Wow! SF is expensive!The Chronicle has discovered how expensive it is to live here. I have exactly one thing to say:
Years and years of refusing to promote affordable housing -- refusing to enact effective rent control, allowing evictions to go on without effective limits, building housing for the rich and not the rest of us -- has come back to haunt San Francisco.
And on all of those battles, the Chronicle was on the wrong side.
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Comments (4)
Tim,
You, as an econ major, should know that the bay area's cost of living derives primarily from our healthy economy.
With all the high paying jobs in biotech, hi tech, finance, and the legal profession, to name but a few, it stands to reason that people would be bidding up the cost of living. Even traditionally blue collar jobs such as construction and the public sector (police and firefighters most immediately come to mind) pay premium wages in the Bay Area. As an example, starting pay for policemen here in SF is now $70,000/yr.
We're victims of our own success.
Posted by jeff | October 17, 2007 09:37 PM
Of course I know that (I also know that one of the reasons we have to pay so much to hire cops is that it's so expensive to live here.)
And I know as a student of urban economics that when you are very successful, and high wages drive up prices, the only way to prevent gentrification so brutal it becomes urbicide is to regulate the price of housing. That's rent control -- tight rent control, the kind the state has outlawed, the kind that limits rent hike on both occupied and vacant apartments -- eviction controls (including an end to the Ellis Act) and a massive effort to build permanently affordable housing.
Posted by tim redmond | October 17, 2007 10:01 PM
The real issue was the poll by the Chronicle, which 30% of the public told the families to move OUT! This is proof that the gay community and gay mafia does not want families in the City. They want sex in the street, whipping in public, oral sex on the buses, more killing in the black communities, gay education at our elementary schools, police department w/ models and high paying jobs, gay politicians for gay rights only, parks with dope dealers and users sleeping in tents, tax dollars spent on gay parties and more sex in the street, gay adults able to marry gay teenagers or youth, lesbian women intimidating young girls into relationship with force, lesbian women dressing like men. Domestic violence in the gay community is at a all time HIGH. Discrimation against gay minorities amoung their gay peers is Real! The Gay community is controling the City and the city tailspinning into a Public indecency sexpool of selfish, self-center, ego, racist gay leaders, which are fighting only for their rights NOT everyone. The City of San Francisco is for everyone, not just a special group of people. Let's face it San Francisco is not a City for everyone anymore. The gay mafia wants this City for themselves only. Are you fed up by now?
On the Police issue: tell the department to place a motto or something on the cars..."Serve and Protect"etc, we are the only large city w/ no motto that the police believe in!
Posted by Bobby Jones | October 18, 2007 11:53 AM
> I know as a student of urban economics that when you are very successful, and high wages drive up prices, the only way to prevent gentrification so brutal it becomes urbicide is to regulate the price of housing.
High wages needn't necessarily result in gentrification, just as economic stagnation needn't necessarily result in ghettoization.
And sometimes that which some describe as gentrification is actually the revitalization of communities, not the death of them. As an example, I note that your publication laments the changing landscape of Polk Street. Yet if I were a resident of the area, I could see how replacing junkies, whores, vagrants, and drag queens with cappucino sipping yuppies might improve the community, rather then destroy it.
Posted by jeff | October 19, 2007 06:39 PM