Technology companies based in and around San Francisco—and particularly Google, as the precursor of the trend, as well as an example to such players—face growing hostility from residents toward their employees, angry at house prices that are being pushed ever skyward thanks to the elevated salaries those working in the high-tech sectors can afford to pay for property.

What started with the public smashing of a Google bus piñata last May has escalated into street protests that have seen buses ferrying tech employees from Google or Apple stopped in the street, and even vandalized.

The process by which once run-down or lower-price city center neighborhoods are taken over by high earners, pushing up the cost of living there, to the detriment of those on lower incomes has become known as gentrification. The phenomenon is common enough in cities around the world once a neighborhood is “discovered” by the wealthy who see a very attractive price-quality ratio and decide to move in.

One of the best illustrations of this, in many ways, the perfect storm, is what has been happening in San Francisco over recent years. Following the trend set by Google, thousands of employees of tech companies are now scouring the city center in search of homes. They are able to offer high prices, and do not flinch at offering a year’s rent up front. What’s more, such buyers are every seller’s dream: they are work-focused, with good salaries, and numerous additional benefits that include access to credit at advantageous interest rates.

Imagine this: the city where you have lived all your life is suddenly taken over by a new elite of workers with hitherto unheard of salaries and bonuses who are picked up each morning from their homes by luxury buses fitted with WiFi, in the process sending the cost of living through the roof. The restaurants you used to eat in are now too expensive. Shops raise their prices to take better advantage of the prices the new residents can afford to pay. Rents are going up, and you are beginning to fear the moment when you will have to renegotiate yours. Soon, you start to see long-standing residents moving out, unable to afford these higher and higher rents, forced to move to other areas. The text of the manifesto above, handed out by demonstrators to Google employees caught up in one of the protests leaves little to the imagination regarding the concerns of San Francisco’s lower-income residents.

Technology companies need to offer high salaries and other important benefits to be able to attract talent in a highly competitive market place. This process is beginning to divide society into a new kind of haves and have nots, redefining many rules along the way. Rents in some areas of San Francisco have gone up by as much as 135% in the last year alone, part of a development that has been going on for years. In short, the directors and employees of tech companies are taking over property that people who have lived in the city all their lives can no longer afford. Now that the better-known neighborhoods have been occupied, other areas, further out of the city, are being targeted: when your company provides you with a luxury bus service that stops in every public bus stop, and you can catch up on work because you have free WiFi, you can pretty much live wherever you like.

Good news for those working in the technology sector, who are now the new elite envied by all: you are taking the city by storm. But for those who have lived in San Francisco all their lives, a big problem.