I guess it's that time of the month again: class warfare and the effect of the tech industry on SF.
> Fueling the growing rift is a common belief that the vast wealth being amassed by the tech industry is not spilling over into the community.
This is a deliberately naive view of economics. Unless tech workers spend nothing they consume local goods and services and money flows through the economy that way. If you profile tech workers who live in SF you'll tend to find they're young (20s) and tend to spend a lot of their money on "entertainment" (bars, restaurants, etc). How exactly does this not benefit the SF economy?
> Instead, activists say, the high-tech invasion is driving up the cost of living to levels that more San Franciscans cannot afford.
No, ignorance of supply and demand, archaic zoning laws and other artificial constraints on supply drive up the cost of living in SF and the rest of the Bay area.
If, for example, you had high density housing along the Caltrain corridor you'd probably find that a lot less people would feel the need to live in SF.
> She has seen a sharp uptick in evictions under the Ellis Act, the state law that allows a landlord to evict all tenants of a building if it is being taken off the rental market. And now she and the other tenants in her building
This is inevitable when you create artificially low rental prices. If you want to avoid this sort of thing the only way to do it is either a) have a government authority own the buildings or b) subsidize the rent paid on the private market. Rent control is always going to leave owners looking for a way to get out of it.
> So he's hunting for a job as a recruiter in the tech industry.
And who said this isn't benefiting the SF economy?
As for the private buses, I don't recall the cost per worker for the system but I believe it's actually pretty low. BART/Muni/Caltrain/VTA/etc is actually pretty expensive and government subsidized. The real problem here is that public transit in the Bay Area is appallingly organized and run so companies have no real choice but to go private.
But I bet the politicians love all this finger-pointing at tech companies. It certainly takes the heat off them.
If, for example, you had high density housing along the Caltrain corridor you'd probably find that a lot less people would feel the need to live in SF.
What are you talking about? There's plenty of housing by Caltrain. I myself live within bed-shaking distance of Caltrain.
A shortage of residences near Caltrain isn't the problem. The problem is ... all these cities SUCK. They are homogeneous culturally barren wastelands. THAT'S why people want to live in SF.
But by moving to SF in such large numbers, with tech millions burning a hole in their pockets, they are driving up rents and home prices to such a degree that non-techies cannot afford to live there.
As this continues, SF itself will turn into a homogeneous culturally barren wasteland - more like San Jose. And the yuppie bars and overpriced restaurants that remain will be staffed by workers bussed in from somewhere else. The art and music and quirkiness will be long gone.
All good points, but there is actually the bigger social problem which is that tech companies are generating an increasing amount of wealth and concentrating it among a smaller number of employees without the overall economy growing at the same rate. During the industrial age there was the natural consequence that large companies needed many employees. Now that tacit social contract is being up-ended and nowhere is this more visible than in San Francisco.
Too many techies ignore this reality and soothe their conscience by an almost religious belief in meritocracy and that anyone can do what they do, they just need to retrain. I'm not trying to assign blame or say that we should feel guilty about our relative success, but we need to acknowledge the structural problem and think about how it can be solved before it turns into real class warfare.
> Fueling the growing rift is a common belief that the vast wealth being amassed by the tech industry is not spilling over into the community.
This is a deliberately naive view of economics. Unless tech workers spend nothing they consume local goods and services and money flows through the economy that way. If you profile tech workers who live in SF you'll tend to find they're young (20s) and tend to spend a lot of their money on "entertainment" (bars, restaurants, etc). How exactly does this not benefit the SF economy?
> Instead, activists say, the high-tech invasion is driving up the cost of living to levels that more San Franciscans cannot afford.
No, ignorance of supply and demand, archaic zoning laws and other artificial constraints on supply drive up the cost of living in SF and the rest of the Bay area.
If, for example, you had high density housing along the Caltrain corridor you'd probably find that a lot less people would feel the need to live in SF.
> She has seen a sharp uptick in evictions under the Ellis Act, the state law that allows a landlord to evict all tenants of a building if it is being taken off the rental market. And now she and the other tenants in her building
This is inevitable when you create artificially low rental prices. If you want to avoid this sort of thing the only way to do it is either a) have a government authority own the buildings or b) subsidize the rent paid on the private market. Rent control is always going to leave owners looking for a way to get out of it.
> So he's hunting for a job as a recruiter in the tech industry.
And who said this isn't benefiting the SF economy?
As for the private buses, I don't recall the cost per worker for the system but I believe it's actually pretty low. BART/Muni/Caltrain/VTA/etc is actually pretty expensive and government subsidized. The real problem here is that public transit in the Bay Area is appallingly organized and run so companies have no real choice but to go private.
But I bet the politicians love all this finger-pointing at tech companies. It certainly takes the heat off them.