Don't Be a Stanford Asshole

I really don't agree with this guy at all. This makes no sense at all:

> Don’t ever move into an apartment, TIC, condo, or house that has been cleared by an eviction

So landlords should be forced to rent to people forever who can't pay? That makes no sense. It is just stealing the property from the property owner.

I know a lot of landlords and they hate doing evictions, because the tenants aren't paying their rent the entire time they are being evicted. The ones I know often say to the judge, I don't want money back from this person (which is generally impossible anyway because the person is poor), I just want to be able to rent my property to someone who can pay. Landlords with a lot of property have to do this regularly.

For a bit of a more balanced discussion of some of the key points related to SF's housing problems, you might want to read Kim-Mai Cutler's (very long and very good) assessment of the issue:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/

(HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7590250)

I don't even want to pick out any quotes because that would be doing it a disservice, but I think it argues successfully that many of the displacement and culture problems surrounding SF today are, at the core, housing issues. And the blame for those problems does not lie solely with tech workers, and the potential solutions are far deeper and more complicated than all of us trying to "not being awful" (though not being awful is a good start).

It still baffles me that people feel entitled to live forever in a rental unit with minimum rent increases (while keeping the right to move out whenever if it's advantageous).

Not being subject to this is pretty much the main advantage of owning your primary residence, rather than renting it.

Now, the fact that a lot of people don't really have viable avenues into home ownership (even if they wanted to do it) is another matter completely.

John Law's response follows. [1]

I’ve been following the Talbot thread, and have very mixed feelings. Here’s my 2 cents for what it’s worth.

“When I moved to Frisco (g’head – take that one on!) in 1976 as a California born, Midwest raised 17 year old juvie runaway living on the streets and crashing at Haight Ashbury Switchboard referred beds, Bernal (as most neighborhoods at that time) was a very different place. Though I never actually lived on the Hill, I’ve lived all around it – Bayview, Mission, Portola, as well as a half dozen other hoods. I’ve hiked, hung out at and slept (not always with the same people) on Bernal off & on for over 3 decades. The hippies I met back then, some toothless drug addicts, some gentrifying householders, all told me the same thing: “Party’s over kid, ya missed it.” Well, they were full of crap on that one. The story of this town as with all towns is one of constant change.

I worked at the York Theater (now the Brava) in 1979/80. The Mission, parts of Bayview, North Beach etc., were cauldrons of crazy energy and underground experimentation for me and my crowd. Each Saturday, Mission Street from 14th to Army was bumper to bumper low riders of the most astonishing detail exquisite paint jobs imaginable. La Raza was feeling it, murals and street art starting to pop up everywhere. The old neighborhood townies bitched incessantly about the hippies, cholos (and later the Punks and Gays) and how they were destroying San Francisco.

Well, in a sense they were right. The new waves were washing away the old, and the old that was being supplanted was far from valueless. l’ve worked in the trades with many of those old townies for years. I would get hints of this past world from the old timers still in the trades when I started. Their world was one of drag racing at Ocean Beach, Irish wakes and marriages at Mission Dolores (yes, the Mission was largely Irish before the wave of Latino immigration and white flight in the 60’s) or St. Paul’s up the hill, diving off Lefty O’Doul Bridge, working the docks, machine shops and produce markets or, as juvenile delinquents, pinching stuff from those markets…

I stopped at Reds Java Hut with my forman at Ad-Art Electrical Sign Co, George Edwards for lunch a few times in the mid-80’s. Red, at that time in his 70’s, was a big man with a ready laugh and short temper. He would loudly, but good naturedly berate George, also a big tough guy, when we came in: “HEY KID!! whaddaya want? A free burger! Ya ain’t gonna get it here, boy!” Evidently my boss and his Irish street gang would try and swipe candy bars at Reds back in the 50’s!

This was the world buried by the new waves over the 60’s and 70’s. And the factories closed, shipping left and by the time I arrived, much of the city was abandoned commercial buildings, boarded up neighborhoods and a great deal of street crime and ingrained poverty.

To me it was a wonderland. Very cheap rent and restaurants made living and creating here easy. All sorts of bizarre and compelling things were growing in that beautiful wasteland. Even so, you’d be mugged for certain in Precita Park if you traversed it regularly. Cortland was a dangerous street and you simply did not go near Garfield Park at night. The gangs owned it. In 2 years of selling popcorn at the York Theater (24th at York St, 1979/80) I witnessed two full on gang fights, saw the aftermath of dozens of serious assaults, and watched as patrons of the theater lost, on average 3-4 cars a week to auto theft. Hampshire at 24th shared the honor of most auto thefts for several years with some street in Newark NJ.

