
Protesters Smash Google Shuttle Bus Piñata In Fight Against Rent Increases - chengyinliu
http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/06/protesters-smash-google-bus-pinata/
======
rayiner
Rents wouldn't be going up so fast if these protestors were protesting
draconian building and zoning laws instead of Google employees. NIMBY-ism
hurts lower income people first.

~~~
subsystem
Do you have anything to back that up? I would imagine that most lower income
people have already been hit and preserving status quo might be in the
interest of anyone who has managed to stay. At least in the short run.

~~~
rayiner
Rent control drives up rents for everyone who isn't in a rent controlled
apartment. Those higher rents affect the young guy working at Starbucks, who
is unlikely to have a rent controlled apartment, before it affects the young
guy who works at Google, who is also unlikely to have a rent controlled
apartment but can at least better afford the resulting rent increases.

------
magicalist
> _As a three-year resident of the Mission, I’ve seen the influx of money from
> the rise of Apple and Google’s stock plus the Facebook IPO change its
> character._

It seems weird for the writer to try to separate himself from this. The
mission starting gentrifying well before 2010, there was just a bit of a lull
at the end of the last decade. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he's a
white stanford-grad who covers the tech industry for a website. Even if you're
a poor recent college graduate with five roommates, your presence changes the
character of the neighborhood.

~~~
GuiA
Of course, but he's writing an article about the underdogs; naturally he'd
rather identify with them :)

------
ryanobjc
I wonder how many commenters here actually live in SF or know anything about
it... San Francisco has one of the most tenant friendly laws in the entire
country. Rent control is very strict, and the whole "rent has gone up by X%"
... well it has gone up no more than 1% for existing tenants. Because that is
the legal limit.

New units are not subject to rent control, but if you don't move, then you
will never really pay much more for rent. People in my building pay 50% what I
pay for the same layout, and new people will probably pay 2x what I am paying
for the same layout as well.

Commercial property tho doesnt have rent control however. But that's kind of a
different argument, right?

~~~
old-gregg
> San Francisco has one of the most tenant friendly laws in the entire country

What? SF is infested by rent-controlled buildings. Rent control is the most
tenant-hostile policy ever invented. It basically means that newcomers (or
people who had to move) are subsidizing ridiculous rents of those who haven't
moved in a while. Rent control restricts the freedom of movement.

My barber pays $1600 for a 2br apartment two blocks from the my building where
a shitty 1br got rented within an hour after showing up on craigslist. The
very same 1br was $2,400 just a year ago, and $2,200 two years ago.

------
eeeeaaii
"Funding some local education or beautification initiatives could go a long
way to reducing the gentrification backlash."

Or maybe California could relax its constitutional restriction on city and
county income taxes, which would make much more sense than relying on random
benefactors to make the city more livable.

------
lsb
I'll consider land use complaints from Miwok and Ohlone, but I'm not sure how
"my neighborhood is different from how it was 15 years ago" is a valid
concern. A vibrant city can't be a museum.

~~~
lambdacat
The issue is who is affected by changes to the city. It is always the poor and
underprivileged who are pushed to the periphery by the privileged. Change
should be shaped in ways that don't involuntarily displace people.

------
modarts
Why are tech employees and companies the getting the blame for increased rent?
Last I checked it was the property owners and landlords who control that.

How far back do they want to go? Protesting in front of Tim Berners-Lee's
house for being an enabling force in the creation of the technology that runs
Google and other companies?

~~~
natrius
Property owners and landlords will charge the highest rent they can convince
someone to pay, so treating them as active agents in this scenario doesn't
seem useful to me. Supply and demand determine what people are willing to pay
for housing, and tech workers are willing to pay a lot.

------
mc-lovin
As someone who generally believes in free markets, I am already unsympathetic
to these people. However the venom directed at tech employees strikes me as
something more than just economics.

People are having a go at nerds because they can. The scales of social status
haven't changed since high school, but it turns out that nerds can earn a good
salary, and in the "fascist" free market economy, this means they can live
where they like, and the police will even protect them!

I wish I knew about this so I could show up in my Google sweater.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"I wish I knew about this so I could show up in my Google sweater."_

I disagree very much with your notion that this is people pummeling at nerds
because of some remnant of high school social pecking order, but please don't
do this.

This is the corner of 16th and Mission. The local police station is literally
two blocks away and still have _zero control_ over this intersection. It is a
mad house. It is the Mos Eisley of San Francisco.

