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.
People who don't pay their rent constitute a minor fraction of all evictions in SF. And when someone doesn't pay their rent there is an effective process for getting rid of them in a finite length of time. Most evictions in SF are not for this cause.
164 of 1977 evictions in 2014 were for late or non-payment of rent. Almost all of the rest were for pretexts classified under "breach of agreement" which tenants groups have shown to consist of things like parking outside the lines or cooking at night.
This is one of the things I really hate about California rental laws: there's not a standard lease. When I rented in Texas there was a statewide standard lease so there weren't weird clauses and other surprises.
The Rent Board's report notes that evictions for non-payment aren't required to be reported to them. So that's a floor, not a cap, on the actual number of non-payment evictions.
You can't sweep all 607 "breach of agreement" evictions away as "pretexts" – those can involve serious issues too, and it's a large category even in years like 2002-2004 when rents were declining. (That suggests it's not just a catch-all for wanting-richer-tenants.) There's also 349 "committing a nuisance" and 42 "illegal use" evictions. Some tenants are truly problematic!
What the author is alluding to is the phenomena of landlords forcing a resident to leave outright, or raising rent beyond the level that existing tenants can pay, resulting in the existing tenant being forced to leave. This is usually done to make more money.
However, I agree with what you're saying: what did people think would happen?! In renting a place, the landlord does not have to keep the rent the same. This is a risk that comes with renting.
> Don’t assume that because you have more money that you have to right to take someone else’s home away. Don’t treat an existing community like your personal playground.
I just... what? No one here is playing dirty, no one is targeting anyone else. The rules of the economic system that we all live in say that these things are possible events, and maybe ones we should all be prepared for.
Also, you can't destroy a community. Communities exist when people exist. Communities can change, like when the people that exist in a community change. But humans will still be there, doing their human thing. And I think that's what this is really about; change that the author doesn't like.
"Also, you can't destroy a community. Communities exist when people exist."
If a neighborhood block has the same residents for 20 years, who have street parties and have their kids play and grow together, and then all those families leave (for whatever reason) and the new residents never talk to each other (for whatever reason), yeah I think you could say a community died there.
There are two definitions for "community" when I look this up:
1. "A group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common."
2. "A feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals."
By the first definition, I don't agree with you. If there are people living near one another, then a community exists. By the second definition, you're at least somewhat correct. When the people are gone/have changed, then that "feeling of fellowship" has disappeared/become unrecognizably different.
I don't think it's wrong to be frustrated or saddened when we lose things like relationships. But I don't think we should demonize others.
The rules of the economic system that we all live in say that these things are possible events, and maybe ones we should all be prepared for.
The author's point is that the community system is more important (to him) than the economic system.
It may surprise many who are mostly familiar with the economics-based system we all live with, but prior to the 1980's economics was usually a second-order concern when talking about city (and even country) development.
In some places you still see this - there was a recentish HN discussion which talked about some particular issue in Spain, and the cognitive misalignment between people who had lived in Spain and considered the society impact first and those who lived in the US and considered the economic impact was quite striking.
At some point unfortunately many will want a answer as to which way of thinking is right. Generally the economic view will win then, because it's easy to measure and reason about the economic impact of things, whilst alternative models of thought tend to be less based on metrics.
(I wish I knew if the downvotes were because I offended "economic-system thinkers" by pointing out other world-views or if I offended "non-economic-system thinkers" by pointing out that non-economic systems tend to be hard to measure)
> Also, you can't destroy a community. Communities exist when people exist. Communities can change, like when the people that exist in a community change. But humans will still be there, doing their human thing. And I think that's what this is really about; change that the author doesn't like.
Clearly you've never lived through the process of gentrification then, because this shit happens a lot.
I will admit, I have not lived through the process of urban gentrification, but I have lived through a significant cultural change due to an influx of people.
I grew up here[0], in a house from the 70's surrounded by other houses from the 70's, all of which was out in the middle of the woods. There was a nice culture that came with living there.
Starting in 2000, what had been many square miles of forest starting just 1000 feet north of our home was logged and in just under 2 years the huge housing development called "Redmond Ridge" went up. It was all cookie-cutter houses, tiny yards, and Microsoft employees. You can see all of this if you zoom out of the location I linked here[0].
With this came more traffic, which brought more road construction, and more development. It put a lot more strain on the surrounding schools, which had to expand, and generally alienated what had been a very woodsy, cowtown sort of people. As you can see, the entire area is a mix of extremely suburban mixed with the remains of a more rural community.
I realize that this doesn't come close to the experience of being pushed out of your home. But I do have a very small understanding of having large cultural changes thrust upon you. Having gone through that, why would one be angry with Microsoft, or their employees, or local government, etc?
Doing something that frustrates you doesn't make them evil.
Isn't your "communities cannot be destroyed, just changed" argument just a semantic point?
I'd imagine that few would describe "Redmond Ridge" as a "very woodsy, cowtown". It's fine to say that "woodsy, cowtown" community has just changed, but if you can no longer see that community it's pretty easy to argue it has gone (aka been destroyed).
I strongly agree that change isn't necessarily bad, and I think gentrification often gets a bad rep for what is often a significant improvement. But I don't see how you can argue that communities don't get destroyed by it.
Even before you get to the landlords' property rights, it's obvious that the strategy isn't going to work. It's a Prisoner's Dilemma game where you know someone is going to defect (and take the now market-rate apartment).
It's all well and good to encourage the principled stand, but it only takes one person (per rental) to defect and, given the supply/demand imbalance, that seems a perfect certainty. So, your principled stand only serves to lock you out of a significant part of the available rental market, make you a more difficult client of real estate brokers, and not provide any lasting change or inflict any lasting pain on the nefarious landlords who have the audacity to charge market rent for the properties they own/manage.
