This painting gentrifiers with a broad-brush! Most of them grew up in neighborhoods with minorities…as landscapers, housekeepers, etc. Those minorities are still welcome in the mission, just bring a mop and vacuum, or be there to fix a leak.
Let me begin with a “tl;dr” apology. And yes, I have been waiting for a place to drop this comment. There was some post a few weeks ago that made me start thinking about it.
I’ve been here since 1993. Nope, doesn’t make me an OG, but it’s a bit of time. Flew in, sight unseen. Stayed in an acquaintance’s basement for a few days, then pored over the Bay Guardian looking for an apartment (there was not only no craigslist, there was barely an internet). I found a room in a Guerrero two-bedroom for $330 a month.
This was when New Dawn occupied the Tokyo Go Go space, Elixir was part of the Jack’s empire, Casanova was an old Vietnam vet daytime bar, and a rice and bean burrito at La Cumbre cost $1.25. Laughing Hyenas at Kilowatt!
You’re probably expecting some things-were-better-then nostalgia to follow, but let me disappoint you. Things are better now. There are better drinks now. There is better coffee. There are breakfast/brunch choices that I wish we had (Boogaloo’s, New Dawn, and crepes used to be the only game in the neighborhood). The food is unbelievable. The only downside to the Mission today is that everything’s a little pricier than I want it to be, but that’s always true, isn’t it? No one has ever thought, “I live in a Golden Age of Prices.”
Something that I have heard weekly, daily, hourly in the past 20 years is howls about the gentrification that has just *ruined* the place. Yes, the folks worried about the Google buses on Guerrero, are not the first to worry about “losing the character of the neighborhood.” People bemoaned gentrification in the mid-90’s, they *really* got up in arms during the dot-com boom soon thereafter, and now, during the app boom (or whatever is driving the current rent increases), we’re hearing the cries again. But I’m not worried about it. Why? Two reasons. First, I don’t consider displacement of *businesses* gentrification. I’ll take a nice restaurant over a grimy donut shop any day, and there’s nothing crucial to the character of the neighborhood about having an “envio dinero” bulletproof plexi kiosk in every single storefront – every third one will be fine. So the economic development of the Mission – from artisanal cheese, to handmade clothing, to custom bikes, to fancy restaurants – doesn’t count as gentrification in my eyes. If it is, well, it’s the good kind.
What counts to me as gentrification is displacement of *people*. And that happens far, far less than the town criers suggest it does. It turns out that Prop. 13 (which caps property taxes) and rent control have done a spectacular job of keeping people in place. The family to the right of my apartment, the woman to my left, two entire buildings across the street – all are full of people who have been there for decades. If they’re renting, they’re renting at a rate they’ve been paying for years, and they can’t be evicted (yes, there are owner move-ins and Ellis Acts, but they are the rare exception, not the rule). If they own, they’re paying a few hundred a year in property tax, as opposed to some folks down the street paying over $10,000.
We have serious structural incentives in place to keep people in place, and they are working. So the folks out back who slaughter a couple chickens on the landing on special occasions aren’t going anywhere. The neighbors with thirty people in the backyard shouting at every punch thrown on the pay-per-view boxing match are settled in. The guy across the street who comes out of his family’s house drunk at 9 a.m., accosting passersby with, “I been here 40 years, born and raised,” will probably do that for another 40, unless his liver gives.
Are there problems with rent increases? Absolutely. Vacancy decontrol lets the apartments that become available shoot up to crazy levels. It’s going to be very difficult for people to come *into* the neighborhood unless they’re rich. I think I saw a $2700 one-bedroom down the street, and no kid fresh from college can rent that out and start working an entry-level job. But that’s true on the Lower East Side, too. The most desirable places are always going to be the most expensive. So there are barriers to entry, but nobody is being “pushed out.”
Demographically, the Mission today looks an awful lot like what it looked like 20 years ago. Economically, Farina employs a lot more people than the dormant bakery there before it (what was that place called?). It may be better than ever here.
I think a lot of what you say makes sense. But demographics include income diversity, which is nowhere near what it was. Also, trading light manufacturing for service jobs- jobs which perplexingly seem to require a degree- has an impact.
Because as those workers leave, some of the small restaurants will close, as will small businesses (not protected by rent control). Those business owners will leave with their families. The people will look around and see that so much of their neighborhood now caters to a different mindset, and see how nice it is for their cousin out in San Leandro or wherever, and decide to move there.
Also, a quick look at census numbers indicates that in fact, demographically the mission has changed in the last 20 years. A lot.
If you want to know where it’s heading, look at North Beach. No italians, but plenty of “authentic italian restaurants”.
But there’s no point having a is it better or worse argument, because of course that depends on where you like to drink/eat/send your kids to school/ buy your heroin.
Diversity is key. Dead on. North Beach? Where is that? I haven’t been there for over a decade, and with good reason. Valencia? I might swing by for a happy hour drink at Cassanova when all the normals are there…but I never stay very long.
Haha yeah that is the sum of it all, once all the people that drew all the rich into the area leave, and the rich are left going.. hey wtf are we supposed to do, we had no creativity of our own..? They look s lost, left holding the leash. Then it will just degrade into a new tourist trap, with Hot topics and all kinds of garbage… then 50 years from now it will be a shit hole again and everything will cycle its self to*BOOM METEOR CRASH ALL DEAD EATEN FROM THE FOOT UP BY CANNIBALISM*
If by “send your kids to school” you mean poop, so far I’ve been able to enjoy doing all four on the same block in the mission for the past 10 years uninterrupted.
The government should treat all the same all the time. I cannot fathom a scenario where one person pays a fraction of what others pay in taxes because they have been there a while.
The government preventing a private owner from raising rents is blatantly wrong on so many levels. The effect is people aren’t pushed out as much. Is that the goal of government? To keep people in place? Nope. The goal is to protect people’s rights. You cannot protect the tenant at the cost of the landlord. That is a corrupt morality.
