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Is The Tech Boom Ruining San Francisco?

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#1 ·

Protest at Twitter HQ as they raise $1.8 billion from IPO by Steve Rhodes, on Flickr

NY Times

Backlash by the Bay: Tech Riches Alter a City

By ERICA GOODE and CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Published: November 24, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO — If there was a tipping point, a moment that crystallized the anger building here toward the so-called technorati for driving up housing prices and threatening the city’s bohemian identity, it came in response to a diatribe posted online in August by a young Internet entrepreneur.

The author, a start-up founder named Peter Shih, listed 10 things he hated about San Francisco. Homeless people, for example. And the “constantly PMSing” weather. And “girls who are obviously 4s and behave like they’re 9s.”

The backlash was immediate. Fliers appeared on telephone poles calling Mr. Shih a “woman hatin’ nerd toucher.” CheapAir offered him a free ticket back to New York. Readers responded that what they hated about San Francisco were “entitled” technology workers like him. Mr. Shih, who said he received death threats after the post, deleted it and apologized.

But a nerve had been struck. As the center of the technology industry has moved north from Silicon Valley to San Francisco and the largess from tech companies has flowed into the city — Twitter’s stock offering unleashed an estimated 1,600 new millionaires — income disparities have widened sharply, housing prices have soared and orange construction cranes dot the skyline. The tech workers have, rightly or wrongly, received the blame.

[...]


Protest at Twitter HQ as they raise $1.8 billion from IPO by Steve Rhodes, on Flickr
 
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#7 ·
Those people are, to put it bluntly, just not smart enough to see the connection between the money the techies spend and the fact that they have jobs--or at least the ones who do have jobs. All they know is that either they or a friend are being evicted or having their rent raised or seeing the crowds and raised prices at the restaurant or bar on their block.

I have to admit I sometimes see their point. I used to go to a place called The US Restaurant in North Beach that, in spite of the name, served huge portions of home-style Italian food to first generation immigrants and others of modest means but smart enough to know about the place (yeah, ME). Then, after years, it rather suddenly closed and, in its place, opened a yuppie wine bar with overpriced food like all the other "northern Italian" spots around town. I too blamed it on the tech invasion (that one was in the late '90s).
 
#3 ·
You have to give Twitter credit though for bringing some much-needed change to The Mid-Market, as most of the constructions finishing up now and coming up in the pipeline came about because of Twitter deciding to locate in some blighted area of San Francisco.
 
#4 ·
With robust San Francisco economy, officials look to address affordability concerns
By Joshua Sabatini

As San Francisco’s local economy rebounds thanks in large part to the flourishing technology industry, there persists an inescapable tension between people who are benefiting and those who are struggling. With evictions and rents on the rise, political debates and meetings are filled with concerns over economic pressures and social disparities.

But there are bright spots. For instance, Mayor Ed Lee praised the recovering local economy in announcing Friday that the unemployment rate in San Francisco is the lowest since 2008. San Francisco’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.3 percent in September and October from 5.7 percent in August, based on preliminary numbers from the California Employment Development Department. That’s the lowest since 2008, right before the Great Recession struck.

The unemployment numbers are a significant victory for Lee, who was elected in 2011 promising economic recovery and job creation. “San Francisco’s steady recovery is gaining momentum from our unrelenting focus on building economic infrastructure, job creation, housing, and educating and training the workforce for the new demands of the 21st century economy,” Lee said in a statement.

Lee spokeswoman Christine Falvey noted that, “18,300 less people are out of work today than in January 2011 in San Francisco” . . . .

But on Tuesday, the mayor is expected to face questions from the Board of Supervisors about challenges associated with evictions and escalating rents.

Amid The City’s promising economic forecast, Supervisor Eric Mar plans to ask the mayor Tuesday for help in addressing the impacts of evictions in the Richmond district, which Mar represents. He wants Lee to create a “multiservice center” for tenants . . . . his district experienced 79 Ellis Act evictions and 202 no-fault evictions between 2009 and 2013.

Board President David Chiu plans to ask Lee for an update of affordable-housing construction and ways to speed up development of such units as it relates to Lee’s 2012 voter-approved $1.3 billion Housing Trust Fund . . . .

Also Tuesday, the board is scheduled to vote on legislation introduced by Chiu that would give residents evicted under the Ellis Act priority for city-subsidized housing. The Ellis Act allows landlords to evict tenants in order to get out of the rental market.