Take into account that at one time these people could pay their rent and now, because of gentrification, they can't. A person too poor to afford a home and has been renting the same place for decades is getting evicted because the wealthy moved in next door.
I don't think what you've written is exactly true. At least some of the rental property in San Francisco is rent controlled (possibly a lot of it if you believe this site: http://www.sftu.org/rentcontrol.html). If a person/family lives in a rent controlled unit, rent increases aren't necessarily tied to the rental market, but rather are limited to a percentage of the CPI (1.9% increase for the current year - http://www.sfrb.org/index.aspx?page=1501). Wealthy neighbors don't have much to do with it in these cases.
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:
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.
I think it is similar with property taxes. At least where I am they are tied to property value, which is assessed based on the recent sale price of comparable properties. If someone is willing to paying huge sums for houses in your neighbourhood you always end up paying more for yours.
Does CA not have limits on property tax increases each year?
I live in FL and the homestead laws prevent the property taxes from raising more that a few percent each year as long it's the primary residence. So, my neighborhood can skyrocket in value and I won't find myself unable to pay my property taxes. The valuation resets on the sale of the property though.
I honestly don't know, but if Proposition 13 is still in effect [1] then it would appear you are right - property taxes can only increase by 2% a year.
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.
I stopped reading right there. If you call the war in Vietnam "genocidal" then you most likely have a political bone to pick and are more than willing to ignore the complexity of the situation to support your own narrative.
a young, Latino man named Alex Nieto was shot 14 times and killed by police near my house...Someone had reported that Nieto, a 28-year-old security guard who grew up in the neighborhood, didn’t look right."
Oh you mean the guy the guy that had mental issues severe enough to cause his friend to get a restraining order? The one that was carrying a holstered gun that turned out to be a pistol-shaped stun gun? The one he pointed at the cops?[1] Clearly the citizens who called the police should have minded their own business. Bernal Heights would be much better off in that situation.
The point is less about the specifics of the shooting (I think it was probably justified.. though 14 seems excessive) and more about the context surrounding it. Community dynamics change whenever there is a large influx of people. When that large influx is wealthy, strongly tied together, not a part of the existing community and commands the respect and deference of community officials, then those struggles become real.
I have no idea if this is true, but it may be that a community of neighbors that knew Alex well would have been less likely to call the cops, to give the police more information about his mental state, etc. and that those measures would have saved his life.
"Class warfare" is an apt term. Wealth is only a part of it.. this is the Old San Francisco (Hippie/Transient/Outcast) class and the New San Francisco (Techie) class. I'm a part of the latter (and live on the edge of the Mission and Bernal Heights). I'm part of the problem. But, I think I can also be a part of the solution.
Not defending or condemning the police's action (honestly don't know anything about it), but the number of gunshots is pretty much irrelevant. 14 rounds is two police officers firing most of the rounds in a magazine - this is what they're trained to do. Unlike movies, it's near-impossible to consistently disable somebody with a gunshot in a non-lethal way. This means that when cops shoot, they shoot to kill: centre of mass shots, often nearly emptying the magazine. It's not like it's a video game, where you can tell if you hit, so the safest thing to do is to keep shooting until you're 110% sure the target is dead. A police officer who only fires one round in an engagement like that wouldn't be acting in a safe manner, for himself or the people around him.
Thanks for the insight. Do you know anything about "downward" shots. That is, bullets that go from the head towards the toe in line with the body. There were several in this case (and a couple in the case of Mike Brown).
Also, why do medical examiners often conflict when looking at the evidence? Is it open that much to interpretation? Are the primary medical examiners motivated in the wrong ways somehow? Or are the alternative opinions coming from quacks?
I realize you may not know all these answers, so I apologize for lobbing them all at you. It is hard to get genuinely balanced knowledge in these things and I want to be as informed as possible.
It's difficult to do that when the article is full of similar statements that separate the 'tech elite' as a different class of people who are destroying all kinds of culture that SF might have had.
I agree that the influx of wealth into SF is causing lots of housing problems and social upheavals, but the same wealth has also improved the lives of lots of people not of this 'tech elite'.
By purposefully alienating the people you blame for everything wrong with the modern state of SF you aren't exactly creating an atmosphere for dialogue.
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.
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?
Your last paragraph is something I wish more people understood. It is very eye opening to take a look at the salary information on US New "Best Jobs" for high cost regions. For instance, while software developers typically out earn RNs nationally, registered nurses earn a bit more at the median in SF than software developers. Dental Hygenists also earn almost as much as software developers. Lawyers and Physicians, of course, earn vastly more.
I've thought about this a bit. I think part of the reason tech workers are blamed may be scale. Because dental hygienists and registered nurses draw their salaries and economic value from the population they serve, they simply can't exist in sufficient numbers to displace the other residents. Tech workers, on the other hand, often draw their economic value from outside there region. While this means that tech workers are good in many ways (they bring wealth into a region rather than drawing wealth from it), they can exist in vastly greater numbers. In other words, there can only be so many $112k a year dental hygienists in SF (average salary in SF[1]), just not enough to cause displacement, whereas there really isn't a limit on how many $114k/yr [2] software developers there are in San Francisco. The salaries are roughly the same, but because software developers don't serve the local population, they can exist in vastly greater numbers.
Other factors- there's no multi-billionaire backed PAC group out there trying to convince congress that there is a desperate shortage of dental hygienists in SF, but there is for software, so there is a cottage industry devoted to convincing the American people that software developers are extravagantly paid workers, when in fact they are paid on average nicely but no more or less than many other jobs that require moderate amounts of training and education.
> 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.