Wow – you nailed it

OK ... I think I understand the Bay Guardian editorial ethos now. Over the past few years, I've learned the following:

1. Nuclear power: bad (even though it would surely get us out of Iraq and off the oil addiction)

2. Cops: bad (anarchy is OK, however)

3. Corporations: bad (unless they're owned by minorities)

4. Property ownership: bad (ditto)

5. Homeless reform: bad (unless it involves nothing less than giving away free houses, free money, and unearned respect)

6. Unbridled sex – anytime, anywhere, with anything that moves: good

7. Graffiti (by "artists") that defaces public property: good

8. Music and movies: good (but only if they're made with no budget by anybody other than European Americans. Bonus points if they're made by Iranians, Albanians, Afghanis, or Tibetans)

9. Editorial cartoons by Dolezal: good (even though the guy doesn't remotely grasp the concepts of nuance and metaphor)

10. Whining and moaning and kvetching about everything that falls outside of the above parameters: good (and the Bay Guardian's raison d'être)

These are the main "talking points" that I'm sure every writer and reviewer must adhere to when they join your staff. When are you going to get your head out of the (marijuana) clouds and join the rest of us in the 21st century?

A.J. Reeve Vallejo

Affordable – and safe

All praises to the Bay Guardian for it's ongoing coverage of the public housing issue in San Francisco and the San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA). A.C. Thompson's recent story ["Home Sweet None," 8/24/05] was just the latest in a long history of great reporting on a difficult issue that warrants attention, and rarely gets it from the Chron-Ex.

Thompson's got a tough job and he does it doggedly and very well. It's not easy reporting on public housing in San Francisco. The folks who live there are very low income, and don't have a heck of a lot of power. They live in substandard housing with a very high rate of violent crime. They are forced to choose among affordability and livability and safety – a Sophie's Choice if there ever was one. So who's to blame? The entity that owns and manages the housing, their landlord, the SF Housing Authority. Why is it that the SFHA is so secretive? Is it because it has something to hide? Sadly, in my experience – which only dates back to 1976 – it's been because it's had a lot to hide.

But the effort to rebuild the Hunters View– public housing development in Bay View-Hunters Point isn't something it needs to hide. Rather than muting the good news, the SFHA and the citizens of San Francisco should raise the effort up and celebrate it. For-profit developer, nonprofit developer – that's not what matters. The real issue is who gets served and who benefits.

In terms of housing development, the questions are: Is the housing safe and sound? Affordable to the very poor? Permanently affordable? The rebuilding of Hunters View will accomplish all three goals. One Hunters View developer, the John Stewart Co., ran the only public housing reconstruction effort "at the North Beach Apartments" in which every existing very-low-income affordable unit was preserved, in perpetuity, and rehabbed into habitable shape. Codeveloper Devine and Gong, Inc. has preserved thousands of at-risk, HUD-subsidized units. Other SFHA-supported redevelopment efforts at Bernal Dwellings, Plaza East, and Hayes Valley failed to serve the tenants or the city. The reconstruction significantly reduced the number of affordable units and continued the poor management that sadly characterizes other SFHA multifamily developments – not to mention readmitting the violent criminal elements that had dominated the developments back into the reconstructed units. With the Hunters View development, the SFHA selected developers with a track record of preserving and improving the development. That's no easy task. I say more power to them and to the public housing tenants with whom they work. Why shouldn't public housing be both affordable and habitable, despite the mismanagement of the SFHA?

Buck Bagot San Francisco

For the record

In "Coldest 'Winter' Ever" (8/31/05), the story misidentified the subject of a photo shown in the movie depicting a soldier smiling by the body of a man he killed. That soldier was not Rusty Sachs, veteran of the First Marine Air Wing.