What do we want? The same crappy Walgreens! When do we want it? Yesterday!

Behold, the corner of 16th and Mission, a utopia on Earth where happy denizens lead cheerful rewarding lives:

lol j/k.  It's actually just a shitty Walgreens ("Hope this store goes out of business soon...  It is really like shopping in hell") and a Burger King.

Along comes Maximus Real Estate Partners.  "Hey you guys hey you guys we've got an idea," they say.  "How about instead of a rundown Walgreens and a BK we put up a 10-story apartment building with 345 units of housing?  You guys are always talking about how housing is so expensive, so how about we make more of it?  And plus instead of the usual requirement of 40 below market rate units, we put in 90?  Win-win, right?"

NOPE.  You're in San Francisco.

First of all, I might suggest that it might have been a good idea to create a subsidiary for this project alone with a name other than "MAXIMUS REAL ESTATE."  Maximus Real Estate sounds like an evil monolith that wants to evict your Mom.  How about something a little more PR-friendly, like "Daisy Homes" or "Smiling Face Emoji Group"?  Just really anything other than MAXIMUS.

Anyway, people are so mad:

“If Maximus builds these condos on 16th and Mission, there will be massive gentrification in this neighborhood,” housing activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca told a gathering crowd. “New people who move in will call the police to get rid of the poor people”

Dude, have you been to the Mission in like the last 3 years?  The Massive Gentrification ship sailed like in 2011.  Now the billionaires are gentrifying out the millionaires.  We're on like 5th-wave gentrification.  Maximus is offering to build 90 BELOW MARKET RATE UNITS.  Right now, the only market rate unit at 16th & Mission is the bench by the BART entrance.

Not good enough for Mr. Mecca:

As Tommi Avicolli Mecca, of the Housing Rights Committee and Plaza 16, said at Monday’s protest: “There’s no community benefits that will make us support this project, all we want is 100 percent affordable housing.”

This is lunacy.  This is like getting surgery to replace a heart valve and telling the surgeon, "As long as you're in there, please also do some plastic surgery and make me look like George Clooney."  Then the doctor says "I can't do Clooney, but I can give you Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park," and you say "NO!  CLOONEY OR NOTHING" and rip off the gown and storm out of the hospital.  I've got news for you, son.  Goldblum gets mad tail.  You just fucked yourself.

So here's my counter.  Right now, the building is scheduled to be 345 units.  You want 100% affordable.  OK, new plan.  You get 345 affordable units, and they get to build a 100-story building with a total of 1380 units.  Everybody wins!