9 ms·

I grew up in SF, and I'm a tech weanie, and I gotta say: We have been terrible neighbors. We have been like the guy that bought a condo in North Beach and then

I grew up in SF, and I'm a tech weanie, and I gotta say: We have been terrible neighbors. We have been like the guy that bought a condo in North Beach and then sued the church for ringing their bells, but 10,000x worse. We've kind of ruined the city. As for Marc Benioff, he's the only billionaire who seems to actually, visibly give a shit. He's Jimmy James. (Even if that fwcking tower looks alternately like a phallus or a giant middle finger. Whatever, dude's cool.)

jseliger 6y ago
SF politicians and the voters who keep them in office have "ruined" SF in the sense of driving up housing costs by restricting supply, and failing to build adequate transportation infrastructure expeditiously: https://www.city-journal.org/san-franciscos-municipal-budget https://www.city-journal.org/san-franciscos-municipal-budget or https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/, to cite two examples. Any time SF wants, it can allow the supply of housing to rise to meet demand, which will drastically improve the city's culture, diversity, and affordability. SF voters don't want that, though, and they've not yet been overruled at the state level. Let's get the diagnosis right first.
- carapace 6y ago
  Have you read this, and, if so, what do you think of it? https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employment-construction-and-cost-of-san.html https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employme... > Building enough housing to roll back prices to the "good old days" is probably not realistic, because the necessary construction rates were never achieved even when planning and zoning were considerably less restrictive than they are now. Building enough to compensate for the growing economy is a somewhat more realistic goal and would keep things from getting worse. > In the long run, San Francisco's CPI-adjusted average income is growing by 1.72% per year, and the number of employed people is growing by 0.326% per year, which together (if you believe the first model) will raise CPI-adjusted housing costs by 3.8% per year. Therefore, if price stability is the goal, the city and its citizens should try to increase the housing supply by an average of 1.5% per year (which is about 3.75 times the general rate since 1975, and with the current inventory would mean 5700 units per year). If visual stability is the goal instead, prices will probably continue to rise uncontrollably.
  - creato 6y ago
    I think it would only take a few years (very few, as in low single digits) of 1.5% growth in housing supply to invalidate the extrapolations being used here.
    - carapace 6y ago
      As it stands now there's not enough construction capacity. Santa Rosa burns in a wildfire and you can't get a contractor to stucco a wall in SF that summer, eh? However, we could do it: "Prefab housing complex for UC Berkeley students goes up in four days" Aug., 2018 https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/02/prefab-housing-complex-for-uc-berkeley-students-built-in-four-days https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/02/prefab-housing-compl... > This new 22-unit project from local developer Patrick Kennedy (Panoramic Interests) is the first in the nation to be constructed of prefabricated all-steel modular units made in China. An interesting detail: "Kennedy notes that the cost of trucking to Berkeley from the port of Oakland was more expensive than the cost of shipping from Hong Kong." So yeah, if we really had the political will we could build arcologies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology
- DerekL 6y ago
  Of course, it's not just San Francisco, it's practically all cities in the Bay Area that strictly limit housing development but allow office construction.
- kelp 6y ago
  Clearly it's years of policy at the state and local level that got us here. I've read big chunks of the Environmental Impact Report for the major downsize that happened in SF in the late 70s. That EIR specifically called out that the downzone would make SF much more expensive in the future if we didn't shift to redeveloping much of the industrialized parts of SF. That redevelopment didn't really happen, and now we're left with this result. The really unfortunate thing is because of the artificially restricted housing supply (and commercial, thanks Prop M) it ends up creating these perverse incentives. I would think that normally if you have an industry that's growing really well, and creating tons of high paying jobs, you'd want them in your city. But, because we combined a strictly limited supply with great growth in high paying jobs, the reaction is to be hostile to those high paying jobs.
Kalium 6y ago
Twitter and Zendesk and more have volunteering cultures and do their best to support the community. Nobody cares, except to criticize them as being insufficiently charitable when it happens to be noticed. I think Benioff gets a pass not because he visibly cares, but because he's got that local boy made good story. Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the inner Bay) is next to impossible. Anything that happens becomes your fault no matter how unrelated you are, even if it's fully self-inflicted. Like the tower, MUNIserable buses, or the housing shortage. Or SF General's billing practices, blamed on Zuckerberg after he gave... I don't even remember how many millions. I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome. The best I can hope for is a grudging sufferance, so long as I hate myself enough for being the wrong kind of different. And why should I care about a community that refuses to grant me membership? Whose life will be improved by my misery? Will I be thanked and appreciated for my generosity and sacrifice, or just attacked for not giving more?
- carapace 6y ago
