8 ms·

Gentrification's Price: S.F. Moves: Yuppies In, the Poor Out (1985)

44 points by hyt7u 8y ago

epicureanideal 8y ago
For anyone who is interested in a CPI inflation adjusted view of those numbers, "$900-$1000" for rent in North Beach in 1985 is supposedly worth about $2100-2400 now. Their combined salary of $30,000 per year would now be about $71,000. https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm However, the article says "$900-$1000" was for "an apartment" without specifying the number of rooms. It seems reasonable that it might've been a 2 bedroom apartment.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  As I remember, North Beach in particular did become unaffordable at about that time. Other parts of The City remained expensive but affordable up to the 2000s. The rent jumps and illegal/shady evictions starting maybe 2010-2012 effectively pushed out a fraction of those surviving on rent control plus many of the merely upper-middle-class out of the city, leaving the wealthy and big-5 programmers getting huge salaries for 80-hour-days during the whole of the best years of their lives. The thing about the situation the city hasn't "upgraded" but rather has been left gray and boring (yet fearful and hyperkinetic). Pretty sad compared to the lively punks I saw squatting old industrial buildings in 1984. Even that was sad compared to the summer of love I assume but I wasn't around for anything but the end of that.
- jaysonelliot 8y ago
  It probably was a two bedroom. When I moved to SF in 1994, I was sharing a four-bedroom on South Van Ness that cost $1200 total. The next big rent spike came around '98 or so, as the dot com boom was in full swing. Rents didn't only shoot up, it got so that there was no housing left to be had. You could show up to an open rental with stellar credit and references, only to have someone else offer the landlord 25% above the asking rent, and pay the entire first year in advance.
  - beamatronic 8y ago
    And you had to go through MetroRent or RentTech
somerando 8y ago
I don't see what is so wrong with gentrification. As the economy expands and people become more prosperous, it restores blighted parts of the city to their full potential. I also think that rent control is disrespectful to the rights of the property owner. Other than making sure that there is no discrimination, and that properties aren't fire traps, government should get out of the way.
- epicureanideal 8y ago
  I think there's a difference though between "a small town that has very little in the way of services because the population won't support it or the people who live there don't earn enough to support nice amenities" becoming more prosperous, and a town where nice amenities are already possible, but building is prevented as people move in so prices get driven up without (as much as would be natural) corresponding increase in amenities. That's not to say that nice amenities are what everyone wants. Some people want to keep the character of their small towns no matter what. But in the former case there's a loss of small-town-ness for amenities that theoretically benefit everyone, whereas in the latter case it's purely an extraction of money from the young to the old.
- asteli 8y ago
  The wealth-ification of a neighborhood isn't per se bad. It would be fantastic if people living in a neighborhood became wealthier through some set of circumstances (economic recovery etc). What you typically see is long-time neighborhood residents being displaced by wealthier newcomers. In a poor neighborhood, this means that people who are already vulnerable, especially those that are renting also have to cope with a whole new set of problems -- landlords who desperately want to evict them, cost-of-living increases, increased pressure from law enforcement. The Bay doesn't have resources for people who find themselves in this position. My old housemate in west Oakland, in her early 30s and well-educated, but with health issues, is being forced from the bay. She grew up in Berkeley and Oakland. This is her home. I'm sad.
  - bcheung 8y ago
    I think what you say is true for long term renters but the complete opposite for long term homeowners. There's rent control, Proposition 13, and fixed rate mortgages. Those greatly help long time homeowner. Homeowners lock in low interest rates and fixed monthly payments. If inflation hits you're still paying the same. Possibly 1/5th the amount that your neighbor might be paying if you've had your house for a while. With Proposition 13 your property tax won't go up more than 2% despite double digital home price inflation year after year in the bay area. The amount of equity generated each year is often more than peoples' entire salaries.
madrox 8y ago
I often wonder about how sustainable SF’s growth is. Between the issues with housing, rent control, NIMBYism, and poor infrastructure, there has to be a price tag at which this can’t continue. I live in the city, and the quality of living here is terrible compared to other cities. The only thing SF has going for it is the people, but sooner or later the right social pressures could cause a mass exodus, and I wonder what those pressures look like.
- maxkimmel 8y ago
  Your question gets asked often: How long can this continue? And the answer is: It will continue as long as people are willing to pay the rent. I understand from your post that you are fed up with the high rent and the low quality of living. But the most important part of what you said is the fact that you are still willing to pay, and you are still willing to stay, despite all of the disadvantages. In other words, you have decided (whether you like it or not) that in your case the advantages of living in SF outweigh all of the disadvantages. And there are many others like you. You are all collectively voting for things to continue the way they are. Making it stop would require you (or others like you) to decide the trade-off isn't worth it.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    Alternatively, a bunch of us could get together and change the laws, so as to make the city better. The more people who get screwed by housing, the more political power we will gain, until something eventually gives out, and we start winning the political game.
  - madrox 8y ago
    My girlfriend and I decided in January that the trade off is no longer worth it. Now it’s just about timing. While I hear what you’re saying, I’m musing more specifically on what that function looks like. I understand “it will continue as long as it can” but looking for a less rhetorical answer.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
madrox 8y ago
If you want to see the latest in the gentrification war, check out the San Francisco subreddit. On the one hand, it’s everyone complaining about the nuisance of the on demand scooters; on the other, it’s people complaining about the needles and human feces. It may have been about poor vs yuppie in 1985, but it’s a culture war now.
- tlrobinson 8y ago
  Wow... > Last week I saw a similar report of a man filling up syringes with blood and throwing them at people walking by https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/8hj7j7/man_juggling_used_syringes/dyk8w2b/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/8hj7j7/man_ju...
  - DrScump 8y ago
    One unconfirmed anecdote does not a trend make.
    - ng12 8y ago
      You're right. But when that anecdote doesn't surprise anyone (look at the tongue-in-cheek responses) you may have a problem.
FartyMcFarter 8y ago
Assuming that the housing supply is finite, the poorest person living in a city is also displacing a different potential resident, just as much as a medium income person, right? Yet gentrification is always portrayed as the "richer" people trampling on poor people. Go figure.
- bcheung 8y ago
  A poor person does not have the means to displace someone. If you can't afford to rent or buy a home you aren't displacing anyone. A wealthier person does have that ability.
- closeparen 8y ago
  >potential resident Gentrification and displacement are distinct from the exclusion of potential residents. To get someone's home transferred to you, you generally have to outspend them, so the gentrifier is essentially always richer than than the displaced person (though there could be corner cases with similar means but different willingness to spend on housing, etc).