Lee’s spokeswoman said the mayor supports Chiu’s Ellis Act legislation that is before the board Tuesday.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfranci...ss-affordability-concerns/Content?oid=2634636
 
#5 ·
Lawyer pumps up S.F. landlords at boot camp
Nellie Bowles
Published 6:37 pm, Sunday, November 24, 2013

In the Fort Mason Center one recent night, real estate attorney Daniel Bornstein stood in front of a crowd of nearly 400 people.

"Can there be protected tenants in a property built after 1979?" he asked, pointing to the audience. "No!" they shouted in unison.

"If you get rid of an illegal in-law unit and the building becomes a single-family home, what can you do?" he said. "Owner move-in eviction," the audience responded.

In a city known for rallies organized by everyone from Tibetan freedom activists to Folsom Street leather fetishists, this was an unusual demographic: landlords.

Lately, landlords, many of whom feel picked on, are coming together - not only to battle the stigma of renting out property but also to learn how to benefit from the tech-fueled real estate boom. Some have been watching neighborhood rents skyrocket while their buildings sit full of tenants from the early '90s who pay less than half of market rate.

Among themselves, they've talked about the recent bad publicity aimed at landlords and Ellis Act evictions ("up 170 percent, I know, we've heard") and how it's getting them down ("It's like we should be ashamed to be landlords" and "people act like we're evil") . . . .

Largely because of the tech boom, the city saw 68,000 new jobs last year but added only around 120 housing units. Rents have risen nearly 21 percent this year, while the government-approved increase for rent-controlled apartments was only 1.9 percent. A vacant multiunit building can sell for double the price of an occupied one.

Bornstein ran through the rules of rent control and gave examples of how he had dealt with "problems" - long-term rent-controlled tenants - to unlock cash flow. The energy rose to such a pitch that the 46-year-old became engaged in a call-and-response with the landlords.

In many ways, Bornstein's advice was surprising: It's far better to pay tenants to leave than to evict them. Part of his job is to help convince landlords that a one-time $50,000 payment to a tenant can be worth it, especially if the tenant is about to turn 60 (and become protected and very hard to evict).

"Every $1,000 more a month in rent is $100,000 equity appreciation in the property," he said.

Bornstein told anecdotes about clever ways of getting buildings up to market rate. One time, he worked with a large home that had seven rooms rented out on seven separate leases. The first thing he did was persuade the tenants to go on one lease, thus changing the classification from multiunit to single-family.

"Then what do you do with seven people who moved into a single-family house in the '90s? Raise the rent to market rate," he said . . . .
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Lawyer-pumps-up-S-F-landlords-at-boot-camp-5008552.php
 
#6 ·
It is a long-standing belief in San Francisco that the New York Times sees San Francisco through some sort of bizarre, distorted lens for its periodic articles and really just doesn't quite "get" the city. But there's also a sort of mutual love between the coastal cities. The Times does seem to write an awful lot of stories about us.

Is S.F. really fine just the way it is?
Carl Nolte
Published 6:00 pm, Saturday, November 16, 2013


As much as San Franciscans like being stuck in time, like Shangri-La, construction cranes signal coming change. Photo: Terry Schmitt

The Muni streetcar came screeching around the corner the other morning, and it was covered in advertising, like a shrink-wrapped sandwich, only bigger. The message in letters 3 feet high: The Next Big Thing Is Here.

The next big thing is here? I'm against it.

I'm against a wall on the waterfront, I'm against a new Warriors arena, I'm against Google buses, I'm against anything new at the Presidio, I'm against taxicabs with pink mustaches. I'm a real San Franciscan. If it's new, I don't like it.

San Franciscans are an odd lot. We love all the attention and we hate it. We love to be the darlings of high tech, but we hate the techies. We like the idea of the cable cars, but we never ride them. They are for tourists, and we, of course, are San Franciscans. Tourists come to see where we are lucky enough to live.

We love all the legends and myths that swirl around the city like the fog: Emperor Norton, and Caruso singing the night before the 1906 earthquake; the Beat Generation and the Summer of Love. And don't forget the giant rainbow flag that flies above Castro and Market streets.

Television was invented in San Francisco, and so was the martini. Who's the most famous native San Franciscan of them all? Steve Jobs, that's who. Didn't he invent the Internet?