I read Talbot’s book and quite enjoyed it. I remember first-hand much that he recounts therein. He is right in his Bernal reverie on one count for sure: The new wave on average, are wealthier. I know many in the tech scene. I’m a partner in Laughing Squid, one of the very early internet “social media” experiments that has gone on to some notice. The “techies” have their own creative wonderland they are building here – much of it is hard for those not initiated to see or understand. I can’t fairly be mad at them for their enthusiasm for MY town….

Many of my closest long time friends ARE being pushed out by the new wave, and they are rightfully as pissed off about it, as the Townies were before. I am very sad about that and we are losing some very important things as that tide recedes and leaves the artists, working class and poor immigrants beached (some for the better) in Oakland and beyond. With a few wrong breaks, I would be pushed out too.

San Francisco is not a place that I would hitchhike to nowadays, couch surf and live cheaply in as I met other broke newbies who want to shake things up. I would end up in Oakland. But for the people that do come and can afford it, I think Frisco is still a pretty awesome place. And for those of you lucky or smart enough to have dug in on Bernal, my congratulations.

[1] source from this article where it's at the bottom: https://bernalwood.wordpress.com/2015/01/27/neighbor-david-t...

Basically, this guy is arguing that "I was here first" should trump "I can buy my way in".

I encourage people to look beyond the title (which might turn some people off) and read this.

While it's always great to see people being passionate about where they live (something I rarely see outside of SF or Portland OR), I couldn't find anything in this article beyond "These dicks should stop doing what they want because it's not what I want". If there's a villain behind gentrification it's economics - calling people assholes for wanting to live in your terrifically wonderful neighborhood is surely beside the point.

I've always been of the opinion that if you want to control how a piece of land is used, you should buy it. If you want a bunch of indigents living on land that is very in high demand, raise the money, buy the land, and build a homeless shelter there. If you don't think that's a wise use of money (i.e., maybe you would prefer to help 10 times as many poor by using land that is in less demand) then don't contribute to the scarcity of already scarce (and thus expensive) private property.

It's sad that people want to manufacture an outrage over the simple reality that if you live in a place you don't own, and others are willing to pay more than you to live there, you need to find a new place to rent.

That was a really long-winded way of saying "I don't like tech people".

This is a well-written piece, much more so than some of the many other articles on the subject I've read in the last couple of years. Still, it provides absolutely no solutions and is rather devoid of ideas. It also seems to ignore basic facts about humanity and society that play out the same regardless of where they take place. Of course a city like San Francisco is currently will be dominated by the rich. Of course the rich will displace the poor and not care about them. Of course they will change things to be closer to their own vision. None of this should be surprising to a seasoned writer like the author. It's human nature. Not only that, but it's so common that pretty much any city with any history of prosperity has gone through the same cycles. Why then, would San Francisco be an exception? Why would it not happen there? There is no reason to see this as anything but a typical progression.

Unfortunately, the author's answer is to make sure you get on the right bus. Let's take a moment to think about what this means. What he's suggesting is that technologists and engineers turn away from the lucrative profession they love and do something that doesn't interest them. What he's suggesting is that people turn down well-paying salaries to essentially be poor so they can be like the 99%. What he's suggesting is just so ludicrous and stupid, it'd be better if he made no suggestions at all. No one is going to do that.

Furthermore, the main reason San Francisco and all of the Valley are still relevant today is technology. I doubt I could find anyone who could claim with a straight face that technology is the reason for prosperity in the area, the influx of people, and general advancement in the area. Simply because the author doesn't understand the new things being built in the area, he decries them. This kind of drivel and banter I'd expect from much less accomplished idiots, not someone as well accomplished and respected as the author.

It almost seems at this point that the hate (and that is exactly what it is) of certain people in San Francisco against technologists is a fad, a wave of anger to be jumped upon because it is popular with the stupid masses. It is obviously uninformed, as for every technologist who actually cashed out stock options or in some way got truly rich, there are thousands who are working just as hard as the author and anyone else merely to stay afloat. When you need a $150k salary merely to afford a $2k / month studio or one bedroom apartment, you can hardly be said to be rich. Poor people have always been walked upon by those who are better off, even if slightly so. It's happening right now everywhere, yet I do not see these kinds of posts coming from other great cities. This is probably because the diversity (in terms of occupation) in other cities is greater and the idiot masses cannot cling to an idiotic idea of the source of their problems.

How about don't be a San Francisco asshole either?