We need to talk about the reaction to Steph Curry opposing a proposal to build condos behind his Atherton, California home.
It’s easy to want to turn this into a class issue.
And there are plenty of conservatives out there that have all the incentive in the world to paint Steph and Aisha Curry as hypocritical Democrats that hate the poor.
But I still live in a world where facts matter over politics, so let’s take a look at the facts.
Steph Curry has dedicated his time, energy, and finances to a multitude of causes that help those in lower income communities have better access to education, health care, nutrition, fitness and more.
Steph Curry puts his money where his mouth is more than he puts his mouthguard where his mouth is. The world is an objectively better place with Steph Curry in it, no matter how you feel about the man’s politics.
This is a legitimate privacy and safety issue for his family. And anyone who tells you it’s about Steph Curry wanting to exclude low income people from being his neighbors needs to explain to you exactly how they define the term “low income.”
The proposed property that is supposed to hold the 16 three-story townhomes is a 1.5 acre plot of land valued at around $12 million dollars. So right there you’re looking at $750,000 per home without even factoring in building costs. Most homes that sold in Atherton last year were closing at over $3500 per square foot.
How many low income people do you know paying thousands of dollars per square foot?
This is about the extremely affluent community of Atherton trying to find a way to comply with California’s new affordable housing plan, which seeks to develop 348 units in communities across different income levels over the next eight years.
Steph Curry overpaid for a house in Atherton, in part for the privacy of having the empty lot next door. He’s one of the most photographed people in the world. So what if he doesn’t want the neighbors staring at his kids from their third story window. Is that a thing you’d want if you could afford to opt out of it? Be honest.
If you were the one of the most famous people in the country, and you moved to a town that at the time, had an ordinance that any dwelling had to be on a minimum of an acre of land, would you be cool with your next door neighbor putting up 16 three-story condos that overlooked your property?
If wanting privacy and safety for your kids makes you a hypocrite because of all the charity you do for other people’s kids, we should all want to be hypocrites.
The dumbest thing about this fake gotcha controversy is that unlike many others in Atherton, Steph and Aisha Curry actually want the condos built. And even in their protest of the condos going up next door, they simply requested that if the construction takes place, it includes sufficient barriers to retain the privacy they were seeking when they originally bought the property.
This whole “controversy” comes off as a desperation play by think tanks and political grifters to try and drive a wedge between Steph Curry and the voting block they believe keeps them out of accumulating power- poor black and brown people.
It’s not going to work.
Can I recommend a better strategy to my Conservative friends?
Get little Buckley out in the driveway and have him put in enough work to shoot 43% percent from three off of screens.
When he makes the league, have him travel Africa to deliver malaria nets. When a natural disaster strikes, have him donate six figures to help get poor people back on their feet. And after little Buckley has a couple of championship rings, help him and his wife launch a foundation that delivers tens of millions of meals to needy families in Oakland, and provides the funding to re-open shuttered school libraries.
Then, when someone comes along and asks if they can put sixteen millionaire families on the property next door to his, have him say yes.
It might sound like a far-fetched plan, but it’ll go a lot further in creating young conservatives than what y’all tried to do with this hit job of a story.
Let that sink in.
