Imagine for just a moment if the Bay Area had started back in the 90s building housing aggressively to meet demand, as well as good transit and related infrastr

Imagine for just a moment if the Bay Area had started back in the 90s building housing aggressively to meet demand, as well as good transit and related infrastructure. Today it would be the greatest city in the world. Really. It’d be like a cross between Tokyo, Berlin, and Shenzhen. It would be well on the way to passing NYC in GDP and probably would soon become the world financial capital. It would be the tech capital of the world and maybe even the cultural capital since real estate hyperinflation would not have driven away all the artist types. The Star Trek world element of Starfleet Command being in SF would seem prescient, not one of the least believable elements of the world. (SF would never build enough housing for that!) I would probably live there instead of being thankful that I managed to build a strong career in tech without doing so. But no, its residents instead wanted to preserve a time capsule of the 60s and 70s and that interest overlapped with the cynical interests of real estate speculators. So instead we get the world’s only slum for rich people, a place where only the mega rich can afford to live and the streets are littered with homeless. A place that pretends to be “woke” and progressive while pricing out anyone who makes less than $200k. A place that is doing its best to divest itself of its core industries and has already driven out everything that once made it culturally cool. SF is doing to itself as a city what a chunk of its residents are doing on the street with fentanyl. Absolute suicide. But hey I guess you saved some old houses and preserved the “character of the neighborhood” once you pick up this week’s load of OD corpses. Other cities should take note. NIMBYs must be opposed ruthlessly, everywhere, without compromise. Don’t let them hide behind fake political posturing. If you oppose housing you are not progressive. You are consigning people to poverty and homelessness.