CAJ#12 Is SV taking over SF?

San Francisco – a small city that was famed as an artistic, bohemian place with a history of flowering counter-cultures that spilled over and changed America and the world. From the beats in North Beach to the hippies in the hilly region of Haight-Ashbury to the gay rights movement in the Castro neighborhood. This is what San Francisco is famous for – or better “was”? Some literary legends who live there complain of a “soulless group of people”, a “new breed” of men and women too busy with iPhones to “be here” in the moment. Shiny new Mercedes-Benzs on the strees and several major art galleries have to close because they cannot afford the new rent as bigger computing startups offered to triple the rent. Is the Silicon Valley taking over the city?

San Francisco has definitely become the hype- and capital fuelled epicenter of America’s technology industry, which has centred on the string of suburban cities known as Silicon Valley. The impact on SF is significant. Rents and house prices began to soar. Eviction rates soon followed as property speculators sought to cash in by flipping rent-controlled apartment buildings into flats to sell. Residents have found themselves unable to afford to live in their city anymore. They are not only worried about being forced out of the city they love, but also that their city is being changed for the worse. Critics say that San Francisco’s communities of alternative culture, ethnic or otherwise – the soil of its creative legendary social movements – are being turned into playgrounds for rich people. If San Francisco’s soul is its social and economic diversity and status as a refuge for those outside the mainstream, the it is being lost.

                                                    

The problem San Francisco is now facing is called “gentrification”. Gentrification is a shift in an urban community toward wealthier residents and increasing property values. It is the result of investment in a community by, in this case, the technology industry. Gentrification leads to population migration, which involves poorer residents being displaced by wealthier newcomers. Poorer pre-gentrification residents who are unable to pay increased rents or property taxes may be driven out.