4 ms·

> They shouldn't be angry at techies, who, after all, are helping fund the city with their taxes. That is a specious line of reasoning. What good is funding th

by clicks 13y ago

> They shouldn't be angry at techies, who, after all, are helping fund the city with their taxes. That is a specious line of reasoning. What good is funding the city with taxes to the very inhabitants of the city who're forced to pay more for rent, or forced out because they can no longer afford to live in the city? The way I see it, these techies, and these techy companies have a moral responsibility to use up their resources in trying to effect change on zoning laws, on improving transportation for the general public, etc.

tptacek 13y ago
Did you stop reading at the first line of my comment?
- clicks 13y ago
  tptacek, I disagree with you that these tech companies are completely free of blame. They're not 100% blameworthy, but they're not 0% blameworthy either. I think burning google effigies is a good PR tactic in renewing, or dramatizing the issue in the public sphere to hopefully instigate needed action as concern zoning laws.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Most cities look at large-scale, high-salary employers as a good thing; they go out of their way to solicit them, because high-income employees consume fewer services while paying more into the system, and because those employees are extremely valuable to the local retail economy. Most cities would see techies as a good thing: they ride bikes, they buy expensive local coffee, they eat out all the time, they're statistically very unlikely to mug people or steal cars. Why does San Francisco not see things that way? I think I answered that question upthread, but you don't sound convinced. A friend of mine who lives in San Francisco, when asked what he likes about living there, says "it's a postcard city". I agree, but allege that San Francisco is more interested in remaining a postcard than in being a city.
    - clicks 13y ago
      At the risk of going more off-topic, but nevertheless answering your question: I judge most things on how they affect people at large. Not just high-salary employers and employees usually from stable households, but normal people that make up the cities. It is kind of a disgusting, spooky thing that we just cater to the well-doing, but ignore the folks who weren't afforded the same opportunities in their lives as the rest of us. It falls on us to level the playing field as much as we comfortably can, so they too can get good education, affordable homes, affordable food. Instead we're depriving them of that, we're displacing them from the homes they've been living in -- there's something very wrong there isn't there.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        Generally speaking, improving the tax base of a city should improve education and health care. It doesn't in San Francisco because the city is mismanaged: it spends integer multiples per capita compared to other cities. Meanwhile, housing is expensive in San Francisco because San Francisco makes it difficult to build high-density housing, which it badly needs, because unlike Chicago San Francisco can't grow "out". When Wicker Park was gentrified in Chicago, residents got angry, but then they moved to adjoining neighborhoods. It's possible that many of them kept their kids in the same schools; virtually all of them kept their kids in the same school system. Chicago in 2013 could sustain at least 3 more waves of gentrification, waves that would turn Garfield Park into yuppie restaurant districts, without displacing residents outside of the city boundaries. San Francisco can't do that. Where Chicago has Garfield Park, then Lawndale, then Austin, then a border with a suburb, San Francisco has cold brackish water. When a working class resident of San Francisco loses their apartment, there's a good chance they're not going to be able to remain in the city at all! That makes gentrification in San Francisco far more painful than it is in other cities. There's a solution to this problem, which is to sacrifice some of the postcard beauty of Bayview and the Tenderloin to allow high-density housing. But for reasons other people have described on this thread, the residents of San Francisco are unwilling to do that. So they suffer, and then scapegoat.
    - michaelochurch 13y ago
      Most cities look at large-scale, high-salary employers as a good thing; they go out of their way to solicit them, because high-income employees consume fewer services while paying more into the system, and because those employees are extremely valuable to the local retail economy. Most cities would see techies as a good thing: they ride bikes, they buy expensive local coffee, they eat out all the time, they're statistically very unlikely to mug people or steal cars. I was in Austin recently and I definitely felt a much more positive energy out there than in California. At first, it was weird. "Wait, people here want people like us to move in?" As an economic arrangement, homeownership is (IMO) a less-than-optimal one-- possibly better than renting but only because the government makes it so-- but it's good for civic virtue because when middle-class people can own houses, there's a focus on making the place better for everyone (since you're planning to be there for several years) rather than this zero-sum mentality you get in the coastal star cities.
- oblique63 13y ago
  I agree that your point about building additional housing was dismissed, but I think the OP is curious as to how that plan would actually benefit the 'original' inhabitants of that area now, after they've moved out. Having lived in SF through both tech waves now, something tells me that if the mission were to implement dense housing, the first batch of people at bay to fill it up aren't going to be the same group of immigrants I remember from the 90's. Thus, is there any hope of friendly coexistence with a dense immigrant community, or are such populations now bound to be pushed into their new densely populated housing in the tenderloin or bayview? Creating more 'ghettos' feels a bit off to propose as a solution to me (not that the city doesn't have a history of it).

