[chrislgrigg]

Already seeing the responses about how their worldview is simplistic, how the protestors are acting out against people who are there to help them... but does anyone want to comment on the actual complaint that the influx of tech money is increasing the cost of living for those not working in the industry? It seems equally simplistic to just dismiss their complaints when they seem to have a very valid problem.

This is always the downside of gentrification. It's not like their claims haven't been heard before, but I don't know if it's ever happened so quickly. Does anyone living in the bay area want to comment on whether their claims are actually valid and, if so, what can be done to help it?

[SDGT]

Supply and Demand is amoral, and section 8 housing promotes a "bare minimum" mentality for landlords.

So now, we have this huge supply of well off middle class kids like myself (I say kid at 26, pretty sure most of us still feel that way) who want a less expensive place to live but can pay for a decent residence. Housing costs go up as tenants actually matter to landlords, and the poor folk living on the taxpayers dime get edged out.

I don't know how to fix poverty, and I don't know how to make landlords care about tenants that don't give a shit about their home and don't have the cash to fix what they break. If everyone could become a responsible human being over night we'd have a lot of problems fixed.

What I do know is that having a larger taxpayer base in a city is a boon to everyone around. I'm from Ohio, and have watched this happen in most of Akron and Cleveland but in the exact opposite direction; The well off middle class left for anything that wasn't East Cleveland, and those that are too poor to leave seem to just destroy the neighborhood. If everything was crime ridden shit before, then it obviously isn't the fault of the new folk that moved in. The same goes in reverse.

[adamnemecek]

If nothing else, they are implying that they are entitled to living there indefinitely.

[sophacles]

Um, that is exactly the same claim the counter arguments are making: "we're entitled to move in wherever we want"

I know I'd be pissed if my community - not the place I happen to live, but the actively built relationships I have with people in my neighborhood (years of freindship, acquaintance, understanding and so on) - were disrupted because a bunch of new people showed up and forced that community to be scattered by mechanisms such as "we can't afford the rent anymore".

There is a lot of value that is destroyed. It isn't monetary, but it is a form of wealth. That is a real problem.

I get that a lot of people don't give a shit about interpersonal things, and think the notion of community is pointless. But a lot of us do care. Basic decency should suggest paying attention to this sort of thing. Just because you have more money than someone, doesn't mean you get to kick apart their world.

Building a new community for oneself, a deep one anyway, is not easy, and gets harder when you have to keep doing it - you start to say "what's the point - I don't have enough money and time to do this again the next time the better off need a new playground".

[tene]

If that's such an important value to you, why do you live somewhere with such a large proportion of renters who do not own their homes? If you really want to build long-term stable relationships with neighbors, wouldn't the best way to prevent people leaving due to rent changes be to live somewhere where you own your home, and so do most of your neighbors?

I feel like I'm missing something significant here. Renting an apartment is a conscious choice to me, a trade-off between a temporarily-convenient location and long-term stability, or at least that's how I've always approached it in my personal life. It's baffling to me that people will sign a rental agreement for a limited term, and then be so upset at the conditions of that agreement not being guaranteed beyond that term. Perhaps I'm confused about the nature of the complaints? Do you object to rental housing entirely?

[sophacles]

For a lot of people (you aren't one of them, by your statements, that doesn't mean you represent the majority, or even that there isn't a significant minority!) renting makes as much sense, or more, as owning. Further, in my neighborhood, the prices have been relatively stable (roughly tracking inflation) for a long time. It isn't trendy place. Whatever. Whatever the case is - there are a lot of long-term renters. People come and go, sure, but it is a slow replacement, and there are many people who've been here as long or longer than me (6+ years for me at this location which I own, 9 in the neighborhood). I like it here. I like the people here. There's a nice community and it's partly due to the stability. Whether or not it was a the best long-term plan to make friends with these folks, to build those ties, it's what happened, and it works pretty well.

So now you're saying that should that get disrupted by things outside of my control, and the control of my neighbors, it's our fault? Isn't that kind of ridiculous?

[walls]

You just spent a paragraph explaining how it was within your control, but because of some nonsense reasoning, you chose to do it anyway.

It's a very simple concept. If you are renting, you have relinquished any guarantee of stability.

[sophacles]

No - I made choices based on the best I could. However other people can make choices that undo my best efforts, and that would piss me off. It seems you think that somehow I am the centralized control for everything, which is awesome but unfortunately un-true.

Even if I could minimize the impact of people coming in and disrupting the community, say causing them to put in a bunch of high cost living stuff a few blocks away, it still drastically affects all sorts of other factors. Property values go up anyway - taxes go up. Prices of things go up locally. Net impact - same shit.

