Who Lives in San Francisco?
Next Week’s Election Is the Big Reveal
Between news about the housing market and think pieces about gentrification and the sharing economy, enough stories about the rapid demographic changes in San Francisco have been written in the last 6 months to fill a phone book. The question becomes either, “Who would be in that phone book, if people still had landlines?” or, “Is the San Francisco we love going the way of the phone book?”
When a news story about gentrification or the severe income inequality in San Francisco or the current housing crisis hits what I collectively refer to as “the hipster blogs,” the comments flood with rants and taunts from the Libertariat, who spout such mantras as “No one has the right to live in San Francisco” and “All those so-called artists are just parasites.” They regurgitate easily debunked Econ 101 arguments about how rent control hurts renters, or how renters are responsible for the housing crisis because it isn’t “natural” to live in an apartment for more than 5 years. Some claim that everything is the City’s fault for not building enough housing.
Let’s take that at face value for the nonce, and then try to gently remind them that the residents living in rent-controlled apartments now are real people, with lives to conduct. Yes, more apartment buildings should be built! Yes, we should build upward, and plan for density! But that doesn’t save the teachers and nurses being evicted or having their rents tripled by the greediest landlords and speculators.
I know, I know. Never read the comments. But the comments on these blogs give me a window into what a certain slice of San Francisco thinks — a slice that believes in the tech meritocracy. Lest you still wonder my stance, I will offer this: If the tech meritocracy were real, it would mean that the people benefiting from it were more deserving than everyone else. The people benefiting from it are largely white men. I do not believe that white men are better than everyone else.
There are some mean people on the Internet, I don’t need to tell you that. But how thick on the ground are these people? It seems like every other person on Valencia Street is wearing a beard and a $150 plaid shirt and talking about their valuation and their app as they hold a $5 coffee in one hand and requisition an Uber with the other. I don’t think these people are inherently bad, so don’t yell at me about “demonizing” tech people. It’s just that they can afford a lot more for an apartment than the rest of us, so they’re driving up rents by agreeing to pay more for the same apartment than a non-tech worker.
How many of these people are there? How many more can we fit in this clown car? And speaking of the future, how do they vote?
More to the point, what will be revealed in this election? I’m going to look at one local race (Assemblyman) and several of the ballot measures, in the context of this election being not only a revelation of who lives here, but a referendum on who gets to keep living here.
CA ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 17
David Campos vs. David Chiu: CAMPOS CAMPOS CAMPOS
David Campos is a housing rights activist. David Chiu let the lobbyists from Airbnb write legislation in their own favor, and then hired them to run his campaign for assembly.
Everyone who makes candidate endorsements worth considering [The League, Clean Slate, Examiner] agrees that Campos will be a better representative of the people of San Francisco than Chiu. The Chronicle recommends Chiu, which is really an endorsement of Campos, since the paper’s editorial page is as close to a pro-landlord newsletter as we have in San Francisco.
If the voting populace is actually more pro-business than pro-San Francisco, not to mention against tenants, then we’ll see a victory for Chiu. Is it that clear cut? Is there not more than one issue? I don’t actually give a shit in this context, but thanks for asking. This isn’t journalism.
PROPOSITION G — YES YES YES
Here it is: The Speculator Tax. This pro-tenant measure would add financial strictures on newly purchased buildings to discourage the practice of evicting tenants in the course of speculative real estate flipping. This practice both removes tenants from their homes and, often, removes rent-controlled housing stock from the market entirely – thus driving up rents – by converting previous rental units into TICs (basically, a kind of condo with different rules for borrowing and ownership).
The SPUR voter guide describes well what the law would do, but they don’t endorse the law because of far-fetched counterexamples that would, say, restrict people who have a death in the family in Texas from selling their building. They also don’t recommend voting against it.
