Dear Broke-Ass Stuart,

I recently came across your article from last year letting us know how bad you feel for us. Thanks for your pity! I hadn’t noticed it when it first ran, but now that I’ve discovered it, I feel an urge to respond. The article is worded like an olive branch to those of us working in the tech sector, welcoming us to the city and inviting us to feel at home, but that’s not really what it’s about.

Alongside your olive branch comes a list of Terms and Conditions. You briefly lament that we’re too eager to view tech workers as outsiders, apart from the rest of the City. Then you spend the bulk of the article defining us that way.

So I want to get this message out there to all the “techies:” It’s time to become San Franciscans. If you’re gonna be here, BE here. I’m tired of all this you/we bullshit that I just did in the previous two paragraphs. What I’m inviting “you” to do, is to become part of the “we.”

If you’re tired of “all this you/we bullshit,” then perhaps you should stop peddling it. Your entire premise is based on the notion that we are not part of your “we,” and we need to change who we are and how we behave in order to meet your standards.

I grew up here, and if someone wants to share it with me, that makes me all the prouder.

I am a born and raised San Francisco native, but I hate “playing the native card,” because it implies that natives are somehow superior to outsiders, and to me, that stance is indefensible. San Francisco is what it is because it’s a place where people can become what they’ve always wanted to be.

Our city was born in a mad rush for wealth. Our roots are in the Gold Rush. Just as we were initially defined by an influx of migrants, we’ve been redefined over and over by subsequent waves of outsiders, often to far greater effect than by native children like me.

Sometimes these outsiders came to escape oppression, sometimes to pursue an opportunity for wealth. Every time, they faced vitriolic resistance from the “natives” who saw them as a threat to “their” San Francisco. This generation is no different. So which San Franciscan do you identify with? The one who chooses to come here and join our ranks? Or the one that slams the door in their face? You were the former, once, Stuart, and it’s a shame to see you become the latter. Well, San Francisco is not yours to save.

Even if it were, I’m not sure you know what you’d be saving it from. Describing the preferred behavior of non-techies, you write:

We don’t sit in our cars all day commuting to work, we bike or walk or take mass transit. We explore local restaurants and get to know neighborhood shop owners. We become part of this city by drowning ourselves in it.

Actually, just under half of SF residents do sit in their cars. This number used to be over half until 2012. Could it be, perhaps, that newcomers to San Francisco are driving the shift away from private cars and towards mass transit use? After all, ridership on BART, Muni, and Caltrain have never been higher than today. No, that can’t be it. Wouldn’t fit your narrative.

You then go on to take aim at developers and landlords for making too much money.

It must be a hell of a thing to move somewhere for a job and be told that you are the cause of most of that city’s problems. What somehow gets lost in all the finger-pointing and hand-wringing is that the bad guys in this housing crisis aren’t the people looking for a place to live. The real villains are the particularly rapacious real estate developers, landlords, brokers and speculators making monumental fortunes, and the politicians who are in their pockets.

This is misguided. You cannot blame the real estate interests and the landlords for raising rent when the market supports rents that high. You should instead ask yourself why the market supports rents that high, and what we can do to change that.

Actually, strike that. Ask the California Legislative Analyst’s Office. Ask UC Berkeley. Ask UCLA. Ask the White House.

Starting to see a pattern? We don’t have enough housing. Market-rate, affordable — it doesn’t matter. Our land use policies are restricting housing growth, thereby driving income inequality, segregation, gentrification, and displacement.

Who, exactly, is to blame for that?

The policies that put us in this mess didn’t come from newcomers. They came from all of us, as San Franciscans, because we’re accountable for what our elected representatives and voting public put in place. When you point at someone, you have four fingers pointing back at you. Let’s stop blaming and start putting our heads together to fix this.

You’ve outlined four simple steps that you think can make someone a True San Franciscan:

1. Check out this article I wrote a few months about about how to be a “good San Franciscan”

Your definition of “good San Franciscan” is apparently “people who agree with me politically.” Nothing makes me prouder of my hometown than our resounding rejection of this idea. We’re not so narrow-minded as that. The only thing we discriminate against is discrimination itself.

2. Donate to and/or volunteer on my mayoral campaign. I’m sticking up for San Francisco and I’ll need all the help I can get.

If “San Franciscans” are defined by having voted for you, it seems there are very few of them here indeed. Can you accept, perhaps, that it wasn’t corruption that got Mr. Lee elected and re-elected? Maybe, just maybe, he won because the majority of San Franciscans aren’t as upset with him as you are.

Those can’t be “San Franciscans,” though, right? Of course not. That wouldn’t fit your narrative.

3. Follow 48 Hills. They are a nonprofit, alternative media source that is all about saving the City.

A civic-minded resident should indeed stay up to date on local politics. However, 48 Hills has no more of a monopoly on what’s “right” for this city than you do. Opinion pieces can help make sense of the torrent of information available to us, but first and foremost we should try to make sense of those facts for ourselves. So yes, follow 48 Hills if you want. But more importantly, follow the facts. The facts don’t point to a cabal of villains, they point to a broken housing system that we need to hold our policymakers accountable for fixing.

4. Join a Democratic Club or at least follow some on FB. That way you can can stay informed on all the issues and share things with your friends.

Everyone should at least register to vote by mail. It takes 3 minutes and you can vote in the comfort of your home in the convenience of your own time.

I must say, it sure seems ironic that you’d recommend following your preferred community groups on Facebook, a company that you seem to cast blame at for destroying “your” city. If people do want to follow someone on Facebook, though, I’d recommend they follow us. We’re interested in explaining how to fix our broken housing system, not in telling people how to be “true” San Franciscans.

To my colleagues and peers: Only one thing makes you a San Franciscan, and that’s the fact that you live here. Maybe you just came for the money, and if so, I can’t fault you. But I don’t think you did. I think maybe you came here because of our beautiful cityscapes, or because of the pristine nature that surrounds us. I think maybe you came here because it’s a place you can live without a car, or because the people are diverse and strong-willed and beautiful. Whatever it was, you came here, and you should feel welcome.

You know, though, that this is not a paradise. We have crippling income inequality. Crushing commutes. Exorbitant housing prices. You should care about these things. What you shouldn’t do, though, is listen to those who’d place the blame everywhere but themselves. Instead, empower yourself to learn about the issues we face, and take whatever action you think will ameliorate them.