44 points by hyt7u 8y ago

For anyone who is interested in a CPI inflation adjusted view of those numbers, "$900-$1000" for rent in North Beach in 1985 is supposedly worth about $2100-2400 now. Their combined salary of $30,000 per year would now be about $71,000. https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm However, the article says "$900-$1000" was for "an apartment" without specifying the number of rooms. It seems reasonable that it might've been a 2 bedroom apartment.

joe_the_user 8y ago
As I remember, North Beach in particular did become unaffordable at about that time. Other parts of The City remained expensive but affordable up to the 2000s. The rent jumps and illegal/shady evictions starting maybe 2010-2012 effectively pushed out a fraction of those surviving on rent control plus many of the merely upper-middle-class out of the city, leaving the wealthy and big-5 programmers getting huge salaries for 80-hour-days during the whole of the best years of their lives. The thing about the situation the city hasn't "upgraded" but rather has been left gray and boring (yet fearful and hyperkinetic). Pretty sad compared to the lively punks I saw squatting old industrial buildings in 1984. Even that was sad compared to the summer of love I assume but I wasn't around for anything but the end of that.
jaysonelliot 8y ago
It probably was a two bedroom. When I moved to SF in 1994, I was sharing a four-bedroom on South Van Ness that cost $1200 total. The next big rent spike came around '98 or so, as the dot com boom was in full swing. Rents didn't only shoot up, it got so that there was no housing left to be had. You could show up to an open rental with stellar credit and references, only to have someone else offer the landlord 25% above the asking rent, and pay the entire first year in advance.
- beamatronic 8y ago
  And you had to go through MetroRent or RentTech

somerando 8y ago

I don't see what is so wrong with gentrification. As the economy expands and people become more prosperous, it restores blighted parts of the city to their full potential. I also think that rent control is disrespectful to the rights of the property owner. Other than making sure that there is no discrimination, and that properties aren't fire traps, government should get out of the way.

