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Comment by dntrkv | Hacker News Reader

It happened to my family. We're definitely not a wealthy or well-connected family. We lost our home in the recession, my dad's business went from doing great to completely closed. We moved to a tiny house in a cheap neighborhood. Started a new business and worked and saved and now we're almost back to where we were before the recession.

I'm not saying we shouldn't help these people, but if you are complaining about not being able to get by in the most expensive city in the country, I really don't have any sympathy for you.

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>>I'm not saying we shouldn't help these people, but if you are complaining about not being able to get by in the most expensive city in the country, I really don't have any sympathy for you.

I have sympathy for them, because the current tech-boom is displacing(or greatly accelerating a process that was already happening much faster than they can handle.) them and I think that's a shame. IMHO, what makes SF great is its diversity. For reasons I won't get into right now(could probably write a book on it), diversity & high-income don't overlap too much... so watching high-income people displace the diversity is sad to me. I believe it to be a worthy goal to preserve SF's diversity of culture & history like this lady carries; preventing events like this from happening. I don't know how though, but I definitely don't think it's okay to lose it.

Build baby, build.

This. The tech boom isn't at fault here. The refusal to make the necessary changes that allow the housing supply to grow is to blame.

Basically, San Francisco voters are responsible for the evictions, whether they be natives, long-time residents or recent tech transplants.

Grow at the expense of what though? So you tear down anything you can to increase SF's ability to hold all the things techies enjoy... and then one day, all this booming goes away and you're left with... http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/3433 ...kinda like the real-estate boom. Build houses anywhere & everywhere because everyone suddenly can afford a house(or at least get the loan)... then one day that isn't the case and you're left with a bunch of empty houses everywhere in places that could have been schools, parks, community centers, living areas for those of low-income.

When you increase fancy apartments for techies, the businesses/services around them will also appear and take up more land. More jobs sure, but those salaries aren't going to be able to buy a place near their job ...since the location of the job is probably near the high-paid techies. I still don't understand that Gamestop on market street, SF. Someone needs to interview them and blog about it. Where do those employees live? How do they survive?

I almost wish SF would enforce a limit on how many tech job holders are allowed to live in SF. Not necessarily the ultimate solution, but I think this gentrification needs to be throttled while someone comes up with the ultimate-solution... or just wait out this tech-boom and the problem would go away on its own.

Or you could get something like Manhattan, which seems more likely than a repeat of Dubai in 2009.

Reading socialistworld.net will only make you more confused about economic issues like these. I'd suggest any basic economics text as a good place to get started.

Build where? SF is hemmed in by hills and ocean. Housing is mostly low rise, but dense and very much in the style of Tokyo given similar issues (earthquakes). Then you have a bunch of beautiful Victorians to tear down before you can build some dense high rise housing.

SF is quite dense already, not like the exclusive suburbs to the south.

In a normal place this is accomplished by increasing building height, increasing the building's footprint and reducing the unit size. No additional land needs to be used and higher density increases efficiency of services such as mass transit as well reducing environmental impact.

Unfortunately SF has some of the most restrictive zoning rules anywhere and, as described in the article, construction usually involves evicting tenants paying well below market rent. Given the highly litigious and politicized environment it is much more likely to get worse than better.

Up.

SF is 4x less dense than Manhattan, for example.

I mentioned Tokyo, which is as low rise as SF. You can build up on faults, but the construction costs (use more steel) are much higher, so it happens less often than geologically more stable locations (like NYC).

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