Are The Techno Riche Really Ruining San Francisco? Yes, Says Rebecca Solnit

<i>&gt; And it feels most like a mining town, in that it’s disproportionately young men coming in, and they’re transient. They’re not committed to the place, and they’re displacing a lot of people who are.</i><p>They&#x27;re transient because screw-the-newcomer policies like Prop 13 and rent control make it unaffordable for many of them to settle down here. And it&#x27;s disproportionately young men because these same policies, in conjunction with anti-development measures like 40-foot height restrictions across the street from BART stations, make it nearly impossible to live here without a tech worker&#x27;s salary.

&quot;I met a guy who lives at 24th and Valencia [Street]. He says the Wi-Fi signal on the buses is so powerful that when the Google bus pulls up in front of his house, it uses all the broadband and his Wi-Fi signal crashes.&quot;<p>That&#x27;s not really how WiFi works. Chances are his router is on the same frequency as the buses and he can fix this by changing to a different frequency. Even more likely (since one SSID shouldn&#x27;t make too much of a difference) is that his WiFi router crashes at random and there&#x27;s some amount of false causation there.<p>I know this isn&#x27;t the beef of the article, but this sort of magical thinking that insists on forcing every little thing into a framework of a class war between the upper middle class and the lower&#x2F;lower middle class is.

The people that gentrified the neighborhood 20 years ago, are upset that younger, richer people are moving in on their territory.<p>The NIMBYs are responsible for the complete lack of new market housing in SF, and have hilariously priced themselves out of the market.

The author writes about how corporate shuttles insulate tech workers from transit problems, and how if this weren&#x27;t the case, there&#x27;d be powerful forces pushing to make public transit better.<p>She misses an opportunity to make a similar point about antidevelopment San Franciscans being insulated by their rent control, but she comes close to it when talking about the Ellis Act. What makes this law so terrifying to longtime, usually antidensity, residents is that it puts them on equal footing with all the new arrivals. It forces them to lie in the bed they&#x27;ve made.<p>It&#x27;s like how the draft can turn hawks into doves amongst people who wouldn&#x27;t otherwise have children in the military.

<i>&gt; Caltrain does run down there. We could have beefed up that system and had a tremendously efficient train system, with trains leaving every 15 minutes or so for the peninsula</i><p>The problem is that Caltrain (and BART outside SF proper) has its stations along the periphery instead of the heart of town. You can&#x27;t jump on Caltrain in the Mission or Noe Valley or even Market St, and on the southern end, it&#x27;s not going to drop you off anywhere near anything.<p>This is because California, and the Bay Area in particular, follows a policy of &quot;The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many&quot;, and when previous generations were deciding where to put stations, they didn&#x27;t use eminent domain like most municipalities would; instead, they built them either in the few parcels of vacant land off on the periphery, or along the freeway land they already owned, which is perhaps the most pedestrian-hostile arrangement possible.

Honestly, I&#x27;m surprised Jason Fried and DHH haven&#x27;t picked up on this news trend to point out how bizarre it is that these companies still bus people around at 40 MPH instead of their communication at the speed of light.<p>Isn&#x27;t this just another argument for the innovative promise of remote work? That both the old centralized model of the company town, and the hub-and-spoke suburban campus model, impose all kinds of costs and limitations on employees and the community as well as the company? It&#x27;s surely impressive that certain companies have become cultural forces in their region, but it&#x27;s not always eventually a good thing (see the Great Lakes area), and the inevitable cultural conflicts are bloody and never-ending.<p>Also, I wonder if other parts of the continent (whom would probably <i>buy</i> Google the buses to transport people <i>in or out</i> of their city) laugh or cry when they read about these first-world-economy problems.

In nature, when a single-celled organism grows large, it divides. Silicon Valley--or more accurately the tech companies located there--needs to diversify geographically. It has gone beyond a critical mass and is starting to hurt itself and the surrounding communities from the excess.<p>The problem is that there are few other nucleation sites that a viable tech community can condense around. The major tech employers are not spreading out to lower their impact. There&#x27;s no reason why 2000 employees all need to be on the same campus. There is no way in Hades you are cross-pollinating your divisions to that extent.<p>Spread out and invest in connectivity technologies that make talking across the continent as easy as over a cubicle wall.

