OPINION Cari Spivek thought it was wasteful that so many employees like her were driving to work in different cars. Her idea became the Google Shuttle, a private transit network made of biodiesel-powered, wi-fi-enabled, air-conditioned buses transporting employees from around the Bay Area to Google headquarters in Mountain View, south of San Francisco.
At first it was used by a hundred employees from the entire area. But Google has been growing and now shuttles more than 1,200 Googlers every day, many from the Mission District, which has recently added a second bus.
Anyone who has ever taken a population class knows that every migration has a countermigration. In addition to all of the Google employees already living in the city and doing less environmental damage by taking the shuttle, many employees are choosing to move to the city because there is now a comfortable shuttle to take them to work. And many want to be a short walk to one of the stops.
When one takes into account the cost of gentrification, which is destroying the arts in San Francisco and forcing many low-income workers out of the city, the Google Shuttle no longer looks so environmentally friendly.
Low- and middle-income wage earners are forced to commute to the neighborhoods they can no longer afford to live in. Their commute can take more than an hour, and they can't afford environmentally friendly cars.
It's very possible the Google Shuttle is doing as much harm to the environment as good. And the young Google employees, many making well over $100,000 a year, who move to places like the Mission for the art and diversity, are unintentionally devastating the neighborhood they love. Soon there will be no economic diversity in the Mission, and the young rich who have driven the rents so high will wonder how they ended up living in a place that resembles Greenwich, Conn.
Ending the Google Shuttle is not the only solution. It's not even the best solution. A much better alternative would be for Google to make substantial investments in low- and middle-income housing in the areas it's transforming, like the Mission and the Tenderloin, where its employees are clustered.
Google could give back to the community by donating $5,000 per employee living in the Mission to a fund that offsets the costs incurred by tenants forced from their homes by owner move-ins or loss of primary leaseholder, with the rest of the money going to fund neighborhood artists and new middle-income housing. Annually, we're talking between $5 million and $10 million, a cost Google could easily afford. It would be good for Google in other ways, keeping this an area its creative employees still want to live in, before they follow the rest of the artists to Portland, Ore., or Detroit.
It's hard for people to admit that their mere presence is doing damage, that their ability to pay exorbitant rent is destroying the neighborhood they love. But the Mission cannot endlessly absorb renters with six-figure incomes. In many ways, including the use of biodiesel shuttle buses, Google has behaved like a responsible profitable corporation should. Now it has a responsibility to help the Mission maintain its diversity. Otherwise, Google needs to stop shuttling its employees from 24th and Mission and stop encouraging them to live in a neighborhood that simply can't afford them.
Elliot's piece makes lots of shaky assumptions. First of all, he assumes that all Google employees who ride the bus from the Mission are rich gentrifiers. It may well be that some Google employees who take the bus from the Mission were already San Francisco residents, and/or are less affluent and vanpool to save money. But if they are all rich yuppies, don't you think they would just drive to work if they couldn't take the bus?
By Elliott's logic, we should tear up Caltrain and BART-- undoubtedly, people use these to commute from the Mission to jobs with tech companies.
Instead of Elliott blaming gentrification on vanpooling, he might look closer to home. He's an author-- a member of the bohemian class without whom Mission gentrification would be impossible. Without artists and writers first colonizing a neighborhood like the Mission, it would not have become a place as desirable to yuppies. Certainly artists and writers have contributed more to gentrification of the Mission than has vanpooling.
What he's forgetting is that Google employees are also supporting the neighborhoods they live in. They patronize the corner stores, eat in the taquerias, drink in the local bars, and, yes, buy three dollar cups of coffee at the very same place that Elliott does. Also, it's not as though the Google shuttles only pick up and drop off exclusively in the Mission. They have stops all over the bay area, affluent and underprivileged neighborhoods alike. I don't see Elliott taking up the burning cause to prevent the transformation of, say, Oakland or the Richmond District. It demonstrates a unique kind of arrogance, not to mention terrible research skills, to suggest that every Google employee is gravitating to the Mission (or even the Tenderloin) simply for the dubious honor of "slumming it" or "living amongst the hipsters." It simply isn't true. Google employees live everywhere. And not all of them are VPs of Engineering-turned-IPO millionaires. Some of them are administrative assistants, HR staffers, mail room clerks, and cooks. Yes, cooks. Did you think they all lived in Mountain View?
I also find it interesting that Elliott has no bone to pick with Kink.com, whose headquarters sit squarely in the middle of the Mission and whose recession-proof income-generating power is attracting plenty of young talent of all varieties. And no, I'm not talking about the actors. I'm talking about the Editors, Web Developers, Marketing Managers, Designers, and other tech/marketing positions they fill. Kink.com was paying very competitively, the last time I checked.
