What this means is that Google should build housing on a non-profit basis equal to the number of employees it has - the issue is that normal SF inhabitants are being priced out if the area - so increase supply of housing to prevent rent and property prices spiralling
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That wonât happen in SF because theyâve got a lot of zoning laws that prevent large scale projects that disrupt the flavor.
Ultimately, SF has a choice between preserving the feel of their infrastructure, which makes rents sky rocket; or rezone areas for maximum capacity/dense urbanizations.
Since the problem is renters, not owners, SF has very few choices to control the issue. And it is an issue because renters in a city have no fundamental financial contribution to a city.
The impoverished? Do you mean human beings?
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Thatâs what they said in the 20s, 90s, and 08âŚ
I know my home turf would just about literally kill to have a huge company like Google come here.
Iâm guessing theyâll be yet another Texas tech company someday.
Firstly: Troll is trolly
The shuttles have been using public bus stops, something that would generate a nearly $300 fine if a private car driver
You mean a car gets a fine for stopping in a bus stop but a bus doesnât? OMG! THATâS CRAZY!
The shuttles make it much easier and more desirable for their workers to live far from their jobs.
The people were there before the busses. The busses did not bring the people. They want to life in SF, thatâs why theyâre there. If you get rid of the Gbus, tech people would still be living there in the same numbers but there would be more beemers and teslas on the roads.
the high rents they can afford displace middle-income and low-wage long-time residents.
Damn you supply and demand! DAMN YOU! Sorry but âI was here beforeâ is not a reason a person gets preferential treatment in a capitalist system. It might not be a nice reality, but itâs reality.
Then those lower-income folks have to leave SF becauseâŚ
Thereâs a lot of presumptions in this paragraph. Are you an economist?
(By the way, do the Google Cafeteria workers get to ride the shuttles if they live in SF? Who wants to place a bet?)
My guess is no, but thatâs pretty moot since anyone on low wages (such as security guards and cafeteria workers) arenât renting high cost apartments in SF. The article you posted (linked incorrectly) is painfully one-sided and whingy: No one gets to take food home from the cafe: no one. Also, is a university degree and specialised knowledge required to work as a security guard or in a cafeteria? Maybe that has something to do with the discrepancy in pay?
By the way, high income residents of SF are paying more for public infrastructure via tax than people on low/mid incomes. Very nice of them to pay for other peopleâs bus services, isnât it? But no⌠not from your twisted perspective. Your rant about tax breaks needs to be directed at GOVERNMENT because all companies - by virtue of the expectations of shareholders to perform as well as possible - try to minimise tax. All of them. Rant in the right direction.
Finally, just to prove my point that the demand for the shuttles was a result of people already living in SF, hereâs this from a google blog from 2011:
Back in 2004, one motivated Googler started a vanpool that ran from San Francisco to Mountain View as a 20 percent project. As demand grew, the program morphed into what is now one of the largest corporate shuttle services in the country.
We will stop scoffing as soon as the stupid protesters understand that theyâre angry at the wrong people.
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1mil damn!!
Doesnât NYC implement rent-control?
There are still low-income and middle-class people living in SF. And have been for decades. See: the Mission, Bayview, the Excelsior, SOMA (before recent loft-splosions started displacing people), Sunset, and of course the Tenderloin. All of which are seeing rents and evictions climb, most of which are under-served by infrastructure like public transit (BART doesnât even go to Bayview or Sunset and barely serves the Excelsior; night and weekend bus service - you know, times when service workers often need to get places - is terrible).
This right here? This attitude is the problem.
People working 2 and 3 jobs just to keep a roof over their head (and their familiesâ) are not suffering a âlack of productivity.â And they should be able to live near services, near their employment, near public transit networks, integrated into the community. The person who makes your coffee and who drives your bus or your Uber cab shouldnât have to add a 90-minute one-way commute to their already egregious work schedule because their landlord decided to go condo and thereâs an 8-year waiting list for something else they could have a hope of affording.
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Reading comprehension is a thing.
Have you worked as a security guard or in a cafeteria? I spent several years working in a grocery store after finishing my PhD, while working on building up a private practice in my field. I was stunned (hereâs my class privilege showing) how much specialized skill and knowledge there is to doing the various jobs in that store well. Including all the folks working back in âPrepared Foods,â the highest-grossing section of the store BTW, with some of the lowest-paid workers.
Contempt for what other people do for work says more about you than it does about reality.
Also: perhaps you havenât been job-searching lately, but university degrees are being demanded for all sorts of âlow-skillâ jobs, just because unemployment is still so high and itâs a quick way to decrease the slush pile.
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Why is it inappropriate? We should not talk about structural changes to the economy and how peopleâespecially those impacted negatively by those changesâare reacting to them?
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[quote=âwrybread, post:96, topic:19792, full:trueâ]No one is protesting anyoneâs right to live wherever they want, weâre protesting a massive corporationâs enabling a huge workforce to live in a place that they donât contribute to in any meaningful way.
[/quote]
Oh yes they are, that is exactly what the thugs trying to stop the busses are doing.
And I donât think a bunch of bully boy thugs breaking things are in a position to decide who makes a positive contribution. I rather suspect that the sort of people who spend their time being thugs are the sort of people who the area would be best off without.
