How Wealthy Techies Ruined the Unique Character of San Francisco

[KamaAina]

http://www.alternet.org/culture/how-wealthy-techies-ruined-unique-character-san-francisco

What’s happening to San Francisco goes beyond the accelerating gentrification in multicultural districts like the Mission or Mayor Ed Lee minimizing affordable housing woes. The city that’s been a magnet for free spirits and immigrants and working-class people for decades seems to be losing its famous heart. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that its heart is being replaced by a software update.

The best encapsulation of this sea change, which is driven by a booming tech sector, might be this blog from former San Francisco Bay Guardian editor Tim Redmond, who begged the techie beneficiaries to stop treating the city he loves like a “rich kid’s playground.”

“When a 1990s tech-startup guy who admits he was part of the last generation of gentrification is now so fed up with the new arrival of high-paid techies that he’s ready to leave, it’s pretty serious,” he wrote in a piece titled, “The Mission ‘Douchebags.’” He ended, “I know, I’m an old fart who is not rich and never will be... But if you’re lucky enough to be rich in your 20s, show some respect.”

All economic booms bring dislocations, but what San Francisco is undergoing seems deeper because unlike past decades, when hippies arrived in the 1960s and gays came a decade later, locals were not displaced. That distinction has also been noted by longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte and by author Rebecca Solnit, another longtime resident, who recently wrote, “The problem is that we understand Silicon Valley’s values all too well, and a lot of us don’t like them.”

[nichomachus]

1. The hippies and the gays became part of the neighborhoods

The techies just use it as a playground.

Karma, as always, will settle the score. Many of the hot, happening tech companies will just go away. Remember MySpace? Gone. When the cool kids decide Facebook is for grandparents, which it increasingly is, they will just bail --they already are.

Some day, people will find out that Twitter is crap and just walk away. It really is the current version of CB radio back in the '70s. Everybody was on CB radio shouting nonsense into the din. And then it ended.

The other thing looming large is IT automation. Many IT companies are working on automated IT development. That won't do away with the brainiest engineers, but will put a huge dent in the underlings, who will no longer be needed - sort of like lava lamp repairmen.

When the tech companies start emptying out, the now-unemployed aging children will find out that their 2-million dollar one bedroom condo is now worth only $500,000. Karma is a bitch.

[Dawson Leery]

4. I look foward to many of those companies failing.

The market will sort this out.

[yeoman6987]

2. I don't see the techies forcing anyone to leave

Stay and enjoy what techies do bring and that is tax money for additional services. Many areas in the US don't have a steady stream of income from taxes coming in and services are decreasing of going away.

[KamaAina]

3. Their presence has caused rents to skyrocket

that, not the techies themselves, is what is forcing people to leave.

[arcane1]

5. Not to mention the evictions. That's definitely forcing someone from their home.

[nichomachus]

6. Au contraire

They are forcing up the price of condos and rent on apartments. They spend money recklessly. Sellers and landlords know this, jack up the prices, and the techies don't even question it. They just pay.

Right now, the average rent in SF for a one-bedroom in SF is $3,000. Landlords want you to have three times the rent in income. So, to get a one-bedroom apartment, you would need to make $9,000 a month or over $100,000 a year. Don't even ask about two-bedrooms.

Most of these techies work down in Silicon Valley, but they want to play in SF. That's what the IT companies send the luxury buses to pick them up and drop them off. If they didn't have to take buses, they would have to drive or ride public transportation with common people (yuck) and they would probably live closer to their jobs.

What's happened is that the people who make the city work -- waiters/waitresses, store clerks, sanitation workers, teachers, etc. can't afford to live there any more.

[daredtowork]

7. services?

What good do services do the original inhabitants who are all but being forcibly deported?

Neighboring Berkeley is rolling out the red carpet for rich techies, but I don't see money being spent on services that will benefit me. At most the money is spent on faux services to put money in the pockets of political cronies and middlemen. No one asks the people in need WHAT they need.

The Berkeley Mayor is on the record about it being "stupid" to build low income housing. Why would he want to "attract the wrong type" with actual services?

In regard ro SF, wasn't one of our Tech Overlords writing blog screeds against homeless people? Haven't others been caught attacking homeless people for kicks? I remember someone threw a homeless ladies' cats - comfort animals! - into the bay! The entitlement problem goes way beyond Glassholes.