Just my thoughts. Maybe some day I will go from being bullied by this government to being protected by it. But since I don’t have children, don’t own a house, and make a decent living, I find that super unlikely.
What I can’t believe is the Google/Apple/Corporate people who receive “affordable housing” subsidies (rent control) without means testing. It’s a very crazy system that needs reform.
On the contrary, one of the main roles of government is to protect the weak from the powerful that may seek to exploit them. To this goal, rent control is a good step (though not one without any problems. Very little in this world is clear-cut black and white).
Free trade is never exploitation. The government forcing private citizen to give, share, offer to other citizens a product or service against their will is for sure exploitation.
You and a landlord have a lease agreement. If you want your rent to stay as is forever, you need a special lease. But landlords wouldn’t do that that because it is stupid.
The mentality of protecting one person at the cost of someone else is called a relative morality. That line of thinking is irrational.
On the contrary, “free” trade often (if not always) represents exploitation of someone(s) along the line. The term you’re looking for is “FAIR trade is never exploitation.”
Oh god, are you one of those “taxes = theft” loons? “The government forcing private citizen to give, share, offer” value through either taxation or other social programs is, on the other hand, the nature of civilization. It is eminently fair and eminently just. To attempt to weasel ones way out of contributing to the society as a whole is fundamentally immoral and destructive and, frankly, deeply dishonest.
Yeah, tell that to the millions in third world countries who had their food economies ruined when multinationals came in and undercut their market, driving farmers out of business and then promptly raised food prices. All in the name of free trade.
HDPDV, nice job quoting half of the statement from Jamin. You seemed to miss the “to other citizens” part. I don’t think he/she’s arguing about taxes here; what he/she’s saying is that this it’s larger-scale equivalent to a bum asking you for change on the street and a nearby cop forcing you to give it to him.
Jacob: Did I misunderstand his argument? Because it sure sounded like the same thing to me. If he is NOT arguing that contributing to the society that you are a part of is unfair then I absolutely withdraw my comments.
HDPDV, I think he’s arguing that they’re two separate things. Contributing necessary taxes for the police, fire department, roads, etc… (what I would probably call the “bare minimum”) vs. being legally required to do “harm” to yourself in order to allow someone else to prosper.
I happen to agree with him, if I’ve interpreted the statement correctly. I’m imagining a parasitic relationship where one thing feeds on the other until the food source dies, which causes the inevitable death of the parasite, unless the parasite can find something else to feed on/kill.
I know my example is a little extreme, and probably a little Rand-esque, but I think it’s applicable to both Jamin’s statement and situations where it’s the belief of people that it’s the strong’s duty to care for the weak at any and all costs to the strong.
trust the most powerful force in the country to protect the weak from the powerful. no chance the state would try and exploit the citizens, right?
lets elect a war criminal again: OBAMA2012!
the voters here don’t agree with you. there’s so many other cities with right-wing policies that would be more in line with your own, no one is forcing you to live here.
@Rod: So the voters don’t agree with Jamin, Does that mean Jamin shouldn’t express an opinion?
Sorry, but your “If you voice any complaint, you should move” attitude is seriously idiotic.
And, the idea that one would only want to live where everyone has the same politics is even dumber. Unfortunately, it is all too prevalent on the left in SF. All sorts of praise for “diversity” but no tolerance for anyone who departs from the party line.
Rod: no one is forcing you to read or respond to Jamin’s opinion, so why complain about it? You certainly weren’t capable of mustering an intelligent response.
Yes, it is not a surprise the voters don’t agree. The majority of people are benefited (short term) by prop 13 since more people are tenants than landlords.
Someone says, “Your rent can stay the same forever if you vote YES.” Most people don’t have respect for rights for anyone but themselves. So they vote YES. People voted for slavery to be legal because it was in their interest. Democratic majority are crazy dangerous.
And other places have just as many corrupt policies. So going somewhere else doesn’t really solve the problem. I am sure you have never complained about anything the government does. I am sure you love BART police and MTA parking patrol and a booze-less bay to breakers.
Anna’s Danish Cookies. They had cookies for diabetics. I have about two thousand of their old red and white striped bags, unused, that they had left on the street for garbage.
Call me hoarder, but it could become currency someday.
The salient point in this critique is that the writer, who found a place on Guerrero for 330 bucks a month in 1993, is still in the Mission.
How many others in his position can say that?
Unless you get wealthy or are incredibly lucky enough to not have been evicted during the Willie Brown years, the odds are slim that if you arrived here in 1993 you’re still in the Mission.
But again, the metric used here to show how great the New Mission is seems to be how many restaurants you can walk to. That makes the Mission sound like a cruise ship, and its neophytes sound like the kind of people who like to go on cruises.
Given that most rental units in the Mission are protected under rent control, what’s the mechanism for forcing out people who have been here for a long time?
I get how rising rent on vacant units will affect the demographics over time, since newly available units are going to be rented at highest price the landlord can find someone willing to pay, but what’s never been clear to me is how long-term residents are forced out unless they leave their current rental.
You’d have to go back to the late 1990s, when a clause was exploited that allowed landlords to evict tenants if the owner intends to move into the building.
There is also something called the Ellis Act, which may include the proviso I mentioned above, and which provides a way for a landlord to clear out a building of tenants by essentially ‘going out of business’.
A more learned person could explain this in much better detail. All I remember is that we got evicted in May 1998, and in November of that year there was a proposition on the SF city ballot to plug one of the loopholes with which so many people were evicted.
This was the Willie Brown administration, when the law was trampled as sweetheart business details went through. IIRC, the Nov. 1998 city ballot provided a lot of corrections to the Brown Administration’s abuse…too late for us and many others though.
I don’t know whether or not the Ellis Act is still in use. I imagine it’s still on the books, but with stricter provisions for evicting current tenants and converting the building.