Let me be perfectly clear: The attack ads are wrong. This tax does not apply to single-family homes or to any property owner’s primary home. If you live in your building, this tax would not apply to you. If you do not live in your building, your property is an investment property, and these regulations would apply to you, you poor, unlucky capitalist opportunist.
Why I care about this law so fucking much: I am a tenant in a rent-controlled apartment. Any of you libertarians who want to call me a parasite because I get to live in San Francisco near the poverty line, go ahead. I’m an artist and a student, and in today’s rental market, I wouldn’t be able to live in San Francisco as either without this apartment.
My landlord, a notorious real estate speculator, is literally waiting to see whether Prop G passes to decide what method he’s going to use next to try to evict us. Despite being prohibited explicitly under Prop M, the anti-harassment law San Francisco passed in 2008, he has been threatening us with eviction since taking ownership in February, vacillating between the three kinds of “just cause” evictions (Ellis Act, Owner Move-in, and Capital Improvements), because each of these would restrict his future use of the property in different ways. It is specifically against the law to pressure tenants to take a buy-out they don’t want in order to get them to leave their homes, and it is illegal to threaten them with eviction if they won’t take your buyout.
If he would lose money by flipping the building, he probably won’t go for an Ellis Act eviction, which would require him to empty out the remaining tenants (not just us) and take the building off the rental market. This doesn’t make us safe forever, but it does mean we continue to devalue his property while we still live here. “How do you sleep at night, knowing how little rent you pay,” he asked my upstairs neighbor. “Just fine,” my neighbor replied. “I’m taking care of my family.”
Proposition G will not lower rents, provide more apartments, or save everyone’s home. But it might slow down the flipping trend, and it will preserve some rent-controlled units. YES YES YES on G
PROPOSITION K — AFFORDABLE HOUSING — Yes (symbolic)
Affordable housing, below-market-rate housing, and low-income housing are all related terms that mean, in broad and simplified terms, housing stock whose rental price is constrained not to exceed 30 percent of income for a given group. Yes, there is a shortage of affordable housing in San Francisco; the vacancy rate is around 4 percent, and the rental market is routinely described as in crisis.
The League SF describes this law as a “non-binding pinky swear” that does little to guarantee or even influence the future of affordable housing in San Francisco. The original legislation by Supervisor Jane Kim was watered down so much before it made it to the ballot that what we are left with is a policy statement that says, “Sure, yeah, more affordable housing sounds great.” Whether this law passes or fails is immaterial for the actual future of the rental market, but for the purposes of this blog, a Yes vote by our populace would indicate support for lower-income renters as an ideal, while a No vote would likely be mixed between people who supported a stronger law and people who don’t care whether middle-class and poor people get to live in San Francisco.
PROPOSITION E — Beverage Tax (Yes)
Although Prop E is a tax, the failure of Prop E to pass wouldn’t necessarily mean our town had been overrun by anti-tax Republicans or anti-regulation Libertarians. So far $7.7 MILLION dollars has been spent by the beverage industry on the “No On E” campaign, more money than has been spent to defeat any proposition since PG&E gunned for public power.
Additionally, many people are of the opinion that it’s a regressive act that would hurt poor people more (as that 2 cents per ounce is a larger per-capita share of their grocery budget, pocket money, and wealth in general). However, sugar-sweetened beverages are a dessert, not a health food; they’re a snack, not a staple; and this might make me sound like a nanny, but I believe they should be a treat and not such an integral part of the daily diet that people who are already buying soda instead of food are taking a hit of 32 cents a day (for a 16-oz bottle of Coke) instead of buying food.
Also on the nanny state front, these 2 cents would fund health and phys ed and recreation programs for kids. If you’re really opposed to disadvantaged kids having more stuff to do after school than watch TV and drink pop, by all means, vote No on E. I’ll be voting Yes. All the slate cards are voting Yes. Even the Chronicle is voting Yes.