  > Twitter and Zendesk and more have volunteering cultures and do their best to support the community. Nobody cares, ... ...because their "volunteering culture" comes off as too little too late. It was insane for Twitter to open their HQ in the middle of SF's skid row. Let me point out one aspect that seems lost on a lot of downtown techies: They see you. The bums and druggies and wastoids see the kids with wealth and success and not-fucked-up-ness of life and they resent it and them. Right or wrong, it's human nature. So yeah, Twitter was never about solving Civic Center's outdoor Bedlam, so they're never going to get credit for saving the world when they are squatting in hell clearly not saving shit. Eh? > Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the inner Bay) is next to impossible. Ask Rainbow Grocery. https://rainbow.coop/ https://rainbow.coop/ No one blames them for anything. > Anything that happens becomes your fault no matter how unrelated you are, even if it's fully self-inflicted. Like the tower, MUNIserable buses, or the housing shortage. Or SF General's billing practices, blamed on Zuckerberg after he gave... I don't even remember how many millions. It's not impossible, but what you're talking about isn't "being a good neighbor" you're just complaining that people are blaming tech for their problems (whether it's true or not.) (And don't get me started on Zuckerberg's gross purchased virtue signalling. He paid for a hospital, put his name on it so everyone would know, and now I can't talk shit about him and the problems his massive wealth and bewheemoth company are causing, because it makes me look like an ingrate!? Bullshit. Bull. Shit.) > I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome. Have you asked, "What can do to gain welcome?" Before ~2001 or so SF was one of the most welcoming places in the whole of this planet of Earth. > The best I can hope for is a grudging sufferance, so long as I hate myself enough for being the wrong kind of different. Okay if that's what you're getting from SFians you are hanging out with the WRONG SFians. This is a city of love, not self-hate. (Insert off-color joke about Castro, gay culture, learning to overcome hate and self-hate to love yourself and others freely, etc. just as a reminder that this city has been so many things to so many people in it's brief and drama-filled life.) > And why should I care about a community that refuses to grant me membership? Whose life will be improved by my misery? Again, no one worth respecting wants you to be miserable or to hate yourself. I don't know you or what you've personally experienced here, so I can't speak to that (I can't even figure out why most people don't like me.) If you came here since ~2001 you're already too late, the culture of welcoming was already thrashed by then. ("Dot-Com Boom", yeah?) A lot of the community has been pushed out, and most of us who remain are wary of the new wave of techie folks, or yes, outright hostile. > I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome. So go somewhere else? I don't mean that in a mean or disrespectful way. I'm a proponent of the idea that just moving somewhere else can be an excellent way to solve problems. It's not a panacea, of course, but it often does the trick. Maybe you're not weird enough to hang with the old skool SF crowd. It's not a reflection on you. SF has long been the city of crazies. This whole tech-Mecca thing is hella recent. Less than a generation. The old joke: "All the crazy people in America move to California, and all the crazy people in California move to SF. (And if you're too crazy for SF you move to Berkeley.)" - - - - Benioff gets a pass because he supported Proposition C. https://abc7news.com/marc-benioff-salesforce-prop-c-homeless-proposition/4586423/ https://abc7news.com/marc-benioff-salesforce-prop-c-homeless...
newfriend 6y ago
Here we go with the tech guilt/savior complex. Tech people in SF have not been terrible neighbors. People who shit in the street are terrible neighbors. People who steal bikes and smash car windows are terrible neighbors. People who do drugs in the open and leave needles on the ground are terrible neighbors. Techies are basically the ideal denizens of a city. Young, educated, well-paid, law-abiding people. You could hardly ask for a better group to populate a city.
- carapace 6y ago
  > Here we go with the tech guilt/savior complex. The what now? > Tech people in SF have not been terrible neighbors. Individually no, collectively yes. > People who shit in the street are terrible neighbors. I would agree with that if it was possible to shit in a bathroom downtown, it's hella hard to shit downtown without $$$ in your pocket. > People who steal bikes and smash car windows are terrible neighbors. Yes. > People who do drugs in the open and leave needles on the ground are terrible neighbors. Drug addicts are a complex problem. I agree that we shouldn't have the open rampant drug abuse going on that we see downtown. I've seen guys shooting up in the metro staircase. It's bad. It's not "terrible neighbors" who just happen to want to smoke crack in the streets though, and it's not isolated from the economic shifts that have rocked the city since ~2001-ish. > Techies are basically the ideal denizens of a city. Young, educated, well-paid, law-abiding people. You could hardly ask for a better group to populate a city. Is that the tech guilt/savior complex again? The problem is they aren't populating an empty shell! They come as a displacing wave of invaders, made all the more insufferable because they're convinced that they're God's gift to the world at a subconscious level.
  - sammalloy 6y ago
    > They come as a displacing wave of invaders This has been happening continuously since San Francisco was first settled by Spanish explorers and soldiers in 1776, displacing the Ohlone peoples who lived there. There are SF history articles in the library that go into great detail about the shift in neighborhood demographics since the initial Gold Rush. When I first perused the source material back in the 1990s, I learned about the hidden history of San Francisco. Of particular note, was the Irish and Polish presence in the Mission in the early to mid-twentieth century, and the Scandinavian wave to Upper Market around the same time. These waves of ethnic migration to the city influenced its development, brought people with new skills and culture, and greatly contributed to the multicolored tapestry of San Francisco. Many of these groups had organized meeting places and interest groups which directly benefited their districts, and they performed charitable work to improve the city in which they lived.
baby 6y ago
If rent control was more of a thing, and people were more open to have more buildings, then a lot of locals and culture would have stayed. Instead, everybody's rent went up, people were forced to quit, or got offered great sums of money to sell their place. It was a forced exodus due to stupid laws, and with covid19 we're seeing another exodus of engineers. Who will remain?
CyberRabbi 6y ago
Benioff is mensch