Thanks for clearing that up – I had read enough to be vaguely familiar with the Ellis act and it sounded like its usage was locked down pretty tight these days, but I didn’t know that it used to be a lot easier to exploit.
I agree that the things I value in the neighborhood sound pretty shallow, but honestly, isn’t most of what we get out of our immediate environs stuff like food and drink? I’m glad I have friends within a few blocks I can do things with. I’m happy to have BART down the street so I can get downtown to go to SFMoMA. I like the weather relative to other neighborhoods. I like walking the dog around Dolores Park.
I wonder what would make my appreciation more profound and admirable. I don’t have round table discussions with my neighbors. I don’t hang out at ATA. I’ve seen all the murals too many times to notice them. But I do try to participate in what’s going on around me.
By way of disclosure, I’m not in that apartment anymore (yes, I kick myself). I’m in another, paying 1/2 my after-tax income in rent, so I can enjoy the cruise . . .
Well, if you’re happy with what you’ve got then what more can you ask for? I guess the key is that only one half of your income goes to the rent, which leaves the other half to cover food and drink.
As someone who grew up here, still live here and was evicted three times in four years from, 94 to 98, due to the building owners wanting to increase the rents each time. Let me ask you something, if you had to move from where you live now, today, would you still be able to afford to live in San Francisco? Because,I seriously doubt if I could, even with my full time job with benefits. FYI, been at currant place for 5 yrs in a room mate situation.
Looking at craigslist for Mission apartments that take dogs (which really decimates availability), no, I couldn’t afford one. I got lucky a few years ago with my current place.
Not that I doubt your story at all, but I’m honestly curious – how did you get kicked out 4 times because the LLs wanted to raise the rents? That’s exactly what rent control is supposed to prevent.
Actually, if there’s some secret way to evict tenants under rent control just to raise the rent, you better not say it here, in case other LLs are reading.
Uh. . . have you met any youth in San Francisco? All of their relationships and support systems exist in a city that they can’t afford to live in once they leave the house. I’m glad that you like a good restaurant – who doesn’t – but I’m afraid you argument may have overlooked a factor or two of the issue. Youth and families are the ones being pushed out of SF.
seniors as well. There is a large community of people who are living on fixed income post-retirement. If their rent/cost of living skyrockets due to sudden increase in market value, should they really be expected to pick up and move after a lifetime of working and living in SF?
Rent control prevents their rent from skyrocketing. For example, the allowable increase in rent from last year was 1.9%. If they own, their property tax is completely static. In terms of other aspects of cost of living, utilities are not priced by neighborhood, to my knowledge, and food costs can be modified pretty easily.
I fear this will sound glib, but I hope not. Many of the young folks who read this blog come from fancy suburbs. They could not possibly move to those suburbs, where their “relationships and support systems exist.” That doesn’t seem like a tragedy to me. If Jim can’t stay in Scarsdale, and Amy can’t afford Woodside, well, that’s how it goes. So I’m not sure why it’s a tragedy that kids raised here cannot stay here, though I’m open to arguments.
Regarding “families being pushed out,” I’ve already indicated my disagreement with that statement.
I agree with you. It’s not a tragedy if you can’t afford to stay where you grew up. Does it suck? Sure, it does. But, unless you can somehow land a job that allows you to pay for what you received from your parent(s) as a child, you can’t keep that same lifestyle. I think to assume that you deserve something just because you were given it when you were young and unable to provide for yourself is silly. If we follow the logic that you deserve whatever you grew up with, then we are saying that those who were raised in poverty deserve to just stay there rather than try to work for a better life.
so if your parents live somewhere and you move out you should automatically have a right to a house on that same block at whatever price you choose? these claims to entitlement don’t make any sense; this isn’t government housing.
I moved to SF in the 80s as a young gay teen getting away from Alabama. Guess what growing up gay in the south still sucks big time. I could not afford to move here these days.
right, you would’t move to Brooklyn these days, either. you might move to Portland or New Orleans these days, cities change and so do their demographics. to think it’s anything new or preventable is silly.
Correct and San Francisco is a better place for it! Having urber rich dickheads with MBAs all over town wanting to drive a Landrover is just sooooo coool!!
I think Santorum’s point was that it (higher ed) will make you a social liberal. You’re the one equating a higher education with bourgeois tendencies focused around consumerism. I don’t think a collage education means Land Rover.
thanks for spelling it out, that’s why young people are moving there. SF is not a great place to move right now because the economy here is so strong, which is making the price of living really expensive.
Do you live in the Mission? If so, your situation is rare; very little of the rental stock here is post-enactment of rent control. Walk down any street in the neighborhood, and you’ll count very few Eighties and later apartment buildings (though you’ll come upon a fair number of recent condos).
So yes, people in newer apartment buildings are absolutely at risk from rent increases. They *are* in danger of being “pushed out,” like renters in every uncontrolled market.
Not exactly in the Mission, but was in Portrero. Our rent went up 500 dollars too! I like new boutiques and all the new interesting food places just as much as the old ones, but bottom line, I’m not a fan of greedy opportunistic landlords. :-/
Just curious… do you know how much it costs to own/operate an apartment building in SF? I don’t know, myself. Property taxes + maintenance + mortgage isn’t cheap, though.
It’s $875k and has 4 units. The payment, at 6% interest is $5,246.07/mo for 30 years. The average property tax is around $6,300 in SF, which is an extra $525/mo. You’re up to $5,771.07/mo right there. Once you add PMI (mortgage insurance for putting down less than 20% on the loan), you’re adding another 1% of the total cost of the loan to the monthly payment, which is $8,750/yr, or $729/mo.
Grand total, around $6,500/mo total cost, not including utilities. That’s $1625/unit just to break even. Imagine a 12 or 24 unit building–the costs go up exponentially.
buying property isn’t ‘breaking even’, for every year you ‘break even’ you gain equity in the property, you aren’t ‘breaking even’, you are getting renters to buy you a highly valued piece of property. are you suggesting that on top of giving you the property, the renters should also pay you a salary while you wait for your investment to mature?
