City struggles

As a Mission resident, I tend to assume that land use fights are about gentrification. The paradigm: some developer has acquired a buildable bit of the neighborhood and wants to erect something that will drive out existing impoverished residents and replace them with folks with more money. Despite the recognized reality that San Francisco needs more housing, communities band together and squaw, sometimes winning mitigation payments.

But while Walking San Francisco today, I came across lots of evidence of another sort of San Francisco land use kerfuffle out in the West Portal neighborhood.

These signs dotted a several block area. People care.

I have not been able to find what I would call unbiased discussions of the proposed project -- though just reading the proposal as described to the building department seems pretty horrifying. Apparently the builder wants to put five large single family houses on a nearly vertical hillside. 

The signs throw the kitchen sink of objections at the project. There's a whiff of injured expectations of privilege about them.

However, an op-ed in the local Examiner -- an almost newspaper -- by a neighborhood activist presents a convincing story of previous efforts to build on this particular hillside leading to mudslides and broken foundations. 

People who live across the street from the five proposed homes are terrified that a large rainstorm during construction — or even just the construction itself — will result in the mountain coming down on top of them.

It’s happened before.

In the 1970s, damage from an earlier landslide and the continuing threat of more rockfalls temporarily closed a church at the base of Edgehill. In 1982, another slide forced a preschool to move. In 1995, rocks fell on a site at the base of the mountain where 13 homes were being built by developer William Spiers on Knockash Hill Court. Engineers inspected the site, declared it safe, and construction continued.

In January 1997, however, after a torrential rainstorm, the hillside above Knockash Hill Court gave way, and 100 tons of boulders, mud and debris overran a 10-foot-tall retaining wall and slammed into the new homes below. ...

I might join the opposition knowing that history. 

On the other hand, as a general matter, it galls me that this builder wants to put in single family homes. What the city needs is more four-plexes and small apartment buildings. And this West Side neighborhood isn't doing its share. That omission keeps my neighborhood on a war footing against gentrification.