You can buy a mansion here.

Come on in, the water's fine.

Certainly the Landlord could redo the lease when it is up....they can't wait a few months when the lease is up and then make the rent 3000? Talk about being selfish.

Low rents. Low housing costs. No gentrification. No tech companies providing buses for their employees to get to work.

What could be more utopian?

Rents are already higher near transit stations...

area the value jumped to about 90k just a couple of years later. They were renting and had been thinking of buying the house, but thought 20k was way too much. Long story short, their lease was not renewed and the house sold for over 100k just a couple of years later, just because there was a subway station a few blocks from their house.

Some company to buy up distressed real estate then make a pickup point nearby and wait for the values to skyrocket. ..

It could be counted as an amenity. A lot of people like the convenience of a subway or train stop or even a bus stop near their home. It is the same as someone want to live near their work. It makes life much easier than having to walk a mile to the subway stop or drive an hour to work. People like convenience and willing to pay extra for it.

I suppose they could get by it if they contracted with owners of lots big enough to have a pickup on private property. ..

I live in a relatively affluent area of Arnold Maryland and we have a bus stop about a 1/2 mile away in front of the Safeway. I don't see it being a big deal. Of course the community said heck no to a subway stop that would have allowed the subway to come from DC to Annapolis MD....I kinda liked the idea but most people did not.

They can impose regs on just about any use of public property, especially commercial use. ..

I mean a bus stop? Really? I can see regulating a lot of things but a bus stop would not be on the top of my list. Would it yours really?

The poor, why not?

I guess they could have the rich move out of the city into a suburb but I thought the cities were trying to get the rich back into the cities. Isn't that what Obama wanted to have a bigger diverse city? Why not just make room for everyone? The cities typically are pretty big. There has to be more to the problem than a bus stop. This is the first time I am hearing that a bus stop pushes the poor out of the city. Wouldn't it make it easier for the poor to get jobs at the companies providing the bus?

Are such great citizens...I'm sure their campuses are teaming with previously poor people of color..Their bus transit systems are all about environmental friendliness. ..

Google and Facebook have racist hiring policies! And they don't care about the environment anyway! A sure sign of who is winning the argument.....

and helping the environment by providing buses for their employees to get to work and back, reducing the number of cars on the freeways.

I hope that these protestors are successful in persuading employers to abandon this city. This will have the effect of reducing job opportunities and depressing property prices and rents, thus reversing the dreaded "gentrification".

Always acting with an eye toward being good corporate citizens they are. ..

Do we know that these companies aren't buying up depressed real estate, then making a bus stop nearby and encouraging employees to buy near the stop?

because if they were, we would not have this story.

If it weren't for public protests which are difficult to ignore.

So, If there is a rise in middle-class professional jobs in an area, that somehow is a BAD thing? I mean, how DARE people bring their larger tax base into a city! Those middle class enemies of the working class should be made to stay within their own gated communities!

Trader Joe's=OPPRESSION!

Would you feel the same if the companies in the article were the Kochs? After all, they provide good paying jobs. ..I live near Koch central. ...they hire nobody without a bachelor's degree. ...sounds familiar. ...

All this does set the working class against the middle class. Now we're identifying middle class professionals with a degree as the enemy? That is EXACTLY what people like the Kochs want.

So long as working class people are identifying middle class professionals making a $100K-$150K a year as the enemy, They can continue to pillage the rest of the country.

It's usually best to have mixed housing, but ultimately, but how do you ensure that? Government sponsored affordable housing is usually helpful, but what else? Rent controls? What do you suggest? FWIW, I know a couple guys in Silicon Valley and many of THEM are chasing chasing affordable housing.

Actually using the monies in the "Affordable Housing Fund" to actually aggressively fund affordable housing development. Expand the tax base to add more monies to the fund. Slow down on approving "market" rate housing that does not also include affordable units in the building (rather than letting the developers contribute to the "Affordable Housing Fund" which allows housing to be built somewhere some other time). Make the eviction procedures more punitive. Expand rent control to newly converted condos. Come down hard on those who Ellis a building in order to evict and then renege on the stipulations; i.e., re-renting before the 10 moratorium has expired.

Turning a blighted, depressed neighborhood into a thriving community by having well paid tech workers moving in and spending their money in stores, restaurants and bars? That would be like the most evil thing ever.

