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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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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