The level of class warfare (from both sides) in the Mission is pretty intense,
and the area is already a bit lawless to the point where the police have
little control over an open-air drug den just two blocks from the station
house. You don't fuck around with that intersection, the cops can't protect
you well there, and everyone knows it.

~~~
mc-lovin
You seem to know much more about this situation than me, but given my
experience in the left, I would be very surprised if the people involved in an
open air drug den had much to do with the people attending and organizing this
protest.

And there seems to be a discrepancy between the extreme danger you claim I
would be in, and the claims of other people that this is a harmless gathering.
Can you shed some light on this? No sarcasm intended there, I really am
surprised by how you characterize the situation because in my experience, no
one provoking left wingers is ever in serious danger.

~~~
potatolicious
These aren't left wingers in the liberal left winger sense. Practically
_everyone_ in San Francisco is a liberal left winger. These are _militant_
left wingers (the photos of the event seem to suggest this, based on my
experiences in the neighborhood). I would not be surprised if there were more
than a few violent folks in the crowd.

Keep in mind what happened the _last_ time there was an anti-gentrification
protest in the Mission. Ostensibly it's a peaceful gathering to march against
gentrification. It turned into smashing windows of local independent
businesses and massive vandalism.

Every leftist protest or demonstration in San Francisco seems to have a bad
habit of turning violent. This isn't to say that everyone there is violent, or
that their cause isn't worthwhile, but rather that if you see these marches or
protests, the Black Bloc is always close at hand, so I'd watch right the fuck
out.

> _"I would be very surprised if the people involved in an open air drug den
> had much to do with the people attending and organizing this protest."_

There's not much of an intersection. The whole open-air drug den thing isn't
to associate the protesters with the crackheads of the neighborhood, but
rather to say that this isn't like any street corner in San Francisco. This is
a street corner that the police effectively have no control over. If you get
jumped by a Black Bloc asshole with a bone to pick with Googlers, you are
fending for yourself. Though, reading the article, it looks like the cops
_were_ on hand for this one, which is a nice change for the corner of 16th and
Mission.

All in all, don't be so cavalier with your own safety. While San Francisco
isn't ruled by the Khmer Rouge, the Mission is _not_ a safe neighborhood.
Don't let the bistros and boutique coffee shops fool you. If you mind your own
business you'll be fine. If you go looking for trouble, the Mission has no
problem delivering trouble to your face, fast.

~~~
mc-lovin
You make some good points, and I will bear them in mind when dealing with
these people.

However, what you say makes the complaints by the protesters about the heavy
police presence seem ridiculous: it cannot be the case that this protest is
"peaceful" and yet anyone present who appears to be against hem would be in
serious danger.

~~~
potatolicious
Even disregarding the personal danger aspect, the police presence is well
justified simply by looking at similar protests in the past. A bunch of people
rallying around hating another group of people is, following San Francisco
patterns, highly likely to result in violence, property destruction,
vandalism, or some combination of the above.

I feel very much that the Black Bloc and anarchist protesters that infest
every cause and protest in San Francisco is a _huge_ part of why the city is
the way it is. Otherwise legitimate, worthwhile causes can garner no public
support because a highly visible minority of their base takes every chance
they get to smash shit up. They become politically untenable to support for
city politicians lest they look like they are soft on crime - because
protesting is _synonymous_ with crime thanks to these people. They also drive
away moderates as no one really wants to be caught on the wrong side of a riot
(is there a right side to being in a riot?).

------
RandallBrown
What is the solution to this problem? You can stop rent increases with a law,
but that causes lots of other problems.

You can get rid of the buses with a law, but then people will just drive or
use other transportation, which causes traffic problems.

~~~
bcoates
The root of the problem is the tension of interests between the landlords who
gain from an increase in property values, even if it prices out current
residents, and the residents who have perverse incentives to make their area a
worse place to live to keep out the yuppies.

Maybe you could securitize the value of the tenant's rent control, entitling
an exiting tenant to a windfall if they are replaced by a higher-rent paying
replacement? This would be on the theory that residential property values are
an externality created by the people living there.

~~~
uvdiv
_Maybe you could securitize the value of the tenant's rent control, entitling
an exiting tenant to a windfall if they are replaced by a higher-rent paying
replacement?_

Can you clarify how this is different from simply prohibiting rental, forcing
residents to own their apartment? A securitized right to property value
increases sounds a lot like equity.

