With Soaring Rents and a Vanishing Middle Class, San Francisco Becomes a City for the Rich [View all]

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With Soaring Rents and a Vanishing Middle Class, San Francisco Becomes a City for the Rich

Tuesday, 15 December 2015 00:00
By Adam Hudson, Truthout | Report


In San Francisco's November election - in which Mayor Ed Lee was re-elected - housing was the number one issue. Two major progressive ballot measures related to housing were defeated: One would have regulated Airbnb by limiting the number of short-term vacation rentals, while the other would have put a moratorium on development in the city's Mission District.

Airbnb spent over $8 million to defeat the proposition that would have regulated it. Even though the development moratorium lost, progressives promise to continue fighting against "market-rate" housing development in the Mission and other neighborhoods, the issue being that few people in San Francisco can afford "market-rate" housing, except those who are rich.

In addition to tenants themselves, nonprofit organizations that assist tenants are also feeling the pain of gentrification. Two San Francisco nonprofits that help tenants avoid eviction - Eviction Defense Collaborative and Tenants Together - are, ironically, getting kicked out of their offices to make room for WeWork, an office-space provider company.

What's happening in San Francisco is not just a story about one city; it's a story of what is happening to urban areas around the globe. As the days go by, San Francisco is solidifying itself as a city for the wealthy, putting it on par with wealth havens like New York City, London and Singapore, where long-time residents have been pushed out and replaced by corporations and the super-rich.

Super High Rents

The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $3,500 per month, according to real estate website Zumper's latest monthly report for November. In October, median rent for a one-bedroom was $3,670 per month, making this the first rent decrease to occur in a while - a decrease of 4.6 percent. However, San Francisco monthly rents remain astronomically high compared to other cities like Chicago and Washington, DC, which are $1,980 and $2,160, respectively. ...............(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34031-with-soaring-rents-and-a-vanishing-middle-class-san-francisco-becomes-a-city-for-the-rich