What Are The Impacts Of San Francisco Gentrification

San Francisco used to be a city defined by sunlight and the cool ocean breeze. However, the sunlight in the city by the bay is now over shadowed by skyscrapers, and the breeze comes not from the sea, but the speed of people evicted from their homes. The radical transformation that San Francisco underwent in the 1990s was the result of rapid gentrification. At one point in time gentrification was equated to “urban rebirth” or “urban pioneers that pushed for “moving back into the city” (Lees 2000). Nowadays gentrification is more closely related to destructive synonyms such as “urban guerrillas” and “class warfare”. This may be due to the fact that that actual process of gentrification causes a sharp distinction between the poor and working class
who are pushed from their homes to accommodate the “trendy” middleclass and bourgeois (Lees 2000).
The dictionary definition of gentrification is “the buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighbourhoods by upper- or middle-income families or individuals, thus improving property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses.” (Dictionary.com, 2015). This paper will examine the economic, social, and cultural effects that gentrification has had on a major cities through a careful examination of the changes undergone in San Francisco during the 1990s.
The technological “boom” that began in Silicon Valley, was the primary catalyst for the initial push for San Francisco’s gentrification.
Its force was so strong that the entire region from the southern tip of San Jose to Napa valley in the north was altered. Cities like Los Angeles in the 1990s were the epitome of “urban decay, open welfare, segregation, despair, injustice, and corruption” (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). Therefore, the economic benefits brought about through the technology industry seemed like the saviour for San Francisco. The unemployment rate at the middle of the 1990s reached up to 8 percent of the total population with an estimated 89,980 person under the poverty line (Usfca.edu 2015) At the onset of the new decade, poverty rates decreased down to 2.4 percent to a reduction of 3.9 percent to 86,585 of persons below the poverty line (Usfca.edu
2015).
The tech boom created more than 70,000 jobs generated annually located in the Bay Area (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). Soon, the city contained “35 percent of venture capital along with 30 percent of the multimedia/internet businesses” (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). However only the upper class can increased in gaining wealth. According to Pewresearch.org, the lower class median income was averaged to $13,800, Middle income $94,100, and upper class averaging $338,500 in 1992. Less than 10 years later lower income only increase to 19,100, while middle income increase to 134,200, and upper income increasing tremendously to 590,300.
An unintended consequence of this economic boom shocked city residents as San Francisco’s housing prices rapidly began to sky rocket. The high demand for housing coupled with the limited supply allowed prices for household and rental properties to increase by 37 percent between 1996 to 1997 alone (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). Displacement is one of the signature effects of gentrification. San Francisco’s Mission District was once a hotspot of Latino culture and has become one of the economic centres for those working in the internet market (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). The rapid increase of young professionals into the city caused San Francisco housing to become one the most expensive housing markets of any “major American city”. Alongside the increase of housing prices was a rapid increased in eviction rates which increased to almost 70 percent of the original tenants (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). Working class individuals simply could not afford the rent in the city anymore as workers in the technology and finance industry competed for housing that was paid by their generous salaries. Gentrification initially pushed out the poor from the city centre but also gradually removed the working class. This has caused a large migration away from the San Francisco by the city’s working class into neighbouring communities such as Oakland.
Despite the eviction rate, there is seldom any permanent vacancy within the city. With an average rate of less than 1 percent of vacancy, it is not uncommon for homes to sell well above the offering price (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). According to Carnochan and Hartman (2002), 1.6 million square feet were being built into office space while there was an additional 2.2 million square feet were awaiting approval in 1999.
However, there still wasn’t enough housing for all the new migrants. In response, San Francisco had to transform. Old, tattered buildings that were relics of a previous culture were torn down to make room for the new “condos, lofts, and dot-com offices” (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000) constructed for workers in the technology and finance sectors. With the increase in space for both the amount of companies and employees within such a small space, the housing market transformed into a viciously competitive market. Massive amounts of renovation money from The San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association allowed non-profits, small business, and homeless shelters to be nixed in order to make “chain stores”, shopping malls, and offices building (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000).
According to Solnit and Schwartzenberg (2000), this focus on technological advancement in some ways in the continuation of the transformations brought about during the Industrial Revolution. A clear separation between the wealthy and underprivileged, as well as “endless work hours and a Spartan work ethic” defines San Francisco’s residents. (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). The tech boom brought negative effects to the native economy. Many individuals lost their jobs in the cities traditional industries as the economic market became increasingly “virtual” (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). Individuals with decent paying middle class jobs such as teachers and police officers were not excluded from the economic pressure gentrification brought to the city (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). This capitalist movement was brutally separated those that could survive within the city and those who would drown if they stayed.