I am absolutely suggesting that I would like a real-time return on my investment, in addition to the huge payoff that I would get when I sold the property, based off of the equity that I gained through the renter paying for a place to live or have their business.
That’s the beauty of having enough money to purchase a rental property here and that’s the downfall of being forced to rent an apartment here because you don’t make enough to buy.
One day UNICEF will get into the business of providing cheap rent to people that choose to take a career in something that doesn’t allow them to live comfortably in this city, but until then, we’re all going to have to sit down, shut the fuck up and pay the goddamn landlord.
ok, good luck with your investments. make sure you clear up your confusion differentiating between breaking even and making money before you sign any papers.
Two of the units in that building are commercial, so you should probably pick a different example.
However, just to run with your thought experiment:
If you’re not really putting any money down, you’re probably intending to get an FHA loan, so that means that you’ll be living there. How does the math look when you are calculating rent that you pay to… yourself?
If you’re not getting an FHA loan, then you’ll have to put down 10-20%, but your interest rates will be more like 4%, which is a payment of more like $4177 a month. If you’re buying a $875000 property now, a better estimate of your tax is 1.25% or $10937.
The PMI estimation I have no idea about, but Zillow has a goofy slider-based calculator that implies the rates are much lower: http://www.zillow.com/mortgage-calculator/
Let’s take your actual number, though, since it’s only $1-2k more than seems reasonable. If you haven’t paid anything at all into this “investment,” but instead are just taking in $1600 per unit, at the end of 30 years your tenants have paid $2.3M to the bank for you. If you then turn around and sell the property for exactly what you purchased it for, you have just made $875k in profit off of a zero dollar investment. If you put in an initial $175k but had exactly the same expenses and charged the same rent, your profit of $700k comes back to you at 5% compounded. That’s basically nothing compared to inflation — but your building’s selling price also probably tracks inflation, so in this thought experiment our imaginary landlord is not doing terribly.
In a 12 or 24 unit building you pretty much have to form a corporation and get a commercial loan, I think, so the margins are closer, but my assumption is that they have stabilized so that everyone makes whatever low-risk investment return they expect.
All great points–it looks like you realize that this was just an exercise to give “curious renter” some insight into home ownership and give me a reason to look into owning rental property, which interests me.
After reading your post, I thought about this a little bit in terms of an “investment.” What I came up with is that for the same amount of money down (the $175k), you might as well just get a CD, which I’ve seen for up to 1.8% APY that compounds quarterly. If you then put in the $1600/mo that you would be “paying yourself” in rent, that figures out to around $1.04M after the same 30 year period. Less chance you’re going to have to worry about the neighborhood going to shit or someone like rod moving in and not being able to pay their rent. I hear eviction is pretty expensive for a landlord.
yep, i’m sure that extra 6 grand a year is going towards maintenance and certainly not straight into the pocket of some wealthy dude who owns multiple rental properties and leverages his mortgages to dodge income tax.
Oh yeah I forgot to add the 300 dollar a month, new, pet fee they decided to tack on. I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s all about the Benjamin on this one!
fuck you all. NEW DAWN was at TOKYO A GO GO’S!!!! right!! that was my first stop as a traveling lad in 1996 on the way to the Epicenter and it was gone by the time I moved here in 98 and I could never remember whether it was TAGG or the Ti Cunt crepe place.
that’s the single useful thing discussed in this miserable thread. please just post pictures of hot hipster girls.
I moved to the Mission in late 1996. I’m not in the same building I was in then, but in my current bldg, everyone has been renting for 10+ years (I think the woman upstairs from me has been here almost 20 years). I do remember the evictions of the late 1990s/early aughts, and if I remember correctly, it was a rash of shady “owner move-ins” where the landlord would evict, move in for a day or have a relative live in it for a month, and then suddenly it’d be magically vacant and they’d flip it to the (overpriced) market value.
I feel like before it was hipsters with waxed moustaches, the Mission was more poi-oriented burners. like, more people wearing capoeira pants and doing partner yoga in the park on Sundays while coming down from the rave the night before.
@Jacob: where would you live if you weren’t paying yourself $1600 in rent? Would you be paying $1600 into your investment and $1600 in rent some where else? If you are paying yourself $1600 in rent, do you then invest your other $1600 into your own property? We’d have to run the numbers again…
you can label it however you’d like. i was homeless when i moved here (the mission) 3 years ago, and now ive got my own two bedroom apt and full-time job. it takes time and effort to get where you want. oh yeah, im a white dude. gentrification is as stupid to me as atheism. you cant be “anti-”theist when you believe no theism exists. gentrification is an illusory word to pit peoples against one another. am i gentry? no. do i kick people out of their homes and blocks? no. do the consequences of my being here do as much? possibly, but in that case its me or them, right? so WHO FUCKING CARES? maybe one day some asshole will move here, and based merely on his be-ing ill be forced out of the mission. how does this make sense? smile and say hello to the people you see. life moves on.
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Can’t say for certain, but that art looks like it could be Mike Hales’s. http://mikemakesart.blogspot.com/
It could be R. Crumbs. Derivative work is derivative.
I can’t lie. I DO consider myself a “better class of people” than those with severe acne/stubble (or is it both?) on their asses.
aren’t you one of those lawyer types who should be at the bottom of the ocean?
Don’t mind it on the ass, but too many have half-assed stubble on their face. Yuck.
This painting gentrifiers with a broad-brush! Most of them grew up in neighborhoods with minorities…as landscapers, housekeepers, etc. Those minorities are still welcome in the mission, just bring a mop and vacuum, or be there to fix a leak.
And don’t be late.
Let me begin with a “tl;dr” apology. And yes, I have been waiting for a place to drop this comment. There was some post a few weeks ago that made me start thinking about it.
