LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
San Francisco Chronicle
Regarding “YIMBYs love to hate her. Inside one Bay Area mayor’s anti-housing campaign” (Bay Area, SFChronicle.com, June 4):
I followed the link in this report to a Palo Alto Weekly article about Mayor Lydia Kou. I learned that she has championed protections for renters, worked to address airplane noise and led the effort to establish Palo Alto’s first safe-parking program for vehicle dwellers.
Kou and another council member also encouraged their colleagues to pay more attention to residents making less than 80% of the area’s median income. In her state-of-the-city address as mayor, I learned about the city’s priority in housing and its accomplishments in low income and transitional housing.
Can Kou be justly labeled as “antihousing”? Should her thoughtful rejection of specific bad housing proposals be portrayed as anti-housing? Perhaps her critics simply do not like the fact that she is standing up for reason and democracy, which can be inconvenient for money-making.
Melinda Stefan, Sunnyvale
