My second-place showing against incumbent Norman Yee and three other challengers for District 7 supervisor feels like a success. Thousands of voters embraced my campaign’s forward-looking message, which will ultimately influence the direction of our city.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- “All my neighbors know people whose children cannot find homes of their own,” said Frank Noto, a senior who has lived in his westside home for 30 years. “Decades of downzoning and anti-housing politics got us where we are today.”
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- When it comes to things that evoke absolute feelings of love or hate, Airbnb is in the same league as Donald Trump, LeBron James and cilantro. In San Francisco, forces against Airbnb clash with those who swear by the polarizing innovation. There is a solution, but not everyone will like it.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- Legislative aide Gary McCoy proved that the human spirit can survive some very dark places when there is a path to realize its full potential. Yet McCoy also proves that simply throwing money at social services is not what saved him.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- What do Groundhog Day, the boogeyman, Whack-a-Mole and the phrase “like sand slipping through your fingers” have in common? They illustrate San Francisco’s perpetual housing crisis.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- At first glance, this is another sad eviction story in the ongoing saga of San Francisco’s overheated housing market: An elderly Latino couple living in the Mission for 50 years versus millennial newcomers seeking a hip neighborhood. Yet what kind of story is it if the Spanish-speaking grandparents are the ones doing the evicting?
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- If San Francisco is able to solve its housing crisis and become a city where middle-income families can survive, we might celebrate the day Eugene Lew, 78, learned how to use a MacBook computer in the Apple store at Stonestown Mall.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- San Franciscans don’t fear social media because it merely wastes time or reduces privacy. They’re scared of being pushed out by highly paid tech workers who move in, drive up prices and alter the community’s character. As long as these fears persist, there will be voters in San Francisco to fight against market forces and politicians to cater to them.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- In an effort to save San Francisco from itself, the Emmy-award winning director behind the PBS hit "Saving the Bay" is producing a new series called "Saving the City." It will highlight successful cities that know what to preserve and what to let go: "Cities change, and if they don't, they die."
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- Monsters are becoming as ubiquitous as Democrats in San Francisco. Like the million shades of blue that define our Democratic spectrum, multiple monster images now illustrate our housing crisis.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- Grandma’s old sayings were riddles I solved while trying to finish a double-scoop ice cream sundae (“Your eyes are bigger than your stomach”) or discovering the taxes in my first paycheck as a steakhouse bus boy (“Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched”). But there was one idiom I never fully understood until moving to San Francisco: “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.”
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- To understand how a sleepy suburb spawned start-ups like YouTube and food truck restaurants like Curry Up Now, it helps to know where San Mateo’s economic development manager learned about cities. Marcus Clarke lived in San Francisco -- branded by SF Weekly as “The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S.” He knows what not to do when it comes to planning San Mateo’s future.
Read MoreJoel Engardio speech on why moderates are the true progressives in San Francisco. Engardio was the guest speaker at the Golden Gate Breakfast Club in August 2014.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- If we fear wealthy newcomers who drive up rents and alter neighborhood character, can we keep them out of San Francisco by making it difficult to build more housing? The problem with that strategy is that rich people, like water, always find their way. Without new housing supply, we risk losing residents like Brian Lee, 33, who grew up here and is married with a baby on the way. He's moving to San Mateo.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- There must be others like me in San Francisco who embrace liberal values but also crave a city that runs on common sense. Forward-thinkers who believe in progress and aren’t afraid of change. True progressives.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- For a town full of original hippies and 1970s liberals, it’s amazing how many San Franciscans in their golden years have adopted William F. Buckley Jr.’s conservative mantra to “stand athwart history, yelling stop!”
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- Supervisor Katy Tang's approach to San Francisco's housing crisis is very different from her colleagues who are focused on stricter tenant protections without addressing the underlying supply problem. "I don't need to introduce quick-fix legislation five times a week," she said. "I'm trying to offer a different solution that addresses root causes."
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- We have a reactionary housing policy that plays whack-a-mole every time rent control creates another market distortion. Our gut always says, “Tighten rent control!” Perhaps it’s time to try a counterintuitive solution, like steering into the skid to avert a crash.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- Students of history know that “Nixon in China” is a metaphor for difficult change that requires a push from an unexpected advocate. Maybe “Seniors on the Westside” will become a similar catch phrase for solving one of San Francisco’s most vexing problems -- not enough housing for everyone who wants to live here.
Read MoreBy Joel P. Engardio -- You know it's a slow election year when a vote on a condo development along The Embarcadero becomes a referendum on all that is good and evil in San Francisco.
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