stay tuned because that will be examined in the next.