I have a completely different take on the causes of the rent rise in SF, and it doesn’t involve scapegoating “baby boomers” or “tech workers”, or anyone else, I hope. Here’s what I think is happening. People want to live in SF because: 1. It has a stunningly beautiful location, 2.It has an intact urban fabric, and, 3. There’s a tech boom underway.
SF was one of the few American cities that survived red-lining, Federal subsidy of suburban freeways, and redevelopment. Several key political movements at first broke the momentum of freeway construction and redevelopment, and then stopped them altogether. In addition, absentee landlords were prevented from destroying neighborhoods via strict zoning, and highrise development downtown was regulated.
Compare this to some other American cities: St. Louis and SF had roughly the same population in 1945, but now St. Louis’ population has more than halved. That’s an astonishing abandonment of infrastructure and capital. Nearly every American central city has suffered this fate: “redevelopment” notwithstanding, 9 of 10 tax dollars left urban cores in the post WWII era, populations plummeted, cities were segregated, white suburban infrastructure was subsidized. The presence a single colored family on a block was enough to prevent home loans by Federally subsidized lenders. The result was a staggering disinvestment. It’s amazing that SF survived at all. I know I’m cramming a lot into a single paragraph, but I just wanted to point out how myopically ahistorical any perspective is that selectively blames any one group for the escalation of rents in SF.
The great irony of the current anti-gentrification sentiment is that its first real result has been SF Mayor Ed Lee’s advocacy of the “fast-tracking” of building permits. Hmm, who do you think gains the most from this? Imagine what could happen if the power of eminent domain could be brought back to level entire “blighted” neighborhoods so that they might be “redeveloped”. Several thousand units of housing were demolished to build the Moscone Center and environs. The Western Addition’s thriving African-American community is mostly gone. Both neighborhoods were victims of “redevelopment”, which used powers of eminent domain to displace renters and small property owners. Finally, the Mission District was spared the redevelopment bulldozer when tenants and small property owners joined in a movement to stop it: the Mission Coalition. This was one of the first places in the U.S. where “redevelopment” was stopped. Likewise, the freeway revolt saved SF neighborhoods from being devastated. The result is a desirable place to live.
