Gavin Newsom in into potholes these days; he mentioned them eight times in his state of the city speech. He's going to fill them, and fix the streets. And he's going to fix the sidewalks, too (or actually make sure that property owners do it).
He's going to fix Muni, too -- but right in the middle of a heated campaign over the most important Muni reform measure in years, with progressives in a pitched battle with Republican billionaire Don Fisher , the mayor didn't say a word about Propositions A or H.
It's as if he's operating in some weird parallel universe, where the real world of local politics doesn't matter. In fact, he insists we should all just be friends here in SF, which ought to be "A city that doesn’t pit one group against another and let them fight it out."
Shucks, we can all just have a little love circle with Don Fisher and sing Kumbaya for a while and it will all be okay, right?
Sorry, Mr. Mayor -- there are powerful economic interests who are fighting the public interest and since I don't seem them giving up, we're going to be fighting it our for the forseeable future. Get used to it.
The truly astonishing thing about this speech was that the most important issue in the city -- the cost of housing -- didn't even come up until the very end, almost as an afterthought to all those potholes. And the mayor's solution -- let's just keep on building a lot of market-rate housing and a bit of affordable housing -- falls so far short of what the city needs that it's enough to make you want to laugh. Or cry.
Here's his pitch:
From where we stand today –we are just a single T-line ride away from over 9,675 units of new housing in Mission Bay and Rincon Hill – a number that rises to 15,675 if you add Treasure Island, which I am firmly committed to moving forward.These new neighborhoods – which are models of community input and planning, as well as environmental sustainability – are also models of basic affordability.
Together they will create 4,020 new units of affordable housing.
What’s more, the new plan for the Bayview Hunters Point Project Area calls for 3,700 new housing units – 25 percent of which will be affordable.
Well above our inclusionary housing requirements.
If that math is accurate, then 75 percent of the new housing will be aimed at the very, very wealthy, since all new market-rate housing in San Francisco is for rich people, and 25 percent will be for people who aren't millionaires and don't have high six-figure incomes. Some of that, maybe 10 percent, will be for low-income people. The average working San Franciscans who desperately need a place to live will have the right to scramble madly for a long shot at a housing unit they can afford, and most of them won't win.
Newsom is saying it's okay to create a city where three quarters of all residents are very rich.
It's as if he's living in some weird parallel housing world, where nobody he knows has any trouble finding a home, and there isn't really a potentially cataclysmic crisis, and we'll just keep on muddling through.
Is he just clueless -- or does he really not care?
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Comments (1)
Think you might be quoting from last year's speech?
They haven't posted a transcript yet. AFAIK
http://www.sfgov.org/site/mayor_index.asp
Posted by Jim | October 29, 2007 06:40 PM