We even have our high-tech myths. It's true, isn't it, that the idea for Twitter came to a couple of geniuses in a brainstorming session at the foot of the children's slide at the playground in South Park? And that spot, trivia fans, is just around the corner from Jack London's birthplace. No fooling.

It's true. We are a city of geniuses, or at the very least, the geniuses live and work just down the street. Just the other day, the New Yorker magazine compared San Francisco favorably to New York. World class. That's us.

No wonder we don't want to change. San Francisco is perfect just as it is . . . .

We forget we are a smallish city on the far west coast of North America. We have a weak city and county government with balkanized politics coupled with a civil service bureaucracy that rivals the Austro-Hungarian empire.

The big tech boom is driving the middle class out of the city; it's unaffordable. Our colorful Chinatown, much beloved by tourists, is really an overcrowded slum. We have a horrible homeless problem that no one seems to be able to solve. So we look past the beggars and walk past the druggies sleeping in the streets. It's not the cool, gray city of love out there.

A friend of mine went to New York last week, hailed a cab. New York cabbies can spot a visitor a mile away. "So," the cabdriver said, "where are you from?"

"San Francisco," my friend said.

"San Francisco?" the cabbie said. "Well, that's a cute little city."

My friend spent a couple of days in New York, looked around. The cabdriver, he said, was right.
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Is-S-F-really-fine-just-the-way-it-is-4988394.php
 
#8 ·
This is What a 385 Square Foot Condo in S.F. Looks Like



Even at 385 square feet, this studio in Presidio Heights still isn't the smallest condo for sale: there are three other condos currently on the market that are even smaller, and plenty of rentals that clock in below 300 square feet. The unit is asking $389K, or $1,010 per square foot. Though incredibly tiny, we will admit that the layout seems workable for the right person, and the finishes throughout are quite nice. There's a decent amount of storage, and the kitchen has bells and whistles like a dishwasher and pantry. The unit also has access to the shared deck and garden, which it looks out onto. Monthly HOA dues are $212 and there's no parking.
http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/...ot_condo_in_sf_looks_like.php#reader_comments
 
#10 ·
Eviction Group Aims to Put Housing on the Ballot

By Lynne Shallcross
Posted November 25, 2013 4:00 pm


. . . David Campos, who represents the Mission on the Board of Supervisors, reassured residents that their voices are being heard . . . .

Campos said that his strategy is two-pronged. The first part is working with Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) to craft a bill that would allow local jurisdictions to make changes to the Ellis Act.

“We want to see a moratorium on the Ellis Act,” Campos said.

The second part is working to combat evictions on a local level, Campos said. His local proposals include one allowing tenants to file a formal complaint with the Rent Board when they’re being harassed by landlords over buyouts, increasing the relocation costs during a buyout and possible legislation regulating buyouts . . . .

Just Cause will host a citywide convention to consider the results of each neighborhood meeting and choose a proposal to move forward with.
http://missionlocal.org/2013/11/eviction-group-aims-to-put-housing-on-the-ballot/
 
#11 ·
New housing units in S.F. are filling up fast
Andrew S. Ross
Published 5:19 pm, Monday, November 25, 2013

Seeing as San Francisco's housing and cost-of-living issues are getting a lot of press attention these days (New York Times: "Backlash by the Bay: Tech Riches Alter a City"), here are a few recent bulletins from the front:

Venn on Market, a 113-unit apartment building at Market and Octavia, which won't be completed until January, is more than half leased and some tenants already have moved in, according to Spencer Moore, a spokesman for the developer, San Francisco's MacFarlane Partners.

Rents range from $3,075 for a one-bedroom - up from $2,900, the figure published earlier this month - to $5,000 for the three-bedroom units. Only one of the three-bedroom units remains. "Demand has gone up," Moore said.

Not surprising given Venn's location, at the intersection of trendy Hayes Valley and the north end of the Mission. Nearby, on the south side of Market Street, sit the headquarters of Twitter and Square.

Cash in hand: Farther south in the Mission, a 17-unit "balanced blend of urban living and comfortable luxury" at 3500 19th St. (at Valencia) is reportedly 60 percent sold, little more than a month after going on the market.

Condo prices there are listed between $1.6 million and $2.3 million. Calls and e-mail to the developer, Vanguard Properties, were not returned on Monday. One of Vanguard's agents told the San Francisco Business Times last month that the buyers are "new money, old money, techies, finance. It's people with money - everybody so far is paying cash."

