Friday, April 11, 2014

SF Progress Haters Now Targetting Individuals



Reuters reports:
 Demonstrations against the grip on San Francisco held by wealthy technology workers took a personal turn on Friday with protesters taking aim at a Google lawyer they say personifies the tensions being stirred by abundant tech money.

Jack Halprin, a landlord in the city's gentrifying Mission district, became the focus of the latest blockade of a tech company commuter bus, with protesters demanding Google ask Halprin to rescind eviction notices he has sent his tenants.

Protesters told Reuters they will increasingly target individuals as part of a strategy to draw attention to the growing divide between rich and poor in San Francisco, a rift widened by a tech industry boom that is inflating rents and exacerbating social problems such as evictions.

"When you put a face on it, it suddenly becomes more real," Erin McElroy, an organizer at Eviction-Free San Francisco, said of what she views as a technology-driven housing crunch. About two dozen protesters took part in Friday's action...
 The prospect of facing protests on their own doorsteps may unnerve technology industry employees across the Bay Area, many of whom are becoming increasingly aware of the growing ill-will they face in a region where housing prices are skyrocketing and salary
growth is anemic outside the tech sector.
Bizarrely, none of these protesters ever think about protesting in front of the government zoning offices and city planning boards, which prevent most new construction in the city. It's all about a take, take, take advocacy for a below market rental rates.

Here's a thought for the protesters: Economics 101 says limit construction and there will be less supply around, prices will go up. Prevent prices from going to market rates and it will discourage new construction.  Let development occur and prices will be lower.

Here's a note for would be techie real estate owners operating in a hostile environment: Put your properties in a shelf corporation with a nominee officer. Keep your name off the public papers.

(ht Andre Grillon)

10 comments:

  1. Here's economics 101. You build new houses/apartments after getting rid of zoning and the rent falls and then people move into SF and drive the rent up. You have people who work in SF who live way out in Petaluma or Antioch and commute 60+ minutes every day. There are a ton of people ready to move into SF. You wind up with over construction, over crowding and the same rent prices. good work.

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    1. Re: Jerry Wolfgang,
      -- You build new houses/apartments after getting rid of zoning and the rent falls and then people move into SF and drive the rent up. --

      Ok. So the rent goes up. That would entice more developers to build more apartments and houses.

      -- You wind up with over construction, over crowding and the same rent prices. good work. --

      Wait - "over-construction" and "overcrowding" at the SAME TIME? How did you come up with that? Do you even understand the English language?

      If you have OVERCROWDING is because you don't have enough CONSTRUCTION, i.e. you would have people sharing apartments, sharing rent, etc. If you have OVERCONSTRUCTION is because you don't have enough tenants or buyers. You can't tie the two together logically. You have NO clue of what you talk about, which means you're nothing but a two-bit charlatan and an ignoramus.



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    2. Kind of like in Austin. Where companies and those seeking work have been flooding to. Where the development of new properties has accommodated the volume of renters. And the surrounding infrastructure has scaled accordingly. Like that? Like how if you can't afford to live in the high rise you have new building taller than 10 stories and the overall supply is closer to the demand? Like that?

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    3. JW: Too stupid to even be a troll.

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  2. Nice to see Team Hatred and Envy Generation being unpredictable. I was becoming bored with their usual motive and m.o.

    It's by the way that the young woman's sign suggests that eviction is not necessarily evil, which is just what we suspected. If eviction, however, is necessarily evil, then "Evil EVICTiON" has a redundancy.

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  3. Bob, you live in the area. Why don't you start a business of "Protesters for Hire" to promote pro-free market ideas. If Unions can hire out minimum wage workers (non-Union of course) to do the protesting for them, then why not start a business where busy productive people can hire a group of protesters to counter act, and place a buffer zone against these Marxist twits. The business would be able to educate the public on the idea of a free market with songs, signs, performance art, and cool pro freedom of exchange costumes, or bikini clad women with big boobs holding up pictures of Rothbard....yes this idea is getting better the more I think about it.....



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  4. It's something in the SF water....been there for years. Apparently certain certain people who comment here drink the water as well.

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  5. I thought Millenials were "the most libertarian generation evar!!!11"

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    1. That's San Francisco we're talking about... the long-time nest of the weirdos and clowns of all stripes, and their plutocrat overlords. I can't wait for the gentrification to flush these characters out, with their pathetic pretenses of being artsy (SF is notorious for the copious amounts of junk it's "artistic" community produces... looks like none of them could be bothered to learn to draw or to compose, and no, drugs are not substitute for skill), their smelly bums, and their obnoxious hard-left bureaucrats.

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