Is it just me or does it make less sense to blame a group of people for having jobs well-paying enough for them to afford living in San Francisco than to blame city zoning laws which have rather unreasonably constrained the supply of rented units and driven prices to what they are now?

&gt; In another era, the captains of industry would have said, “OK, our workers live here, our factory is there; let’s encourage, enforce, and subsidize the improvement of public transit.”<p>Uh, what?<p>This is kind of a silly point, but I think it exemplifies how misplaced all this tension is.<p>For example, mayor LaGuardia put a TON of work into forcing the privately owned transit lines to become a public good in NYC. The &quot;captains of industry&quot; didn&#x27;t improve public transportation - they just started their own transportation companies. It took a lot of hard work by a lot of great government officials for the NYC subway to become the awesome service that it is today (incoming jokes about the L train).<p>The city of San Francisco&#x27;s biggest enemy in this whole &quot;nouveau riche&quot; problem is the city of San Francisco. But everyone&#x27;s too busy cuttin&#x27; each other&#x27;s throats to realize that.

There is a lot of focus on Ellis Act evictions, but the fact is that there just aren&#x27;t very many of them. This article claims only 116 in the last year, which is significantly less than the numbers 5 or 10 years ago:<p><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-evictions-surge-report-finds-4955020.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfgate.com&#x2F;bayarea&#x2F;article&#x2F;San-Francisco-eviction...</a><p>The solution to the rising price to rent is to increase supply. Anybody in SF should be able to drive up Market and see evidence of the massive number of units just opening up.

&quot;Anti-everything activist writer in opposition to everything shocker&quot;

&quot;Are Job Creators and Tax Paying Workers Really Ruining San Francisco? Yes, Says Rebecca Solnit&quot;, fixed that for you.<p>The idiocy of this article is disturbing:<p><i>&quot;Twitter got this tax break to stay in San Francisco that they blackmailed out of the mayor&quot;</i> (They &quot;blackmailed&quot; him? Really?)<p><i>&quot;young men coming in, and they’re transient. They’re not committed to the place&quot;</i> (which is why they bought a house in a dump neighborhood to fix up and keep for the rest of their lives. Jesus give them time, they&#x27;re not going to settle down, get married, and have kids right after college.)<p>It seems no journalist is willing to see this from the other point of view. Which is blaming San Francisco&#x27;s politics. 1 of 4 things is happening here:<p>● Politics have bought out journalism to such a degree that a serious conversation criticizing San Fran cannot take place.<p>● Journalists today really are that one sided.<p>● The media is trying to fuel a class war, they just got done fueling a race war with the Trayvon Martin trial.<p>● Somebody has a serious hatred for Google in particular because all of this anger is directed towards them.

I feel like, as far as this topic goes, everything that needs to be said has already been said. There&#x27;s been a lot of talk about &quot;class warfare&quot; in San Francisco, and nothing new has developed. Until then, we&#x27;re stuck with speculation from a handful of writers that (in my opinion) are dredging up news where none exists.

There&#x27;s a related conversation happening in the neighborhood I live in, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Not about techies specifically, but about the general wave of wealthier young folks moving in and driving up rents. Displacing existing residents. Gentrifying. Etc.<p>Now, I can afford to continue living there, so maybe it&#x27;s easy to hold this view, but I never felt I could get too upset about this situation.<p>First: It&#x27;s a great sign that the neighborhood&#x27;s so desirable that people will spend to move there. It&#x27;s bringing in business (and helping existing businesses). It&#x27;s making things safer. Making things more interesting.<p>Second: I&#x27;ve been around for longer than many people, but I transplanted there at some point, as well.<p>Third: Neighborhoods and cities change. No way around it. Much rather they grow and become popular with smart, upwardly-mobile young people (with a creative streak) than grow stale or decay.<p>Fourth: If something is a limited resource but in high demand, the price goes up! While I don&#x27;t believe people should be kicked out their homes willy-nilly, I also believe that if a ton of people want something, then it&#x27;s fair for the market to respond by raising prices (with some constraints, of course, which I&#x27;m not going to get into here). To me, this is one of the downsides of renting. You run that risk. If that&#x27;s not appealing, then one should try to own (which could be a nice investment if your area is booming).<p>Am I being a douchebag gentrification-sympathizer? Maybe I&#x27;m just one of the people the &quot;real residents&quot; get to hate on -- a white male with a bit of extra disposable income.<p>Anyway: Not SF-specific. But certainly other parts of the country are having similar issues. (I lived in Austin for 27 years, and though I don&#x27;t keep up with local politics there, I bet they&#x27;re also going through a light-weight version of this in areas.)