I’ve been here since 1993. Nope, doesn’t make me an OG, but it’s a bit of time. Flew in, sight unseen. Stayed in an acquaintance’s basement for a few days, then pored over the Bay Guardian looking for an apartment (there was not only no craigslist, there was barely an internet). I found a room in a Guerrero two-bedroom for $330 a month.
This was when New Dawn occupied the Tokyo Go Go space, Elixir was part of the Jack’s empire, Casanova was an old Vietnam vet daytime bar, and a rice and bean burrito at La Cumbre cost $1.25. Laughing Hyenas at Kilowatt!
You’re probably expecting some things-were-better-then nostalgia to follow, but let me disappoint you. Things are better now. There are better drinks now. There is better coffee. There are breakfast/brunch choices that I wish we had (Boogaloo’s, New Dawn, and crepes used to be the only game in the neighborhood). The food is unbelievable. The only downside to the Mission today is that everything’s a little pricier than I want it to be, but that’s always true, isn’t it? No one has ever thought, “I live in a Golden Age of Prices.”
Something that I have heard weekly, daily, hourly in the past 20 years is howls about the gentrification that has just *ruined* the place. Yes, the folks worried about the Google buses on Guerrero, are not the first to worry about “losing the character of the neighborhood.” People bemoaned gentrification in the mid-90’s, they *really* got up in arms during the dot-com boom soon thereafter, and now, during the app boom (or whatever is driving the current rent increases), we’re hearing the cries again. But I’m not worried about it. Why? Two reasons. First, I don’t consider displacement of *businesses* gentrification. I’ll take a nice restaurant over a grimy donut shop any day, and there’s nothing crucial to the character of the neighborhood about having an “envio dinero” bulletproof plexi kiosk in every single storefront – every third one will be fine. So the economic development of the Mission – from artisanal cheese, to handmade clothing, to custom bikes, to fancy restaurants – doesn’t count as gentrification in my eyes. If it is, well, it’s the good kind.
What counts to me as gentrification is displacement of *people*. And that happens far, far less than the town criers suggest it does. It turns out that Prop. 13 (which caps property taxes) and rent control have done a spectacular job of keeping people in place. The family to the right of my apartment, the woman to my left, two entire buildings across the street – all are full of people who have been there for decades. If they’re renting, they’re renting at a rate they’ve been paying for years, and they can’t be evicted (yes, there are owner move-ins and Ellis Acts, but they are the rare exception, not the rule). If they own, they’re paying a few hundred a year in property tax, as opposed to some folks down the street paying over $10,000.
We have serious structural incentives in place to keep people in place, and they are working. So the folks out back who slaughter a couple chickens on the landing on special occasions aren’t going anywhere. The neighbors with thirty people in the backyard shouting at every punch thrown on the pay-per-view boxing match are settled in. The guy across the street who comes out of his family’s house drunk at 9 a.m., accosting passersby with, “I been here 40 years, born and raised,” will probably do that for another 40, unless his liver gives.
Are there problems with rent increases? Absolutely. Vacancy decontrol lets the apartments that become available shoot up to crazy levels. It’s going to be very difficult for people to come *into* the neighborhood unless they’re rich. I think I saw a $2700 one-bedroom down the street, and no kid fresh from college can rent that out and start working an entry-level job. But that’s true on the Lower East Side, too. The most desirable places are always going to be the most expensive. So there are barriers to entry, but nobody is being “pushed out.”
Demographically, the Mission today looks an awful lot like what it looked like 20 years ago. Economically, Farina employs a lot more people than the dormant bakery there before it (what was that place called?). It may be better than ever here.
Well said and thought out.
I think a lot of what you say makes sense. But demographics include income diversity, which is nowhere near what it was. Also, trading light manufacturing for service jobs- jobs which perplexingly seem to require a degree- has an impact.
Because as those workers leave, some of the small restaurants will close, as will small businesses (not protected by rent control). Those business owners will leave with their families. The people will look around and see that so much of their neighborhood now caters to a different mindset, and see how nice it is for their cousin out in San Leandro or wherever, and decide to move there.
Also, a quick look at census numbers indicates that in fact, demographically the mission has changed in the last 20 years. A lot.
If you want to know where it’s heading, look at North Beach. No italians, but plenty of “authentic italian restaurants”.
But there’s no point having a is it better or worse argument, because of course that depends on where you like to drink/eat/send your kids to school/ buy your heroin.
Diversity is key. Dead on. North Beach? Where is that? I haven’t been there for over a decade, and with good reason. Valencia? I might swing by for a happy hour drink at Cassanova when all the normals are there…but I never stay very long.
Haha yeah that is the sum of it all, once all the people that drew all the rich into the area leave, and the rich are left going.. hey wtf are we supposed to do, we had no creativity of our own..? They look s lost, left holding the leash. Then it will just degrade into a new tourist trap, with Hot topics and all kinds of garbage… then 50 years from now it will be a shit hole again and everything will cycle its self to*BOOM METEOR CRASH ALL DEAD EATEN FROM THE FOOT UP BY CANNIBALISM*
If by “send your kids to school” you mean poop, so far I’ve been able to enjoy doing all four on the same block in the mission for the past 10 years uninterrupted.
The government should treat all the same all the time. I cannot fathom a scenario where one person pays a fraction of what others pay in taxes because they have been there a while.
The government preventing a private owner from raising rents is blatantly wrong on so many levels. The effect is people aren’t pushed out as much. Is that the goal of government? To keep people in place? Nope. The goal is to protect people’s rights. You cannot protect the tenant at the cost of the landlord. That is a corrupt morality.
Just my thoughts. Maybe some day I will go from being bullied by this government to being protected by it. But since I don’t have children, don’t own a house, and make a decent living, I find that super unlikely.
What I can’t believe is the Google/Apple/Corporate people who receive “affordable housing” subsidies (rent control) without means testing. It’s a very crazy system that needs reform.
