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I was trying to put myself in the position of the guy who wrote the article. I.e. someone who is a "progressive" but moved into SF and has a decent income. If I

by minimax 13y ago

I was trying to put myself in the position of the guy who wrote the article. I.e. someone who is a "progressive" but moved into SF and has a decent income. If I'm moving to SF and there isn't any new construction to buy, I'm going to have to bid against the existing residents for a place to live. It seemed like the point of the article was like "Look, not all us SF techies are assholes because we don't say asshole things" and my point was more that it's the economic consequences of your lifestyle that have the biggest impact on the city's preexisting long-term residents.

PavlovsCat 13y ago
How about this: if you are rich and move to a place where this gentrification stuff probably applies to you, help out the local residents in whatever they do to work for sane rents and for building more housing where needed. Don't be a stranger, you know? Even better if you can inform yourself what "normal" rents are in the area, and try to spot offers that look like they have been recently modernized just to raise rents a lot. Or other ways that involve caring about the people being displaced, instead of just saying "it's all in the game tho", just because technically every step is correct and sanctified, and we are all just very small parts of the end result, doesn't mean we don't have responsibility. I'm not trying to "you have to do that, yesterday, or you're a bad person and I'm not".. I'm mostly asking, can we consider if it would make for a nicer world to live in if everybody did that? If that was "the thing to do", instead of "fuck you got mine" being the norm? I think where people live is kinda integral and important to their whole quality of life. Like, a human right. So I would argue that "being kicked out" is worse than not having found a super nice place and instead just an okay one. If people with money wanted to move somewhere in droves, and couldn't, because they refuse to take part in raising rent for others, how long would it take for new stuff to get build? The poor have no lobby, and if they don't even have solidarity, they are fucked.

by minimax 13y ago

PavlovsCat 13y ago

How about this: if you are rich and move to a place where this gentrification stuff probably applies to you, help out the local residents in whatever they do to work for sane rents and for building more housing where needed. Don't be a stranger, you know? Even better if you can inform yourself what "normal" rents are in the area, and try to spot offers that look like they have been recently modernized just to raise rents a lot. Or other ways that involve caring about the people being displaced, instead of just saying "it's all in the game tho", just because technically every step is correct and sanctified, and we are all just very small parts of the end result, doesn't mean we don't have responsibility. I'm not trying to "you have to do that, yesterday, or you're a bad person and I'm not".. I'm mostly asking, can we consider if it would make for a nicer world to live in if everybody did that? If that was "the thing to do", instead of "fuck you got mine" being the norm? I think where people live is kinda integral and important to their whole quality of life. Like, a human right. So I would argue that "being kicked out" is worse than not having found a super nice place and instead just an okay one. If people with money wanted to move somewhere in droves, and couldn't, because they refuse to take part in raising rent for others, how long would it take for new stuff to get build? The poor have no lobby, and if they don't even have solidarity, they are fucked.