He's the epitome of everything wrong with SF Supervisors: they pit communities against each other to create political gridlock and build voting blocs for reelection, but do fuck-all to actually solve San Francisco's problems.
No matter how many times they say "gentrification" in the same tone as "boogeyman," it won't refute basic supply-and-demand. Inaction just makes all the problems worse.
The only way to bring down rents is to increase supply.
Everyone else is lying to you.
Presumably the mortgage on the first home is quite far below current market prices, but this is not enough to drive the landlord to offer a price that is necessarily in line with rents at the time the home was purchased.
The mortgage interest is no longer tax deductible, so effective cost of ownership is higher than when compared to someone paying a mortgage on a home they live in.
The profit from renting is compared against profit from selling. If the rental price is driven too low, the owner will prefer to sell and collect the profits (and the home will likely be taken off of the available rental inventory, which will further drive up rents).
The only people exploiting the underclass are politicians that make building housing impossible. This dynamic is only possible through their help. A price is set by what the market - not by landlords.
Sounds remarkably like national politics.
There is a 2-term (8-year) term limit (each member can run for re-election 1 single time before being termed out), so this summary is false on its face.
In recent elections several incumbents have won re-election by only 2 or 3 percent. It is entirely plausible for an unpopular member to be unseated by a well organized challenge.
Before 20 years ago, the elections were at-large, so what you’re going on with this complaint is a pretty short time frame (maybe a couple dozen individual elections involving an incumbent).
The SF board of supervisors (and its elections) doesn’t seem materially different than other American political offices.
What people don't seem to understand is if you live in SF you probably have housing that's working for you.
Lots of people can't live in that city. Guess what? If they don't live there they can't vote there. I'm not sure why but even as people decry NIMBYism they seem to think there's some groundswell of support that's somehow suppressed.
At this point we should just make Fresno really desirable too or something.
That's my rather unpopular opinion. Could just force the Tech Billionaires, VC's and lords of finance to point the fire hose of money somewhere else for a change.