Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Elberling...is among those who believe the city was being overrun by people who arrived for one reason.

“The motivation got to this get-rich-quick attitude,” he said. “And that isn’t what our city is about."

It's what your city has been about for over 170 years. Your fucking football team is named for this very idea.[0][1]

Now, that's not to say I'm not sympathetic. Even in the less-expensive Seattle area I wonder where my hair dresser is supposed to live (I know where she lives: nowhere near Redmond). I'm trying to think of anyone I know that lives within the boundaries of "Eastside" (...of Seattle) that doesn't work in software and isn't married to same. I came up with one person: a psychologist. IOW, I have drifted from my modest roots and now only know high-income people. That's fine, I guess, but boy howdy, I'll bet I've grown far more out-of-touch and more bubbled than I'd like to think.

But I see a lot of what I perceive to be jealousy amongst the noble concern for those less well off. Are you blocking those "new, expensive condos" because of concern for the poor or because you don't think wealthy people should have a place to live in SF? (Okay, fine, they can consume all of the cheap housing, and...oh, this has been rehashed ad nauseam.) I don't even have a snappy question for those that block corporate busses, y'all are just "doing something" for the sake of doing so (and the 'gram points, I imagine). But mostly I see a lot of "I was here first" attitude, like that counts for something. As if one gets to define "what our city is about", even if one gets it horribly wrong from the start.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_49ers

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Forty-nin...

Seattle also has international shipping, multiple Universities, and, at least for now, Boeing. Being a software town rounds out the demographics, instead of dominating them.

A lot of midwestern towns have faded away because they were single industry towns. I can sympathize with people who don't want their city to be beholden to one group of people, who might disappear at any moment, after having extracted what they want from the city.

Sure, but being an industry town is largely a consequence of city policy. Specifically, policy which makes it too expensive to live in the city unless you're part of that dominant industry.

It's "Dutch Disease"[1] from a different angle.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

The Tech industry is not really a single industry, though. There is medical tech and media tech and manufacturing tech and more. Many of these fields hardly touch each other and have jargon that is unintelligible to the others. Major changes in the economy could flush entire sectors and leave the rest humming away. In a way the current pandemic has underscored the resilience of tech's economic sprawl.

I think this is a really good point about people moving to San Francisco to get rich for a long time now. And not just SF; my grandparents immigrated to New York with nothing, worked hard to establish themselves, and eventually moved out to raise a family. They had a "transactional" relationship with the city, but I like to think that New York was also enriched by their presence. And I think when we look back at all the people who have come through San Francisco on their journey to a better life, we'll realize that the city has been serving a very important function.

That's not to say that San Francisco doesn't have problems - it most certainly does. But I think that this "us vs. them" mentality is counter productive when it comes to actually solving the city's problems.

It’s funny because Eberling is a rich developer living mostly in Marin who makes his money renting out expensive apartments built with city subsidies.

I don’t know why it’s so difficult to accept that cities change, often for the worse. The quality of life for the average person in SF was unquestionably better ~30 years ago than it is today. At this point, is it even possible to have a middle class existence in SF?

Your post seems to contradict itself. If it's not possible to have a middle class existence in SF, then surely it's even less possible to have a working class or poor existence in SF. Therefore, since the city is now exclusively populated by rich people, wouldn't the average person be rich, and therefore have a better quality of life than the average middle class person ~30 years ago?

Is this a serious reply? The real world isn’t a logic problem.

SF today is mostly inhabited by two groups: the rich and the working poor. The rich can afford to live wherever they like and take Ubers or corporate shuttles. The working poor commute in on decaying, often dangerous public transit from an hour or more away.

Of course it's serious, and you just confirmed it: SF is not "inhabited" by the working poor at all, who are forced to live elsewhere. Unless you're talking about the tent cities, I guess. If you can actually afford to live in SF proper, I bet your quality of life is excellent.

You are conflating “average person in the country”, aka middle class, with “average person that lives in a specific area.”

This is not particularly complicated.

What? I'm not conflating anything. I'm talking about "the average person in SF", exactly as you described in your OP. You can talk about the average person in the country all you want, but this person does not live in SF.

I'll stop replying since it seems like we are talking past each other, and I'm attempting to read your posts charitably but I just don't get it.

Tell that to the recent college graduates splitting a dilapidated Victorian with 4 roommates for $1800/mo.

> If it's not possible to have a middle class existence in SF, then surely it's even less possible to have a working class or poor existence in SF

That's a fallacious conclusion. It is very much possible to have a poor existence if there's no reasonable path to middle class. For example, you don't pay rent if you live in a tent city, and tent cities are very much a reality in SF.

Lots of people live in cheap rent controlled housing though. They can take low paying jobs and still make ends meet so they drive wages down.

The city requires housing producers to sell a percentage of their output to low-income buyers at a government-set price. So middle-class housing buyers pay significantly more to cover that cost.

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