
The Google Shuttle Effect:  Gentrification and San Francisco's Dot Com Boom 2.0 - jjhageman
http://svenworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Goldman_PRFinal.pdf
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npinguy
The city is free to mandate subsidized housing ratios in the neighborhoods it
is worried about becoming gentrified.

Maybe it doesn't because it wants the property tax revenue from the highly
paid tech employees that live in these neighborhoods but don't use as many of
the city services (including, most evidently, the public transport).

This is like the OPPOSITE of what Wal-Mart is infamous for - paying their
employees as little as they can, and forcing them to depend on millions of
dollars of federal subsidies like food stamps to actually make ends meet.

Gentrification is a real social concern that needs careful but focused
solutions. But it is a goddamn travesty that all the discussion is focused on
"Google" (really all Silicon Valley tech companies that are doing this stuff),
and the employees that have the audacity of being highly skilled, highly
desired, and are willing to put up with a long commute to stay in the city.

They pay city taxes, they put money into the local economy, and they're the
enemy? And don't give me the garbage that they spend all their time at the
company offices. If that was the case, they'd just live in the valley and save
on rent. They live in San Fran because they want to spend money on the things
that you can do in San Fran that you can't do in the suburban sprawl hell that
is the valley.

This isn't a "99%" thing. Everyone involved here is in the 99%.

~~~
temp42564356
> The city is free to mandate subsidized housing ratios in the neighborhoods
> it is worried about becoming gentrified.

Subsidized housing doesn't prevent gentrification, it just shifts rental
profits from landlords to subletters, while depriving the city of tax income
on the market value of the housing.

> Gentrification is a real social concern

Why? Why is it that nobody bemaons the pricing of gucci watches or belgian
caviar or first class airline seats, but as soon as it's "living in one of the
most desirable neighboods in the world", all reason has to go out the window?
Clearly not everyone who wants to live in San Francisco can live in San
Francisco, why aren't we talking about the millions of people in (for example)
Somalia who are being prevented from moving to Mission Hill by gentrification?
Why is it just those who by accident of history decided to _rent_ (which by
it's very nature is temporary occupancy) in SF that need to be now subsidized?

~~~
untog
> Why? Why is it that nobody bemaons the pricing of gucci watches

Because the sale of Gucci watches does not push more affordable watches off
the marketplace and out of the hands of people who do not have enough money
for more.

The issue with gentrification is this: it ruins existing communities and takes
opportunities away from people that don't have many to begin with.

People have to move from the neighbourhood they've known for decades with good
facilities and schools to an area considerably further away from the job
market, bringing down their quality of life and reducing the chances that
they'll ever be prosperous enough to live in the neighbourhood they've just
been forced out of. But hey, smart, innovative kids will still rise up, right?
Well, no, because now they're nowhere near the good schools and after school
programs. Neither they nor their parents have the opportunities that others
do. It's not exactly the kind of meritocracy Silicon Valley champions.

The very fact that you think these people are _deciding_ to rent speaks
volumes. Not everyone can afford to buy a house or get approved for a
mortgage. They _have_ to rent, and are increasingly powerless to stop these
kind of changes. Gentrification is not all negatives, but are you seriously
saying you can't see why people would be angry about it?

~~~
fennecfoxen
The underlying injury is that people who feel they belong to a neighborhood
cannot afford live there anymore. Now, as a society, there are a variety of
ways to entitle someone to live in a neighborhood: primarily, by owning a home
in the neighborhood, or possibly by coming to an arrangement with the owner
voluntarily (a long-term lease negotiated up front, or continually paying more
money, commensurate with the rising rents).

We also have other ways. San Francisco's rent control is one such way. It
entitles the tenant to continued occupancy and limits the rent the owner can
charge that tenant. Of course, this has significant negative side effects. It
deliberately fails to respect the owner's interests, instead rejecting him as
an invalid actor, some sort of Evil Capitalist type. It effectively functions
as a wealth transfer from the owner to the renter, in the form of foregone
rent increases. This naturally changes the capitalist's incentives, inhibiting
the maintenance of and formation of new capital (specifically the capital we
call a "housing stock"), and provides other perverse incentives for the
landlord to mess with tenants.

In the case of San Francisco, this housing shortfall exacerbates its problems
by raising the price of all housing... a humanitarian tragedy far in excess of
mere neighborhood-dissolution. Not that this is the only thing that inhibits
homebuilding in the Bay Area, though.

------
jelkins
I am mystified by housing/anti-gentrification advocates' refusal to consider
building new housing stock as a solution to this problem. And what's with
"luxury housing" snub? You can't prevent highly paid tech workers from moving
into the city without restricting their freedom of movement.. so why not make
some room for them? The "historic character" of neighborhoods doesn't have to
be ruined, either.

I'm not opposed to something like her Community Benefits Agreements, as long
as it actually does speed the approval process up. Of course, it might be hard
to get off the ground, since "While the community coalition might be a
representative group, there is no oversight to guarantee appropriate
representation", and the rest of the community will always be arguing over who
has the right to represent them.

~~~
temp42564356
> I am mystified by housing/anti-gentrification advocates' refusal to consider
> building new housing stock as a solution to this problem.

