San Francisco's Housing Crisis Explained

An anonymous reader writes "We've heard a few brief accounts recently of the housing situation in San Francisco, and how it's leading to protests, gentrification, and bad blood between long-time residents and the newer tech crowd. It's a complicated issue, and none of the reports so far have really done it justice. Now, TechCrunch has posted a ludicrously long article explaining exactly what's going on, from regulations forbidding Google to move people into Mountain View instead, to the political battle to get more housing built, to the compromises that have already been made. It's a long read, but well-researched and interesting. It concludes: 'The crisis we're seeing is the result of decades of choices, and while the tech industry is a sexy, attention-grabbing target, it cannot shoulder blame for this alone. Unless a new direction emerges, this will keep getting worse until the next economic crash, and then it will re-surface again eight years later. Or it will keep spilling over into Oakland, which is a whole other Pandora's box of gentrification issues. The high housing costs aren't healthy for the city, nor are they healthy for the industry. Both thrive on a constant flow of ideas and people.'"

Comments

Re:BS

[thesupraman]

Jealous much?

Seems to me that the people who have been pissing away their time spending everything they can day to day and not buying any actual property are now pissed that the property values for others who didnt do that are going up, and that they will then have to pay more rent.

Hint - its called investing for the future, and its a damn good idea, no matter how fashionable your triple chocolate mochas and anti establishment tees are.

To you actually know that the capitalism in, well, capitalism actually means? Or would you rather live in some state allocated location, with a state allocated job, eathing your state allocated rations? hmmm?

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm into the leather scene. San Francisco used to be our Mecca. You know how Las Vegas is Disneyland for adults (tm) or something like that? Well, San Francisco is Disney Land for gay men. Or was. Quite frankly, it's gotten too fucking creepy for me -- And I have no problem getting fisted by a midget while a tranny shits on my chest! I have friends that put the goatse man to shame. San Fransisco is just fucked up.