Letters: Historic buildings | Retire Harris | Voting rule | Israeli violence

Re: “ ” (Page A1, Dec. 3). Destroying historic buildings won’t solve the housing shortage.

Oakland’s General Plan designates historic Areas of Primary and Secondary Importance. Structures citywide are rated “A” to “D” by the Cultural Heritage Survey. Yet both the state-mandated Housing Element and the proposed Downtown Oakland Specific Plan zoning rules allow “infill” construction that sometimes looms over significant older buildings.

“C” or “D” rated structures are disposed of through owner neglect. Even higher-rated buildings, like the Fruitvale Hotel, are allowed to deteriorate, then be demolished. Many communities, including ours, have surpassed state targets for new housing in all but the “affordable” category.

Yet builders argue that only with luxury apartment towers will their projects pencil out. Trickle-down economics doesn’t work — not in the national economy, not in California cities. Destroying existing affordable housing to build market-rate units displaces low-income residents.

It is wrong to pit housing-hungry people against residents who value our built environment. Re: “ ” (Page A9, Nov. 3).

Joe Mathews is right — Kamala Harris should come home. Harris has proven unqualified for the national stage. Her only major assignment since being elected vice president three years ago was to solve the ongoing immigration disaster on our southern border, an assignment she has utterly failed.

Harris has never exhibited any leadership qualities needed to be a politician at the state or national levels. She has only a minimal understanding of the issues and appears clueless when trying to discuss them in front of a camera. Mathews is wrong to suggest she’d be a great governor of California.

California doesn’t need another mediocre governor — we need someone who understands how liberal policies have failed Californians and knows how to put California back on the right track. For the benefit of all Americans, Harris should come home and retire from politics. Re: “ ” (Page A9, Dec.

3). Dan Walters’ latest column calling out Gov. Newsom as a hypocrite for a voting move on a statewide ballot measure misses a very important point of democracy: Every vote is equal.

If a measure only needs 50%+1 to set a new bar that all future votes require 67%, in this case to pass tax measures, then current voters have an outsized influence against all future voter pools. Walters, himself, makes the point that raising the requirement for the initial bill to two-thirds would make it “much more difficult, perhaps impossible, to pass. ” I think it is a good thing that amendments designed to change voter approval minimums meet that same threshold.

Perhaps Dan Walters can explain in a future column why he thinks present-day voters should be able to stack the deck against future citizens, but that might be seen as hypocritical. Related Articles Shame on the American public for allowing their government to facilitate and excuse the wanton slaughter of thousands of innocent children and civilians in Palestine. Do we really believe that this is excusable simply because there are a number of Hamas fighters amongst the innocents? The Israeli army headquarters is located in densely populated downtown Tel Aviv teeming with civilians.

The Palestinians have no military, no army, no air force, no billions of dollars worth of weaponry given to them by a sponsoring empire. Would they be excused for carpet bombing downtown Tel Aviv, killing 20,000 innocent civilians and 5,000 children because the military that has oppressed them for decades is located there? Again, shame on us for allowing and excusing such inhumanity to happen once again in our name. .