Don't be ridiculous. I'm not suggesting that Kink.com is on par with Google. But, you know, they can clearly afford to pay $14.5 million for the Armory, essentially a behemoth setting for shoots. It stands to reason that they pay their employees well. Their employees live in the Mission and can afford the skyrocketing rents. They are, in proportion to their size, as "responsible" for the gentrification that Elliott is attributing to one company alone.
Oh, wait. Forget everything I just said. Kink.com is okay. They make Elliott's preferred flavor of porn. Awesome.
Stephen, if you truly represent starving artists, how were you able to afford a place in the Mission at the height of the first dot-com boom?
Let me make clear that I didn't mean to suggest that I was quoting you by placing quotation marks around "slumming it" and "living amongst the hipsters." Those are turns of phrase that are bandied about commonly and I was placing them in quotes in order to differentiate from things I might say in my own voice. So let it be known that you never actually used those words.
However, and this time, I'll quote you properly:
"And the young Google employees, many making well over $100,000 a year, who move to places like the Mission for the art and diversity, are unintentionally devastating the neighborhoods they love."
That, more or less, sounds very much like the sentiment I gleaned, that Google employees move to these areas and without understanding exactly how, ruin them. If you want to mince words -- well, fine.
"...the Mission and Tenderloin, where Google employees are clustered..."
"...there are many employees who move to the city because there is a comfortable Google Shuttle to take them to work. And many of them want to be a short walk to one of the shuttle stops."
You are, in fact, suggesting that Google employees place themselves in these neighborhoods specifically to be within walking distance to a shuttle. That's absurd. The Mission/Noe Valley is a popular area to live in, period. Ask any of the idiots hanging out in front of Ritual Roasters. You are not considering some very basic facts: (a) a lot of these people already called these areas home (Google planned these routes according to how many people lived there) and (b) again, there are plenty of other neighborhoods that have pick-up and drop-off points. If the number of Mission dwellers have grown -- well, it's proportional to the general growth of the area.
I respect your point of view and can completely understand your concern and indignation. If take a moment to consider a reader's view of your published opinion, though, you might acknowledge that there's a slightly accusatory tone to your editorial that is, well, offensive. I don't work for Google but I do work for another technology company that also provides San Francisco dwellers with a shuttle service and it's just a little bit presumptuous of you to assume that workers like us are taking a big dump all over your neighborhood simply for the pleasure of doing so. You make a point of calling out our mean incomes ("well over $100,000 a year" and "six-figure incomes") and ages ("young," you said), as though we are a bunch of spoiled, over-privileged brats who shouldn't be concerned with things like a lengthy commute to work and don't deserve to have our pains eased a bit. That's just crap. You, of all people, should appreciate how offensive generalization can be.
I share f00bar's question, which you so elegantly dodged: assuming you moved to the Mission 8 years ago, how did you afford the insane rents at the height of the boom?
Stephen Elliot worked at a failed dot-com called ROIDirect.Com/Fabrik Communications during that time.
Who do you think is supporting all those restaurants, dive bars, clubs, galleries, parties, gourmet shops, speakeasies, bike stores, clothing lines, book stores, bands, DJs, and indie boutiques that make the Mission a great place to live?
Ironically, the only national chains in the entire neighborhood are catering to lower-income residents. Googlers sure as hell aren't eating at Popeye's Chicken or shopping at Sketchers.
Go fuck yourself. And don't eat at a nice restaurant in the Mission ever again, don't ever shop at Aquarius, don't ever step foot in Shoe Biz, don't ever pay $2.25 for a coffee at Philz if you want to keep it so fucking real. Real Mission folk CAN'T AFFORD THAT SHIT. So you shouldn't buy it either. Right?
Bullshit. This sort of commerce is keeping the Mission alive, pal. And in case you didn't know it, the Mish is LARGELY OVER anyway. The "artists" are now mostly at Mid-Market and the Loin. It's already "gentrified." And guess what? Real Mission people, like working moms, are glad for the safe streets.
I teach kids in the Mission, and in Bernal, dork. We WANT safety. A bus for Google employees is evil?
-- Dojo1, Mission since '96.
I personally can't wait for neighbors who:
-don't shoot each other (happens every month w/i a couple blocks of my house)
-take care of their house
-don't dump their garbage in the street
-don't tag
-don't shit on the sidewalk
And if the way for that to happen is Google employees, bring em on!
tired of the mess at 24th & Florida
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