San Francisco homeowners, tenants and small-business owners showed up at City Hall on Sept. 11 expecting to be heard. Instead, our voices were buried — or, more accurately, steamrolled.

Sacramento had already sent its marching orders in advance of that day’s Planning Commission hearing: a letter from the State Department of Housing and Community Development expressing approval of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s sweeping rezoning plan , which loosens affordability rules and strips away protections that might inconvenience developers.

Call it “guidance” if you want, but to these homeowners the message was blunt — comply or the state takes control. That feels like coercion.

The spectacle that followed made the imbalance undeniable. Hours before the vote, Mayor Lurie stood on the steps of City Hall

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