FROM HORIZONTAL EXCLUSION TO VERTICAL EXCLUSION

FROM HORIZONTAL EXCLUSION TO VERTICAL EXCLUSION

Once,
the city divided us
across the ground.

A red pencil moved across a map
and said:

You may live here.
You may not live there.

The line crossed neighborhoods,
mortgages,
deeds,
schools,
parks,
trees,
and generations.

It was only ink,

yet families spent lifetimes
trying to cross it.

Then the law changed.

The red pencil was put away.
The covenant lost its authority.
The map appeared clean.

We looked upon it
and almost believed

the wall was gone.
But walls are clever.

When they can no longer stretch
across the street,

they learn to climb.
Now the city rises.

Twenty stories.
Thirty stories.
Forty stories—

glass catching the afternoon sun,
balconies hanging above sidewalks,
elevators carrying people
toward rooms in the sky.

And somewhere inside the lobby
a new boundary waits.

It asks no race.
It examines no ancestry.

It simply asks:
How much can you pay?

And suddenly
the old horizontal line
has learned to stand upright.

The penthouse above.
The worker below.

The owner above.
The renter below.

The investor watching
the neighborhood appreciate,

the tenant watching
the rent increase.

They may share the same street,
the same bus stop,
the same morning fog,
the same view of the bay—

yet inhabit
different San Franciscos.

The cook prepares dinner
beneath apartments
he cannot afford.

The janitor polishes windows
through which she could never
afford to watch the sunset.

The caregiver rides the elevator
to tend someone else's parent,

then rides the train
far from the city
to reach her own.

The teacher tells children
that San Francisco belongs to them,

then drives fifty miles
to find a place
where her salary belongs.

And beneath the tower,
someone sleeps
against the building
whose empty windows
glitter above him.

What strange architecture:

so many floors,
and still
not enough room.

Do not blame the height.
The sky has committed no injustice.

Build upward.
Build homes.
Build thousands.

Let parking lots become bedrooms.
Let vacant parcels become kitchens.
Let children wake
where asphalt once slept.

But while the crane lifts steel,
let conscience lift
something with it.

Affordability.
Belonging.
Community.
Memory.
Mercy.

For density without belonging
can become merely
exclusion stacked higher.

Yesterday
the boundary ran
from east to west.

Tomorrow
it may run

from sidewalk
to penthouse.

Yesterday
the map said,

Do not cross.

Tomorrow
the market may whisper,

You may enter—
if you possess the key.

And the key
may no longer be made of metal.

It may be made of income,
credit,
equity,
inheritance,
and all the advantages
one generation quietly passes
into the hands of another.

So when San Francisco
builds toward the clouds,

let justice climb
every floor.

Let the teacher have a door.
Let the cook have a window.
Let the caregiver have a neighborhood.
Let the elder remain near friends.
Let the child born here
imagine adulthood here.
Let the person emerging
from the street
receive more than shelter—
let them receive
a place among neighbors.

We have spent generations
trying to erase the lines
drawn across the earth.

Let us not redraw them
up the walls of our buildings.

For the measure
of a vertical city

is not how high
its wealth can rise,
but how far
its belonging can reach.

Build the tower.
Raise the skyline.
Open the elevator.

And from the sidewalk
to the highest window,
let every floor declare:

The future will not be
a red line turned upright.

The city may rise—
but let no human being
become smaller
beneath its height.

Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
August 29, 2026

https://www.facebook.com/steven.g.lee1/posts/pfbid02oBDqbqWtpHUvwo8oK4mtbHmAAR853hhWHb6g3vnFMnkaafXMn2cLGekhueLxjwV9l ___San Francisco is a textbook example, one of the most expensive urban areas in the United States, where an AI-driven wealth boom pushes home prices to near-record highs, while a wave of mega-tower proposals aims to radically reshape the city’s vertical profile. Despite navigating high office vacancies downtown, developers are aggressively betting on the city's upward growth.