I'm not saying that it should stop. You seem to think I'm against progress. I'm not - I'm just for sensible community preservation as well.

It's an even simpler concept: it isn't progress if it fucks up a bunch of people's lives for no good reason.

What do you have against letting people be happy with their lives - seriously it may take a little more effort to respect people, but it still seems decent to do so.

[ameister14]

I think the reason I don't have as much sympathy as perhaps I might is because I grew up in a place where the community was over 200 years old, and mostly made up of the same families that entire time. Unfortunately, the mill closed, and most people lost their jobs. Lots of people left because they couldn't afford to live here anymore (it's not expensive, but there aren't many jobs.)

So, the death of a community over two centuries old was what I grew up in.

Change happens; you can shape it as it comes and maybe make it palatable, but you can't entirely stop it.

[adamnemecek]

For the sake of argument, let's say that I (to some extent) agree. What should Google and more importantly Google employees living in Oakland do?

[yapcguy]

Google could open an office in Oakland given that there are enough employees there to merit arranging free transport by bus.

Googlers could live closer to work. Why would you want to sit on a bus for two hours everyday when you could live in Mountainview and cycle to work?

Or Google could buy up houses and apartments and turn them into corporate housing for their workers.

[adamnemecek]

> Or Google could buy up houses and apartments and turn them into corporate housing for their workers.

How is that a solution? Won't it only force out more people?

[dkuntz2]

Why would it make sense for Google to open an office in Oakland given it's current huge campus in Mountain View?

[eli_gottlieb]

Google even tried proposing to build more housing in Mountain View. The town council shot them down.

[ameister14]

You can protect your community. If you have something valuable, people are going to want to purchase it. Decline their offer.

If you don't actually own the thing, but the person that does is a member of your community, persuade them not to sell.

What you don't do is break the valuable thing hoping the would-be buyers go away, or blame them for wanting the thing you value.

[sophacles]

This is a beautifully off point solution! Should my community start getting disrupted by higher rent, (half my neighborhood is long-term tenants, there is not rent control here, or anything like that), I will surely tell the people who don't own the apartments they rent to not sell!

[ameister14]

Who owns the apartments? Talk to them. If they're not members of your community, work with your city council to pass ordinances making that arrangement more difficult.

Why would the rent be higher if the people that own the apartments didn't raise it? They have a choice in this; they can live the way they did two years ago.

[sophacles]

These things are shown time and again to not work for many reasons:

* landlords just want the rent, and any "scum" (by which I mean employed and decent tenants that don't pay as much) need to get packing.

* city councils want the higher taxes. Good citizens just don't count unless they pay more.

* the police get in on the act and start hassling people who don't look like they belong (aka not in the new, higher class)

* cost of living goes up even if half the old population stays there. new businesses are forced in by crazy eminent domain tricks.

It's the same old gentrification story: some new folks with more money want it, so they take it without regarding that they are displacing a whole bunch of good people (along with some bad ones) who are now force to rebuild their lives.

I'm not against progress, I'm against "progress" that disrupts people who did nothing wrong for reasons that are basically needless.

[chrislgrigg]

Are they? I'm not so sure. They have a right to feel upset that money has disrupted (and not in some cool buzzword startup kind of way) their way of life by driving up the cost of living without trickling down to them. A lot of what was written struck me as sour grapes, frustration at the ease with which some people live while they slave away, but it doesn't change the fact that gentrification can destroy communities and culture.

[fennecfoxen]

Society has a variety of ways to entitle people to live somewhere. One involves purchasing the property. You could also enter into a lease with your landlord that gives you the right to renew for a very, very long time (which you'll pay for, of course, if you get it.)

Now, if you want to talk about rising property taxes driving people out, that's a legit thing to talk about, but really more of a NYC problem than SF.

[eli_gottlieb]

Umm... I spent last summer in the Bay Area, does that count?

I mean, here's the thing: housing prices in the not-shitty and already-gentrified parts of the Bay Area are batshit insane. As in, $1100/month for a rented room in a shared house, insane. And for this money you got your own private bathroom, use of the kitchen and backyard, and weekly maid service, because holy crap gentrification. Yet that was actually the cheap deal compared to paying $1200/month to rent a bunk bed in a "hacker house" further away from work via AirBNB.

The only possible good move I see is for the Bay Area to approve massive amounts of housing construction and increased density, but political will is 100% stacked against that move because local governments are almost always dominated by well-off local landowners (who've usually resided in the same single town for decades) rather than by the large population of salariat-class transplants who rent.