Residents were given other options for affordable living from the revenue for "revitalization"...but alas....

Did you bother to read this and the 20 other posts and stories about why the people are protesting?

or require affordable housing to be provided when new retail and residential developments are approved.

Instead of whining about Google and Facebook providing well-paid jobs and helping the environment by providing transportation.

not too many blighted and depressed 'hoods in that expensive city.

A woman mentioned in the story pays $1750 in rent (not too shabby) but the landlord wants her out so he/she can charge much more.

Basically, they demonstrated, using the city governments own numbers, that the gentrification and rent increases were occurring before tech moved in, and that the complete removal of the tech industry wouldn't stop it. At worst, the techies ares increasing its pace a little, but that's it.

The real problems are complex and multifaceted, but are the result of a complex interplay between the lack of development, poorly written rent control laws, and a growing population. San Francisco is growing fewer housing units than it is growing people, and unlike some cities, it can't expand outward. Competition for real estate is growing, which drives up housing costs. Rent control laws only cover a portion of the rental market, which creates huge economic divisions between those who live under it and those who don't. With a growing population, buying a rental and performing an Ellis eviction can often be the simplest way to find a home for many people. Because rent controlled buildings are less profitable than "free market" rentals, they can be bought cheaper than uncontrolled buildings and provide an easier "targets". The reduction of available housing stock through these buyouts also has the effect of increasing competition for the remaining "free market" rentals, driving up their rent even further, driving even more renters to buy, and taking even more rentals off the market. It''s easy to try and villify these buyers, but the reality is that most of them are San Franciscan's too, and they're just looking to stay in their home city. Does one San Franciscan have more of a "right" to stay in the city than another? Who gets to pick which San Franciscan is "San Franciscan enough" to live in a particular unit? There aren't enough residences for the population, so somebody has to go.

Most cities would respond to these conditions by building more housing units, but San Francisco has long been vehemently anti-developer which makes putting up new buildings a huge feat. Every development proposal is accompanied by years of hearings, neighborhood votes, and multiple pitches to the politically finicky supes. So the population continues to grow, and no "new" housing is being built for them. In just about any other city, this new population growth would be funneled into new housing towers, land use conversions, and other developments that add to the total number of residences, allowing the population to grow without displacement. In San Francisco there aren't nearly enough developments to accomplish this, so the new population has to displace the old population simply to find shelter. The result is "gentrification".

Tech certainly carries a small part of the blame, as a portion of those new residents are from workers moving to SF in order to service the tech industry, but even a total flight of tech wouldn't save San Francisco from gentrification. The douchie "brogrammers" make a convenient asshole scapegoat that few want to defend, but they're not the real problem. The real problem is a lack of leadership and planning in San Francisco that started long before most techies were even born.

But it's easier to blame Google and Twitter.

Generally it means bidding up the real estate and harassing blacks with police to leave. Manhatten, DC, San Fran, La and now Chicago.

That is amazing. Why not give tax breaks on anyone making under 100K? She probably pays 50 percent of her salary to taxes of various areas. If she received the entire 77 grand, she may be able to live in San Francisco. Why doesn't anything think of that. Just give folks their entire paychecks instead of 1/2 most of the time.

And it's not that she "can't afford anywhere". It's that she can't afford a nice apartment in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in San Francisco.

is getting out of hand price-wise. Most of our friends have moved from the city over to the East Bay now. Who knows how long they can stay. Lifelong SFers, too. Kinda sad.

sweeping view of the Bay and it makes me want to weep.

and reading the short info about that one particular woman… I get the feeling she is a part time yoga instructor (she has a box full of yoga mats) who HAD a two bedroom apartment (it says so at end of article) in a highly desirable neighborhood but didn't want to get a room-mate when rates when sky-high.

Not to downplay the gentrification issue.

But that happens everywhere.

Neighborhoods go to heck, artists move in and make it hip, money comes back in, artists move somewheres else.

artists, and I am doubting that most of the displaced have much of anything in common beyond economic situation and race...

As for displacement, I live in an area with the highest real estate values in the country.

The baymen largely lost their livelihood. The farmers are long gone.

We don't have enough volunteers for fire department anymore cause housing is reserved for Wall Street and other wealthy weekenders.