On the contrary, one of the main roles of government is to protect the weak from the powerful that may seek to exploit them. To this goal, rent control is a good step (though not one without any problems. Very little in this world is clear-cut black and white).
+1
Free trade is never exploitation. The government forcing private citizen to give, share, offer to other citizens a product or service against their will is for sure exploitation.
You and a landlord have a lease agreement. If you want your rent to stay as is forever, you need a special lease. But landlords wouldn’t do that that because it is stupid.
The mentality of protecting one person at the cost of someone else is called a relative morality. That line of thinking is irrational.
On the contrary, “free” trade often (if not always) represents exploitation of someone(s) along the line. The term you’re looking for is “FAIR trade is never exploitation.”
Oh god, are you one of those “taxes = theft” loons? “The government forcing private citizen to give, share, offer” value through either taxation or other social programs is, on the other hand, the nature of civilization. It is eminently fair and eminently just. To attempt to weasel ones way out of contributing to the society as a whole is fundamentally immoral and destructive and, frankly, deeply dishonest.
Yeah, tell that to the millions in third world countries who had their food economies ruined when multinationals came in and undercut their market, driving farmers out of business and then promptly raised food prices. All in the name of free trade.
HDPDV, nice job quoting half of the statement from Jamin. You seemed to miss the “to other citizens” part. I don’t think he/she’s arguing about taxes here; what he/she’s saying is that this it’s larger-scale equivalent to a bum asking you for change on the street and a nearby cop forcing you to give it to him.
>Free trade is never exploitation.
I completely agree. And so do the 11-year-olds who make my running shoes.
Jacob: Did I misunderstand his argument? Because it sure sounded like the same thing to me. If he is NOT arguing that contributing to the society that you are a part of is unfair then I absolutely withdraw my comments.
HDPDV, I think he’s arguing that they’re two separate things. Contributing necessary taxes for the police, fire department, roads, etc… (what I would probably call the “bare minimum”) vs. being legally required to do “harm” to yourself in order to allow someone else to prosper.
I happen to agree with him, if I’ve interpreted the statement correctly. I’m imagining a parasitic relationship where one thing feeds on the other until the food source dies, which causes the inevitable death of the parasite, unless the parasite can find something else to feed on/kill.
I know my example is a little extreme, and probably a little Rand-esque, but I think it’s applicable to both Jamin’s statement and situations where it’s the belief of people that it’s the strong’s duty to care for the weak at any and all costs to the strong.
trust the most powerful force in the country to protect the weak from the powerful. no chance the state would try and exploit the citizens, right?
lets elect a war criminal again: OBAMA2012!
the voters here don’t agree with you. there’s so many other cities with right-wing policies that would be more in line with your own, no one is forcing you to live here.
@Rod: So the voters don’t agree with Jamin, Does that mean Jamin shouldn’t express an opinion?
Sorry, but your “If you voice any complaint, you should move” attitude is seriously idiotic.
And, the idea that one would only want to live where everyone has the same politics is even dumber. Unfortunately, it is all too prevalent on the left in SF. All sorts of praise for “diversity” but no tolerance for anyone who departs from the party line.
Rod: no one is forcing you to read or respond to Jamin’s opinion, so why complain about it? You certainly weren’t capable of mustering an intelligent response.
misdirected anger issues here, i’ll let you read my response again.
Yes, it is not a surprise the voters don’t agree. The majority of people are benefited (short term) by prop 13 since more people are tenants than landlords.
Someone says, “Your rent can stay the same forever if you vote YES.” Most people don’t have respect for rights for anyone but themselves. So they vote YES. People voted for slavery to be legal because it was in their interest. Democratic majority are crazy dangerous.
And other places have just as many corrupt policies. So going somewhere else doesn’t really solve the problem. I am sure you have never complained about anything the government does. I am sure you love BART police and MTA parking patrol and a booze-less bay to breakers.
Everyone else has replied intelligently. So I’ll just say this: you’re a moron.
that bakery was called Anna’s
Anna’s Danish Cookies. They had cookies for diabetics. I have about two thousand of their old red and white striped bags, unused, that they had left on the street for garbage.
Call me hoarder, but it could become currency someday.
I loved their sign “we have diabetic cookies” they finally changed it to “we have cookies for diabetics” it made me laugh every time I saw it.
Me too.
The salient point in this critique is that the writer, who found a place on Guerrero for 330 bucks a month in 1993, is still in the Mission.
How many others in his position can say that?
Unless you get wealthy or are incredibly lucky enough to not have been evicted during the Willie Brown years, the odds are slim that if you arrived here in 1993 you’re still in the Mission.
But again, the metric used here to show how great the New Mission is seems to be how many restaurants you can walk to. That makes the Mission sound like a cruise ship, and its neophytes sound like the kind of people who like to go on cruises.
Given that most rental units in the Mission are protected under rent control, what’s the mechanism for forcing out people who have been here for a long time?
I get how rising rent on vacant units will affect the demographics over time, since newly available units are going to be rented at highest price the landlord can find someone willing to pay, but what’s never been clear to me is how long-term residents are forced out unless they leave their current rental.
You’d have to go back to the late 1990s, when a clause was exploited that allowed landlords to evict tenants if the owner intends to move into the building.
There is also something called the Ellis Act, which may include the proviso I mentioned above, and which provides a way for a landlord to clear out a building of tenants by essentially ‘going out of business’.
A more learned person could explain this in much better detail. All I remember is that we got evicted in May 1998, and in November of that year there was a proposition on the SF city ballot to plug one of the loopholes with which so many people were evicted.
This was the Willie Brown administration, when the law was trampled as sweetheart business details went through. IIRC, the Nov. 1998 city ballot provided a lot of corrections to the Brown Administration’s abuse…too late for us and many others though.
I don’t know whether or not the Ellis Act is still in use. I imagine it’s still on the books, but with stricter provisions for evicting current tenants and converting the building.
