A while back, I was walking out of the 16th St BART station and noticed a large sticker that someone had plastered on a telephone pole reading "Die Techie Scum" (like this one). This was neither the first nor last anti-tech piece of graffiti or protest I've seen in the Mission, but I think it encapsulates well the ugliness that has overtaken the conversations about our community.
This week, two pieces of writing similarly caught my eye, because both desparately seek a villain to blame for SF's problems.
The first, an open letter from a local start-up founder, Justin Keller, to our mayor, bemoaned the fact that the wealthy folks who can afford to live in this city have to step around homeless people as they go about their days. This letter provides an example of all the worst stereotypes about people who work in technology in the Bay Area - they only care about their fancy coffee and luxury experiences, are oblivious to their privilege, and have no respect for any culture that existed in SF before they arrived. The villains in Justin Keller's story are the city's homeless and our politicians that refuse to do anything about them.
The second was a response titled "Open Letter to Justin Keller, from Edna, one of your servants in San Francisco" that got lots of high fives on Facebook and Twitter. Edna's letter is thinly about Justin's argument but much more about how she hates what the tech industry has done to San Francisco rents and culture. It ends, "If you’re not going to bring anything good to this city or be part of the communities that grew here out of desperation for creativity and acceptance, then GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE, GO BACK TO YOUR PERFECT SUBURB AND TAKE ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS WITH YOU." Edna's villains are people who work in technology and people who enjoy wine bars.
Living in SF now feels like standing in the center of a shouting match between these two extremes, with everyone desperate to find a villain to blame for systemic problems. Housing affordability is at the root of both of these. The two loudest voices on this issue are either in NIMBY camps that argue that there is no problem or in camps like Edna's, who insist that the real solution is for the tech industry to pack up and go back where they came from. The NIMBY camp ignores the impact of things like zoning, height limits, and historically racist housing policy that have created the desperate housing situation we have today in SF. The organizations that fight for tenants' rights against evictions are forced into a corner in which they fight for people who arrived in communities at the exact moment at which they could end up in an affordable rent-controlled apartment. Neither camp provides real solutions to house a growing population.
If your solution to a community problem is to find a villain in your community to expel (Justin and Edna's solutions, both!), you're doing community wrong. SF has a huge and growing problem of housing its people, and regardless of our motivations, none of us wants people living on the streets (Rainbow Grocery included). Our population will continue to grow, but the only question is whether our policies and our discourse can grow with it. For now, this conversation is just ugly.