As would many people. Living in such a neighborhood is a luxury choice that obviously has a higher cost than living in a somewhat more modest neighborhood and taking advantage of public transportation.

For private enterprise too?...corporate person rights and such?

live in the Mission district without being forced out by a landlord who sees the opportunity to make twice as much if she can be forced out somehow.

Rent control probably prohibits the landlord from raising the rent by more than a few percent unless the unit is vacated. That's the goal. Raise the rent from 1700/month to 3000/month on vacation of the premises. Let the existing person stay and only be allowed to raise it by a "pittance".
Remember they were renting it out a profit previously and mortgages have gone down. I doubt the landlords expenses are going up (although I wouldn't pay 3000/month for a place with a 20 year old carpet and needs some paint and double glazing).

The landlord would lose one month's worth of rent paying to help out with moving costs. Let them share the pain of their greed.

They are the ones who raised the rent after all.

Rebecca Solnit is discussing this whole gentrification mess on her website. I love how she refers to Google as "hipster Big Brother."

The wealthiest in this country are managing to make the middle class and the working class fight each other. Meanwhile the 1% continues to pillage the country.

Corporate America, for the most part, rejects the notion that "a rising tide lifts all boats."

aimed at Unions, it should be aimed at other companies that dont give the same benefits unionized firms do and who also discourage the unionization of their firms.

You think the city of SF is going to require their contractors pay clerks, security guards and janitors at least $80K a year as a minimum wage to be able to live close enough just to be able to work on time - because they're not dropping the kids off at daycare at 4am, catching the van-pool to the BART at 5am to just be on the job at 8am?
You think restaurants are going to pay their cooks and wait-staff more than $30 an hour so that they can live within 5 miles of the job site and won't be stressed out of their minds trying to get to work on time and still be able to take care of things at home?

The problem is not just that someone wants "the privilege" to live in the Mission or Castro Districts; the problem is that even a 250sq.ft. unfurnished "pay your own utilities" cold-water studio over a bar in the Tenderloin or Waterfront districts is out of reach for the average minimum-wage SF worker at near $1500 a month rent, and they're forced to look far outside the city to be able to find a large enough affordable apartment or home for themselves or their families.
SF is old, with limited area for housing and an in-city workforce at least five times over the actual capability for the city infrastructure to comfortably support - and there is no where left to expand unless they are willing to plow up the existing green areas and parks (that currently attract a significant amount of tourist dollars) to put in more housing for people who can't afford the "gentrified" pricing of housing within the city.
Traffic is a nightmare on spiderwebs of narrow, historic streets and loop freeways and highways; and public transportation, while pretty good, still sucks if the only places you can afford to live are thirty to sixty miles away.
There are hundreds of thousands of people who work in SF at near minimum wage who can't find a decent place to house themselves and their families near enough to their jobs to bike to work or spend less than an hour one way on public transportation.

While gentrification can be beneficial for "the atmosphere" of a neighborhood, it tends to displace people who were living there for decades previous who can't afford to pay the new rents or, in most cases, move. That's why rent control policies are crucial to create housing stability for the majority of workers who aren't in glamorous or high-paying jobs and are going to be renting all their life because the post-WWII boom is over and the shrinking working middle class aren't making enough in wages to responsibly buy and keep up property and a house any more. Not to mention the thousands retirees who have been maintaining the same previously apartment for over 30 to 50 years, and can't conceive of moving.

There needs to be a balance between housing and housing costs that don't force people out into the streets with nowhere to go just because "the Market" can charge more because there's a bunch of new grad-school technocrats spending money (that they should be saving for that now obvious forced retirement they will be experiencing in the next two decades when they're no longer "fresh and young&quot just to live in the hip new neighborhood - until they get laid off and can't find another job.

I've seen this happen to too many "gentrified" neighborhoods. House flipping is rampant, because people

Haele

And who weren't "poor people" when they started their lives there. Keep up.

I get that you hate any discussion of economic inequities caused by the system, but you could at least read the background on the history here.

If you are working, you move to where you can get a better job.

If you are retired, you move to where the cost of living is lower.

This happens all the time, as people adjust to their situation. They're not plants.

What if your entire family lives in SF? What if it's going to cost you $5000 to move, with finding a new place and getting a new deposit, first month rent and moving costs and you're living paycheck to paycheck?

