Author: rrivero

This past Tuesday (Sept 17, 2019), I attended a panel discussion on affordable housing in San Francisco. Afterwards, I wrote and edited a quick summary of my main takeaways from the panel and shared it on Instagram. Several friends commented that it was helpful to them, so I’m sharing it here on Medium in a more permanent location.

Background

The panel was hosted by Impact SF, a new chapter of an NYC organization which describes itself as “a non-profit and non-partisan organization dedicated to understanding today’s most pressing social and political issues and promoting viable actions for positive change”. It was also co-hosted by Yimby Action, a CA organization focused on lobbying to bring down the cost of housing.

President Trump said late Wednesday that his administration would issue a notice of environmental violation against the city of San Francisco because of what he described as its homelessness problem.

Traveling aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from a three-day trip to California and New Mexico, Mr. Trump told reporters that San Francisco was in “total violation” of environmental rules because of used needles that were ending up in the ocean.

“They’re in total violation — we’re going to be giving them a notice very soon,” the president said, indicating that the city could be put on notice by the Environmental Protection Agency within a week that its homelessness problem was causing environmental damage.

Photos from the Event

Clips from the Event

When the shimmering, state-of-the-art, $1.3 billion Levi’s Stadium opened its doors in Santa Clara, it was hailed as the pinnacle of technological innovation. Concessions delivered to your seat at the touch of a button! Bluetooth beacons to navigate you with pinpoint precision! High-speed internet throughout! And to top it all off, not a single public cent was spent. The whole thing was privately financed, partly through seat licenses sold to fans at prices ranging from $2,000 to $250,000 — a testament to the exorbitant, almost incomprehensible wealth generated in the greater Bay Area in recent decades, and a gambit that happened to price out a huge swath of 49ers faithful.

Congressman Josh Harder shares a message about the importance of Affordable Housing in California with Impact.