jseliger 6y ago

SF politicians and the voters who keep them in office have "ruined" SF in the sense of driving up housing costs by restricting supply, and failing to build adequate transportation infrastructure expeditiously: https://www.city-journal.org/san-franciscos-municipal-budget https://www.city-journal.org/san-franciscos-municipal-budget or https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/, to cite two examples. Any time SF wants, it can allow the supply of housing to rise to meet demand, which will drastically improve the city's culture, diversity, and affordability. SF voters don't want that, though, and they've not yet been overruled at the state level. Let's get the diagnosis right first.

carapace 6y ago
Have you read this, and, if so, what do you think of it? https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employment-construction-and-cost-of-san.html https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employme... > Building enough housing to roll back prices to the "good old days" is probably not realistic, because the necessary construction rates were never achieved even when planning and zoning were considerably less restrictive than they are now. Building enough to compensate for the growing economy is a somewhat more realistic goal and would keep things from getting worse. > In the long run, San Francisco's CPI-adjusted average income is growing by 1.72% per year, and the number of employed people is growing by 0.326% per year, which together (if you believe the first model) will raise CPI-adjusted housing costs by 3.8% per year. Therefore, if price stability is the goal, the city and its citizens should try to increase the housing supply by an average of 1.5% per year (which is about 3.75 times the general rate since 1975, and with the current inventory would mean 5700 units per year). If visual stability is the goal instead, prices will probably continue to rise uncontrollably.
- creato 6y ago
  I think it would only take a few years (very few, as in low single digits) of 1.5% growth in housing supply to invalidate the extrapolations being used here.
  - carapace 6y ago
    As it stands now there's not enough construction capacity. Santa Rosa burns in a wildfire and you can't get a contractor to stucco a wall in SF that summer, eh? However, we could do it: "Prefab housing complex for UC Berkeley students goes up in four days" Aug., 2018 https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/02/prefab-housing-complex-for-uc-berkeley-students-built-in-four-days https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/02/prefab-housing-compl... > This new 22-unit project from local developer Patrick Kennedy (Panoramic Interests) is the first in the nation to be constructed of prefabricated all-steel modular units made in China. An interesting detail: "Kennedy notes that the cost of trucking to Berkeley from the port of Oakland was more expensive than the cost of shipping from Hong Kong." So yeah, if we really had the political will we could build arcologies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology
DerekL 6y ago
Of course, it's not just San Francisco, it's practically all cities in the Bay Area that strictly limit housing development but allow office construction.
kelp 6y ago
Clearly it's years of policy at the state and local level that got us here. I've read big chunks of the Environmental Impact Report for the major downsize that happened in SF in the late 70s. That EIR specifically called out that the downzone would make SF much more expensive in the future if we didn't shift to redeveloping much of the industrialized parts of SF. That redevelopment didn't really happen, and now we're left with this result. The really unfortunate thing is because of the artificially restricted housing supply (and commercial, thanks Prop M) it ends up creating these perverse incentives. I would think that normally if you have an industry that's growing really well, and creating tons of high paying jobs, you'd want them in your city. But, because we combined a strictly limited supply with great growth in high paying jobs, the reaction is to be hostile to those high paying jobs.

Kalium 6y ago