There is a lot of metro area that is less expensive than the city without going to Tracy.

I live in one of the suburbs of SF. It's fucking expensive. There are no jobs in my field, I have the last one of its kind in the immediate area. Wages have not kept rising with the cost of living, and middle-class families got slammed in the recession. Where are you proposing to relocate 1000's of families, FC? Where are us poors moving to where you'd prefer?

Aside from the fact that two or three booms ago the Mission was not a particularly desirable place, I can think of a few reasons.

They could be SF natives, born and raised in the city and now see themselves being driven out by hipster wannabes. They could be people who work in the city, and think the higher costs in the city balance out the commute costs and commute time. They are attending school in SF. They like the climate. They like the diversity.

jobs, most of them rejected Democrats and the liberal policies that have helped keep the domestic economy very strong - things like tariffs and other pro-labor policies - and voted Republican.

Today, we see that most of those jobs have been outsourced or else those who were doing these jobs have been replaced by H1-B's.

There is a karmic cycle that will eventually come back around to bite those who are displacing current residents. I don't know what form it will take, or when it will happen, but I've seen it happen over and over and over again in my lifetime.

The problem (or as we say out here, "the issue" ) is that no one wants to live in San Jose, present company very much included. So they all pile into SF.

They live in San Jose, they just sleep in SF.

It would be difficult to find anyplace in The City, except maybe up on Twin Peaks, that had my lousy 55 walk score. Or transit that ran only every half-hour middays and weekends.

They are daytime San Jose and come to SF only to sleep. The fact that they do so is why San Jose transit is not improved, why it does not really benefit from being the actual center of all of that money.
I actually like San Jose, there is a bit of authentic life there still, the Rep does great theater, SF has only bus and truck tours of Book of Mormon and Lion King.

For instance, SF has a much larger Chinese community, while SJ has a much larger Vietnamese one.

come along and totally ruin it, craving *authenticity*.

Then, after the yuppies discover they've ruined a place by trying to mimic the authentic, (because they've bought out or driven off whoever and whatever was authentic about the place they took over) they buy summer homes in the new authentic places where the authentic people they drove out moved to, and made artsy and fun, and drive them out again. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

You can't buy real.

We live smack dab in the middle of Sf (the Inner Richmond) across the street from GG Park, and all of our young techie friends are looking for vacay homes on the Russian River. This is how it starts.

And for those of you still confused, landlords can't raise the rent more that 1 or 2 percent each year. They can, however, make you miserable enough to move out (which lets them out of your relocation payment). See, if a landlord wants to live in your apartment, s/he can force you out under the Ellis act, but s/he has to pay you quite a bit (sliding scale based on your length of time there, rent, deposits, and your age if you're over 60). There are a few more legit reasons why you can legally be forced out, but it costs the landlord, and they'd rather just run you off. When you're gone, they can offer your place at the current going rate.

We currently pay $3000 per month for a 2 bed/1bath place in a boutique bldg with a European courtyard half a block from the museum entrance to the park. The new neighbors next door are paying $4000 for a dark, dank interior apt the same size. The woman who moved out of there was paying $1600. Her daughter married a movie star, and she moved to L.A.

The googlers don't want to live in Livermore or Palo Alto. I can't blame them. They're like suburbs looking for cities: miles and miles of strip malls. And the googlers are complaining about the human excrement and drug deals going on outside their trendy loft conversion bldgs downtown. They have a point, but they should've researched the neighborhood before signing the lease, IMHO.

Anyway, the problem isn't nearly as simple as reporters pretend it is. The city is magnificent, and I'm having an absolute blast living here after more than a decade on Capitol Hill!

Don't like the rent move to Rhinelander.

Hodag
The Hodag is a folkloric animal of the American state of Wisconsin. Its history is focused mainly around the city of Rhinelander in northern Wisconsin, where it was said to have been discovered. Wikipedia

Thing bled for three days. Keep away from the hodags.

Finding affordable housing is just one of the side effects of the Corporatization of America. I could never afford anywhere near $2000-$3000 of month for an apartment. Must be nice to be young, have a tech degree and work for Google .. they contribute so much to society don't they?

Which enables DU to be accessible and usable even for members who choose not to donate.