epicureanideal 8y ago
I think there's a difference though between "a small town that has very little in the way of services because the population won't support it or the people who live there don't earn enough to support nice amenities" becoming more prosperous, and a town where nice amenities are already possible, but building is prevented as people move in so prices get driven up without (as much as would be natural) corresponding increase in amenities. That's not to say that nice amenities are what everyone wants. Some people want to keep the character of their small towns no matter what. But in the former case there's a loss of small-town-ness for amenities that theoretically benefit everyone, whereas in the latter case it's purely an extraction of money from the young to the old.
asteli 8y ago
The wealth-ification of a neighborhood isn't per se bad. It would be fantastic if people living in a neighborhood became wealthier through some set of circumstances (economic recovery etc). What you typically see is long-time neighborhood residents being displaced by wealthier newcomers. In a poor neighborhood, this means that people who are already vulnerable, especially those that are renting also have to cope with a whole new set of problems -- landlords who desperately want to evict them, cost-of-living increases, increased pressure from law enforcement. The Bay doesn't have resources for people who find themselves in this position. My old housemate in west Oakland, in her early 30s and well-educated, but with health issues, is being forced from the bay. She grew up in Berkeley and Oakland. This is her home. I'm sad.
- bcheung 8y ago
  I think what you say is true for long term renters but the complete opposite for long term homeowners. There's rent control, Proposition 13, and fixed rate mortgages. Those greatly help long time homeowner. Homeowners lock in low interest rates and fixed monthly payments. If inflation hits you're still paying the same. Possibly 1/5th the amount that your neighbor might be paying if you've had your house for a while. With Proposition 13 your property tax won't go up more than 2% despite double digital home price inflation year after year in the bay area. The amount of equity generated each year is often more than peoples' entire salaries.

madrox 8y ago

I often wonder about how sustainable SF’s growth is. Between the issues with housing, rent control, NIMBYism, and poor infrastructure, there has to be a price tag at which this can’t continue. I live in the city, and the quality of living here is terrible compared to other cities. The only thing SF has going for it is the people, but sooner or later the right social pressures could cause a mass exodus, and I wonder what those pressures look like.

maxkimmel 8y ago
Your question gets asked often: How long can this continue? And the answer is: It will continue as long as people are willing to pay the rent. I understand from your post that you are fed up with the high rent and the low quality of living. But the most important part of what you said is the fact that you are still willing to pay, and you are still willing to stay, despite all of the disadvantages. In other words, you have decided (whether you like it or not) that in your case the advantages of living in SF outweigh all of the disadvantages. And there are many others like you. You are all collectively voting for things to continue the way they are. Making it stop would require you (or others like you) to decide the trade-off isn't worth it.
- stale2002 8y ago
  Alternatively, a bunch of us could get together and change the laws, so as to make the city better. The more people who get screwed by housing, the more political power we will gain, until something eventually gives out, and we start winning the political game.
- madrox 8y ago
  My girlfriend and I decided in January that the trade off is no longer worth it. Now it’s just about timing. While I hear what you’re saying, I’m musing more specifically on what that function looks like. I understand “it will continue as long as it can” but looking for a less rhetorical answer.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

madrox 8y ago

If you want to see the latest in the gentrification war, check out the San Francisco subreddit. On the one hand, it’s everyone complaining about the nuisance of the on demand scooters; on the other, it’s people complaining about the needles and human feces. It may have been about poor vs yuppie in 1985, but it’s a culture war now.

tlrobinson 8y ago
Wow... > Last week I saw a similar report of a man filling up syringes with blood and throwing them at people walking by https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/8hj7j7/man_juggling_used_syringes/dyk8w2b/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/8hj7j7/man_ju...
- DrScump 8y ago
  One unconfirmed anecdote does not a trend make.
  - ng12 8y ago
    You're right. But when that anecdote doesn't surprise anyone (look at the tongue-in-cheek responses) you may have a problem.

FartyMcFarter 8y ago

Assuming that the housing supply is finite, the poorest person living in a city is also displacing a different potential resident, just as much as a medium income person, right? Yet gentrification is always portrayed as the "richer" people trampling on poor people. Go figure.

bcheung 8y ago
A poor person does not have the means to displace someone. If you can't afford to rent or buy a home you aren't displacing anyone. A wealthier person does have that ability.
closeparen 8y ago
>potential resident Gentrification and displacement are distinct from the exclusion of potential residents. To get someone's home transferred to you, you generally have to outspend them, so the gentrifier is essentially always richer than than the displaced person (though there could be corner cases with similar means but different willingness to spend on housing, etc).