Chic retreat: With Valencia Street, the focus of much angst, filling up, more attention is focusing on Mission Street itself.

The 202-unit Varas, a "chic retreat located in one of San Francisco's most desirable neighborhoods" - at Mission and 15th streets - opened in July, with 40 percent of it preleased. Now it's 85 percent full, said a spokeswoman for Behringer Harvard, a Dallas real estate investment trust that bought the property from the original developer, San Francisco's Avant Housing.

Last we checked, rents for the one- to three-bedroom apartments were similar to Venn on Market, ranging from about $2,500 to $7,000 a month. Vara also has 40 below-market rental apartments, ranging from $939 a month for a studio to $1,309 for a three-bedroom.

Cool and transformational: A perhaps more significant game-changer is under construction farther down Mission Street, where the Giant Value store once stood between 21st and 22nd streets.

In its place: a $70 million, eight-story, 114-unit development of market-rate condos. Next door, the historic, long-shuttered New Mission Theater is being replaced by the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission, complete with five screens and digital projection, plus dinner, drinks and live events. As part of the development deal with San Francisco's Oyster Development, 14 below-market-rate units are to be built elsewhere in the Mission . . . .
http://www.sfgate.com/business/bott...-units-in-S-F-are-filling-up-fast-5011308.php
 
#13 · (Edited)
In Waspy Pacific Heights Culture Clash, It’s Tech Bravado vs. San Fran’s Old Guard
by Vanity Fair



The new guard of tech entrepreneurs moving into San Francisco’s ultra-exclusive neighborhood of Pacific Heights, historically a Waspy and conservative enclave of old-money families, is creating friction, writes contributing editor Evgenia Peretz in the October issue. Peretz speaks with both new and old residents, exploring the culture clash.

“They bore the hell out of me,” San Francisco society doyenne Denise Hale tells Peretz of the Silicon Valley transplants. “They’re one-dimensional and can only talk about one thing. I’m used to brilliant men in my life who leave their work, and they have many other interests. New people eventually will learn how to live. When they learn how to live, I would love to meet them.” An exception, Hale says, is Yahoo C.E.O. Marissa Mayer: “Marissa is something which I like. Marissa has a handsome husband, in love, beautifully dressed, a lady. I don’t go for this slob culture—leave me alone.”

Peretz writes that the two families who ruled the roost in Pacific Heights for the past 30 years—the Gettys and the Trainas—are still very much kicking today. But, according to Peretz, the tech elite is buying there en masse, including: Mark Pincus, founder and chairman of gaming platform Zynga, and his wife, Alison, co-founder of online-shopping destination One Kings Lane; Sir Jonathan “Jony” Ive, head designer at Apple; Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder and C.E.O. of Yelp; Bebo’s Michael and Xochi Birch; Facebook designer Aaron Sittig; Nextdoor founder Nirav Tolia; and Yammer C.E.O. David Sacks.

The younger generation of Gettys and Trainas appears to be welcoming its new neighbors with open arms. According to Tolia, Trevor Traina, San Francisco’s undisputed social king, “basically handpicked the neighborhood” for them. “My aspiration for my good friends is that they all love their homes,” Traina tells Peretz, “and selfishly it’s wonderful to have so much incredible magical brainpower nearby.”

One bone of contention for the older residents of Pacific Heights is the lack of philanthropic involvement from the tech community. But some tech people think they’re getting a bad rap. “I didn’t really think about it,” Sacks tells Peretz when asked about the moment last year when he knew he was $1.2 billion richer, thanks to the sale of Yammer to Microsoft. He threw himself a $1 million 40th-birthday party called “Let Him Eat Cake,” for which the guests were asked to dress up as members of Marie Antoinette’s court. He insisted that the guests keep the party secret from the public. As for his philanthropic giving, it’s mostly anonymous, he says.

The tech entrepreneurs seem unimpressed by the pedigree of the older Pacific Heights families (“I probably don’t know who those people are,” Sacks tells Peretz). “Silicon Valley people tend to be allergic to this notion of ‘society,’ ” says Tolia. “Kissing the ring doesn’t do anything. Like, who kisses the ring? What people do is, they commit themselves to excellence and they work really hard to create that. . . . The people with privilege aren’t the ones creating the great companies. It’s the people who work the hardest, have the best ideas, and are the most passionate and most innovative.”

