The Bleaching of San Francisco: Extreme Gentrification and Suburbanized Poverty in the Bay Area

[haele]

54. If they work there, they would want to live there.

You think the city of SF is going to require their contractors pay clerks, security guards and janitors at least $80K a year as a minimum wage to be able to live close enough just to be able to work on time - because they're not dropping the kids off at daycare at 4am, catching the van-pool to the BART at 5am to just be on the job at 8am?
You think restaurants are going to pay their cooks and wait-staff more than $30 an hour so that they can live within 5 miles of the job site and won't be stressed out of their minds trying to get to work on time and still be able to take care of things at home?

The problem is not just that someone wants "the privilege" to live in the Mission or Castro Districts; the problem is that even a 250sq.ft. unfurnished "pay your own utilities" cold-water studio over a bar in the Tenderloin or Waterfront districts is out of reach for the average minimum-wage SF worker at near $1500 a month rent, and they're forced to look far outside the city to be able to find a large enough affordable apartment or home for themselves or their families.
SF is old, with limited area for housing and an in-city workforce at least five times over the actual capability for the city infrastructure to comfortably support - and there is no where left to expand unless they are willing to plow up the existing green areas and parks (that currently attract a significant amount of tourist dollars) to put in more housing for people who can't afford the "gentrified" pricing of housing within the city.
Traffic is a nightmare on spiderwebs of narrow, historic streets and loop freeways and highways; and public transportation, while pretty good, still sucks if the only places you can afford to live are thirty to sixty miles away.
There are hundreds of thousands of people who work in SF at near minimum wage who can't find a decent place to house themselves and their families near enough to their jobs to bike to work or spend less than an hour one way on public transportation.

While gentrification can be beneficial for "the atmosphere" of a neighborhood, it tends to displace people who were living there for decades previous who can't afford to pay the new rents or, in most cases, move. That's why rent control policies are crucial to create housing stability for the majority of workers who aren't in glamorous or high-paying jobs and are going to be renting all their life because the post-WWII boom is over and the shrinking working middle class aren't making enough in wages to responsibly buy and keep up property and a house any more. Not to mention the thousands retirees who have been maintaining the same previously apartment for over 30 to 50 years, and can't conceive of moving.

There needs to be a balance between housing and housing costs that don't force people out into the streets with nowhere to go just because "the Market" can charge more because there's a bunch of new grad-school technocrats spending money (that they should be saving for that now obvious forced retirement they will be experiencing in the next two decades when they're no longer "fresh and young&quot just to live in the hip new neighborhood - until they get laid off and can't find another job.

I've seen this happen to too many "gentrified" neighborhoods. House flipping is rampant, because people

Haele