S.F. Prop. M’s vacancy tax could help house thousands

Regarding “Vacancy tax would be ineffective” (Endorsement, Oct. 7): The Chronicle’s Editorial Board states that perhaps Proposition M will compel only 250 vacant housing units back to the market and may garner only $15.4 million in revenue.

In San Francisco, there are thousands of low-income seniors who pay 70% of their income in rent.

The proposition states half of the income will go to direct subsidies for low-income seniors and families, the most efficient way to keep people from losing homes, and the other half will be used to purchase permanently affordable housing, another relatively quick solution.

If $15 million were used for these purposes, it would stabilize housing for many who serve our community every day and for elders who should be able to stop working.

Since no one really knows how many units will go back on the market or how much income will be generated, and everyone knows that people are suffering because housing

is unaffordable, this measure seems both sensible and caring. Vote yes on Prop. M.

Leslie Roffman, San Francisco

Reminder of war

Robert E. Lee supposedly remarked, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow

too fond of it.”

As a nation, we may have not grown fond of war, but we are at the very least blind to the horrors that our growing military-industrial complex yields in much of the world.

With the help of compliant media, the horrors of war kept off our TV screens and out of our magazines and newspapers while terror is delivered from North Africa to the Middle East by drone strikes, joint special operations, and the doling out of weapons to dubious allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel.

It is well that Fleet Week and the Blue Angels, with their window-rattling thunder, should remind us a bit of what endless war really means.

Maybe if they would only strike a wedding party or two, or a young father returning home to his family, they might make that reality better understood.

Bernie Corace, San Francisco

Freedom’s power

Regarding “Fleet Week glorifies military warmongering” (Letters to the Editor, Oct. 6): I taught English in Japan and South Korea for a number of years and have many relatives in the Philippines whom I have visited.

I can say with certainty that the peoples of these Asian democracies are deeply appreciative of their security arrangements with the U.S., which keep Chinese and North Korean military aggression and totalitarianism in check and serve to promote freedom, democracy and human rights in the region.

Fleet week is important because it enables the American public to feel what U.S. power really is and understand the constructive role it plays in the world.

Without fighter jets or ships, freedom, democracy and human rights are just fuzzy intellectual creatures without teeth — creatures that authoritarians in Moscow, Beijing or Pyongyang would love to beat down, capture and slaughter as they do to their own peoples.

During Fleet Week, we are reminded that totalitarians will not have their own way so easily. The sound of a U.S. fighter jet is the sound of freedom.

Carlo Barlaan, Martinez

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle A condo in S.F. sat empty for two years because of a legal dispute. Vacant units would be subject to a tax under Prop. M.