Script preview: Gentrification and Displacement in San Francisco

Hello everyone! I have a new video scheduled to go live this Thursday. Here's a script preview for you to check out. I'll try and post the video early here soon as well.

San Francisco, California. Home to the Golden Gate Bridge, Full House, Alcatraz, Fuller House, and runaway gentrification. Since the 1990s, the tech industry in Silicon Valley has grown and many of those workers own or rent here in San Francisco. In that time, housing prices have gone through the roof and now the city is the most expensive place to live in the United States, beating out Manhattan. Longtime residents are being priced out and teachers, nurses, and police officers are struggling to live in the city. Lots of people blame the tech workers for the problems facing San Francisco, but are they really to blame or just a convenient scapegoat? 

San Francisco, California. Home to the Golden Gate Bridge, Full House, Alcatraz, Fuller House, and runaway gentrification. Since the 1990s, the tech industry in Silicon Valley has grown and many of those workers own or rent here in San Francisco. In that time, housing prices have gone through the roof and now the city is the most expensive place to live in the United States, beating out Manhattan. Longtime residents are being priced out and teachers, nurses, and police officers are struggling to live in the city. Lots of people blame the tech workers for the problems facing San Francisco, but are they really to blame or just a convenient scapegoat? 

So what is gentrification exactly? Gentrification occurs when capital and higher-income, higher-educated people move into working-class neighborhoods. It’s pretty safe to say that this is occurring here in San Francisco. Gentrification has already transformed about 10 percent of neighborhoods across the entire Bay Area. 

Gentrification can lead to displacement. Displacement occurs when people are forced to move, either because of their housing conditions or their neighborhood conditions. An influx of higher-income residents can encourage property owners and landlords to increase rents and home sale prices. They do this because new residents can and will pay higher prices than the long-time residents. This can lead to displacement. Displacement is occurring in nearly half of Bay Area neighborhoods. The median home value in the Bay Area has increased by 168 percent between 1996 and 2016, the highest rate of anywhere in the United States.

We know that gentrification and displacement are occurring in San Francisco and in cities around the world, but it’s really hard to know how much. Displacement can be difficult to measure, as about 15 percent of Americans move in any given year. It’s hard to know exactly why people move and if it is due to displacement. Gentrification can be difficult to identify initially as cities change constantly, though oftentimes slowly. Once wealthy neighborhoods can decline; old mansions could be split into multi-family housing. On the other hand, poor neighborhoods can become more wealthy. There’s an ebb and flow to cities and neighborhood over time. 

That said, researchers have metrics for measuring gentrification and displacement, and those metrics tell a clear story in the Mission, a neighborhood in San Francisco. The neighborhood is dense, walkable, and well-served by transit. In other words, very attractive to the young people who work at tech companies. The Mission has historically been the center of the city’s Latino community, and the influx of young, mostly white, tech workers has eroded some of the character and community of the neighborhood. The Mission is filled with colorful murals, but the artists can’t afford to live here any more. One bedroom apartments in the neighborhood go for about $3,800 per month. That’s so high that entry-level tech workers can’t even afford to live here. Some of the housing in the Mission is rent controlled, but once a resident leaves, or is forced out, the rent can be raised to market value.

It’s important to point out that this is actually the second recent wave of gentrification in the Mission. The tech industry did the plenty of damage to the neighborhood in the first dotcom boom of the 1990s. Between 1990 and 1999, approximate 925 households were evicted in the Mission. Evictions are higher now, though. There were 908 evictions in the Mission in the four year period between 2011 and 2015, the highest rate for any neighborhood in the city.

So it sounds like an open and shut case, right? High income tech workers are moving into the Mission and forcing out long-time Latino residents. Well, it’s not that simple. First of all, Silicon Valley is booming and people who work there need to live somewhere. As I mentioned, the Mission is an attractive neighborhood. And it makes sense to encourage people to live in dense, transit-served areas to reduce traffic and greenhouse gas emissions. 

We’ve only really looked at the problem from the demand side. That is, people demanding to live in San Francisco neighborhoods like the Mission. What if the real problem is housing supply? Despite all of the demand for new housing in the Mission, new construction has not kept up. Needless to say, that doesn’t help housing prices. With housing in such high demand, it seems like real estate developers would be lining up to build new units in such a hot market, but that hasn’t happened. Why?

Some people blame the NIMBYs. NIMBYs, short for “Not In My Back Yard,” are people who oppose new development in their neighborhood. NIMBYs are often derided in San Francisco for holding up or derailing new high density housing that could alleviate the housing shortage that has driven up housing costs. NIMBYs have consistently supported restrictive zoning codes and building regulations that make building new housing a chore. Certainly NIMBYs bear some blame, but the situation here is also more complicated than that. One can imagine a Latino resident of the Mission opposing new housing because they don’t want more tech workers moving in, driving up demand and rents, as well as diluting the neighborhood character. They may technically be NIMBYs, but you can see their point of view. 

AirBnB may actually bear some responsibility, too. A study of short-term rentals in the Mission found that 29 percent of potential rental units were listed on the site. The city recently passed laws that aim to curtail AirBnB listings that constrain supply for long-term residents.

One last point — the housing that is being built is overwhelmingly market rate. Affordable housing is not being built at a rate fast enough to stem the tide of gentrification and displacement. So simply building may not solve the problem if the new construction is for high-income residents. 

Tech workers, NIMBYs, AirBnB, and burdensome regulations. These are just a few of the causes of gentrification and displacement in San Francisco. Tech workers may get an undue amount of the blame because they are increasingly visible as they colonize neighborhoods like the Mission. But the truth is that the rapid and substantial changes in San Francisco are caused by a lot of factors. This complicated problem means there is no one silver bullet solution, and it’s more than I can tackle in just one video. It can be easy to say build more housing, preferably affordable housing. But there are roadblocks that need to be taken down to dramatically increase supply. And the concerns of long-time residents shouldn’t necessarily be ignored either. San Francisco has a rich history, and it would be a shame to have it bulldozed and replaced. But it’s clear that this instinct toward preservation has led to a city that is completely unattainable to low and middle income residents.

So, what do you think? How do you solve a problem like San Francisco?