Transportation Measures — A (YES), B (No), and L (NO NO NO)
One of the mantras of the anti-rent control set is that it doesn’t matter whether people get priced out of their homes and have to leave San Francisco; SF’s economy could be sustained without economic diversity among its residents as long as low-wage workers have adequate transit to get them to their jobs. They think the money should go into transportation instead of affordable housing, as if moving people toward their jobs more efficiently would somehow mitigate the fact that they were coming from farther and farther away.
Others, like urbanists and planning geeks (who as a group have a mixed opinion on rent control), swear by density as a solution to the housing crisis and note that one of the best ways to facilitate density is improving transit. Thus, votes for good public transit policy might not immediately indicate whether the voting public is more or less sympathetic to people who rely on transit to get to work. However, votes against supporting public transit could indicate a preponderance of power among those who have no sympathy for transit riders (and, in the case of Proposition L, those who have a seething hatred for bicyclists and no regard for the concerns of pedestrians and transit riders).
PROPOSITION A — YES
Provides $500 Million in funding for MUNI, pedestrian, and bike infrastructure and repairs by issuing a bond which, according to The League, doesn’t actually put the City in more debt but spreads out needed funding over the years the infrastructure would be used. The only Con I’ve seen is that it’s not actually enough money to pay for the backlog of planned or needed projects. Read concurring views at SPUR and the League.
PROPOSITION B — Maybe
This proposition pegs the growth of the MUNI budget to the growth of the city’s population. That would retroactively give MUNI another $22 million dollars to spend, but that comes out of the general budget with no funding source. While giving money to MUNI is always a good idea, this measure tries to fund MUNI directly after taking away its funding sources (Sunday parking meters and the Vehicle License Fee). This measure is self-canceling if the VLF comes back. It’s a messy bill, and I’m not sure how I’ll vote on it. Read opposing views at SPUR and the League.
PROPOSITION L — CARS-FIRST INITIATIVE — NO NO NO L NO
San Francisco’s Transit-First Policy is 40 years old, and the City just spent 11 years proving that, in fact, buses are good for the environment, even though cars sometimes have to wait for them to move. Seriously, that was a question? Yes. Read the amazing story of the Environmental Impact Report involved in the planned Bus Rapid Transit project.
So, having just spent 11 years proving that buses are good for you, the City of San Francisco now faces a challenge in the form of Proposition L, a measure that would restrict San Francisco’s ability to make any sort of transit policy unless it put cars first. This would undo the Neighborhoods Plan, the Bike Plan, the Parking Plan, and of course MUNI planning, as well as any ideas around managing increased population by managing density.
To understand why anyone would be opposed to making it easier to get around without a car, you need to imagine loving your car so much that you would never want to leave it. Now, hold in your mind that you also want to get out of your car as fast as possible, and that everyone who rides a bus or a bike is in your way. YOUR. WAY. Proposition L reminds me of every head-shaking moment when a car double-parks and blocks a bus stop, or cuts off a bus at an intersection: Some drivers are so concerned with their extra few seconds that it doesn’t even cross their minds that they are prioritizing themselves alone over a vehicle carrying 40–100 people. That’s what this law does.
PROPOSITION J — MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE — YES YES YES
As stated previously, more and more people in minimum wage jobs are having to commute into SF in order to do those jobs. More and more people in minimum wage jobs are having their rents raised or being evicted from their rent-controlled apartments. The Minimum Wage laws in Seattle and San Jose have had a net positive effect on the economy. Voting for this law is a simple humanitarian act. Voting against it is voting for people to live in poverty, or at the least with stagnant wages and decreasing wealth.
So, if you’ve read this far, you probably voted already. Good for you! I hope you’re with me in wanting our beloved City to thrive for more than just the rich. I hope your optimism hasn’t been dashed upon the rocks. I hope for a lot of things. We’ll see what happens November 4.
CORRECTION: This post previously stated erroneously that SPUR endorsed Campos for Assembly. SPUR only endorses ballot measures, not candidates. This was a cut-and-paste error. You can stop shouting.
