
Gentrification Spreads an Upheaval in San Francisco’s Mission District - zonotope
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/us/high-rents-elbow-latinos-from-san-franciscos-mission-district.html
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lnanek2
I wish they had a reasonable argument that benefitted everyone. They want the
owners of properties not to be able to set the rent. But my family had an
apartment building in NJ that unfortunately, due to laws, we couldn't raise
the rent more than a set amount per year. Soon there was just no way to even
pay for maintenance when the roof leaked and things like that and it had to be
shutdown.

So giving these people what they want, the ability to force owners not to
raise rent, just does not benefit anyone in the end.

She runs a chile shop, how would she feel if protestors were sitting in front
of city hall demanding she can only charge ten cents per bowl of chile? Sure
the protestors love the idea of nearly free food, but that is just going to
kill the business, not give them nearly free food forever.

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ChuckMcM
And that is the problem in a nutshell. Price fixing a single thing (in this
case rents) means the market moves without those prices changing and that
results in huge imbalances.

Now if the NJ government funded a fixed rate building maintenance team you're
family could use the price appropriate maintenance team to keep the building
in repair, of course they could not pay them market wages (that is why
maintenance costs more) so the people working for the maintenance group would
have to go to the state run stores where they could get their fixed priced
foodstuffs. Of course the manufacturers selling to that store would need fixed
price ingredients which you would get from state run farms selling their crops
at a set price.

It is a silly ad nauseum sort of response but the kernel is accurate, you
cannot successfully control one aspect of prices without somebody getting
disadvantaged. Since you want more housing, the answer is to let people build
more market rate housing, not to control rents.

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sliverstorm
_Since you want more housing..._

Trouble is what people _really_ want is for nothing at all to change. Prices
stay flat, no new housing is built, nobody gets evicted, no new people come to
town.

Sadly, since they want to have their cake and to eat it too, nobody seems to
be approaching it from the POV of:

 _We are up against an inexorable force of change; how do we channel that
change in a way that is most acceptable?_

Instead they demand the impossible and lose all control of where that
inexorable force is going to take them.

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williamcotton
I know us programers have a proclivity towards binary thinking, but these
people aren't arguing for a world without any change, just a way to decrease
the volatility of a housing market that fluctuates beyond human scale.

Humans are big, blundering slow moving beasts at the top of the food chain. It
takes us years to settle in to new homes and communities and find our
footings. Having rents double over just a few years is just too much for most
people to handle.

Call it "rent stabilization", not "rent control" and it makes more sense. The
goal is to slow the rates of change and make sure things are happening at
human scale. Real estate, contract law and marketplaces are all human
constructions and we shouldn't let them get the best of us.

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anaximander
_Luxury condominiums, organic ice cream stores, cafes that serve soy lattes
and chocolate shops that offer samples from Ecuador and Madagascar are rapidly
replacing 99-cent stores, bodegas and rent-controlled apartments in the
Mission District_

It's a minor tragedy to set up the conflict this way. "Largely useless and
hedonistic shops replacing stores that actually matter! How long can the city
tolerate these too-wealthy, dandy scum?!"

Certainly, if the stores are being replaced, that's a function of property-
owners' decisions to change tenants, is it not? Why are we blaming
financially-successful technologists for actions taken by greedy land-owners?
Don't you think these "gentrifiers" would be happy to pay the same amount that
the "natives" have been paying for so long?

The property-owners are extracting as much from the world as they can, because
they have a monopoly on the land/property and nobody except maybe the
government can argue with them. They were taking as much as they could from
you before, and now they're taking as much as they can from the wealthier
people moving in. This is capitalism: they've earned their right to set the
price for their property by buying it/building it/inheriting it before you
did.

What options do we have, if we want this to change? Let's not pit the victims
against each other.

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patcon
imho the landlords shouldn't shoulder the blame either. Regional wealth in
general seems to lead to a surplus of culture consumers and a deficit of
culture creators, for a variety of structural reasons.

it's funny, because we conflate two sides of gentrification that are actually
separate: 1) the harsh reality we impose on oppressed communities of people
living in poverty, and 2) the loss of artistic culture-creators from a
neighborhood that they are living in because society doesn't know how to
reward those who create culture.

Both the marginalized and creative artistic class share a problem, and so have
reason for solidarity, but they're not necessarily tightly coupled in all
possible societies.

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jkot
> _luxury condominiums .... are rapidly replacing ... rent-controlled
> apartments in the Mission District_

Anyone who comments on this subject should disclose if they hold rent-
controlled apartment. It is a huge conflict of interest. I know from my own
country, how journalists and politicians will jump through hoops to keep it.

Also article tries to create unfair image of new comers. If I would move to
SF, I would probably shop in a dollar store as well, since I have children.

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snappy173
It's ironic ... The NIMBY's didn't want the BART to go through their
neighborhoods, but having two stops in Mission is part of why it's so
attractive now.

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skybrian
So they were right? Unless they wanted to sell.

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snappy173
No. The concern is that it makes it easier for the wrong type of people to get
there ... from Oakland, etc.

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nulltype
My understanding of the NIMBY thing is it's either: A) keep everything the way
it is so that things don't change for me or B) keep everything the way it is
so that my home value goes up. The arguments you use to enact a NIMBY strategy
are not really important.

So type A NIMBYs were "right" in that they didn't want BART to go through
their neighborhood because it would case the neighborhood to change, and lo
and behold it did. Type B NIMBYs were "wrong" if they argued against BART
because it had a positive effect on their home values.

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sethbannon
There is clearly a problem with the rapid rise in inequality and the tensions
gentrification create within a community like The Mission District, but what's
the solution? Have there been successful efforts elsewhere that have helped
moderate the negative effects of such rapid changes?

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sliverstorm
Can there be a solution? I don't really think so. More people want to live
there than the area can fit. Someone has to lose out. The newcomers think they
should get to live there because they have a lot of money to pay for scarce
resource. The incumbents think they should get to live there because they were
there first. Right or wrong, one group loses.

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bhickey
Here's a politically infeasible solution: Make the pie bigger. People want to
live in San Francisco because Silicon Valley is an awful alternative. What are
some concrete steps we could take to increase the stock of housing?

* Repeal Prop 13. While Prop 13 stands, cities have a huge interest in combating new residential development because it'll erode the tax base. It serves as a tax on newcomers and discourages people from moving and downsizing.

* Prohibit rent control, it's the surest way to destroy housing stock short of bombing.

* Strip local zoning authority from municipalities. Los Altos Hills has a 1 acre lot requirement and prohibits multi-family construction. Menlo Park has a 30' height limit and a 15' curb setback requirement.

* Institute land value tax. It's inexcusable that 24th Street is surrounded with two-story construction. Compare it with Central Square in Cambridge: [https://www.google.com/maps/@42.365178,-71.103326,3a,75y,273...](https://www.google.com/maps/@42.365178,-71.103326,3a,75y,273.3h,96.9t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s5En2leDaMgVcLGj9Lt2POQ!2e0)

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sliverstorm
_People want to live in San Francisco because Silicon Valley is an awful
alternative._

Maybe that's the answer right there. San Francisco doesn't need to fix itself
if Silicon Valley can be made attractive, and Silicon Valley has a lot more
space than San Fran.

~~~
sthu11182
the only construction i see is in redwood city. the rest refuse to change.

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pbreit
The statistic that "29% of rental inventory is being leased on AirBnB" is
absurd. They're calculating it on the number of rentals that just happen to be
unoccupied/available right now which makes no sense at all as a statistic.

