District 2 — covering the Marina, Cow Hollow, Pacific Heights, and surrounding neighborhoods — is squarely in the crosshairs of this debate. And the candidates vying to represent it are being forced to answer a version of the question that most city leaders have spent decades artfully dodging.

The core tension is familiar. San Francisco has a catastrophic housing shortage. Everyone acknowledges this. Everyone says they want more housing. But the moment you point at a specific neighborhood — especially one with million-dollar views and vocal homeowners — suddenly the conversation gets complicated.

Candidates Sherrill and Brooke have both weighed in on whether District 2 itself should absorb more housing development, and their answers matter. District 2 is one of the wealthier, lower-density parts of the city. It's exactly the kind of area that progressive housing advocates say needs to accept more development, and exactly the kind of area where residents tend to fight it tooth and nail.

Here's what we'd love to see from any District 2 candidate: an honest acknowledgment that you can't champion housing production citywide while quietly ensuring your own district stays frozen in amber. The math doesn't work. If San Francisco is going to dig itself out of a housing crisis that's driven costs through the roof and pushed working people out of the city, every neighborhood has to be part of the solution.

That doesn't mean dropping a 40-story tower on Chestnut Street. It means allowing smart, well-designed infill. It means not treating every new unit like an existential threat to neighborhood character. And it means candidates who are willing to level with voters instead of promising them that all the new housing can magically go somewhere else.

District 2 residents deserve representatives who respect both property rights and the reality that a city this expensive didn't get here by building too much.