In “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,” Anakin Skywalker delivers a line as he transforms into Darth Vader, “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy.”
That’s the playbook developers and their allies are using in Sacramento’s housing debate today. Agree with them, and you’re on the side of progress. Question them, and you’re labeled a “NIMBY” — dismissed, caricatured and fed into a narrative that paints residents as villains standing in the way of solving California’s housing crisis.
We’re watching this play out with the Alhambra redevelopment project. A proposed six-story, block-long building will be dropped into a neighborhood defined by one-story homes. It even requires bending or outright bypassing long-standing zoning protections meant to prevent exactly this kind of mismatch…