Peretz also speaks with 47-year-old design guru Ken Fulk, whose clients include the Pincuses, the Birches, Traina, and Tolia, and who designed Sean Parker’s multi-million-dollar wedding, which he called “beautiful enough to bring you to tears.” Fulk describes himself as “a shortcut to things they want to do, to have a good party, to buy the right suit, to know where to stay when you go to Zurich. I have clients move here, and the women, I’ll give them a list: This is where you should cut your hair. This is who you should wear if you want to go to lunch, to eat the right thing. They want to know and I love telling them! It’s not like I want to be in charge, but you want people to have a good experience.”

Fulk’s tech clients are typically control freaks, but they put themselves completely in his hands when it comes to their homes, he tells Peretz. After the Birches bought their Gold Coast home, they decamped to London for seven weeks and let Fulk redesign every square inch, even importing an actual old English pub from England because Michael calls drinking his main hobby. Before the Birches’ arrival at their new home (what Fulk calls “the Reveal”), the designer gathered all the Birches’ friends at the house, got two Beefeater doormen from the Sir Francis Drake Hotel to greet guests, and enlisted a singer to serenade the group with Beatles songs.

. . . Traina describes his friends’ Gold Coast properties as fixer-uppers. Of the Pincuses 11,500-square-foot Dutch Colonial Revival–style house, bought for $16 million in August, he says: “Their house needs a lot of work but also has superb potential, so I’m really excited for them.” As for David Sacks, who spent $20 million in September on a 17,500-square-foot mansion and 6,000-square-foot guesthouse, next to the Pincuses: “It’s hollow, but it has superb potential.”
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/da...ash-it-s-tech-bravado-vs-san-fran-s-old-guard

Note: I quoted most of the article because it is itself a very brief summary of what's in the hard copy edition of Vanity Fair.
 
#14 ·
Sean Parker’s Lavish Big Sur Wedding

Wedding of the year? In a V.F. exclusive, social-media baron Sean Parker and singer-songwriter Alexandra Lenas traded vows amid towering redwoods . . . . Parker, 33, oversaw all details, from the leather-bound keepsake volume for guests, to the nine-foot-tall wedding cake, to the fur-pelt-strewn beds in the lounge area. Dedicated to their love of old-growth forests, the celebration—which included Tolkien-ized costumes for all 364 guests by Lord of the Rings costume designer Ngila Dickson—cost Parker $4.5 million for the wooded site alone.











http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2013/09/photos-sean-parker-wedding_slideshow_item32_33

I believe in addition to the $4.5 million cost of the wedding, Parker paid $2 million in fines for despoiling a pristine wilderness to California environmental regulators.
 
#16 ·
Techies must nip growing scorn in bud
Willie Brown
Updated 2:35 pm, Sunday, November 24, 2013

There's a war brewing in the streets of San Francisco, and a lot of people could get caught up in it if the tech world doesn't start changing its self-centered culture.

Every day in every way, from rising rents to rising prices at restaurants to its private buses, the tech world is becoming an object of scorn. It's only a matter of time before the techies' youthful lustre fades, and they're seen as just another extension of Wall Street.

And when that happens, tenant advocates, community activists, labor unions and Occupy types are going to start asking why we're giving away the city to all these white-male-dominated businesses that don't even hire locals.

At which point, the politicians will do what they always do - count votes. And by my last count, for all of their hype and money, tech types were still a decidedly small part of the vote. If they even vote at all.

What the tech world needs to do is nip this thorny plant in the bud. They need to come off their high cloud efforts to save Africa or wherever they take adventure vacations and start making things better for folks right here.

They need to start helping in Hunters Point and in Chinatown.

Most of all, they need to start hiring locals.

Otherwise, the next time it comes to a tax measure or a vote at the Planning Commission, they could find themselves getting skinned . . . .
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Techies-must-nip-growing-scorn-in-bud-5006404.php

For anybody who doesn't know, Willie Brown is the former 2-term pro-business San Francisco mayor and multi-decade speaker of the California Assembly. In the opinion of many, he has forgotten more about SF politics than anyone else alive ever knew.
 
#19 ·
The issue is the impoverishment of life in the city (something that isn't measured by money). The destruction of neighborhoods or the selling off of beauty and lifestyle for quick profits for developers may be economically inevitable but it's hardly something to be wished-for.

