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First, the Google employee let his emotions get the best of him and should have avoided the confrontation. Second, if these protesters think gentrification is

First, the Google employee let his emotions get the best of him and should have avoided the confrontation. Second, if these protesters think gentrification is so bad, wait till they get a load of anti-gentrification, like in my hometown of Baltimore, and elsewhere in places like Detroit. If you want to keep the city vibrant, it is a delicate balance, and yes, if you swing too far towards gentrification you get monoculture, but if you swing too far in the other direction, you get a lot of problems I think are far worse than not being able to afford to live in a "cool" city. San Francisco has a basic supply/demand problem. More people have a preference to live there than capacity, and the distribution of incomes of those with that preference form a wide gap, driving up prices. Thus the supply is rationed by price. Either they can increase supply, or they can decrease the number of high-end bidders somehow by making the city less desirable somehow. But to blame the tech workers over this is the height of hypocrisy and irony. Many of the same people at these protest events also complain about suburbia, people driving excessively and not using public transport, etc. People used to avoid the cities, but now there is a trend towards reurbanization, and as more people move back into cities, the natural result of that is an increase in prices unless supply increases. San Francisco is no different than New York, London, Tokyo, or Shanghai, in real estate trends and gentrification and to fixate on the tech workers or Google Buses, which are not the cause of your problem, and not your politicians, who need to figure out ways to mitigate the problem, I think is only likely to damage your cause by making you look like an angry mob.

foobarkk 13y ago
In addition to this anti-gentrification protest, San Francisco also has a fairly organized faux anti-gentrification cabal in league with SF Police, including "Homes not Jails".
fiter 13y ago
> Either they can increase supply, or they can decrease the number of high-end bidders somehow by making the city less desirable somehow. Another option (which the city pursues) is regulations like rent control, affordable housing, etc.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  Rent control invariably just increases the evictions and reduces supply and many property owners opt to lease the space for other uses. San Francisco is unable to build high density housing because many of the same people who don't want the city culture to change also don't want it's skyline to change. Large parts of SF are suburb-like and could be replaced with high density high-rises, but it would then lose the "SF charm". Someone else suggested Google shouldn't have built its campus in Mountain View, but Google built the campus there long before the craze of moving back to SF started. In the last .com boom in the 90s, it was Peninsula rents that were sky high. In 1999, I paid $3600 for a 2 bedroom in Foster City. To suggest Google move its campus close to SF would only make things worse. Most Googlers don't live in SF, so you'd be asking a huge number of people who live in the South Bay to uproot and move up north. That plan won't pass go. I certainly wouldn't, for school district alone. San Francisco's problems are bigger than Google. It cannot rescue San Francisco.
rtpg 13y ago
considering that land (and property) is more or less in fixed supply, SF could justifiably implement price/rent controls. Or zone things better to have more apartments. I have no experience with SF first-hand, but from what I hear it is extremely, extremely expensive to live in. In Tokyo you can get a 1 room appartment for $600 a month ( a kinda shitty one, but you can find one), and it's easy to find meager jobs (fast food joints or convenience stores) to make $10 an hour (comes out to $1600 a month). The jobs are more or less everywhere too, but the point is even in the downtown-y area you can live where you work. It's possible to work there because the population density of the special wards of Tokyo (the actual "urban" part, there's a lot of mountain) is 3 times that of SF. I only have a cursory knowledge of what it's like, again, but looking at apartment listings, it seems like San Francisco has a pretty high amount of gigantic apartments. Like, apartments that could be cut into 4 separate apartments-type huge. From the side of the people who are mad about this stuff, about the rent and the transportation: Here's a guy who has an apartment that takes up half a floor, who takes his private bus to go work out in the countryside, asking me, the guy making his burgers/checking out his groceries, to go live out in the countryside and bus into work because he couldn't survive having an apartment with 200 sq feet less space. Even worse, this is next to some of the most technologically advanced companies in the world. We're supposed to be the Jetsons. How is it that we can have a halfway-functioning public transit system in nowheres-bourg, France, population 100k , but we can't seem to get one running in an area with 3 times the density and 10 times the people? I'm not necessarily agreeing with everything, but the rage is justified. And it can be solved by political means. >but now there is a trend towards reurbanization, and as more people move back into cities, the natural result of that is an increase in prices unless supply increases. Supply can be increased pretty easily: by having companies build closer to the city center, thus expanding the radius of "interestingness". I'm sure that if Google had built closer to san francisco proper that the area of interesting things would have increased immensly. Instead they built their own little disneyland way out , with a huge suburb in between it and SF. Obviously square footage is expensive, but what is money when you're apparently rolling in it? Building the Googleplex closer would've made it smaller but at least it would have helped SF expand its area of interestingness.
- aarkling 13y ago
  > considering that land (and property) is more or less in fixed supply, SF could justifiably implement price/rent controls. > Supply can be increased pretty easily First you say supply can't be increased. Then you say it can. No it's not Google's fault there is not enough supply. It's bad zoning laws that limit the number and size of buildings. And rent control that makes building less profitable. Houston and Austin get a way bigger influx of people and even money (for Houston at least) than San Francisco but they don't have these problems.

