By: David Talbot
San Francisco Values vs. YIMBY Values. Once upon a time, San Francisco stood for diversity, tolerance, affordability. It was a city you could live in without being rich and figure out who you were — no matter WHO you were. But now under the cloak of YIMBY values — “Yes In My Back Yard” — the city is being overrun by hedge fund-developers and their useful idiots. Tools like Matt Haney, who once upon a time defeated a YIMBY candidate as a progressive in his race for the Board of Supervisors. But that was then. Now, in his race for a California State Assembly seat, Haney has turned himself into a YIMBY spokesman, sucking up campaign dollars from the corporate real estate lobby.
YIMBYs dominate the media landscape these days. In the San Francisco Chronicle, you have hacks like columnist Heather Knight. (In the New York Times, you have slightly more agile pro-development hacks like Ezra Klein.) YIMBYs believe in the old Reagan school of voodoo economics. They believe if you build more and more market-rate housing, these units will somehow magically trickle down and make the housing market more accessible for average working families. Guess what? The only people who benefit from this magical thinking about housing are Wall Street developers — and the political puppets they finance.
Teachers, waiters, hospital employees, firefighters, artists, social workers, street maintenance crews — all the people who actually make a city run, who make it worth living in — can’t afford to live in a YIMBY San Francisco.
Matt Haney has sold his soul to the corporate devil. It’s that sad and that simple. If you care about the future of San Francisco, you will donate money to his opponent David Campos, the true-blue progressive in the April 19 race — the candidate who refused to take any corporate money in this race. (Campos wants to build more affordable housing by putting a bond on the state ballot.)
This is David Campos at a campaign event his afternoon, where I had the honor of introducing him. Frankly I’m tired of going to these events. I feel burned out and depressed about American democracy on every level. But it’s my city — when I ride around it, or walk its streets these days, it breaks my heart.
Greed, corruption, selfishness, shallowness — they’re killing San Francisco. They define the Matt Haney campaign.
Vote for San Francisco Values — vote for David Campos. And donate here.
