Dear Editor:
It is sad and tragic that Joe Garofoli’s Sunday SF Chronicle column (July 19, 2026) grossly misrepresents sentiment in Rockridge in regards to affordable housing. It is especially sad that he insults his neighbors and his community for their sound and hopeful positions on more affordable housing in Rockridge. And Rockridge residents are not NIMBYs, and are not racists. On our block alone, we welcome African American, Asian, gay, and transgender neighbors.
The Rockridge community, through the Rockridge Community Planning Council, has pushed for more affordable housing on at least five large sites, two of them huge, with the capacity to comfortably accommodate over a thousand homes.
Buffy Wicks’ housing intentions are good, and she is trying to address our serious affordable housing shortage. But here is what we see so far at the community level in Rockridge.
1. Zero affordable housing efforts.
2. Zero low-income housing efforts. (A Korean Methodist church near the corner of College and Hudson is for sale. It is adjacent to the only low-income housing in Rockridge. Not a word from Wicks’ office on any efforts to secure the site for more low-income housing or more affordable housing)
3. Continued failure to secure housing on the five large sites, two huge, entirely appropriate for multiple units and within walking distance of BART: the California College of the Arts (CCA) site, the old shopping center site at Broadway and 51st, the corner of Claremont and College, a portion of the DMV lot on Claremont, and the Davida site at Claremont and Clifton. These are all sites that the community can support.
4. The Wiener and Wicks loophole in their zoning “improvement” legislation is not addressing Rockridge affordable housing but instead promoting development of unaffordable sites of questionable need with two large and one massive development for wealthy older adults. The chosen sites are poorly located, would create an environmental disaster on the two-lane College Aveue corridor, and would result in the elimination of a beloved and much-used Trader Joe’s at the behest of a developer who allegedly also represents Safeway, a nearby Trader Joe’s competitor.
The Rockridge community supports affordable housing and has multiple sites to accomplish that goal. Garofoli and politicians like Wicks need to get their facts and policies correct to support truly more affordable housing rather than imposing unaffordable units per the developer wish lists.