Thanks for clearing that up – I had read enough to be vaguely familiar with the Ellis act and it sounded like its usage was locked down pretty tight these days, but I didn’t know that it used to be a lot easier to exploit.
I agree that the things I value in the neighborhood sound pretty shallow, but honestly, isn’t most of what we get out of our immediate environs stuff like food and drink? I’m glad I have friends within a few blocks I can do things with. I’m happy to have BART down the street so I can get downtown to go to SFMoMA. I like the weather relative to other neighborhoods. I like walking the dog around Dolores Park.
I wonder what would make my appreciation more profound and admirable. I don’t have round table discussions with my neighbors. I don’t hang out at ATA. I’ve seen all the murals too many times to notice them. But I do try to participate in what’s going on around me.
By way of disclosure, I’m not in that apartment anymore (yes, I kick myself). I’m in another, paying 1/2 my after-tax income in rent, so I can enjoy the cruise . . .
Well, if you’re happy with what you’ve got then what more can you ask for? I guess the key is that only one half of your income goes to the rent, which leaves the other half to cover food and drink.
As someone who grew up here, still live here and was evicted three times in four years from, 94 to 98, due to the building owners wanting to increase the rents each time. Let me ask you something, if you had to move from where you live now, today, would you still be able to afford to live in San Francisco? Because,I seriously doubt if I could, even with my full time job with benefits. FYI, been at currant place for 5 yrs in a room mate situation.
Looking at craigslist for Mission apartments that take dogs (which really decimates availability), no, I couldn’t afford one. I got lucky a few years ago with my current place.
Not that I doubt your story at all, but I’m honestly curious – how did you get kicked out 4 times because the LLs wanted to raise the rents? That’s exactly what rent control is supposed to prevent.
Actually, if there’s some secret way to evict tenants under rent control just to raise the rent, you better not say it here, in case other LLs are reading.
Yeah, I was under the assumption that it took forever to be evicted, even if there was just cause.
Of course, I’ve also read a lot of shady stuff about Citi Apartments, so I absolutely don’t doubt that something like that could happen.
Uh. . . have you met any youth in San Francisco? All of their relationships and support systems exist in a city that they can’t afford to live in once they leave the house. I’m glad that you like a good restaurant – who doesn’t – but I’m afraid you argument may have overlooked a factor or two of the issue. Youth and families are the ones being pushed out of SF.
seniors as well. There is a large community of people who are living on fixed income post-retirement. If their rent/cost of living skyrockets due to sudden increase in market value, should they really be expected to pick up and move after a lifetime of working and living in SF?
Rent control prevents their rent from skyrocketing. For example, the allowable increase in rent from last year was 1.9%. If they own, their property tax is completely static. In terms of other aspects of cost of living, utilities are not priced by neighborhood, to my knowledge, and food costs can be modified pretty easily.
I fear this will sound glib, but I hope not. Many of the young folks who read this blog come from fancy suburbs. They could not possibly move to those suburbs, where their “relationships and support systems exist.” That doesn’t seem like a tragedy to me. If Jim can’t stay in Scarsdale, and Amy can’t afford Woodside, well, that’s how it goes. So I’m not sure why it’s a tragedy that kids raised here cannot stay here, though I’m open to arguments.
Regarding “families being pushed out,” I’ve already indicated my disagreement with that statement.
I agree with you. It’s not a tragedy if you can’t afford to stay where you grew up. Does it suck? Sure, it does. But, unless you can somehow land a job that allows you to pay for what you received from your parent(s) as a child, you can’t keep that same lifestyle. I think to assume that you deserve something just because you were given it when you were young and unable to provide for yourself is silly. If we follow the logic that you deserve whatever you grew up with, then we are saying that those who were raised in poverty deserve to just stay there rather than try to work for a better life.
so if your parents live somewhere and you move out you should automatically have a right to a house on that same block at whatever price you choose? these claims to entitlement don’t make any sense; this isn’t government housing.
I think this is one thing we can agree on, rod.
I moved to SF in the 80s as a young gay teen getting away from Alabama. Guess what growing up gay in the south still sucks big time. I could not afford to move here these days.
right, you would’t move to Brooklyn these days, either. you might move to Portland or New Orleans these days, cities change and so do their demographics. to think it’s anything new or preventable is silly.
Correct and San Francisco is a better place for it! Having urber rich dickheads with MBAs all over town wanting to drive a Landrover is just sooooo coool!!
yeah Rick Santorum was right, OBama wants everyone to go to college, what a snob.
I think Santorum’s point was that it (higher ed) will make you a social liberal. You’re the one equating a higher education with bourgeois tendencies focused around consumerism. I don’t think a collage education means Land Rover.
dang i wonder how many magazines are ruined while receiving “collage education.”
The cities you listed have two of the worst economies in the US.
thanks for spelling it out, that’s why young people are moving there. SF is not a great place to move right now because the economy here is so strong, which is making the price of living really expensive.
$5 Latte’s or Gunshots?
My rent is going up 500 dollars in August because my building was built after 1979 lol
Do you live in the Mission? If so, your situation is rare; very little of the rental stock here is post-enactment of rent control. Walk down any street in the neighborhood, and you’ll count very few Eighties and later apartment buildings (though you’ll come upon a fair number of recent condos).
So yes, people in newer apartment buildings are absolutely at risk from rent increases. They *are* in danger of being “pushed out,” like renters in every uncontrolled market.
Not exactly in the Mission, but was in Portrero. Our rent went up 500 dollars too! I like new boutiques and all the new interesting food places just as much as the old ones, but bottom line, I’m not a fan of greedy opportunistic landlords. :-/
Just curious… do you know how much it costs to own/operate an apartment building in SF? I don’t know, myself. Property taxes + maintenance + mortgage isn’t cheap, though.
