Monday, June 27, 2011

David Chiu, Sean Elsbernd, and Parkmerced


Good letter on Parkmerced in Beyond Chron:
 
To the Editor:

David Chiu's
transparent attempt to seem supportive of tenants rights by his last minute cramming of 14 pages of useless amendments to the Developer Agreement, while voting to demolish 5,000 tenants' homes, is as pathetic as Sean Elsbernd's statement quoted by Heather Knight in The Chronicle, Sunday, June 26, that the Parkmerced demolition will create more affordable housing for families in San Francisco.

The garden apartments here are the best place in the city to raise kids, safe in protected courtyards with green play space for each apartment away from traffic on the street. Which is where kids will be in this new idiotic scheme. Three‑quarters of the open space and 1,500 trees are slated for destruction with 6,500 new cars threatening the safety of kids who will be raised without patios, courtyards, balconies front yards or back yards!

How does this seem family friendly to you? Elsbernd has never stood up for tenants in his career, only homeowners in cushy St Francis Wood, Forest Hills and Parkside. If we wanted to raise kids in South of Market or Manhattan, we would have moved there. Families I know here will have to leave the city in droves if this demolition idiocy survives the growing onslaught of lawsuits and ballot challenges in the works.

I got 100 signatures in one hour walking around Parkmerced, and one hour at a tenants meeting. NOT ONE person I met said they liked this new plan. Where else can you find spacious three bedroom apartments in the city, especially rent controlled or affordable? Replacements units would be smaller and surrounded by concrete. Owners Stellar and Fortress will try their best to get rid of rent control under Costa-Hawkins and Ellis Acts. Look at the developers' own architect drawings that show busy sidewalks and streets with happy people---and not a speck of greenery anywhere!? They are planning to pave paradise, put up a parking lot for 6,500 new cars, triple the density, cause toxic pollution for 20-30 years, increase the carbon footprint for decades and move families out of the city in a massacre of the best place for diverse working class families anywhere in the Bay Area.

Sean Elsbernd has a two-yr old. I have raised two kids here, 12 and 17, and would never have dreamed of doing so in a place so inhospitable to children as the "density" housing they want to build here. Density indeed---this is the most dense idea I have ever heard called good for families! What foolish nonsense! Come to my apartment and see where kids should be raised.

Michael Russom
San Francisco

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1 Comments:

At 1:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

They are planning to pave paradise, put up a parking lot for 6,500 new cars.

NIMBY. Please pave someone else's paradise, please. Where are the people moving to SF going to live?

OR - put in the housing, and NO PARKING LOT!

 

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