I donât have much sympathy for people who resort to violence and lies to make a point. This is the same group that had one of their group pretend to be a Google employee and say some stupid stuff a few weeks ago trying to manipulate us to support them.
Sorry, no deal. The fact that you admit to being part of the group that tried to propagate a lie really does not make me at all sympathetic to your case or inclined to believe your claim.
the claim that this is about the cost is also a big fat lie told by lying liars. They knew that Google and the rest were talking to the city about paying for the use of the stops before they held the first protest. This is quite a common tactic used by self-promoting slimeballs: they pick a fight that is already won and then position themselves to take the credit.
San Francisco has been expensive for over a decade now. The only parts that werenât expensive were the slums where it wasnât safe to walk at night. As soon as it became safe the rents started to spiral up.
All that bussing means is that Route 101 is slightly less crowded than it would be otherwise and considerably less fuel is wasted. The bay area needs more and better public transport and mass transport.
I can read; I was saying that I donât believe it. How does the guy know that theyâre taking them home, not somewhere else on the premises? Furthermore if those staff are allowed to take home their âto goâ box then whatâs stopping him putting food items in a bag himself? Supposedly the only person there to stop such behaviour is⌠he himself?
Iâve worked an incredible list of shitty jobs during high school and university and yes, most jobs require particular knowledge and skills. Iâm not belittling those jobs or those people in any way, what I was saying is that university degrees cost an investment of money and time and the reward for that is notionally getting a higher paid job.
Contempt for what other people do for work says more about you than it does about reality.
Whoâs high and mighty now? You have just been slandering basically all employees of Google (who, btw, I have no association with whatsoever) then have the gall to turn around and mischaracterise what I said to call me out for exactly what youâre doing.
Itâs odd that you reply to me on the tangent that has little to do with what youâre supposedly annoyed about while staying quiet on the other bits. Shall I take your silence to mean that I should just ignore all the rest of your commentary then?
@Elusis you are a troll, especially your first comment where you introduce a bunch of talking points which are purposefully misleading and mostly your own conjecture presented without any evidence. When pulled up on those topics you ignore it completely and instead argue unusual tangental points that have nothing to do with buses.
The reason I donât believe it is because it sounds like abject nonsense. If youâd take two seconds to consider it you might realise so too. THE GUY IS THE FREAKING SECURITY GUARD. If no one is busting peopleâs balls for getting âto go boxesâ then who exactly is going to bust his?
PS saying âdata pointsâ does not make you sound smart.
If youâre crazy enough to work 2-3 McJobs, wtf are you doing in San Francisco unless youâre making a ton of money somehow? If you can get 2-3 jobs in San Francisco, thereâs no reason you couldnât get 2-3 jobs in a place that that costs 1/4th as much and is probably safer. Iâm not crazy enough to want to live there, but if all you can afford is a tiny box to live in while you work 60 hours a week to scrap by, it would make a hell of a lot more sense to demand a higher wage or just abandon the overpriced place in search of better prospects. If you have that kind of energy, you probably could even find a decent blue collar job as a floor manager in towns that focus on that and make more money there. If you owned property for a long time in SF, youâre effectively rich, and if youâre just renting itâs easy enough to get a U-Haul and just go. Iâm not saying thatâs peachy, but I donât understand how people ended up ever paying the rent in that kind of city to begin with. Even with kids, you should have time in the summer. Itâs like a bunch of fast food workers are picketing in Beverly Hills to complain about no longer being able to afford the rent there. I admit, the transition is going to be rough, but it seems absolutely weird to me that instead of say, forming a San Francisco service industry union and going on a city-wide strike, people are picketing Google buses.
I desire cities with less economic inequality, not ones where everybodyâs wealthy.
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You nicely forgot to mention absent landlords that donât care about anything but their checks. Funny how people born into poverty made bad decisions and those born on third base made all the right ones⌠like choosing a luxury wombâŚ
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[quote=âEreiamjh, post:100, topic:19792, full:trueâ]
You nicely forgot to mention absent landlords that donât care about anything but their checks. Funny how people born into poverty made bad decisions and those born on third base made all the right ones⌠like choosing a luxury wombâŚ
[/quote]Iâve mentioned landlords that donât care about anything but their checks several times in this discussion.
I thought that it was common knowledge that the children of people that make bad decisions often themselves make bad decisions, as itâs a learned behavior. Itâs certainly not impossible for the children of those that make good decisions to make bad decisions, and vice-versa, but decision making is usually a function of how one is taught.
If you want a discussion of the teaching of children and how that affects their lives as adults, Iâm happy to have that discussion, but I didnât figure that it was necessary in this context.
âBut if thatâs broken itâs something you can fix without shutting it down.â
Well yeah, but for those who want to tell the world that they are PISSED OFF because GOOGLE ROLLING IN DOUGH, whatâs the point of just fixing the bus congestion??
Wouldnât it be more sensible to just take a combination of Muni and Caltrain? If they donât want to commute with the plebs they should just live closer to work and visit the city on the weekends. If they love the city so much itâs not like thereâs a shortage of startups to work for in SF. I donât really understand people who choose to commute for more than an hour each way if they have a choice in doing so.
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