Meatpacking plants were eliminated in the 1990s to make room for technology company offices, while new bars marketed to the white, middle-class youth replaced African Orthodox Churches (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). The low riders that once roamed through the Mission District were gradually replaced by Lexus sedans. This atmosphere slowly increased the social and economic separation of the working class and bourgeoisie elite while causing the social and economic discourse to be more “homogenous and controllable” (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000).
The political elite assured San Francisco’s residents that gentrification was just the “emancipatory urbanism” by migrating into older, less “appealing” neighbourhoods within the urban centre.
They argued that the money brought about by the tech boom helped beautify the city in neglected neighbourhoods plagued by crime (Lees 2000). However, according to Lees (2000), gentrification “subverts the dominance of hegemonic culture and creates new conditions for social activities leading the way for the developers that follow.” Capitalist ideology expresses that economic development creates a “new kind of space” that allows for a mix of productive and positive advancements by individuals who will allow for more “tolerance” (Lees 2000). This tolerance theoretically allows individuals hailing from of various classes, ethnicities, and background to live alongside one another in a place that is “pleasant and liberated” (Lees 2000). Is this really true? Lees claims that is not the case. With the increase of unfamiliar migrant into a city centre causes the natives to hold a more “pessimistic view of encounters with unknown and anonymous urban others. Far from being liberating, urban encounters of strangers is suggested to be threatening and full of anxieties” (Lees 2000). The community atmosphere where these encounters would take place are now being replaced by consumption. According to Solnit and Schwartzenberg (2000), “civic and cultural life are in decline because of the acceleration
of work…..the public sphere is merely the space were people pass through on errands and commutes”.
Gentrification played a large part in transforming the cultural atmosphere of San Francisco. Prior to gentrification, San Francisco boasted a cultural diversity celebrated for racial and political expression due to the heterogeneous cultures that mixed within its streets. As mentioned above, gentrification effectively pushed out the poor and the working class that had found a home for themselves in the city for years. Likewise, it also eradicated artists and individuals who pushed for social activism and social service (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). These were indispensable characters that played a part to create the delicate cultural structure within San Francisco.
According to Solnit and Schwartzenberg (2000), these “free space of the city” where “ideas circulate” are the very places where “the poor, the radical, the marginal and the creative overlap.” Without these pre-existing conditions met, the “bohemian” culture could not thrive for the “artist needs the city as the city needs the artist” (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). Instead of authentic art, cultural consumption produced by corporations became what was hip. Flys, one of the most popular bars in San Francisco at the time, was evidence of this. Located in a historically African American neighbourhood, the entire bar was a homage to the Blaxploitation film era. A name derived from the film Superfly, the purple furniture and artwork that depicted “elongated female of various skin tones in skimpy seventies clothes” all play a part in constructing a cool, hip place for predominately white, middle-class audience a place to drink (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). This establishment exploited different elements of African American culture for profit and pleasure by the predominately white bourgeoisie.
According to Solnit and Schwartzenberg (2000), gentrification of San Francisco has “eaten out the heart of the city from the inside…its siphoning off diversity, cultural life, memory, and complexity.” San Francisco used to be the centre for Asian immigration, a haven for the gay and lesbian culture, and a creative centre for music and the arts. Anybody was accepted in the city as long as they could afford the rent. The tech boom changed all of this. It soon became more important to be economically well positioned rather than psychologically or emotional well in the changing culture of San Francisco’s urban environment. According to Solnit and Schwartzenberg, (2000) there were reports from workers at a domestic violence counselling shelter that women were given damaging counsel. Instead of telling the victim they should leave their abuser, they told them otherwise due to the lack of availability of housing (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). Location is the most desirable principle no matter of the current culture as something that insignificant could always be removed. Therefore under the preface “slum clearance” and “blight removal”, the underprivileged were evicted from their homes with the support of San Francisco’s “power elite” (Carnochan and Hartman, 2002). Police force were an additional cleaning agent for San Francisco. They would harass ethnic owned establishments under the guise of “possible code infractions” in order to “accelerate their turnover into enterprise” (Solnit and Schwartzenberg, 2000). In the 1990s, San Francisco experience a radical facelift. Employment rates increased, neighbourhoods finally felt safe enough to walk at night, and there were various trendy places to go out it in the city. However, to administer this beatification procedure, there had to be some price. There was an enormous increase in housing costs that resulted from the increase in new businesses and young professionals that the technology boom brought about. This new socially homogenous population removed the city’s former racial, political, and artistic ambiance for an economy that sharply separated class and left the social space culturally numb. It finally was clean of the “urban filth” that soiled it previously but lost its soul in process. One must wonder at such a high cost, was the gentrification brought about by the tech boom really worth it?