Twitter and Zendesk and more have volunteering cultures and do their best to support the community. Nobody cares, except to criticize them as being insufficiently charitable when it happens to be noticed. I think Benioff gets a pass not because he visibly cares, but because he's got that local boy made good story. Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the inner Bay) is next to impossible. Anything that happens becomes your fault no matter how unrelated you are, even if it's fully self-inflicted. Like the tower, MUNIserable buses, or the housing shortage. Or SF General's billing practices, blamed on Zuckerberg after he gave... I don't even remember how many millions. I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome. The best I can hope for is a grudging sufferance, so long as I hate myself enough for being the wrong kind of different. And why should I care about a community that refuses to grant me membership? Whose life will be improved by my misery? Will I be thanked and appreciated for my generosity and sacrifice, or just attacked for not giving more?

carapace 6y ago
> Twitter and Zendesk and more have volunteering cultures and do their best to support the community. Nobody cares, ... ...because their "volunteering culture" comes off as too little too late. It was insane for Twitter to open their HQ in the middle of SF's skid row. Let me point out one aspect that seems lost on a lot of downtown techies: They see you. The bums and druggies and wastoids see the kids with wealth and success and not-fucked-up-ness of life and they resent it and them. Right or wrong, it's human nature. So yeah, Twitter was never about solving Civic Center's outdoor Bedlam, so they're never going to get credit for saving the world when they are squatting in hell clearly not saving shit. Eh? > Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the inner Bay) is next to impossible. Ask Rainbow Grocery. https://rainbow.coop/ https://rainbow.coop/ No one blames them for anything. > Anything that happens becomes your fault no matter how unrelated you are, even if it's fully self-inflicted. Like the tower, MUNIserable buses, or the housing shortage. Or SF General's billing practices, blamed on Zuckerberg after he gave... I don't even remember how many millions. It's not impossible, but what you're talking about isn't "being a good neighbor" you're just complaining that people are blaming tech for their problems (whether it's true or not.) (And don't get me started on Zuckerberg's gross purchased virtue signalling. He paid for a hospital, put his name on it so everyone would know, and now I can't talk shit about him and the problems his massive wealth and bewheemoth company are causing, because it makes me look like an ingrate!? Bullshit. Bull. Shit.) > I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome. Have you asked, "What can do to gain welcome?" Before ~2001 or so SF was one of the most welcoming places in the whole of this planet of Earth. > The best I can hope for is a grudging sufferance, so long as I hate myself enough for being the wrong kind of different. Okay if that's what you're getting from SFians you are hanging out with the WRONG SFians. This is a city of love, not self-hate. (Insert off-color joke about Castro, gay culture, learning to overcome hate and self-hate to love yourself and others freely, etc. just as a reminder that this city has been so many things to so many people in it's brief and drama-filled life.) > And why should I care about a community that refuses to grant me membership? Whose life will be improved by my misery? Again, no one worth respecting wants you to be miserable or to hate yourself. I don't know you or what you've personally experienced here, so I can't speak to that (I can't even figure out why most people don't like me.) If you came here since ~2001 you're already too late, the culture of welcoming was already thrashed by then. ("Dot-Com Boom", yeah?) A lot of the community has been pushed out, and most of us who remain are wary of the new wave of techie folks, or yes, outright hostile. > I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome. So go somewhere else? I don't mean that in a mean or disrespectful way. I'm a proponent of the idea that just moving somewhere else can be an excellent way to solve problems. It's not a panacea, of course, but it often does the trick. Maybe you're not weird enough to hang with the old skool SF crowd. It's not a reflection on you. SF has long been the city of crazies. This whole tech-Mecca thing is hella recent. Less than a generation. The old joke: "All the crazy people in America move to California, and all the crazy people in California move to SF. (And if you're too crazy for SF you move to Berkeley.)" - - - - Benioff gets a pass because he supported Proposition C. https://abc7news.com/marc-benioff-salesforce-prop-c-homeless-proposition/4586423/ https://abc7news.com/marc-benioff-salesforce-prop-c-homeless...

