4 ms·

"People have been commuting by car from San Francisco to Mountain View and Santa Clara since the dotcom bubble." I'm sure that some people were doing that. Yo

by timr 13y ago

"People have been commuting by car from San Francisco to Mountain View and Santa Clara since the dotcom bubble." I'm sure that some people were doing that. You can find people who will tolerate anything. The point is, the buses shift the market by making that kind of commute appealing on a large scale. "by paying employees who own and maintain property in Oakland, Google is in fact providing part of the tax base for Oakland. Every other city in the country understands this and their mayors and city councils practically puke on their shoes trying to get big employers to move in." Red herring. Again, the increased property taxes those tech employees are paying (assuming they're not just renting from owners who are all protected from tax increases by Prop 8, but I digress...) isn't offsetting the real cost-of-living increases experienced by the people living in Oakland. Said another way: your theoretical, twice-removed tax-base gains aren't making the housing cheaper, or the poor people richer in Oakland.

jamiequint 13y ago
Gentrification is the reality, its just a matter of where at this point. Why is gentrification centered around where the tech companies are based better than gentrification in lower-income neighborhoods. Either way people are getting displaced and rents are going up somewhere as demand exceeds supply. I find it interesting that in this situation in general (and in your comments in particular) most of the blame seems to be focused on the tech companies. The businesses are just making economically rational decisions around how providing transportation helps recruiting. What is their alternative? There are two sides to the supply and demand equation. Asking companies to scale back the "demand" for workers moving into the city is ridiculous. The City of San Francisco is the one that is actually to blame for not appropriately managing the supply side of the housing market by making it so hard to get new projects approved and built. Why is all the focus on the companies and not on the city government and neighborhood NIMBYs that seems to proliferate all of SF.

by timr 13y ago

jamiequint 13y ago

Gentrification is the reality, its just a matter of where at this point. Why is gentrification centered around where the tech companies are based better than gentrification in lower-income neighborhoods. Either way people are getting displaced and rents are going up somewhere as demand exceeds supply. I find it interesting that in this situation in general (and in your comments in particular) most of the blame seems to be focused on the tech companies. The businesses are just making economically rational decisions around how providing transportation helps recruiting. What is their alternative? There are two sides to the supply and demand equation. Asking companies to scale back the "demand" for workers moving into the city is ridiculous. The City of San Francisco is the one that is actually to blame for not appropriately managing the supply side of the housing market by making it so hard to get new projects approved and built. Why is all the focus on the companies and not on the city government and neighborhood NIMBYs that seems to proliferate all of SF.