foobarkk 13y ago

In addition to this anti-gentrification protest, San Francisco also has a fairly organized faux anti-gentrification cabal in league with SF Police, including "Homes not Jails".

fiter 13y ago

> Either they can increase supply, or they can decrease the number of high-end bidders somehow by making the city less desirable somehow. Another option (which the city pursues) is regulations like rent control, affordable housing, etc.

cromwellian 13y ago
Rent control invariably just increases the evictions and reduces supply and many property owners opt to lease the space for other uses. San Francisco is unable to build high density housing because many of the same people who don't want the city culture to change also don't want it's skyline to change. Large parts of SF are suburb-like and could be replaced with high density high-rises, but it would then lose the "SF charm". Someone else suggested Google shouldn't have built its campus in Mountain View, but Google built the campus there long before the craze of moving back to SF started. In the last .com boom in the 90s, it was Peninsula rents that were sky high. In 1999, I paid $3600 for a 2 bedroom in Foster City. To suggest Google move its campus close to SF would only make things worse. Most Googlers don't live in SF, so you'd be asking a huge number of people who live in the South Bay to uproot and move up north. That plan won't pass go. I certainly wouldn't, for school district alone. San Francisco's problems are bigger than Google. It cannot rescue San Francisco.

rtpg 13y ago

considering that land (and property) is more or less in fixed supply, SF could justifiably implement price/rent controls. Or zone things better to have more apartments. I have no experience with SF first-hand, but from what I hear it is extremely, extremely expensive to live in. In Tokyo you can get a 1 room appartment for $600 a month ( a kinda shitty one, but you can find one), and it's easy to find meager jobs (fast food joints or convenience stores) to make $10 an hour (comes out to $1600 a month). The jobs are more or less everywhere too, but the point is even in the downtown-y area you can live where you work. It's possible to work there because the population density of the special wards of Tokyo (the actual "urban" part, there's a lot of mountain) is 3 times that of SF. I only have a cursory knowledge of what it's like, again, but looking at apartment listings, it seems like San Francisco has a pretty high amount of gigantic apartments. Like, apartments that could be cut into 4 separate apartments-type huge. From the side of the people who are mad about this stuff, about the rent and the transportation: Here's a guy who has an apartment that takes up half a floor, who takes his private bus to go work out in the countryside, asking me, the guy making his burgers/checking out his groceries, to go live out in the countryside and bus into work because he couldn't survive having an apartment with 200 sq feet less space. Even worse, this is next to some of the most technologically advanced companies in the world. We're supposed to be the Jetsons. How is it that we can have a halfway-functioning public transit system in nowheres-bourg, France, population 100k , but we can't seem to get one running in an area with 3 times the density and 10 times the people? I'm not necessarily agreeing with everything, but the rage is justified. And it can be solved by political means. >but now there is a trend towards reurbanization, and as more people move back into cities, the natural result of that is an increase in prices unless supply increases. Supply can be increased pretty easily: by having companies build closer to the city center, thus expanding the radius of "interestingness". I'm sure that if Google had built closer to san francisco proper that the area of interesting things would have increased immensly. Instead they built their own little disneyland way out , with a huge suburb in between it and SF. Obviously square footage is expensive, but what is money when you're apparently rolling in it? Building the Googleplex closer would've made it smaller but at least it would have helped SF expand its area of interestingness.

aarkling 13y ago
> considering that land (and property) is more or less in fixed supply, SF could justifiably implement price/rent controls. > Supply can be increased pretty easily First you say supply can't be increased. Then you say it can. No it's not Google's fault there is not enough supply. It's bad zoning laws that limit the number and size of buildings. And rent control that makes building less profitable. Houston and Austin get a way bigger influx of people and even money (for Houston at least) than San Francisco but they don't have these problems.