In fact, SF is a desirable place to live because consistently from the 1950's people have been fighting the kind of ideas that are found so attractive in this thread. There wouldn't even be something to fight for if 300 high rises had choked the city for the last 50 years.
 
#20 · (Edited)
SF is a desirable place to live because consistently from the 1950's people have been fighting the kind of ideas that are found so attractive in this thread.
I can't find where any lifestyle is "found attractive" in this thread. I can find a lot of mockery and criticism.

Let's summarize:

1. The techies are living it up these days and demonstrating a fair amount of excess. There is clearly a real state boom that has pushed prices beyond what people in other lines of work can afford but there seem to be enough tech employees to absorb the available inventory and it's difficult for those of us who have owned a home for a long time to complain because what we own is escalating in value.

2. What the techies are NOT doing so far is giving much back to the city. With one large exception--the owner/founder of Salesforce.com who gave $100 million to the new UCSF Children's hospital--there are not many examples of conspicuous philanthropy among the the technocrats.

3. The are, however, unintentionally bringing about the hiring of lots of people in various service industries from home renovation to food, beverage and retail. Even, as I mockingly suggested, car sales and repair. As even Willie Brown failed to recognize this, however, it isn't apparent to a lot of long-time residents. And because a lot of the jobs they are creating outside tech itself aren't particularly high wage, there's less gratitude than there might be.

4. San Francisco is, perhaps, being truly "Manhattanized" this time, not in the sense of tall buildings being built, though they are, but in the sense of seeing the funk and the bohemianism pushed across a body of water. In our case, it's not the East River (to Brooklyn) but the Bay (to Oakland and Berkeley). It's not that construction is obliterating the artist studios and funky bars but that the rents are simply climbing beyond what that sort of venue can afford.

To afford today's rents, you have to sell designers cocktails, locally grown vegetables, hormone-free meat and locally made soap, and you have to sell them at a premium. But I would point out that these latter sorts of things are things that many people already here want to buy and they are a lot easier to find than they used to be.

5. The trick may be for the city to find ways to draw revenue from the tech boom without killing it off. So far, the requirement for "affordable housing" to be created as a result of the building of "market rate" housing (15% of units built must be "affordable") is leading to a boom in that type of construction as well. I have not read what's happening to the city's property tax coffers, but they must be overflowing (or soon will be when all the new buildings are occupied). Among the things that still need to be done is finding a way to drain a stream of new revenue into public transportation in order to do long-delayed repair, replacement of rolling stock, and construction of new, long-needed lines (rail to the Richmond). A recent study said the city needs $10 billion for these purposes (including street repair).

6. And finally, they desperately and quickly need to find a way to make clear to everyone the connection between the boom and the good things flowing from it. If they don't, that pervasive species, the San Francisco NIMBY, will find ways to stop it all.
 
#21 · (Edited)
Tech's space appetite eclipses highs of dot-com boom

Technology companies have leased 40 percent more San Francisco office space since the start of 2010 than during the five-year dot-com boom.

That's just one eye-catching statistic in a comprehensive new report analyzing the tech industry's impact on the city's office market, which brokerage firm CBRE will release on Wednesday. Here are a few more: Tech tenants now fill 22 percent of all occupied office space in San Francisco. The sector represented 61 percent of all office leasing last year, a historical high. Since 2009, tech has created 23,500 jobs - 86 percent of all new office positions in the city.

There are different - and not mutually exclusive - ways to view these numbers. They clearly underscore the incredible contributions that the tech sector is making to the local economy. But they're also a revealing glimpse into San Francisco's reliance on the health of a single sector historically prone to intense booms and busts.

With tech filling so much of the city's office space, San Francisco's leaders and landlords should take to heart that most basic piece of investment advice: Diversify your portfolio. "When you look at the job-growth figures, it's so dominantly tech that should it falter, it would have a big impact on the market," said Colin Yasukochi, director of research and analysis at CBRE and the principal author of the study.

Whether we're in a bubble has become a boring semantic debate. But we do know that this boom will end, because all booms end. The real questions are when will it happen - and how painful will it be when it does?

[...]
 
