Dog Bites

It all started when someone looking for an apartment complained of unrelievedly unaffordable rents. Someone else complained of the complainee's "negativity." And then this screed (edited considerably) appeared, denouncing those who can afford to rent here as "part of the problem." Dog Bites sympathizes with those caught in the crunch but reserves judgment for a future column, noting only that the poster's suggestion that people other than longtime San Francisco residents move, perhaps "to Milwaukee," is, like nighttime car-keying activity, highly unlikely to effect useful change to our city's housing policy:

First off, I have lived here all my life, and San Francisco has changed dramatically, but it isn't necessarily for the better. One of the reasons is, the demand ... This city is rapidly losing its diversity and culture to thousands, and I mean thousands, of "new transplants" who use the city as a playground and have no regard for their communities or the culture or just how this city became such a great place to live in the first place. People who pay $2,200 for a one bedroom and $1,700 for a studio are the people who are supporting the 1/2% occupancy[vacancy] rate. When there are two studios available, and 400 people show up and show landlords exactly what they are willing to do to "get" a place, by outbidding against one another by several hundred dollars, this poses a problem to all of the people who are in need of affordable housing, as well as the natives who are out of home and can't compete or afford to do so -- and this does happen.

Another thing, and hear me loud and clear: To all the mindless, uncultured, loud, greedy, shallow, people running amok around this town: You are clearly paying no respect or thought to those who have been investing into this city all of their lives. This is not about a monetary investment either. Awareness is rapidly fading in this town. There are thousands of apathetic selfish money-grubbing assholes who have recently, over the past few years, "transplanted" themselves here. So, from someone who has been investing in this city all of my life -- and my father and his father before him, we are the ones who have been doing the investing!!! Only to be shoved out into the streets, out of our homes and our neighborhoods, and small family-owned business, thanks to the Starbucks, Gap, cookie-cutter culture and by the guy whose dad buys his way through university and life, it happens all the time.

If you can't afford the high rents, you can always squeeze yourself into a crowded four or five bedroom and live with three others, if you can afford $1,000 per month to live in a room. So you can keep your lack of understanding and your intolerance and your apathy, too. There is an emergency in this city, and if a SF native is feeling pushed up against a wall because there is nowhere to go, then so be it. This is a community list, a community in your neighborhood, and someone in this community feels pissed off because maybe they spent 15 years investing into their city, and, in the end, there's no place to live, nowhere to go. It's happening to most of the people who have lived in this city most of their lives, and the numbers are shocking. It's his right to be a bit freaked out!! Clearly, the problem has turned into an emergency, a crisis, to those of us who simply can't afford to have a roof. This is unfair, and we are all in it together, and for the first time in my life, in this city, this tension is at its maximum between the haves and the have nots, and it is bad. And we as long-term natives deserve some sort of correction. This life is not all about money and whether or not you can afford a $2,000-to-$3,000 place to live. Unless it is to you; then you're just as shallow and selfish and self-serving as the rest of them, and quite frankly I wouldn't mind if an earthquake came and shook things up a bit. Maybe people might come to their senses and stop supporting this outrageous and unfair housing problem, or move to Milwaukee and buy a home where there's room. But hell if I'm going to be forced out after 30 years because of this problem. But gee, let's see, if I don't make $100,000 per year, I can't afford these rents. That's what the average person will have to earn. I don't earn that much, not even close, but does that mean that I should live on the street or on someone's sofa and have no home? So get the picture??? Are you getting a better sense of where this person's, this city's "negativity" might be stemming from????