Rents in \u201ccramped and costly\u201d San Francisco continue to be\u00a0the highest in the nation. There simply isn\u2019t much housing left, so any that\u2019s available is expensive, and it tends to go to the select few who are able to afford it. Lately, that\u2019s been\u00a0elite workers in the tech industry,\u00a0which has been booming in the city since at least 2012. That\u2019s when\u00a0companies like Uber and Twitter were lured into the city\u2019s rundown Mid-Market\u00a0neighborhood by\u00a0an exemption on payroll taxes, legislated by the local government and approved by voters.<\/p>\n
Whoops, I guess.\u00a0That incentive saved these corporations a combined $34 million last year\u2014pocket change when you\u2019re worth $62.5 billion,\u00a0though for locals struggling to pay skyrocketing rents, it\u2019s\u00a0a tad insulting.\u00a0(For a little context, a\u00a0one-bedroom apartment was $1,700 in 2009;\u00a0now it\u2019s\u00a0$3,500.)\u00a0Many natives blame the city\u2019s influx of tech employees, who work for companies like Apple and Google which are not based in San Francisco and therefore immune to the proposal, for driving housing prices to unsustainable levels.<\/span><\/p>\n Neither the tech companies nor the city administration made any preparation for the number of workers that were coming in.<\/p>\n Kathy Lipscomb, a 23-year resident of the city\u2019s Noe Valley neighborhood and associate of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (<\/span>ACCE), hopes a new payroll tax would nudge tech companies into meeting their full responsibilities to the community. \u201cTech has been generous with education,\u201d she told me. \u201cThey\u2019ve given a lot of money to healthcare, to hospitals, but in housing, where they have a very negative impact in terms of affordability, it seems to me it\u2019s time to pony up. Neither the tech companies nor the city administration made any preparation for the number of workers that were coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n Deirdre Hussey, director of communications for San Francisco mayor Ed Lee, pointed out that lots of jobs at the newer technology companies actually go to locals. \u201cThis is a job-killing measure that [will] take jobs away from everyday San Franciscans,\u201d she told me. \u201cTaxing jobs, instead of revenue, will drive unemployment.\u201d She added that it\u2019s particularly bad for \u201cpeople such as administrative assistants, office managers, security guards, laborers, and any entry-level positions\u201d who might lose their employment.<\/p>\n Tech companies have been predictably unified in their silent response. What corporation in their right mind would want to be labelled either anti- or pro-homeless? But they also have strong reason to believe the proposal\u00a0won\u2019t even make it to ballots this November. It would need six of 11 Board of Supervisors members to vote in its favor\u2014a political longshot\u2014to even reach a public vote, where the proposal would then need to be approved by two-thirds of the same population that granted these tech companies a tax break in the first place. The San Francisco Chronicle\u2019s editorial board called the proposal \u201creckless and self-defeating,\u201d claiming it was a \u201cknee-jerk response to serious problems\u201d in a recent missive. So why speak on it?<\/p>\n \u201cRather than scapegoat a sector of our economy, we should be working together to find solutions to housing and homelessness, such as the proposed sales tax on the November ballot,\u201d said Hussey. The Mayor\u2019s 0.75 percent sales tax increase would bring in an estimated $150 million per year\u2014$50 million of which would be earmarked for homelessness. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This is a job-killing measure that [will]\u00a0take jobs away from everyday San Franciscans.<\/p>\n Nickolas Pagoulatos, a legislative aide for Eric Mar, District 1 Supervisor and one of the bill\u2019s authors, clarified that the \u201ctech tax\u201d is in fact <\/span>all about fairness. \u201cWe do not want to penalize employees,\u201d he told me. \u201c[We want to] make sure that large, profitable companies are made to pay their fair share for the impact that their workforce is having on San Francisco\u2019s housing market and community safety net.\u201d<\/p>\n Pagoulatos cited the city\u2019s Small Sites Acquisition Program\u2014an underfunded yet successful initiative which purchases buildings where low and moderate-income tenants are being threatened with eviction\u2014as one in need of a cash infusion, especially with the city staring down a projected $250 million deficit over the next two years. The \u201ctech tax,\u201d which the City Comptroller estimates would bring in <\/span>as much as $140 million in revenue per year, would also go toward getting homeless residents into permanent, assistive housing with complementary human services like mental health evaluations and drug rehabilitation.<\/p>\n For Kung Feng, lead organizer of <\/span>Jobs With Justice San Francisco, the tax could lead to more projects like the Vera Haile Senior Housing complex, which opened last year and, in under two weeks, received 5,000 applications for its 90 open units. \u201cRevenue could go to a full range of responses, from tenant counseling, homeowner assistance, homeless services, new construction of affordable housing to preserving existing affordable housing through acquisition and rehab,\u201d he told me. \u201cWe need a multi-faceted approach and we need to hold tech corporations accountable for their housing impact.\u201d<\/p>\n [We want to] make sure that large, profitable companies are made to pay their fair share.<\/p>\n No one disagrees about the idea of a multi-faceted approach to homeless and housing issues\u2014it\u2019s merely the methods to get those ideas funded: a sales tax on everyone versus a payroll tax on tech. <\/span><\/p>\n Ultimately, the \u201ctech tax\u201d will likely fail because of lacking political support, but its proposal is still symptomatic of the tensions that occur when a city doesn\u2019t have enough housing, when <\/span>nearly 7,000 people live in its streets and shelters, and when those doing a little better are a mere rent increase away from ruin. Yet in a grand act of civic irony, it might be the tech workers themselves who ultimately regulate the housing market. Rents have become so high, even they\u2019re getting wandering eyes\u2014looking to Oakland, to Berkeley, really, to any place where the cost of living is just a little more affordable.<\/p>\n Image via Flickr user David Yu (cc)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rents in \u201ccramped and costly\u201d San Francisco continue to be\u00a0the highest in the nation. There simply isn\u2019t much housing left, so any that\u2019s available is expensive, and it tends to go to the select few who are able to afford it. Lately, that\u2019s been\u00a0elite workers in the tech industry,\u00a0which has been booming in the city…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}