Stop the freeway!

Thank you so very much for your well-researched and thoughtful article ["Freeway Fight," 4/28/04]. I am glad someone in the press understands just what a nightmare this [new freeway] ramp will be for all of San Francisco.

All one has to do is spend a morning watching folks walk down Market Street to the Van Ness station and wonder who will be the first pedestrian or bicycle casualty of the "this is the best we could do" ramp.

It's heartbreaking to live in the most liberal and progressive city in the country and have the concerns of a working-class area be ignored and dismissed.

Leslie Kossoff, North Mission Neighborhood Alliance
San Francisco

A Dan fan

For the last 10 years, the number-one reason I have picked up a Bay Guardian is Dan Leone. You may as well call it the S.F. Bay Leoneian. Dan's tongue and typewriter, not to mention his ukulele and steel pan, have had an enormous amount of influence on this town, and I'm proud to be one of his influenza.

And it's about time he was on your cover. Burp.

Adam McCauley
San Francisco

Pursuing land trusts

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is right that community land trusts offer strong protection for housing affordability – stronger than rent control [Opinion, 4/28/04]. The San Francisco Community Land Trust has been working for the past two years on legislation that would help to make this a reality.

The legislation, sponsored by Sup. Chris Daly, would set up a process to allow tenants to gain collective ownership of rental buildings of seven or more units. Only community land trusts would be permitted to do conversions, acting as an agent of the tenants. Rents would be converted to affordable mortgages locked down under permanent resale restrictions, ensuring affordability for future generations.

A community land trust doing a conversion would be required to offer the apartments for sale to the existing tenants at a price such that their total housing costs would not be more than 35 percent of their income.

The community land trust model is a two-tier co-op structure, separating ownership of land and buildings. The community land trust itself would be a scatter-site, nonprofit, zero-equity cooperative responsible for protecting long-term housing affordability. Buildings would be owned by separate limited-equity condo associations or co-ops. To balance interests of owners and renters, both would be members of the community land trust that owns the land under their building and the apartments of nonbuyers.

Tom Wetzel, President, San Francisco Community Land Trust
San Francisco

Who loves Bush?

Your opinion-page editorial cartoon of April 28 startled and saddened me. Am I actually supposed to believe that poor rural Americans are the reason Bush has a poll lead? My, they're funny and gullible, those NASCAR- and Fox News-watchin', tobacco-spittin' buffoons from "Crackerville, Alabama." Let's blame all the nation's political woes on these folks, who just don't have the class to work at Pizza Orgasmica or go to the BBC for their news, and thereby mess up this country for the rest of us.

Charlotte Honigman-Smith
San Francisco

The real 'demons'

I am writing in response to Josh Hart's April 21 opinion piece "Save the Concourse" and the follow-up letters, "The Transit Fanatics" and "Don't Demonize the de Young," printed April 28. While I am definitely in the "transit-fanatic" camp, I love the museums and can't wait for them to reopen. And I think it's vitally important to understand the needs of those who may not be able to use transit to visit the museums. However, the charge of "demonizing" the museums is overly harsh.

The real issue at hand is not the "demonization" of the museums but the cut-and-dry facts of this construction that go against the clear will of the voters. The voters specified in Prop. J that the garage entrance be outside of the park. Where is the garage entrance now? Inside the park. The voters specified in Prop. J that the garage construction be funded entirely with private funds. What is funding it now? Municipal bonds.

Let's not "demonize" the museums, let's "demonize" the real "demons" in this scenario: the folks backing the construction that clearly and precisely goes against what the voters want. How much more illegal and wrong can you get?

Alison Knowles
San Francisco

For the record