Neeraja Deshpande
Everyone is ragging on the Boomers in this photo, but one of the basic facts of public policy that everyone fails to understand a is that you can’t force people to care about abstractions. They’re old—hopefully one day we will be too—they’re not dead, and until they are, they can and should care about their own interest. Everyone cares about their own interest! This is one of the most basic principles of free-market economics (invisible hand, anyone?) that everyone, even many on the right, seems to have forgotten. You have to appeal to their self-interest, and you have to remember that these are people who have invested in SF for decades before the current boom. They need to hear how this development will tangibly improve their lives and make SF a place that will be better and happier and more open *for them.* On that note, this is why YIMBYs should care more about aesthetics than they do—people would feel less attached to this particular landscape if they knew the alternative wouldn’t largely be grey, unappealing plastic.
Laura Waxmann
Hundreds of #SanFrancisco Marina residents turned out this evening for townhall on controversial @Safeway housing plan, which would place what for many is an uncomfortably tall, 22 & 18 story project at the low-slung neighborhood’s waterfront. @sfchronicle
