At the end of June, my neighbor moved out. Since then, the landlord has had various crews come to deep clean the apartment, paint the place, and make what repairs they needed to make. Last night there was an open house. The email to the tenants in the building said due to the high interest in the unit, we should expect heavier than normal foot traffic. To avoid the noise and commotion outside of my door, I left.
I’m not crazy about the prospect of having a new neighbor – especially since my last neighbor was seldom home which made him a near-perfect neighbor (aside from his rumbling BMW in the garage). Moreover, I can pretty much guess the type of neighbor I will get. The unit is going for $4,200 per month… and well, school teachers or nurses or basically anyone with a job that isn’t in tech or finance won’t be able to afford $4,200 per month. And since it’s a one bedroom unit, I don’t think a family or a couple will be moving in. The only thing I can hope for is that my landlord is a good judge of character and won’t rent to a complete jerk. They advertise on their website that they are a conscientious landlord, and my experiences with them support that claim. Besides, they rented to me, and I’m a pretty stand-up guy. So maybe it’ll be someone cool or interesting or decent. I’m not counting on it.
The price sticks in my craw. I hate that this city is as expensive as it is and that with every tech boom, it only gets more so. For far too long, politicians have used the scare tactic of inflation as a reason to not raise the minimum wage, at the same time enacting tax breaks for the wealthy and touting the disastrous policy of trickle down economics. The truth is, when there is widespread income inequality (as there is here in the Bay Area), everything gets more expensive, and very little trickles down. What this means to a person like me is that I can almost guarantee that the city will continue to attract people who chase money as opposed to ideas or beauty – essentially, people who are decidedly not like me.
Worse still, many of our local politicians seem to court this type of economic development. As a lefty who wishes we had more space for artists and bartenders and the “non-professional” class, I’m disappointed in the direction the city is headed. We’ve passed laws that requiring drug testing for people on public assistance, and allow shelters to evict people for drug use. Both of those measure are not considered best practices. They are punitive in nature and will most-likely put more people on the streets. At the same time, our supervisors just approved reducing the minimum requirement for affordable housing in new developments. It used to be that new housing developments (apartment buildings) had to have 15% of their units set aside as affordable. In the misguided hope that lowering the rate will spur development, our supervisors dropped that mandate to 5% – even though it’s the cost of labor and materials coupled with high interest rates (not the percentage of affordable units) that is stalling most projects. When housing is treated as an investment and not as a basic human right, developers salivate at the idea of building market rate or luxury housing and balk at affordability.
In yet another politically right-leaning turn, the city also seems to be going all-in on tech surveillance. They’ve increased the usage of police drones, license plate readers, and speed cameras everywhere. The drones are particularly disturbing given that recent footage was accidentally posted on a public site, and the drones were frequently recording things that were not criminal activities (as covered in this Wired investigation). Similarly, license plate readers pose significant challenges to individual privacy. Police officers in multiple municipalities across the country have misused the readers to stalk former romantic partners or strangers who caught their eye. We are very quickly moving towards a surveillance dystopia in which the expectation of privacy is quickly disappearing. San Francisco seems all to eager to jump in with both feet.
As much as I love the city, more and more often, I find myself wondering who San Francisco “belongs” to. The idealist in me says it belongs to everyone or it belongs to anyone who wants to be a part of it. The economic reality is that it belongs an odd combination of legacy “old money” people, to those who were blessed by good timing and established themselves before the various booms, and to with what one recent book reviewer called the newer transplants, “techie carpetbaggers.” In my more contemplative moments, I feel stuck between two realities: the city is still full of “regular folks” and it is increasingly attracting young people brainwashed by influencers and tech and the overwhelming desire to get in on the ground floor, make mad money, and cash out quickly. Nearly all of my friends fall into the “regular folks” category. They don’t have a lot of money, but they earn enough to stay. Most of them live with the golden handcuffs of rent control – meaning they can’t leave or move because they can’t afford current market rates. Despite being surrounded by this everyday reality, I’m also inundated with news of tech growth, skyrocketing costs, and the soon to be newly minted millionaires of SF (when the AI companies go public).
As best as I can tell, there is little upside to having such income inequality or having a glut of wealth in the city. When the IPOs hit, an entire crop of new millionaires will emerge. If they stay, things will get more expensive. If they leave, we’ll likely experience another bust. If the bubble pops, a lot of people (not just in SF) will lose their shirts – almost every retirement account is tied up in the AI boom.
Admittedly, some of my grumbling stems from jealousy… stems from the egocentric belief that I came here for the right reasons and all of these other people came here for the wrong reasons. Some of my grumbling stems from the galling idea that a whole bunch of people are getting rich off of a technology that will not only put people out of work but looks to be an unmitigated climate disaster. People shouldn’t get obscenely rich at the expense of other people.
One thing that isn’t helping as I navigate these conflicting feelings about this magical and strange place, is that I’m also reading Season of the Witch, an unvarnished history of San Francisco in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The loving “utopia” that sprang out of the beat movement and the hippies has a very dark underbelly of crime, murder, and false prophets. There is a long history of people coming here to live out their idyllic dreams as well as people coming here to exploit whomever and whatever they can for their personal gains. What seems to be missing from today’s San Francisco is a viable counter-culture movement to question and challenge the status quo. Even in the earlier days of the tech boom, there was an underground punk vibe to the work that was being done. Then, the internet was seen as a wild force that could democratize information and bring people together. Now, it seems like it’s mostly used to sell us things or swindle us out of our money (gambling apps, targeted advertising, misleading AI slop). Today’s evangelists seem to revel in inauthenticity and because they’ve dismantled or taken over the means of communication, dissident voices are fractured and drowned out by the noise.
I’m not sure what to do about any of this, or if anything needs to be (or can be) done. After vacating my apartment for the evening and meandering around North Beach (to check out a writer’s group that I didn’t join), I made my way back to my refuge of “regular folks,” my neighborhood bar. There, I ended up talking with a couple who I’ve gotten to know over the past few months. I was sharing some of my mixed feelings about the city. The woman said my appreciation for the city seems far deeper than one would expect from a relative new comer. She said she hopes I don’t give up on it, the city needs people want it to be all of the things that it can be. I said the problem with wanting to make this place better (either through the arts or fighting for greater equality) is that it’s getting increasingly expensive to do so and market forces are headed in the wrong direction. Grassroots efforts are being priced out, and the cost to enter into any market (weather its a bar or music venue or a one bedroom apartment) are prohibitive to all but those with significant income or investments and our political machinery seems ok with that.