newfriend 6y ago

Here we go with the tech guilt/savior complex. Tech people in SF have not been terrible neighbors. People who shit in the street are terrible neighbors. People who steal bikes and smash car windows are terrible neighbors. People who do drugs in the open and leave needles on the ground are terrible neighbors. Techies are basically the ideal denizens of a city. Young, educated, well-paid, law-abiding people. You could hardly ask for a better group to populate a city.

carapace 6y ago
> Here we go with the tech guilt/savior complex. The what now? > Tech people in SF have not been terrible neighbors. Individually no, collectively yes. > People who shit in the street are terrible neighbors. I would agree with that if it was possible to shit in a bathroom downtown, it's hella hard to shit downtown without $$$ in your pocket. > People who steal bikes and smash car windows are terrible neighbors. Yes. > People who do drugs in the open and leave needles on the ground are terrible neighbors. Drug addicts are a complex problem. I agree that we shouldn't have the open rampant drug abuse going on that we see downtown. I've seen guys shooting up in the metro staircase. It's bad. It's not "terrible neighbors" who just happen to want to smoke crack in the streets though, and it's not isolated from the economic shifts that have rocked the city since ~2001-ish. > Techies are basically the ideal denizens of a city. Young, educated, well-paid, law-abiding people. You could hardly ask for a better group to populate a city. Is that the tech guilt/savior complex again? The problem is they aren't populating an empty shell! They come as a displacing wave of invaders, made all the more insufferable because they're convinced that they're God's gift to the world at a subconscious level.
- sammalloy 6y ago
  > They come as a displacing wave of invaders This has been happening continuously since San Francisco was first settled by Spanish explorers and soldiers in 1776, displacing the Ohlone peoples who lived there. There are SF history articles in the library that go into great detail about the shift in neighborhood demographics since the initial Gold Rush. When I first perused the source material back in the 1990s, I learned about the hidden history of San Francisco. Of particular note, was the Irish and Polish presence in the Mission in the early to mid-twentieth century, and the Scandinavian wave to Upper Market around the same time. These waves of ethnic migration to the city influenced its development, brought people with new skills and culture, and greatly contributed to the multicolored tapestry of San Francisco. Many of these groups had organized meeting places and interest groups which directly benefited their districts, and they performed charitable work to improve the city in which they lived.

baby 6y ago

If rent control was more of a thing, and people were more open to have more buildings, then a lot of locals and culture would have stayed. Instead, everybody's rent went up, people were forced to quit, or got offered great sums of money to sell their place. It was a forced exodus due to stupid laws, and with covid19 we're seeing another exodus of engineers. Who will remain?

CyberRabbi 6y ago

Benioff is mensch