edit: Oh I'm stupid. Clearly you mean all of this under price control: the
renter gets the benefits of equity, _without_ paying anything for them, and
_without_ taking on any risk of ownership (like property values collapsing). A
complete soup of misincentives and disaster.

~~~
bcoates
"Securitize" was the wrong word for me to use, as no uninvolved third party is
coming into the picture.

The difference between owning and renting is already a matter of degrees,
particularly once you add rent control, mortgages, condos and HOAs into the
mix. The renter already has the right to deprive the owner of the property
value increase, this is just creating a legal framework to give it back for
cash. I'm imagining it would only be part of the value of increase in rent
over the rent-control limit, not all of it.

It would increase market price rents modestly, as you're essentially depriving
landlords of the power to shake off bad tenants by finding rent control
loopholes or waiting them out, but you could offset that by creating a process
for voluntary tenant buyouts.

Buyouts are currently very difficult to carry out legally even if the tenant
wants to leave and the landlord would rather replace them with someone paying
more, leaving the two parties stuck together in an unhappy marriage as an
unintended side effect of the way the laws work.

In response to your edit: Of course you'd pay for them, new rentals are
market-priced (then locked into rent control until that tenant leaves), aren't
they? It's got one-sided risk like any option but those aren't hard to price.
It's in everyone's interest to increase the future value of the rental unit.

~~~
uvdiv
In that case (owners raising prices), who would want this? To renters it has
the character of investment: pay more money today, for a possible payout in
the future. I don't think typical renters want this. They're renting in part
because they opt _not_ to invest in real estate. They choose not to shift
costs to the present.

------
grbalaffa
Anybody else watch the video? There were at least as many cops as protestors
present. It's eerily reminiscent of those pictures from OWS where the cops
were lined up outside banks.

~~~
gyardley
Sure, but in both cases that's because when there aren't as many cops, these
protests result in widespread property damage.

This has unfortunately been the case since the WTO protests in Seattle in late
1999.

------
ChuckMcM
_"Cheap grocery stores and eateries have been going out of business, while
trendy bars and cafes move in."_

Probably a moot point but do those new bars and cafes provide jobs? Do these
people tip more or less than those who used to frequent the 'Cheap eateries' ?

I am sympathetic to the challenges of having a neighborhood go from affordable
to "hip" (and not affordable) but does this bring more disposable income into
San Francisco and increase the available money supply or not?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
I doubt they increased their tipping 29% between 2011 and 2012. Viewing the
situation from a distance, it appears that the key issue in SF today is that
the Board of Supervisors is unwilling to relax zoning laws[1]. San Francisco
obviously can't build out, so the only option is to build _up_. Until that
happens, things will just keep getting worse.

[1]
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/11/san_francisco...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/11/san_francisco_zoning_needs_more_density_and_tall_buildings.html)

~~~
tiredofcareer
The residents who fight tooth and nail against going up and more dense forms
of housing are just as much to blame as the BoS. The city could ignore them,
yes, but government is about what people want.

Most residents of San Francisco -- homeless, tech, lower-income, whatever --
want absolutely nothing to change except for what makes _them_ happier. And in
most cases, the loudest, wealthiest, Pac Heights/Sea Cliff voices want the
"charm" of San Francisco to stay the same. Meanwhile, it's one of the most
undesirable places to merely walk around that I've come across in my life, and
I only work in the city because I have to. I will _never_ move to the city.

Some of the comments are already popping up on TechCrunch; "do you want SF to
be the next NYC?" My answer to that is _abso-fucking-lutely_. New York City is
perfectly suited to dense living without gritting your teeth; the subways run
24/7, the risk of stepping in homeless shit is significantly lower, there are
very few places in NYC that make me cringe as much as the TL after sundown,
the varying cultures get along and complement each other instead of beating
Google Bus piñatas at a dirty-ass BART station...

If San Francisco slowly became the next New York City I'd be pleased as a
peach. (Imagine NYC with SF's weather!) But it will never happen in our
lifetimes. Honestly, I think it's a California thing, because L.A. has a
better shot at it and that's not going to happen either.

~~~
cafard
"Meanwhile, it's one of the most undesirable places to merely walk around that
I've come across in my life"

How so? I know the city only as a tourist, and in that capacity thought it
pretty pleasant to walk through.

Politically, San Francisco will never be New York: New York incorporates its
own suburbs, and the outer boroughs can outvote Manhattan.

~~~
tiredofcareer
San Francisco is one of the only places I've ever commuted where the question
isn't _if_ you'll step in human shit, but _when_. The quality of my workday
usually begins with "did I get a face full of hot, evaporating urine and avoid
a pile of shit on the way here today? no? gonna be a good day."

The people that live near my office on the ground level have put up "please
don't defecate near our door, this leads right into our living room" signs.
Good luck getting anybody to care. _Nobody cares._ I bet if someone dropped a
deuce in front of a New York bodega, there'd be a dozen locals competing to
rinse it off. I love New Yorkers. Tough as nails and been through some shit,
man, and you really get that in the culture.

