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Indybay Feature

San Francisco's Mission St. Mission

by San Francisco
The contentious public hearing Monday evening, June 20, at the Mission Cultural Center regarding the MUNI changes on Mission St. was exacerbated by unrequited gentrification.
Residents of the Mission District failed to identify the rising value of real estate as a natural source of revenue for both their neighborhood and the city at large during a public hearing punctuated by high passions and near pandemonium on Monday evening, June 20 at the Mission Cultural Center.

Instead, the public hearing on the dedicated bus lanes, right turns only, no left turns, and reduced number of bus stops changes along Mission Street which have been implemented by the city on behalf of MUNI service merely acknowledged real estate as the occasion for the excited animosities among Mission District residents. Public testimony split a chasm between those endorsing the changes and those finding fault with them. The acrimony expressed by those opposed to the changes reflected an abiding belief by many that city hall wants to displace the Latino population in favor of the decidedly less Latino, generally more affluent population entering San Francisco.

When framed as a matter of expediting MUNI service, reducing pedestrian injuries and fatalities, and facing global climate change, the Mission St. road changes received high marks. When framed as a matter of elder access and harm to car-access shopping, the changes received poor marks. There were some nuanced comments by the public which largely favored the changes while calling for adjustment of the no left turn policy introduced during recent months. However, the social and economic context of what otherwise would have been a textbook city planning challenge of reconciling car and public transit concerns, took center stage.

Many speakers spoke of gentrification. Some railed at city staff, present and otherwise, accusing them of being accomplices in a nefarious intent to drive out the Latino population. Certainly all present palpably felt the emotional burden the city feels as rising incomes lift real estate values, resulting in pressure brought upon, in particular, renters.

Missing, sadly, was any expression of conviction that the rising real estate values are a commonwealth. Were the rising land values of the city recovered as public revenue, there would be plenty of revenue for smaller buses running more frequently, thus satisfying the effective call for more near door-to-door MUNI service (more, not fewer bus stops). But that's merely at the narrow city transit planning level. At the larger, more profound socio-economic level, recovering much much more of the huge land values of San Francisco would enable the housing and transportation subsidies required to enormously diminish the threat of displacement by income disparity which now menaces our city.
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