4 ms·
The programmers have as much of a right to be there as anyone else does. People who owned their condos and houses weren't pushed out, they usually sold to buy s
by WWLink 6y ago
The programmers have as much of a right to be there as anyone else does. People who owned their condos and houses weren't pushed out, they usually sold to buy something bigger. That would be practically everyone my parents knew. (Edit: Of course, people who rented apartments for 20 years and then had their rent jacked sky high by a new landlord, that's a different story...)
The fun part for me is I was born in SF. My family relocated to a suburb when I was little to get a bigger house. They never could afford to move back. Now that I'm a programmer, I can afford to take us back there! Would I feel guilty about it? Abso-fucking-lutely not.
That said, if I were to do that, I'd be buying an old beat up house in outer sunset. The only thing I'd be displacing in that case, are the people who decided to sell it after owning it for 20+ years because they wanted a bigger house in Fairfield or something. (Let's be real though, I can't afford to buy a house in SF at all haha. Maybe a few more years of saving.)
I don't know, there's a large gap between "I've got mine, fuck you" and "You must be apologetic for having a good career and being able to afford the rent."
Of course, I feel that displacing all the old hole-in-the-wall restaurants for shit like starbucks and panera bread is a disgrace. Especially because I don't eat shit like starbucks or panera bread lol. I'm all about the $5 lunch special at the chinese place. (Although now it's a $20 special!)
- anw 6y agoNo doubt anyone has a right to be wherever. The issue was not so much who has a right to live where. It was around the attitude of saying one thing while living another.
- ironmagma 6y agoBuying a house at SF prices is always contributing to displacement, for in your absence there would be less demand for houses and the prices would be lower.
- shuckles 6y agoThis depends on a very liberal interpretation of what "displacement" means.
- ironmagma 6y agoDisagree, I think the opposite interpretation is very conservative. If a tech bro moves in to a house that was just vacated voluntarily by someone who had lived in the city for twenty years, have they not displaced anyone, since that house would be vacant anyway? What if they moved to a nicer place in the same city, and the tech bro is taking their old residence? What if the last tenant passed away instead? You can split hairs all you want, but anything that causes even a perceived (by the landlord) increase in demand contributes to keeping that price from going any lower. In an extreme case, that could be data from the housing data broker saying that the average apartment in their zip code goes for $X. In an even more extreme case, maybe their proxy for a data broker is the weekly number of Craigslist views for an ad they put up. Sometimes landlords keep vacancies open for multiple months or even years on end, hoping to get someone who will pay their asking price. Either way, the perceived demand is the thing keeping it up, and someone buying a house as opposed to them not being able to sell the house is also what stops them from renting it out to Joe Schmoe who can only pay $900/mo in the meantime.
- shuckles 6y agoI'm not sure what you're trying to say. Is it that buying a house from an owner occupier at high market rates displaces the person who couldn't bid market rate for the property?
- ironmagma 6y agoExactly; buying the house contributes to the displacement in the sense that if they weren't buying the house, someone of less means could buy it instead.
- shuckles 6y agoDisplacement the word means moving something out of a place it currently occupies. You should find a better word.
- 6y ago