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Comment by kmeisthax | Hacker News Reader

I'm not surprised. As far as I can tell, the only thing the San Francisco government wants is for poor people to leave so they can stop reducing property values. This is the same city council that deliberately plans to have half the housing units they actually need, after all. The entire city is one big real estate scam being foisted on tech companies, and people living in it just get in the way.

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There's a distinction between the poor and the homeless. As much as they don't understand cost of living for the working class, they bend over backwards for the homeless, and needles and shit in streets doesn't exactly raise property values.

> for poor people to leave

Are you talking about poor or homeless? I've seen the footage and if it's the same in real life(drugs, hordes of homeless) then residents would be glad too.

Texas is next. Companies are moving out of SF for Texas.

You assume the companies are the source of the shenanigans, which I disagree with. It seems counter productive for a tech company to want their worker's cost of living to be higher, as that just means they will cost more.

The reality is the companies create a large inelastic demand for living space, and the local government and property owners of exploit that for profit. If you just create adequate supply (build residential), or constrain demand (don't build office space), the problem doesn't happen.

I'm not so sure that it's counterproductive, because the senior leadership of those tech companies is also frequently part of the local NIMBY class.

They have the same general characteristics as the local NIMBY class, but I think I'd want to see more evidence that they are actually members of that class. It's a substantial accusation to make without evidence, especially since you purport to link that to tech companies being NIMBY by policy -- again, a claim I've not seen evidence for.

Only one half of the equation (new residential) is affected by NIMBY-ism. No new residential is fine, just don't build more office space then. That requires local governments not to endlessly expand spending though, so obviously impossible.

Free internet for the poor also improves political organizing which could be a net negative for the ultra wealthy.

Literally anything that changes anything 'could be a negative for the ultra wealthy'.

It also improves the ability to gaslight those minorities via targeted advertising. Not that newstainment doesn't do the same.

I really hope the employees who follow don’t vote like they did in CA. I’ve seen first hand the effect that had on politics in WA. I hope TX avoids the same fate.

Well they don't. If you look at polling from the last election, what is turning Texas blue is hispanics turning 18, what's keeping it red are people moving into Texas.

During election season I saw billboards here about like: Are you new from a state of blue? Remember in November why you came to Texas

A WSJ reader letter welcomed a fleeing VC but stated, "I would only ask Mr. Lonsdale and his fellow economic migrants to carefully consider that they are arriving as refugees, not as missionaries."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blue-peril-threatens-texas-refu...

> This is the same city council that deliberately plans to have half the housing units they actually need

Should cities be compelled to keep growing as long as there is demand? Are they not allowed to say "this much is enough - there are plenty other places to go"?

I've never found "first come first served" to be a satisfying answer to municipal determinations.

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