Because an anti-gentrification advocate is bascially saying, "you don't have
the right to desire to live in my neighborhood, only I should be allowed to
desire to live in my neighborhood"

~~~
JohnTHaller
"... that I moved to as part of the last round of gentrification."

~~~
Crito
That's the real kicker. They are _all_ "forty-niners".

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temp42564356
tl;dr: The City of San Fancisco should prohibit Google buses until Google
promises to magically repeal the laws of economics that rents increase when
demand exceeds supply.

EDIT:

The paper specifically recommends that the city prevent Google buses from
stopping to pick up passengers until Google enters into "Community Benefits
Agreements" (CBAs), the purpose of which is to "foster changes" and "mitigate
impact".

Unfortunately, it's obvious to any rational person that Google cannot change
human nature via any kind of CBA. Hell, they can't even get me to sign up for
Google+!

The thing that makes the paper super-funny, are the types of things the author
be included in these CBAs would be agreements to "hire locally", which would
require Google to open new offices in San Francicso, which would... further
increase rents. Funding for parks, which would... further increase rents. Job
training, which would increase wages and... further increase rents.

But hey, we could all live in a Marxist paradise if people would all just
magically stop being humans who want what's best for themselves.

~~~
nielsbot
...so you haven't actually read the paper

~~~
temp42564356
I read the paper. 90% of it was hand waving that could be boiled down to a
grudging acceptance that demand exceeds supply, and drives up rents, and the
remaing 10% was wishful thinking about how to change reality so that rents
would somehow dip below market-clearing rates.

------
kevinpet
I wasn't aware until now that "city planning" was so much marxist navel
gazing. Am I supposed to just assume that rising rents and gentrification are
a bad thing?

~~~
pacaro
Indeed. I waded through the whole thing, trying to mentally rewrite it in a
wikipedia NPOV voice. I failed.

I was also heartily amused that IPO deserved a footnote, but the reader is
expected to swallow 'neoliberal urbanism' whole.

An interesting undertone is introduced very early on, there is a quote:

“many first-stage (sweat equity) gentrifiers have sold their property to new
(very well-off gentrifiers), who are regentrifying property in the
neighborhood”

To me this implies the idea that a tech workers income is not sweat equity,
that it is either undeserved or un-earned—while this may be true for some, it
fails to recognize the work that most of us put in at every level of
schooling, at work and on our own time

~~~
ken_railey
"sweat equity" specifically means doing repairs to a property to increase its
value, as opposed to building equity by making payments. A tech worker's
income is not sweat equity.

------
yonran
This master’s thesis does provide some evidence that shuttle stops are
correlated with localized rent increases. This is a survey rather than an
experiment; there’s no way to tell whether the shuttle lines caused rent
increases, or whether they simply started in already up-and-coming
neighborhoods. It’s also impossible to tell whether the desirability is due to
shuttles or other transit; all the chosen shuttle stops (“selected by the San
Francisco Tenants’ Union”!) are also within a couple blocks of a Bart station
or the intersection of major Muni bus lines. I wish she had at least compared
these locations to other Bart and Muni stops that don’t have shuttles
(although admittedly this can be difficult). She also makes no attempt to
correct for geography or neighborhood differences and just assumes that the
annulus around a circle contains “similar units in the same neighborhood.”

I doubt that this would be too useful to the greater debate, however. The real
problem is not that a few bus stops are getting too expensive; it’s that _the
entire city and peninsula are getting too expensive_. And to discuss that, we
really need to quote the number of housing units and the number of jobs in the
area.

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ChuckMcM
Not sure I agree with all of it, the data on rents of 1 and 2 br units within
and not within walking distance didn't see particularly convincing. But I
really appreciate that the approached it methodically and could share that
with us (a requirement for the project I know, I still appreciate it).

I get kind of lost on the economic justice angle though. I'm not sure what an
economically "just" city would entail.

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cnorgate
This article is confusing cause and effect. Bus routes have been opened to
cater to people who choose to live in desirable neighborhoods. It's not the
buses that make the neighborhood desirable. If all googlers decided they
wanted to live in Marin, I would bet that google would send a bus up there in
a heartbeat.

~~~
rodrodrod
I'd imagine it's at least partially a feedback loop. Bus routes are determined
by looking at where employees live, and figuring out the optimal locations for
stops, which I'd imagine is how the first routes opened up. For new
employees/employees moving who are figuring out where to live, though,
proximity to a shuttle stop seems like a relevant factor in the decision. If
nothing else, not having shuttle service could be a point against living in a
given neighborhood. I'd imagine if you took away shuttle service away from one
neighborhood (just for the sake of argument), you would probably see a gradual
decline in the number of employees living there.

Thing is, it'd be hard to quantify to what extent shuttle service availability
influences the decision making process, so I'm not sure how much we can say
about the net effect of shuttle routes on demand for living in a particular
neighborhood.

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WalterSear
Thanks providing something concrete to go with all the hand waving on all
sides of this.

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chooseybeggar
I gladly welcome more study in general. Every conversation on this topic is
either anti-gentrification hand-wringing or self-victimization by
oversensitive tech professionals. More data, less sensationalism.