#22 ·
Pushed out

As Rent Soars, Longtime San Francisco Tenants Fight To Stay


A Save Our City and Protect Rent Control protest at the San Francisco Association of Realtors. by Steve Rhodes, on Flickr

San Francisco has long been a desirable place to live — and that's even more true today as the city is basking in the glow of another tech boom. But the influx of new money and new residents is putting a strain on the city's housing market.

The city has the highest median rent in the nation, and evictions of longtime residents are skyrocketing. Ground zero for San Francisco's eviction crisis is the Inner Mission District. Until recently, this edgy neighborhood was home to a mix of working-class Latinos, artists and activists.

Tom Rapp, an airport building maintenance worker, rents a modest second-story flat that he has called home for 15 years. He says a lot of his neighbors have been evicted over the past couple of years. Then bad news came knocking on his door, too. "We received an eviction notice at the end of August," he says. "But we've gotten like three different ones, right?" adds his roommate, Patricia Kerman. Kerman, a senior on a fixed income, has lived in this flat for 27 years.

The two are fighting to stay in their rent-controlled apartment as their landlord tries to evict them under what's known as the Ellis Act. It's a state law that allows an eviction if the landlord wants to pull the building out of the rental market, usually with a plan to sell the units. "They found this loophole where they're now able to get people out of their rent-controlled apartments, and it's just becoming an epidemic," Rapp says.

[...]
 
#24 ·
Ground zero for San Francisco's eviction crisis is the Inner Mission District. Until recently, this edgy neighborhood was home to a mix of working-class Latinos, artists and activists.
Now it's home to Mark Zuckerberg's $10 million fixer-upper:

3450 21st St.


Note: The house is on 21st St. 20th St has long been reputed to be the dividing line between the turf of the Nortenos and the Surenos Latino gangs.
 
#25 ·
People hate those busses, among other reasons because they illegally use the "bus stops" reserved for Muni public transportation busses, making all the more apparent the difference between the luxury reserved for the technorati and the horror that is the public transit used by the rest of us.
 
#27 ·
CEO's post about homeless in SF highlights tech PR problem
By Jonah Owen Lamb @Jonahowenlamb

. . . Two incidents this week have fed the seething anger against what many see as the main source of San Francisco’s wealth-driven woes: tech workers.

The first incident — an imposter Google employee yelling at people protesting one of the company’s shuttle buses — revealed what many thought was the real face of tech: snobbish, elitist and entitled. But it turned out to be a straw man caricature.

However, the second incident — a tech CEO’s Facebook post about homeless and poor people in The City — did confirm to many how snobbish, entitled and elitist some in the industry can be . . . .

The first incident -- a video from the San Francisco Bay Guardian showing a staged tirade by a make-believe Google employee -- briefly lit up the Web on Monday with what seemed the true rotten heart of all tech workers. A group of protesters blocking a Google shuttle bus in the Mission district because the company isn’t paying for access to municipal bus stops was harangued by someone who claimed to be a Google employee.

“I can pay my rent. Can you pay your rent? Well then, you know what, why don’t you go to a city where you can afford it. This is a city for the right people who can afford it. If you can’t afford it, it’s time for you to leave,” said the presumed Google employee.

It turned out that he was Max Bell Alper, an East Bay activist and union organizer who staged the whole thing.

While the subsequent reaction was swift and condemning, the all-to-real act seemed to tap into a current of anger.

Then on Wednesday, the real thing came along in the form of Greg Gopman, the founder of hackathon organizer AngelHack. Gopman on Tuesday posted on Facebook his assessment of the down-on-their-luck population of Market Street, and Valleywag was able to publish it before he removed it from his page.

“There is nothing more grotesque than walking down market st in SF. Why the heart of our city has to be overrun by crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash I have no clue. Each time I pass it my love affair with SF dies a little,” wrote Gopman. “The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to them selves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it’s a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests. And that’s okay.”

Gopman did issue an apology Wednesday, which elicited the support of some of his Facebook friends. Their comments seemed to echo his original sentiment, indicating that such opinions are likely widespread.

Greg Gopman
http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfranci...cisco-tech-industry-image/Content?oid=2647636
 
#30 ·
I feel Seattle is starting to deal with this but on a much smaller scale. Rents are rising and developments are popping up all over the city. The difference is there are still relatively underdeveloped areas in the city and even in the dense areas. San Francisco is already much more dense and expensive so we aren't to your extreme, yet?