<i>She skipped high school altogether, enrolling in an alternative junior high in the public school system that took her through tenth grade, when she passed the GED.</i><p>This is from Rebecca Solnit&#x27;s Wikipedia page. This is the longest way of saying, &quot;Dropped Out of High School&quot; I have ever heard.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Solnit" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rebecca_Solnit</a>

Someone really need to write about all the side-effects of the technology and finance workers leaving San Francisco. What will the real estate prices be like? How will it affect local businesses? City taxes? Crime? How about we see the truth from all angles?

&quot;And I have other friends who are homeowners, but the majority of people I know are renters, and I keep teasing my friends who are economically vulnerable that maybe they should go to Vallejo or Stockton, which are in economic crisis, and create a great, thriving bohemia there.&quot;<p>I think she&#x27;s on to something here... A smart community activist in conjunction with a pro-active real estate developer with a really long term vision could &#x27;organically&#x27; help create neighborhoods ready for gentrification (and profit handsomely) and help create great places for artists, writers and activists to live at the same time.<p>All that&#x27;s needed is a website that organizes groups of artists, writers and activists to tell them where to go live next, flash mob style. Once the artists, writers and activists have sown the seeds of gentrification, the developer can then provide the members some financial (or non-financial) reward to move on to the next neighborhood and start the process anew.<p>Basically it&#x27;d be comp&#x27;ing the group for all the work they have done to create a live-able, dynamic neighborhood which is not happening today.

I don&#x27;t know about San Francisco because I live in Oakand, but I know there are lots of wealthier (like people who can afford $600+&#x2F;mo in rent) people moving in who are hurting my neighborhood. I try to mitigate the harm I&#x27;m doing, but know I&#x27;m one of them too.<p>We don&#x27;t acknowledge other people in the street. We draw arbitrary lines between &quot;scary&quot; people and &quot;less scary&quot; people, but in reality are using race and class markers to make those decisions. And we treat somewhere between &quot;the scary few&quot; and &quot;everyone not white&quot; as if they don&#x27;t exist. We don&#x27;t shop at local shops and restaurants, we leave the area to go to restaurants that either appeal to their class background or their racial comfort zone.<p>I&#x27;m not trying to place blame, or say we are &quot;classists&quot; or &quot;racists&quot;. As someone who tries and often fails to do the opposite, I can see how hard it is. There are real dangers to be afraid of. It&#x27;s not easy to walk into a barbeque place where you&#x27;re the only white person and have that be your Date Night go-to spot.<p>That said, I think a lot of people moving out here aren&#x27;t even trying to understand what it&#x27;s like having a different class of people move into your neighborhood and &quot;walk among you&quot; as if you don&#x27;t even exist, terraforming the space you struggled in your whole life with a snap of the fingers.<p>I know San Francisco is a different place, and it&#x27;s more white, which changes some of this stuff. But in the Mission I know there are similar things happening in Latin@ neighborhoods. People who have been living in those neighborhoods for <i>decades</i> who were central contributors to that place are being pushed out to the East Bay and elsewhere because they can&#x27;t afford rent.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s inevitable, and maybe it&#x27;s no one&#x27;s fault. But I don&#x27;t see how anyone can deny that important cultural institutions are being destroyed so that rich tech folks can have nice apartments to live in in &quot;funky&quot; neighborhoods.

<i>Like there’s a $3 million prize that some of the Facebook and Google billionaires have put up for medical breakthroughs. They seem to misunderstand how medical research takes place.</i><p>This lady is out of her gourd. She appears to be talking about this:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/science/new-3-million-prizes-awarded-to-11-in-life-sciences.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;02&#x2F;20&#x2F;science&#x2F;new-3-million-priz...</a><p>This alone makes it obvious what her real problem is. She wants people to give their money to causes that she supports. She does that by stating that they aren&#x27;t civicly minded but she&#x27;s just belittling what civic-minded tasks they&#x27;re doing because she thinks other ones are important.<p>Entire article was a waste of time to read.

