http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/us//backlash-by-the-bay-tech-riches-alter-a-city.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131125&r=0&pagewanted=all
Hello Everyone:
In the rush to congratulate you for your strong support of this blog, I forgot to ask to spread some holiday joy to a few very worthwhile causes: Road Recovery
(http;//www.roadrecovery.org), the National Trust for Historic Preservation
(http://www.preservationnation.org), and your local food bank. Each of these organizations could really use your help in continuing the good work they do. Thanks. Now onto to today's topic, "Backlash by the Bay."
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The city of San Francisco from the bay
zanebenefits.com |
The city of San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the world. It's got the right blend of West coast casual and East coast urbane. It's one of California's oldest and definitely most eclectic cities. San Francisco has also become home to the high-tech industry, which is moving north from its traditional home in the Silicon Valley. This has been both good and bad for the "City by the Bay." No I will not start quoting that ubiquitous Journey song, although I do like it. The good is the introduction of a younger, more vibrant energy who work in the companies and have the disposable income. The bad is that younger vibrant energy who work in the companies and have the disposable income. In her article for the
New York Times, "Backlash by the Bay: Riches Alter a City," Erica Goode and Claire Cain Miller look at how the high-tech march north has altered the quirky character of San Francisco.
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Trolley car
commons.wikiepedia.org |
The anger was building and reaching a boiling point. When did the backlash reach its tipping point? The moment when the resentment toward the techocrats who were driving up housing and threatening to alter the city's bohemian identity came this past August in the form of a response posted by Peter Shih, a start-up founder. Mr. Shih listed ten things he hated about San Francisco. Not a good way to make friends with the neighbors. The backlash was immediate and very public. Wisely, Mr. Shih deleted the post and apologized. San Franciscan do have their pride. As the center of the technology industry shifts north, from the Silicon Valley in the south, it brings with it the energy and capital to San Francisco. When Twitter began offering stock, it created an estimated 1,600 new millionaires. The income disparity has widened causing housing prices to soar and the appearance of cranes-the building variety. For better or worse, the tech workers have been targeted for blame.
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City Lights Bookstore
en.wikipedia.org |
The resentment festers everywhere and at the symbols of the high-tech industry. The fleet of Google company buses ferrying workers to the Mountain View, California campus and back, the sight of tech-heads buried deep in their laptops sitting a posh coffeehouses and the sleek cars that carry them around bar hopping. In October, two tech millionaires opened the invitation only, $2,400-a-year club the Battery in a renovated factory in the Financial District. The critics see such sights as symbols of a city losing its diverse culture-artists, families, and middle-class workers who can no longer afford to live in the city. I need to stop and point out that this isn't a recent trend, the shrinkage of affordable housing. This is something that started in the nineties and has ebbed and flowed. On the day Twitter's stock went public, protestors gathered outside the company headquarters carrying sign reading "People not profit" and "We're the public, what are you offering?" As longtime residents are being forced out, landlords and speculators jockey to take advantage of the infusion of money.
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San Francisco's Chinatown
geektrek.com |
One example of a longtime resident being forced out is Mary Elizabeth Phillips, a 97-year-old retired accountant. Ms. Phillips is fighting eviction from the rent controlled apartment, where she's lived for almost fifty years. If Ms. Phillips is evicted, she will have to move in April, not long after her ninety-eighth birthday because the landlords want to sell the units. The neighborhood around her has changed. The auto dealership across the street is now a luxury apartment complex. "I can understand it from an investment standpoint," Ms. Phillips said of her landlords' actions. "But I don't think I'd ever be that coldblooded about this." Here, here. While the technology boom begot hostility, it also brought San Francisco tangible benefits. Mayor Edwin M. Lee credits the technology sector with helping pull the city out of the recession, creating jobs, and feeding a thriving economy that's making cash strapped cities across the nation jealous.
