Bay Area native here, and not some rural remote area, raised in Berkeley, and resident of SF for over a decade. First I’d like to thank Edna for her letter! It’s heartwarming, and comforting to know that others feel the same way.

To all the ‘fuck you poor people it’s a free market economy, and techies have a right to be here, and if you don’t like go move to Castro valley’ commenters I’d like to say something. Without us; the artists, the ‘hippies’, the working class people, the homeless, the punks, the mariachis, the teachers, the poets, the freaks, the mentally ill, and drug addicted this city WOULD be Castro valley! If you want to live in a sterile suburb please pick up your shit, and go! This is a metropolis where people make noise at night, they get dirty, they express their feelings, and they live. Really live. In a not always neat and polished way. Life is more interesting with us, and you’d be fucked without us. You’d be eating at Applebee’s every god damned night if we really do ALL leave. And maybe we will. Maybe we will abandon our home, and make another place interesting and cool, and you can have Applebee’s, but you’ll have to bus in service staff from Castro Valley to work there.

To the little shitty bastard who said that the ‘have-nots’ were envious of the techies, kindly suck a rancid turd:) We don’t want what they’ve got. That’s why we are angry and heartbroken. We want teachers and waitresses to be our neighbors. We want the person who busks in the BART stations to bring in our mail when we are out of town. We want to hear laughter and singing at 4am instead of loud frat-boy cheers. We want people who see a person, and not a fucking bum on the corner of 6th and Market. And you know what? You baby retard? I do! Because I work with the ‘have-nots’ the ‘riff raff’ the ‘dangerous’ people. For 12 years I’ve worked with people with mental illnesses, many of whom have been homeless most of their adult lives. Their stories are as varied as the microclimates of MY Bay Area. And you know what else shit-for-brains? The absurdly wealthy ARE ABSOLUTELY contributing to the kind of homeless being addressed in this letter. I can give you one specific example that is being echoed throughout MY, once fair, city. I worked with a client about 8 years ago, he had his first schizophrenic break after his mother died. He was quite young, and the grief caused him to pull his own teeth out with his bare hands. He, being an Asian immigrant with no teeth and a diagnosed mental illness, was no longer employable. He was a kind and generous person, but often wound up homeless because he had difficulty managing medications etc. Anyhow I helped him find housing in an SRO (single room occupancy) south of market, years ago. So he lived in his SRO relatively happy and stable for years. He made friends, he helped out at the day treatment center where he went for groups and to see his therapist. So fast forward to last year. His SRO experiences a devastating fire. He, along with the other residents, are given temporary shelter in various places throughout the city. He does ok for a while awaiting the reopening of his home. But instead of the SRO reopening the property owner sees an opportunity. Why bring in poor people, and receive a subsidy from the government, when I can raise the rent to an obscene amount, and allow tech bros to move in? So my client, after waiting and waiting, is finally told that he no longer has a home. Too bad so sad. Good luck. He eventually decompensates, and winds up homeless. He turns into the ‘riff raff’ that little prick Justin bitched about. The thing is my client’s story is not unique. It’s happening ALL over the city. We used to have a lot of housing options for our clients, and everyday we have less and less and less. I want you to come to my program, look me and my clients, and coworkers in the face, and tell me how much your kind has ‘improved’ the city. Don’t act surprised though if I introduce you to someone with anger issues twice your size motherfucker.