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Some Root For a Tech Comeuppance In San Francisco
HughPickens.com writes: David Streitfeld writes in the NYT that cities do not usually cheer the downfall or even the diminishment of the hometown industry, but the relationship between San Francisco and the tech community has grown increasingly tense as the consequences for people who do not make their living from technology become increasingly unpleasant. "It's practically a ubiquitous sentiment here: People would like a little of the air to come out of the tech economy," says Aaron Peskin. "They're like people in a heat wave waiting for the monsoon." Signs of distress are plentiful. The Fraternite Notre Dame's soup kitchen was facing eviction after a rent increase of nearly 60 percent. Two eviction-defense groups were evicted in favor of a start-up that intended to lease the space to other start-ups. The real estate site Redfin published a widely read blog post that said the number of teachers in San Francisco who could afford a house was exactly zero. "All the renters I know are living in fear," says Derrick Tynan-Connolly. "If your landlord dies, if your landlord sells the building, if you get evicted under the Ellis Act" — a controversial law that allows landlords to reclaim a building by taking it off the rental market — "and you have to move, you're gone. There's no way you can afford to stay in San Francisco."
Sorry, but how democracy works is people have the ability to decide what their city is like. Democracy is more important than markets.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
The old gentry doesn't like the new gentry.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The problem here is that a city, even in the Bay area, needs low and mid wage workers too in order to function.
Think about it this way: How is the Bay Area tech industry going to function when there's nobody left to staff their Starbucks'?
The real problem is that San Francisco adamantly refuses to build more housing to meet demand.
Even if San Francisco did allow more housing, developers will want to build more luxury housing and apartments to maximize their profits. My apartment complex in Silicon Valley had three different corporate owners in as many years. Each one slapping on a coat of exterior paint, redoing the landscaping, charging "luxury" rental rates and selling the complex when they don't get their expected return on investment. The current corporate owner is actually renovating the apartments since exterior paint and landscaping doesn't justify the luxury rental rates.
Interestingly, what you described couldn't happen in California since 1978 because there is a state law that limits property tax rate amounts and increases, and also only allows reevaluation of the property value when the property is transferred.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Considering you're talking about policies in some of the absolutely most LIBERAL places in America as somehow "Republican" in their thinking is *incredibly* humorous. San Francisco and New York - two of the cities in the world with the worst gentrification problems - are some of the most liberal places in America. And yet somehow, you've managed to blame evil Republicans for putting the hurt on those poor widdle poor people you wuv so much.
The problem is a consequence of the policies put in place by LIBERAL governments. Don't bleat about how pure your motives and intentions are when you are actively supporting the liberals who put these policies in place.
I'm sure that George Bush is also to blame for these policies, somehow.
Asshole.
The translation of SJW is: "Anyone who doesn't agree with me".
''
Actually I thought that was the SJW's definition of a bigot, racist, etc.