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Lombard Street
sfgate.com |
According to Mayor Lee, the industry is "not so much taking over but complementing the job creation we want in the city." However, civic officials have to deal with the issue of squeezing in more people into already tight forty-nine square miles that is San Francisco. The housing shortage is the driver of the hostility aimed at tech workers. To put matters into perspective, San Francisco has the least affordable housing stock in the United States, 14% of homes are accessible to middle-class buyers, according to Jed Kolko, chief economist at
trulia.com. The median rent is also the highest in the nation, $3,250 a month for a two-bedroom apartment.
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Batkid
nydailynews.com |
"Affordable housing projects are constructed, and the money set aside for that purpose is used, but the demand is just far greater than what can be supplies," says Fred Brousseau of the city budget and legislative analyst's office. Evictions under state law allows for landlords to evict rent-controlled tenants if they plan to convert a building for sale have more than tripled in the past three years, as they did in the first tech boom. For Yelly Brandon and Anthony Rocco, the obstacles to finding housing became apparent when spent two months looking for an apartment. At open houses, they were competing with techie who offered more than the asking price and cash up front.
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Fort Mason Building 201
commons.wikimedia.org |
The infusion of wealth is also changing the tone of the neighborhoods. Fort Mason, a renovated military post on the the bay has been dubbed "Frat Mason" for its twenty-something "tech bros-" tech company salespeople, marketing employees, and start-up founders who moved in to the luxury apartments. However, nowhere is the change more evident than in the Mission District, once a working-class Latino neighborhood, now an enclave of the tech elite. Evan Williams of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook have bought homes in the community.
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Mission District mural
Ingrid Taylar
sanfrancisco.about.com |
Longtime residents of the community complain that the high-end apartments, expensive restaurants, exclusive boutiques are crowding small businesses. They also complain about the tech workers who treat the Mission District like a bedroom community. The workers board buses everyday and return in the evening to drink and dine on Valencia Street. Also, there are complaints about some of the intangibles: insensitivity during daily public interactions or a disregard for neighborhood traditions. One example was the annual Day of the Dead celebration, intended to be solemn but turned into a rowdy affair. "Some of the people in the stores that I knew, they are good people and nice people, and I see them get evicted and then the people who move in there are not as nice," said Rene Yañez, artist and co-founder of Galeria de la Raza in the seventies. Mr Yañez and his partner, who is battling cancer, are fighting eviction from the apartment they occupied for decades. Evictions in the Mission District are higher than in other part of the city.
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Union Square
sanfrancisco.about.com |
"They are not only expelling the homeless and the gangbangers," says Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a performance artist. "They are also expelling the performance artists, the poets, the muralists, the activists, the working-class families-all these wonderful urban tribes that made this neighborhood a very special neighborhood for decades." Mr. Gómez-Peña predicts, "One day, they will wake up to an extremely unbearable ocean of sameness. Some tech companies try to give back. Salesforce donated millions of dollars to the public schools and Twitter, which declined to public comment about its affect on San Francisco, is providing lawyers to help fight evictions in exchange for tax breaks from the city. However, according to many people, the city government bears the brunt of responsibility.
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San Francisco skyline at night
storify.com |
"There has to be some kind of public support to make sure you don't just have a city of the very wealthy, but people to make the city run," says Kevin Starr, professor emeritus of history, policy, planning, and development at USC. "You can't have a city of just rich people," adds Mr. Starr. "A city needs restaurant workers, a city needs schoolteachers, a city needs taxi drivers." Well said Kevin Starr. Mayor Edwin M. Lee claims he has a strong commitment to affordable housing-the Housing Trust Fund, which will provide $1.5 billion in affordable housing over the next twenty years. Mayor Lee concedes, "Wholesale evictions [are] not good for the city. We have to figure some things out." Returning to Peter Shih, the angry response was a lesson learned. As a form of penance, Mr. Shih has augmented his work with his company Airbrite by volunteering at homeless shelters. Mr. Shih admits, "What I did was wrong, I feel like the changes the tech scene has made to San Francisco have made people very angry and I was caught in the cross-fire."
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