In general, the argument here is &quot;Fucking rich people!! They&#x27;re ruining it for the rest of us!&quot;, which I don&#x27;t think has ever been a successful way to get anything you want. Moreover, they&#x27;re missing half of why this is happening: their beloved shitty neighborhoods are being cleaned up by new business and new housing.<p>If they got enough political control over the zoning board or the city council they could make it impossible for new businesses to be approved, make it harder for the ones there now, and generally make it difficult to impossible to create new condos. Either they suck at local politics or they&#x27;re being too anti-authoritarian to accomplish their goals in a meaningful way.

I wonder how she feels about hispanic immigrants to the USA? Does she think we should keep them out because they&#x27;re &quot;ruining&quot; American culture? This whole thing smacks of this weird anti-immigration mentality that I wouldn&#x27;t have expected from the left-leaning groups leading the protests. I&#x27;m going to make a side-by-side of Texans upset about Latinos and San Franciscan hipsters upset about techies.

Anyone else burst out laughing after reading this?:<p>&quot;I met a guy who lives at 24th and Valencia [Street]. He says the Wi-Fi signal on the buses is so powerful that when the Google bus pulls up in front of his house, it uses all the broadband and his Wi-Fi signal crashes. And that’s like a tiny thing that happens to one guy, but it signifies, “We are so mighty, we are crushing your reality.”&quot;

Man, I am 100% sympathetic to the issues Solnit is talking about -- gentrification, the plight of the poor, public transit -- but I find this approach &amp; framing completely off-putting. It&#x27;s hard to articulate why. Maybe the whiff of entitlement to SF the way Solnit believes it ought to be, as if that&#x27;s somehow purer SF than prior waves of change.<p>The upshot is that I&#x27;m way more conflicted than I might have been otherwise. And while it&#x27;s not like I, as an individual, have some great sway over this debate, I can&#x27;t imagine I&#x27;m the only leftie who feels sympathetic but alienated.<p>Maybe that&#x27;s that cost of doing business here, so to speak. It&#x27;s no secret there&#x27;s a huge libertarian streak running through tech. And it&#x27;s not difficult to imagine how unpopular a lot of obnoxious young white men in tech might already be in some areas.<p>And finally: big name tech companies = big headlines.<p>Disclosure: I work for one of the big companies discussed in this piece.

On the flip side its kind of amazing that such a beautiful city with a mild climate and massive protected harbor has maintained being so affordable for so long prior to today. Its kind of a fluke that some really awful urban planning disasters happened to blight the city enough in the 50&#x27;s to open a window for activists and artists to affordably settle down there in the 60&#x27;s and 70&#x27;s. Otherwise it would probably never have been a counter culture mecca to begin with

I really hope there won&#x27;t be any financial industry like cold response to these issues. It be good for all involved if tech companies and people (who are definitely capable of this) to reach out and allay these concerns.

I&#x27;m sympathetic to these arguments, largely until the people making them open their mouths.

Yes, but the anger at the Google buses and the people who ride them is misplaced. These people really <i>don&#x27;t</i> want to be paying $3000 per month for housing, and they have no power. In fact, many would be happy to live in low-COL regions (instead of cramming into SF) if it weren&#x27;t for the career-limiting effects (at least at Google, you <i>have</i> to work in MTV if you want a decent shot at getting a real project; there are good projects elsewhere, but far fewer of them.)<p>Google&#x27;s rank and file are not the bad guys. Irritating them does no good to anyone. When poor proletariat fight somewhat richer proletariat over their rides in &quot;luxury buses&quot;, the real bad guys win. Divide and conquer.<p>The real bad guys aren&#x27;t &quot;techno riche&quot;. They invest in and manage software companies, but they don&#x27;t know (or care) about technology. They couldn&#x27;t write a line of code to save their lives. Those software execs making $250k++ per year while working 11-to-3 are MBA-culture colonists (Damaso Effect) who came in because we, as technologists, failed to prevent them from conquering us and drawing off almost all of the wealth we produce. We&#x27;re very good at busting our balls (and ovaries) to solve hard technical problems, but we&#x27;re terrible at protecting our own interests, especially as a group.