I love beautiful old buildings, and North Beach is a charming and historic neighborhood, but government bureaucracy is the wrong way to go about preservation.
Ultimately, more preservation will happen – more beautiful structures worthy of it will be built in the first place – if property rights are respected and people are free to build what they choose.
Much of North Beach's gorgeous architecture would not be there today if current government land use rules had been in effect. Respecting property rights, and allowing markets to function freely, generates the wealth that gives society the luxury to focus on secondary values like preservation.
Consider the billions a year that San Francisco's city government spends to address the homelessness crisis, and then imagine if that money had been left in people's pockets, giving them more money to fund causes like preservation, instead of having all this money burned up by trying to slap band-aids on the problems caused by the housing shortage that is a direct result of restrictive government land use policies.
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Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
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