I went down to SF for the first time this spring. I noted that it seems like a blend of NYC and Seattle. The city aspect of NYC and the geographic aspect of Seattle. Cool city indeed.
 
#31 ·
S.F. tech companies' civic image at stake as backlash grows
Heather Knight and John Coté
Updated 8:38 am, Sunday, December 15, 2013

Rachel Ceasar, a 29-year-old doctoral candidate in medical anthropology, sat in Sightglass Coffee surrounded almost exclusively by men - many of them staring at MacBook laptops, wearing designer eyeglasses and drinking artisanal coffees - and made a confession.

"I actually can't stand tech people," Ceasar said with a slight laugh that suggested she was only partly joking. "I think there just needs to be more conversations about what's happening and not this, 'Let's all move to the Mission and take it over.' "

Even here, home turf for San Francisco's tech set - a modern, South of Market coffee shop that lists Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey as an investor - the tech industry faces a backlash.

But sometimes it's more obvious.

One morning last week, protesters swarmed the corner of 24th and Valencia streets and for half an hour blocked a Google bus headed to Mountain View. That afternoon, another group of protesters marched down Market Street from Twitter headquarters to the Westfield San Francisco Centre to protest the city's growing economic inequality . . . .

Some San Franciscans say the leaders of the technology industry are bringing the scorn upon themselves. Techies are often seen as being immersed in their own world of coding, deal making and socializing.

Antonio Garcia agrees that the tech sector is insular. The former Facebook product manager is now the vice president of products at Nanigans, which specializes in online advertising.

"Your whole social world is tech," Garcia, 37, said as he finished a bagel sandwich at the Creamery, a cafe at Fourth and Townsend that's a hotbed of tech deal making.

"The reality is that there are real people in San Francisco, but they're usually in neighborhoods like the Richmond or Sunset," he continued. "The wall between them and us, so to speak - not to get too postcolonial about it here - is pretty high."

That wall is creating what some critics call a tale of two cities. Ellis Act evictions, used most often so a landlord can clear his or her building to sell it, are up 170 percent since 2010. Meanwhile, the median home sale price in the city hit $1 million in June.

Foot in the mouth
The occasional outlandish statement by tech workers and executives about their adopted city doesn't help . . . .

. . . there are an eye-popping 1,892 tech companies in San Francisco. They account for 22 percent of all occupied office space in the city. The number of tech jobs here has soared 58 percent from 2010 through 2012, the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics figures available.

. . . tech companies have "an image problem," but said they could easily improve their reputation just by better sharing all the positive impacts they are having on San Francisco: the 23,500 jobs they've created since 2009, according to one report; the tax base they have helped shore up; their direct impact on helping the city's unemployment rate shrink to 5.3 percent, the lowest since 2008. That compares with Los Angeles at 9.7 percent and Sacramento at 8.1 percent.

But San Francisco's tech industry as a whole isn't doing a good job of self-promotion . . . .

. . . many longtime Mission residents are concerned that their neighbors and small businesses are being squeezed out by rising rents. And they blame tech workers.

Some neighbors say the resentment isn't helped by the fact that they see the tech workers only when they're boarding the private shuttle buses that take them down Highway 101 to Google or Apple, delaying Muni buses and blocking traffic while they're at it.

"They don't see them active in the local school or helping the local merchants or helping with the local playground," . . . .

Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.com, is widely credited with being the most generous tech titan in San Francisco and has funded a children's hospital, housing for homeless families and computer equipment in public schools.

. . . Facebook recently gave laptops to students at two Mission District public schools, Yelp announced $100,000 in grants to local nonprofits, Google helped fund free Wi-Fi in parks, and Zynga has offered mentorship to students at Balboa High. Volunteers from Kontagent served a holiday meal to homeless children and their families.

. . . Twitter provides attorneys for a free program to help residents fight evictions . . . .

Supervisor Scott Wiener agrees the companies and their workers are getting an unfair bad rap. He said they're not contributing to the city like business titans, including the late financier Warren Hellman, who created the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival and helped fund the San Francisco Free Clinic, but that the companies are still in their infancy and have the potential to increase their civic participation . . . .
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-tech-companies-civic-image-at-stake-as-5065669.php#page-3

Let's play a game: Tech worker or non-tech worker.

One of these 2 is a tech worker . . . you guess:




Both images: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-tech-companies-civic-image-at-stake-as-5065669.php#page-1
 
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