Once San Francisco was a city filled with vibrant people enjoying its beauty and its relatively good weather. Visitors came from far and wide, enjoyed the City by the Bay, shivered in summer when winds from the Pacific Ocean blew in and basked in the warmth of a January in the sun.

Youth from around the nation, and particularly the western part of the country, flooded into San Francisco to go to school, meet potential mates and often they settled down in the City to enjoy its cosmopolitan lifestyle.

No more. No one but the very rich and the very poor can afford to life in San Francisco. It is a place of too many angry poor and disenfranchised who crowd the downtown and many of its neighborhoods. It is hard enjoy fantastic views if you are homeless and hungry. The wealthy and the "upwardly mobile" fill the lovely hills with their panoramic views, while the poor huddle and the middle class flees to the suburbs of the Peninsula, Marin County and the East Bay.

Is this Seattle's future, too? We have an abundance of beautiful views, the weather is wonderful compared with Buffalo or Chicago and people who move here never leave willingly.

But, already some industrial companies are complaining they cannot get workers to come into the city to work because of the terrible commute from Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap counties - even some from Thurston and Skagit counties. These people bought housing in places an hour, two hours and sometimes much longer away because they could afford a home there, but no longer in the Emerald City.

One sure sign of our becoming a Utopian city is the fact more and more apartments are being converted to condominiums. Seattle City Councilman Tom Rasmussen clearly points out, hundreds of apartments are being converted each year.

"In addition, the rate of apartment conversions continues to increase: in 2004, 430 apartments were converted, in 2005 conversions rose to 1,551 apartments, last year 2,352 apartments were converted and during the first two months of this year 497 apartments have been permitted for conversion," Rasmussen says.

He notes the Legislature, and not the City Council, controls much of this situation and proposes it pass legislation that does three things: increase the time required for notice of conversion from three to four months; increase the amount of relocation assistance payments to low income tenants; and prohibit construction inside the building until the tenants move out.

As much as we do not like to tell people what to do with their property, we must keep our residential market strong so that our economy will remain strong. If business cannot get workers, then business will move and the city will become a place for only the very rich and the very poor.

We urge the Legislature to do what Councilman Rasmussen suggests and protect our citizens against this growing trend.

- Jack Mayne