No City for Poor Men

http://watchingamerica.com/News/243821/no-city-for-poor-men/

San Francisco — the bastion of American culture and the farthest-at-sea lighthouse of liberalism in the West — now takes a surprising turn.

No City for Poor Men
Krytyka Polityczna, Poland
By Agata Popęda
Translated By Natalia Suta
28 July 2014
Edited by Nathan Moseley

At the moment, San Francisco boasts twice as many billionaires as London. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment comes to over $3,000 a month — the most expensive on the U.S. real estate market. In the gap between the poor and the rich, the city has just jumped up to the second position in the country, placed right behind New York.* One reason is that since 2011, when Mayor Ed Lee introduced tax incentives for technology companies, a new class of immigrants has been pouring into the city. They are Silicon Valley employees for whom San Francisco, 40 miles away, has become a new bedroom.

The indigenous citizens quickly started referring to them as "Google Bus People." Moving silently outside and beyond public transportation, these vehicles, with on-board Internet, have become a constant element of the urban landscape. City districts such as South of Market have become headquarters for Twitter, Dropbox and Angel List (direct investments in startups) as well as a hotbed for new startups (supposedly, there are over 5,000 at the moment). As many as 50,000 people are employed in new technologies. As a result, the unemployment rate in San Francisco is 4.8 percent, whereas in the whole of California it reaches 8.3 percent.

Where is the problem? San Francisco is proud of its history. It boasts that it has never been a city of economic contrasts. However, this is changing now.

While young billionaires are pouring into the city, poor citizens are being displaced. Rent prices are soaring up, causing speculations on the real estate market and mass evictions. Of course, there are plenty of jobs available in San Francisco, but they are exported rather than offered to the locals.