Take this property for example: http://www.loopnet.com/Listing/17552656/2976-Mission-Street-San-Francisco-CA/
It’s $875k and has 4 units. The payment, at 6% interest is $5,246.07/mo for 30 years. The average property tax is around $6,300 in SF, which is an extra $525/mo. You’re up to $5,771.07/mo right there. Once you add PMI (mortgage insurance for putting down less than 20% on the loan), you’re adding another 1% of the total cost of the loan to the monthly payment, which is $8,750/yr, or $729/mo.
Grand total, around $6,500/mo total cost, not including utilities. That’s $1625/unit just to break even. Imagine a 12 or 24 unit building–the costs go up exponentially.
buying property isn’t ‘breaking even’, for every year you ‘break even’ you gain equity in the property, you aren’t ‘breaking even’, you are getting renters to buy you a highly valued piece of property. are you suggesting that on top of giving you the property, the renters should also pay you a salary while you wait for your investment to mature?
I am absolutely suggesting that I would like a real-time return on my investment, in addition to the huge payoff that I would get when I sold the property, based off of the equity that I gained through the renter paying for a place to live or have their business.
That’s the beauty of having enough money to purchase a rental property here and that’s the downfall of being forced to rent an apartment here because you don’t make enough to buy.
One day UNICEF will get into the business of providing cheap rent to people that choose to take a career in something that doesn’t allow them to live comfortably in this city, but until then, we’re all going to have to sit down, shut the fuck up and pay the goddamn landlord.
ok, good luck with your investments. make sure you clear up your confusion differentiating between breaking even and making money before you sign any papers.
I appreciate the well-wishes, Rod! Please stick around on here so I have a resource, should I ever wish to create a business with negative cash flow.
Have you considered consulting? If so, how much are you going to pay your clients for the hours you work for them?
Rod: Well said.
Two of the units in that building are commercial, so you should probably pick a different example.
However, just to run with your thought experiment:
If you’re not really putting any money down, you’re probably intending to get an FHA loan, so that means that you’ll be living there. How does the math look when you are calculating rent that you pay to… yourself?
If you’re not getting an FHA loan, then you’ll have to put down 10-20%, but your interest rates will be more like 4%, which is a payment of more like $4177 a month. If you’re buying a $875000 property now, a better estimate of your tax is 1.25% or $10937.
The PMI estimation I have no idea about, but Zillow has a goofy slider-based calculator that implies the rates are much lower:
http://www.zillow.com/mortgage-calculator/
Let’s take your actual number, though, since it’s only $1-2k more than seems reasonable. If you haven’t paid anything at all into this “investment,” but instead are just taking in $1600 per unit, at the end of 30 years your tenants have paid $2.3M to the bank for you. If you then turn around and sell the property for exactly what you purchased it for, you have just made $875k in profit off of a zero dollar investment. If you put in an initial $175k but had exactly the same expenses and charged the same rent, your profit of $700k comes back to you at 5% compounded. That’s basically nothing compared to inflation — but your building’s selling price also probably tracks inflation, so in this thought experiment our imaginary landlord is not doing terribly.
In a 12 or 24 unit building you pretty much have to form a corporation and get a commercial loan, I think, so the margins are closer, but my assumption is that they have stabilized so that everyone makes whatever low-risk investment return they expect.
@Jesse
All great points–it looks like you realize that this was just an exercise to give “curious renter” some insight into home ownership and give me a reason to look into owning rental property, which interests me.
After reading your post, I thought about this a little bit in terms of an “investment.” What I came up with is that for the same amount of money down (the $175k), you might as well just get a CD, which I’ve seen for up to 1.8% APY that compounds quarterly. If you then put in the $1600/mo that you would be “paying yourself” in rent, that figures out to around $1.04M after the same 30 year period. Less chance you’re going to have to worry about the neighborhood going to shit or someone like rod moving in and not being able to pay their rent. I hear eviction is pretty expensive for a landlord.
yep, i’m sure that extra 6 grand a year is going towards maintenance and certainly not straight into the pocket of some wealthy dude who owns multiple rental properties and leverages his mortgages to dodge income tax.
Oh yeah I forgot to add the 300 dollar a month, new, pet fee they decided to tack on. I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s all about the Benjamin on this one!
fuck you all. NEW DAWN was at TOKYO A GO GO’S!!!! right!! that was my first stop as a traveling lad in 1996 on the way to the Epicenter and it was gone by the time I moved here in 98 and I could never remember whether it was TAGG or the Ti Cunt crepe place.
that’s the single useful thing discussed in this miserable thread. please just post pictures of hot hipster girls.
I moved to the Mission in late 1996. I’m not in the same building I was in then, but in my current bldg, everyone has been renting for 10+ years (I think the woman upstairs from me has been here almost 20 years). I do remember the evictions of the late 1990s/early aughts, and if I remember correctly, it was a rash of shady “owner move-ins” where the landlord would evict, move in for a day or have a relative live in it for a month, and then suddenly it’d be magically vacant and they’d flip it to the (overpriced) market value.
I feel like before it was hipsters with waxed moustaches, the Mission was more poi-oriented burners. like, more people wearing capoeira pants and doing partner yoga in the park on Sundays while coming down from the rave the night before.
@Jacob: where would you live if you weren’t paying yourself $1600 in rent? Would you be paying $1600 into your investment and $1600 in rent some where else? If you are paying yourself $1600 in rent, do you then invest your other $1600 into your own property? We’d have to run the numbers again…
you can label it however you’d like. i was homeless when i moved here (the mission) 3 years ago, and now ive got my own two bedroom apt and full-time job. it takes time and effort to get where you want. oh yeah, im a white dude. gentrification is as stupid to me as atheism. you cant be “anti-”theist when you believe no theism exists. gentrification is an illusory word to pit peoples against one another. am i gentry? no. do i kick people out of their homes and blocks? no. do the consequences of my being here do as much? possibly, but in that case its me or them, right? so WHO FUCKING CARES? maybe one day some asshole will move here, and based merely on his be-ing ill be forced out of the mission. how does this make sense? smile and say hello to the people you see. life moves on.
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