No on Proposition C argument

Here's the argument I've written against Proposition C, the "housing trust fund" (text below and also attached as an MS Word document).

  My suggested title for sending to the media or using for outreach is "SF Redevelopment Agency -- Back From The Dead?" Everything below the title comes in at 305 words, but since I use the term "San Francisco" more than 5 times, and the SF Elections Department counts the city's name as one word, the argument should be under 300 words as required.

  I'd like to include my name in addition to "Libertarian Party of San Francisco" as authors of the argument, since name recognition could help me in future runs for office.

Love & Liberty,
                               ((( starchild )))

SF Redevelopment Agency -- Back From The Dead? Vote No On Proposition C!

Last year, governor Jerry Brown signed a bill passed by the legislature’s Democratic majority and upheld by the state Supreme Court shutting down California’s redevelopment agencies.

The action was justified. These agencies earned a reputation for waste, secrecy, racism, and lack of accountability.

The Orange County Register called them “engines of corporate welfare” that “use eminent domain to confiscate private property and typically sell it cheaply to developers, who sometimes build shopping centers and auto malls”

( http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/agencies-293985-redevelopment-government.html )
The sad legacy of San Francisco’s redevelopment agency includes destruction of the Fillmore, once a thriving African-American neighborhood: “883 businesses were shuttered and 4,729 households were forced out,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle, and around “2,500 Victorian homes were demolished.”

( http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Sad-chapter-in-Western-Addition-history-ending-3203302.php#ixzz23SxGJw3L )

Proposition C tries to bring redevelopment back from the dead. Its text admits “the measure is structured as a revenue capture mechanism” like that “previously used by the former San Francisco Redevelopment Agency.”

Before it was abolished, that agency had plans to “redevelop” over half of Bayview-Hunters Point, the city’s major remaining black neighborhood, partly in order to “build affordable housing” – the same rationale being used to sell Proposition C.

But Proposition C won’t make San Francisco homes more affordable. It would actually reduce affordability requirements for new projects, while subsidizing housing for people earning more than the median income.

Worst of all, Proposition C will commit San Francisco to increasing expenditures until 2042 – hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that won’t be available for other priorities like schools, parks, infrastructure, or health care – plus an open-ended authority to issue bonds without further voter approval!

San Francisco needs affordable housing, not more unaccountable and unaffordable government schemes.

Redevelopment was killed for good cause. Let’s not bring it back from the dead! Vote NO on Proposition C.

Starchild
Libertarian Party of San Francisco

noon8window.pdf (36 Bytes)

Most excellent Mr. Starchild...

:>)

Mike