aldeka/gist:5057bc851409c0063359571f535e07ec

## gistfile1.txt
Dear Supervisor Slocum,

My name is Karen Tölva and I'm one of your constituents in Redwood City. I'm writing to encourage you and the rest of the board of supervisors to vigorously endorse SB 50.

There is no way to deny it: the bay area needs much more housing, just to keep up with the jobs created here. Major changes are needed to dig out from the hole of unbuilt housing that's developed over the last decade as both the economy took off and NIMBYs made it harder and harder for newer, denser, greener housing developments to get off the ground. We have got to have a better, stronger public policy around housing, and we cannot afford any more time letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. SB 50 is a major piece of the solution.

We've tried having local control. We've tried begging individual towns to build more. We've seen the result--members of city councils bragging about killing senior housing, low income housing, as well as market-price housing projects. The mayor of Cupertino joking about building a wall around the city and making San Jose pay for it. Individual city council members, sadly, are incentivized to artificially inflate housing prices for those lucky enough to already own a home and to resist all change for its own sake, because the people who might otherwise be their constituents literally can't afford to be. The teachers and firefighters and housecleaners commuting two or three hours each way don't get a vote. The young families who have already had to leave California to be able to afford a child don't get a vote. We who are managing to survive here must vote for them, with an eye to a future that would let them live here too.

Speaking personally, my family is actually doing okay. We have two tech incomes and one two year old. My retired mother provides about half of our child care--we'd be paying another thousand dollars a month if we didn't have her. We're slowly saving for a down payment--though not much faster than the price of housing is going up. We have hope, someday, that if our stock options pan out and our careers go well, even in the most expensive market in the world for both housing and child care, we might someday be able to own a home for our son to grow up in. Might.

We are in our early thirties. Many of our friends are also in the tech industry. We joke that our son is our biggest piece of "conspicuous consumption". No one in our peer group on the peninsula or in the city has kids. They can't afford it.

If it takes two engineering salaries to try and have a family and a house in the bay area, what the heck is everyone else supposed to be doing? How can the daycare teachers who watch my son so that my husband and I can work afford to have their own kids? Who will helm the elementary school when he reaches school age? Where will they live?

A thriving community needs enough housing so that all sorts -- social workers, public servants, librarians, scientists, waitresses, delivery drivers, lawyers, engineers, mechanics, chefs -- can afford to live _and have a future_ locally. Most people cannot hope for a future in Redwood City or the bay area at large, as things stand right now. We risk the entire region wizening into a dried-up husk of the pleasant-weather place it used to be, or at best a gated playground for millionaires. Those are the stakes.

Housing is a regional problem--it affects everyone's traffic, economy, pollution, and climate--and it must have a regional--yes, even statewide--solution. Please, please support SB 50.

-- Karen
	Dear Supervisor Slocum,

	My name is Karen Tölva and I'm one of your constituents in Redwood City. I'm writing to encourage you and the rest of the board of supervisors to vigorously endorse SB 50.

	There is no way to deny it: the bay area needs much more housing, just to keep up with the jobs created here. Major changes are needed to dig out from the hole of unbuilt housing that's developed over the last decade as both the economy took off and NIMBYs made it harder and harder for newer, denser, greener housing developments to get off the ground. We have got to have a better, stronger public policy around housing, and we cannot afford any more time letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. SB 50 is a major piece of the solution.

	We've tried having local control. We've tried begging individual towns to build more. We've seen the result--members of city councils bragging about killing senior housing, low income housing, as well as market-price housing projects. The mayor of Cupertino joking about building a wall around the city and making San Jose pay for it. Individual city council members, sadly, are incentivized to artificially inflate housing prices for those lucky enough to already own a home and to resist all change for its own sake, because the people who might otherwise be their constituents literally can't afford to be. The teachers and firefighters and housecleaners commuting two or three hours each way don't get a vote. The young families who have already had to leave California to be able to afford a child don't get a vote. We who are managing to survive here must vote for them, with an eye to a future that would let them live here too.

	Speaking personally, my family is actually doing okay. We have two tech incomes and one two year old. My retired mother provides about half of our child care--we'd be paying another thousand dollars a month if we didn't have her. We're slowly saving for a down payment--though not much faster than the price of housing is going up. We have hope, someday, that if our stock options pan out and our careers go well, even in the most expensive market in the world for both housing and child care, we might someday be able to own a home for our son to grow up in. Might.

	We are in our early thirties. Many of our friends are also in the tech industry. We joke that our son is our biggest piece of "conspicuous consumption". No one in our peer group on the peninsula or in the city has kids. They can't afford it.

	If it takes two engineering salaries to try and have a family and a house in the bay area, what the heck is everyone else supposed to be doing? How can the daycare teachers who watch my son so that my husband and I can work afford to have their own kids? Who will helm the elementary school when he reaches school age? Where will they live?

	A thriving community needs enough housing so that all sorts -- social workers, public servants, librarians, scientists, waitresses, delivery drivers, lawyers, engineers, mechanics, chefs -- can afford to live _and have a future_ locally. Most people cannot hope for a future in Redwood City or the bay area at large, as things stand right now. We risk the entire region wizening into a dried-up husk of the pleasant-weather place it used to be, or at best a gated playground for millionaires. Those are the stakes.

	Housing is a regional problem--it affects everyone's traffic, economy, pollution, and climate--and it must have a regional--yes, even statewide--solution. Please, please support SB 50.

	-- Karen