I remember reading a very long, well-researched, and balanced post from TechCrunch [1] about the housing shortage in SF. Media: more posts like that, please. Help identify underlying issues, flawed policies, or missed opportunities, instead of simply blaming the engineers.
Yes, gentrification does have some impact on people on the periphery, and we can't discount that, but on average, the population as a whole is better off. Back in the early '90s, SF's real estate was in a depression. RE agents were moving out, due to the RE market depression. What we have now needs addressing, but it's more of a governmental intervention which is necessary. Intervention to address the housing stock shortage.
We need an organization like ABAG to have some executive power. Someone who can say, these will be green areas, these areas we can build up, and we need to bring mass transit here. We need regional governmental integration. Piece-meal works too slowly to adapt to the changes brought on by economic development.
It's because the SF bay area is such an economic engine that we have so many people come here and find jobs they cannot find in their home states or counties. If we were in stagnation like Fresno/Bakersfield, we'd have people fleeing trying to find the economic magnet.
Anti-gentrification activists make it even worse since they oppose pretty much every new development. "We don't want luxury condos in our neightbourhood". Then you will have old tiny studios at the price of luxury condos.
People don't move to SF because because they look for a luxury condo here. They move to SF because there are jobs.
Oh, come on. At least in SF, that's obvious exaggeration: San Francisco had been the west-coast center of the financial industry since before the 1980s, and most of what you see on Market street was built decades (if not a century) earlier. It looked nothing like Fresno.
If you're referring to the economic status of the people living at mid-Market, it's equally wrong to use it as an example where "tech" is making things better: The Tenderloin was a blue-collar neighborhood before the war. It gradually descended into property as the rest of the city gentrified around it, leaving few places for working-class people to go. Gentrification absolutely made things worse in the Tenderloin.
Mid-Market's decline came as part of the larger Tenderloin decline, but also as the result of BART construction, which killed business on the road in the 60s. SOMA was light industrial in the 1960s and 1970s, but by the late 1980s, this area was beginning to gentrify as well. For example, entire blocks of SRO housing were eliminated during the 1980s to build Moscone Center.
About the only thing you can say regarding the "tech industry" is that it's the latest gentrifying wave of many, all of which have undoubtedly made things nicer for rich people, and worse for poor people. It's therefore completely unsurprising that someone in the tech industry would believe that gentrification makes things "better", but it doesn't reflect a lot of empathy.
My overarching point is that without tech, the Bay Area would not be the place people come to find good paying jobs --it would be more of a retirement destination and a tourist destination. Let's look at North Dakota, yes, there are homeless despite the boom, but if it were not the for the boom, the state would be in the dull-drums but with shale, whatever you think of it, you have a vibrant economy which attracts all people looking for a way to make a decent living -not everyone will be lucky. That's not to say we should not try to provide for those not lucky (I think we should), but to say that industry creates the "luckless" to me, is disingenuous.
Look at the population trends for SF as a proxy for economic vitality in the 70's and 80's:
1970 715,674 −3.3%
1980 678,974 −5.1%
1990 723,959 +6.6%
2000 776,733 +7.3%
2010 805,235 +3.7%
2013 837,442 +4.0%
[1]When white collar was basically finance, people used to commute _into_ the city. Whereas now, SF is a place people have a desire to live --it was not always that way. [2]http://sfist.com/2013/07/18/enemies_of_the_tall_four_seasons...
Do you mean "into poverty..."? Genuine question, not being snarky.
As I see it, we should focus on solving these issues as residence of the Bay Area as a whole. Pitting one group against another will just deplete the political will necessary to make vital policy changes to allow high density housing, mass public transit, raising minimum wage, improving education, etc.
The thing read like a bad undergraduate essay, wherein the student decided the thesis ("tech isn't really responsible for the bay area housing crisis!") before doing the research, discovered that the data didn't support her conclusion, then simply chose to overwhelm the reader with disconnected facts in an attempt to distract from the self-evident conclusion that, yes, we really are responsible for the latest spike in housing costs.
A more sophisticated analysis acknowledges that foregone conclusion, but then separates culpability from cause: the tech industry is certainly the cause of the latest housing crisis, but that doesn't mean growth in tech is automatically bad (or good, for that matter). Only once you have acknowledged those truths can you proceed forward with a rational discussion on what to do about the problem.
Once you acknowledge that this is an acute crisis caused by a single industry, you have to consider that one reasonable solution might be to discourage tech companies from coming to the city via taxes, zoning and so on. There is, after all, no inalienable right for startups to have offices in live/work lofts in SOMA.
Again, the whole thing was written to appeal to an audience of tech people who want to believe that they're not the problem and shouldn't have to sacrifice, even though the facts clearly point in the other direction. Why should the fabric of a city change instantaneously because a group of relatively entitled new arrivals believe that they somehow "belong" more than the people who arrived before?
We can't have a useful conversation that doesn't start from the acknowledgement that tech is a big part of the problem.
>“It’s not necessarily their fault, but they are stakeholders in the homelessness problem and have the power and brains to change it.”
Where are you detecting notes of "us" vs. "them"?
the author isn't nourishing the concept of 'us vs. them' it with what they wrote, just with the reports from others.
I agree. And yet, this place is set aflame every time a financial or banking article is posted, questioning when "we" are going to do something about "those people".
It isn't constructive, at all.