Bay Guardian Archives: Tim Redmond's decades long war on housing - research

[Jon Schwark]

Those of us who got here in the early 90's remember Tim Redmond's editorial rants. The "100% affordable or none at all" mentality is his gift to the city, and he has been preaching it for decades as editor of the Bay Guardian, and now at 48 Hills. Here he is in 2006, gloating about having essentially brought on a housing moratorium in SoMa (yes, he did that- "the more you know" right kids?):

http://www.sfbg.com/2006/04/04/condo-war-continues

We'd like to hold a few facts to be self-evident: San Francisco doesn't need more million-dollar condos for young single people who work in Silicon Valley. The city can't build the equivalent of another good-size town, with a population of perhaps 100,000 new residents, in eastern San Francisco without massive improvements in infrastructure, particularly transportation. The costs of the new streets, bus lines, train lines, and pedestrian walkways will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars — and there's nothing anywhere in any Planning Department document about who will pay for it.

Here we are, 9 years later. Of course they had a plan for transportation in SoMa, he was just talking smack to stop development. Since that screed, The T-third has become operational. We have the Central Subway in progress. Also the new Transbay Terminal and the Caltrain extension are in the works. Don't even get me started about his complaining about private busses when he's using the lack of transportation as an excuse to stop housing construction. 

Now it's 2015, The center of gravity has shifted and for a few years the jobs have been moving to San Francisco. AND HES STILL ARGUING AGAINST BUILDING HOUSING. Meanwhile, since we didn't build enough because of the mindset of people like Tim, those same young rich people he was complaining about are scouring open houses and frantically calling landlords in every neighborhood driving up prices- but its 5 times more of them.

Those 20 thousand additional "luxury" condos we should have built during the dot.com boom (when a 2 bedroom in the city was going for $400k) would now be migrating down into the lower price ranges as newer shinier developments superseded them.

Thanks Tim. This was a dumb idea in 2006, and you should have learned that from the 90s.

I really wish their archives went back farther. I'm going to continue to mine them for nuggets for a blog post I'm working on contrasting Tim with Matt Smith who was the YIMBY editor of the SFWEEKLY. Feel free to join me and post some good quotes on this topic. The archives are here. He usually wrote the letter to the editor and one other article: http://www.sfbg.com/issue_archive

Jon

[Brian Hanlon]

My favorite Tim Redmond piece about housing, from a post titled, "Why can't the Twitter IPO winners live in Stockton?":

There aren't enough vacant rental units in this city for all the newcomers attracted by tech jobs (jobs in SF, but also on the Peninsula.)  So for a while, until somebody voluntarily moved or a new unit was built, they'd have to live ... on the Peninsula. Or in the East Bay. Or in Stockton, where the longtime San Franciscans who are getting evicted are winding up.

http://timssanfrancisco.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-cant-twitter-ipo-winner-live-in.html

I get the sentiment, but issuing visas from the sovereign city-state of San Francisco is an impossibly ridiculous proposal, the entertaining of which enables SF "progressives" to think that they have an actual proposal to fix the housing affordability crisis. They don't.

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 6:25 AM, 'Jon Schwark' via SFBA Renters Federation <SFBAren...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Those of us who got here in the 90's remember the editorial rants. "100% affordable or none at all" mentality is his gift to the city, and he has been preaching it for decades as editor of the Bay Guardian, and now at 48 Hills. Here he is in 2006, gloating about having essentially brought on a housing moratorium in SoMa (yes, he did that- "the more you know" right kids?):

http://www.sfbg.com/2006/04/04/condo-war-continues

We'd like to hold a few facts to be self-evident: San Francisco doesn't need more million-dollar condos for young single people who work in Silicon Valley. The city can't build the equivalent of another good-size town, with a population of perhaps 100,000 new residents, in eastern San Francisco without massive improvements in infrastructure, particularly transportation. The costs of the new streets, bus lines, train lines, and pedestrian walkways will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars — and there's nothing anywhere in any Planning Department document about who will pay for it.

Here we are, 9 years later. Of course they had a plan for transportation in SoMa, he was just talking smack to stop development. Since that screed, The T-third has become operational. We have the Central Subway in progress. Also the new Transbay Terminal and the Caltrain extension are in the works. Don't even get me started about his complaining about private busses when he's using the lack of transportation as an excuse to stop housing construction. 

Now it's 2015, The center of gravity has shifted and for a few years the jobs have been moving to San Francisco. AND HES STILL ARGUING AGAINST BUILDING HOUSING. Meanwhile, since we didn't build enough because of the mindset of people like Tim, those same young rich people he was complaining about are scouring open houses and frantically calling landlords in every neighborhood driving up prices- but its 5 times more of them.

Thanks Tim. This was a dumb idea in 2006, and you should have learned that from the 90s.

I really wish their archives went back farther. I'm going to continue to mine them for nuggets for a blog post I'm working on contrasting Tim with Matt Smith who was the YIMBY editor of the SFWEEKLY. Feel free to join me and post some good quotes on this topic. The archives are here. He usually wrote the letter to the editor and one other article: http://www.sfbg.com/issue_archive

Jon

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[Mike Schiraldi]

Some online communities snip suchs predictions and add them to a
"claim chowder file", so the claims can be revisited years later and
studied to see, with the benefit of hindsight, which way of thinking
was right and which was wrong.

We should start a claim chowder file on the wiki, beginning with this
quote and the one from the 1987 Balboa Reservoir voter guide Sonja dug
up, where the prediction was made that people in the year 2000 would
look back and thank the people of 1987 for preventing housing from
being built because so many other useful things were going to be done
with the site.

If you come across any other gems, let me know and I'll add them to the file.

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 6:25 AM, 'Jon Schwark' via SFBA Renters
Federation <SFBAren...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>

> Those of us who got here in the 90's remember the editorial rants. "100%

> Thanks Tim. This was a dumb idea in 2006, and you should have learned that
> from the 90s.
>
> I really wish their archives went back farther. I'm going to continue to
> mine them for nuggets for a blog post I'm working on contrasting Tim with
> Matt Smith who was the YIMBY editor of the SFWEEKLY. Feel free to join me
> and post some good quotes on this topic. The archives are here. He usually
> wrote the letter to the editor and one other article:
> http://www.sfbg.com/issue_archive
>
> Jon
>

[Mike Schiraldi]

Oh, and to answer the 2006 "Who will pay for all this new
infrastructure?" question, we should check and see how much property
tax, income tax, and other public revenue was generated by the owners
and residents of all the new buildings.

[Matt Thrailkill]

The Stockton post amuses me. I grew up in Modesto and moved from Stockton.

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