by clicks 13y ago

tptacek 13y ago

Did you stop reading at the first line of my comment?

clicks 13y ago
tptacek, I disagree with you that these tech companies are completely free of blame. They're not 100% blameworthy, but they're not 0% blameworthy either. I think burning google effigies is a good PR tactic in renewing, or dramatizing the issue in the public sphere to hopefully instigate needed action as concern zoning laws.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Most cities look at large-scale, high-salary employers as a good thing; they go out of their way to solicit them, because high-income employees consume fewer services while paying more into the system, and because those employees are extremely valuable to the local retail economy. Most cities would see techies as a good thing: they ride bikes, they buy expensive local coffee, they eat out all the time, they're statistically very unlikely to mug people or steal cars. Why does San Francisco not see things that way? I think I answered that question upthread, but you don't sound convinced. A friend of mine who lives in San Francisco, when asked what he likes about living there, says "it's a postcard city". I agree, but allege that San Francisco is more interested in remaining a postcard than in being a city.
  - clicks 13y ago
    At the risk of going more off-topic, but nevertheless answering your question: I judge most things on how they affect people at large. Not just high-salary employers and employees usually from stable households, but normal people that make up the cities. It is kind of a disgusting, spooky thing that we just cater to the well-doing, but ignore the folks who weren't afforded the same opportunities in their lives as the rest of us. It falls on us to level the playing field as much as we comfortably can, so they too can get good education, affordable homes, affordable food. Instead we're depriving them of that, we're displacing them from the homes they've been living in -- there's something very wrong there isn't there.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Generally speaking, improving the tax base of a city should improve education and health care. It doesn't in San Francisco because the city is mismanaged: it spends integer multiples per capita compared to other cities. Meanwhile, housing is expensive in San Francisco because San Francisco makes it difficult to build high-density housing, which it badly needs, because unlike Chicago San Francisco can't grow "out". When Wicker Park was gentrified in Chicago, residents got angry, but then they moved to adjoining neighborhoods. It's possible that many of them kept their kids in the same schools; virtually all of them kept their kids in the same school system. Chicago in 2013 could sustain at least 3 more waves of gentrification, waves that would turn Garfield Park into yuppie restaurant districts, without displacing residents outside of the city boundaries. San Francisco can't do that. Where Chicago has Garfield Park, then Lawndale, then Austin, then a border with a suburb, San Francisco has cold brackish water. When a working class resident of San Francisco loses their apartment, there's a good chance they're not going to be able to remain in the city at all! That makes gentrification in San Francisco far more painful than it is in other cities. There's a solution to this problem, which is to sacrifice some of the postcard beauty of Bayview and the Tenderloin to allow high-density housing. But for reasons other people have described on this thread, the residents of San Francisco are unwilling to do that. So they suffer, and then scapegoat.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    Most cities look at large-scale, high-salary employers as a good thing; they go out of their way to solicit them, because high-income employees consume fewer services while paying more into the system, and because those employees are extremely valuable to the local retail economy. Most cities would see techies as a good thing: they ride bikes, they buy expensive local coffee, they eat out all the time, they're statistically very unlikely to mug people or steal cars. I was in Austin recently and I definitely felt a much more positive energy out there than in California. At first, it was weird. "Wait, people here want people like us to move in?" As an economic arrangement, homeownership is (IMO) a less-than-optimal one-- possibly better than renting but only because the government makes it so-- but it's good for civic virtue because when middle-class people can own houses, there's a focus on making the place better for everyone (since you're planning to be there for several years) rather than this zero-sum mentality you get in the coastal star cities.
oblique63 13y ago
I agree that your point about building additional housing was dismissed, but I think the OP is curious as to how that plan would actually benefit the 'original' inhabitants of that area now, after they've moved out. Having lived in SF through both tech waves now, something tells me that if the mission were to implement dense housing, the first batch of people at bay to fill it up aren't going to be the same group of immigrants I remember from the 90's. Thus, is there any hope of friendly coexistence with a dense immigrant community, or are such populations now bound to be pushed into their new densely populated housing in the tenderloin or bayview? Creating more 'ghettos' feels a bit off to propose as a solution to me (not that the city doesn't have a history of it).