Walk around late enough in the same neighborhood and appear vulnerable and see
what happens, too. If you stuck to the various places that we keep squeaky-
clean for tourists, that's why you didn't notice.

~~~
enraged_camel
What is it about San Francisco that causes its denizens to defecate on the
streets?

I've visited it as a tourist many times, and have walked around extensively in
neighborhoods such as Nob Hill, Fisherman's Wharf, Union Square, Financial
District, and Inner/Outer Richmond. Never stepped on human shit, much less dog
shit.

~~~
potatolicious
Homelessness and a government whose attitude towards it is to pretend the
passive aggressively opposing them will make them go away.

The city has, over the past decades, slowly taken over all public seating in
homeless-prone areas of the city. It's a sunny day outside and you want to
have a seat and munch on a sandwich instead of eating at your desk? No can do,
there are _literally no_ seats, benches, or anything that might be remotely
comfortable to rest on.

Ditto public restrooms, which have been taken away under the same pretenses.

Of course, the response hasn't been a decrease in homelessness - they lean,
lie, and sit against buildings just fine, and they piss and shit in the
streets just as well too.

San Francisco's stance towards homelessness seems to be "if we make it
inconvenient to be homeless, people will stop being homeless", which strikes
me as shockingly idiotic for a city famous for its liberalism.

~~~
enraged_camel
Heh. Where I live (Long Beach, CA), they deal with the homeless in equally
idiotic ways.

I was volunteering for an "alleyway beautification" project in downtown, and
it just turned out that there was a small, cute park adjacent to the alley. To
our dismay though, we found it to be locked 24/7. When we asked the city
officials, they said it got locked because the homeless were using it as their
living space!

Similarly, when the cops are dealing with homeless people with mental
disorders, do you know what they do? They don't actually take them to the
station to write them up - they learned long ago that doing so doesn't
accomplish anything (the system is not equipped to deal with mental disorders,
especially in people with no money).

Instead, they sit them in the backseat of their patrol car, drive them over to
one of the adjacent cities (i.e. San Pedro, Carson, etc.) and drop them off
there. That way, those homeless become that other city's problem!

Can you believe it?

It's crazy. I feel really bad making this analogy, but it's like sweeping the
trash under the carpet and pretending the room is clean.

~~~
tiredofcareer
In Detroit the police used to round up homeless people in vans and after
promising to take them to shelters, dropped them off in the nearby city of
River Rouge. If you're not familiar with River Rouge, that's where nearly all
of Detroit's heavy industry, such as several steel plants, is located. Here's
what it looked like in the 70s:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/RIVER_ROU...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/RIVER_ROUGE_PLANT_OF_THE_FORD_MOTOR_COMPANY_COVERS_1200_ACRES_OF_LAND_IN_DEARBORN_-
_NARA_-_549725.jpg)

It's gotten better, but it's not exactly a residential city:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/ZugIsland...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/ZugIslandFromDelray.jpg)

When I visit family, the I-75 bridge over River Rouge is a windows-up, vent-
closed affair. River Rouge is rather famous these days for annoying Canada
with hums, too.

------
tzs
Are Google/Facebook/Apple employees living in that neighborhood because the
company shuttle buses make it convenient, or did the companies start sending
shuttles there because so many employees live there?

------
akkartik
I showed a friend this, and he pointed out the awesome quasi-gonzo
<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n03/rebecca-solnit/diary>.

~~~
mturmon
It's a nice outsider article. Funny-because-it-hurts:

"All these youngish people are on the Google Bus because they want to live in
San Francisco, city of promenading and mingling, but they seem as likely to
rub these things out as to participate in them."

Earlier HN discussion, studiously failing to appreciate the piece:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5189580>

------
racecar789
I can understand the outrage these displaced people feel. Especially for the
hard working lower class.

It is not displacement for a public works project. It is pure class
displacement with a rub-it-in-their-face quality about it.

------
navyrain
The core problem here is that high-earners are being concentrated in one area.
If the Google employes weren't expected to commute to a computer, and were
free to remote in from anywhere, their economic impact on their neighborhoods
would be distributed, rather than concentrated in a couple locations.

~~~
jopof
Google/Facebook employees don't work anywhere near SF. They live in SF because
it's hip, and endure huge commutes (on the comfy buses) to do so. Maybe if G/F
stopped subsidizing ridiculous commutes with the comfy buses, employees would
live in the low-cost housing areas near campus.

~~~
redcircle
Do you mean East Palo Alto, or the whole valley? There is almost no housing
supply in the valley. I have the feeling that engineers are now priced out of
the market in the valley. Houses sell to bidders that offer no contingencies,
cash, and a price that exceeds a lender's appraisal.

------
flatfilefan
Yuppies and Gentrification are antonims in my book. Does the author know what
those words mean?

------
jstalin
I bet more regulations will fix it.

