San Francisco and what to do in it

as opposed to being an artist that does commercial theater or SMOB stuff of the white supremacist tradition (Symphony, Museum, Opera, Ballet)

Feel like i know some folks who would qualify...

Yeah -- I think you would. And as far as zip codes go, it's pretty much, the ones where the remaining low-income people actually live in SF

And undoubtedly now, the struggling artists of Oakland are gonna be like, "Hey Libby, when do we get our $6k?" and everyone will be mad at the mayor, yet again, because San Francisco gets nicer things than we do.

I still think San Francisco should pay some kinda tax to Oakland for providing housing/workspace to prop up the arts & culture of their gentrified city

Better than nothing, but I expect a fair amount of uproar from those rejected for whatever reason.

"SMOB"?

keep going, you're almost there

A 6-month program for a small subset of artists sounds more like a grant program than a "UBI."

Agreed...

I still think San Francisco should pay some kinda tax to Oakland for providing housing/workspace to prop up the arts & culture of their gentrified city

So OTM.

OTM but replace SF with Silicon Valley employees (and probably more pointedly: Silicon Valley NIMBY/low-density proponents).

The pandemic made me forget just how myopically outdated Gen-X Oakland bias vs. SF was lol

Fair points on myopically outdated and Gen X.

We could zoom out though, the tax base inequality in California isn't just a state issue, it also could be seen as an issue with some global impact as well: https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2021-03-09/kern-county-approves-new-oil-and-gas-wells-over-environmental-objections

How about start by repealing Prop 13? How many millions of dollars a year in taxes does Chevron get a break on from that disastrous ballot measure?

Actually I think SF, Oakland and Berkeley should all be one city. If need be we can let Emeryville stay as the weird little corporate colony née vestigial card club company town in the midst of San Franberkland. Alameda and Piedmont are basically weird little colonies in the midst of Oakland already.

Emeryville is a weird place... barely any population, but an enormous tax base: Pixar, Genentech, IKEA, etc. Where does all that money go?

There is a free emery-go-round shuttle...

Oh that's right... that'll get you from gross BART to the gorgeous Bay Street Experience.

Pretty sure both Target & Home Depot are in Eville as well.

Do they still have that indoor food market?

xpost

Apparently Best Buy is actually in Oakland but the Office Depot across the road is in Emeryville. Target though "resides half in each city, and therefore splits its sales tax revenue between the two municipalities."

(Found by checking on what happened to that Wal-Mart that used to be on Hegenburger Rd. They apparently pulled out cause Oakland raised the minimum wage in 2016. Apologies if that's old news here.)

yes they have a nicer indoor food market now, though, at the moment, I think several of the spots have shut down. (xpost)

A 6-month program for a small subset of artists sounds more like a grant program than a "UBI."

― DJI, Thursday, March 25, 2021 1:48 PM (six hours ago)

It is -- it's being administered not by the city but by YBCA. Apparently once they determine eligibility, the "winners" will be chosen at random from the larger pool of eligible applicants. YBCA has kinda "pivoted" in a weird way in the past few years that I have mixed feelings about. It's similar to the thing I was talking about in the NFT thread about "the art world" kinda appropriating things of value into "the art world" ... and now it is social justice/activism.

The pandemic made me forget just how myopically outdated Gen-X Oakland bias vs. SF was lol

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, March 25, 2021 2:28 PM (six hours ago)

I was saying this in the context of the huge disparity in arts funding between San Francisco and Oakland, which I spent almost 20 years dealing with first hand. Maybe you know more about this topic than I do, I don't know. But considering you took my comment out of context, I'm guessing you are more interested in making a broader point about statewide economics in general, which is more significant than just the issue of arts funding. But the fact that you read my post as just being about "outdated" bias, makes me think you actually don't really know much about arts funding in the Bay Area. Not saying that makes me better than you or anything, just ... y'know, maybe chill on the condescending a bit?

Sort of want an explanation of that, tbh. The bias exists well beyond Gen X, too-- I don't know a single person who'd rather live in SF than Oakland, mostly because SF is filled with a population of the most oblivious douchebags who've ever stepped on soil.

I remember a few months ago, there was this glimmer of (Pandemic)hope, that basically went like this: all the techbraw douche-canoes can work on Zoom, so they're going to move back to Suburban Annapolis or the Hamptons or wherever they're from, and that rents will drop dramatically in San Francisco and then all the punks and artists and weirdos can move back and it'll be just like it was in 1986.

There may of sliver of that happening somewhere, but I think it's still hopelessly naive.

is the grant funded from money people paid to enter YBCA's Dream House scam?

lol

leeeeroy jenkins

San Francisco rent rebounds coming in hotter and sooner than we expected. With vaccine rollouts and office reopenings accelerating, the pendulum is starting to swing back. Full @ApartmentList rent data/report out next week... pic.twitter.com/p8lR2HNiZF

— Igor Popov (@IAPopov) March 26, 2021

the greatest trick the NIMBYs ever played was getting people to believe that tech employees were the problem

^^

is the grant funded from money people paid to enter YBCA's Dream House scam?

― akm, Friday, March 26, 2021 10:45 AM (one hour ago)

hahahah seriously, what is up with that Dream House thing?

i remember some reporting on it years ago that seemed to indicate that they could find no documentation of winners or where these houses were. but I don't know if there has been any other news about it. They do it rather reliably every year.

My understanding is that there's some for-profit scam company that does these all over the place, and YBCA fell for it because it's literally no investment for them.
They find a house that has been on the market for a really long time with no offers ("the dream house") and approach the seller about a guaranteed sale if they'll agree to a set price. If they sell enough tickets to buy the house and take a hefty fee, there's a big winner. If they don't sell enough tickets for the house, then you win other great prizes, like a bottle of cabernet franc or a deluxe weekend in Morro Bay, etc.

Not sure if anyone has ever won the house via the YBCA racket.

I visited Morro Bay recently for the first time, it was cool. Maybe I'll enter some time.

Also, I'd never driven through the area north of Santa Barbara before, around Los Olivos ... gorgeous like o_O

Morro Bay is great! Thank god it has a giant mothballed nuclear plant right on the water, or it would end up like Carmel or Monterey. A vestige of the old coastal California fishing towns.

"the greatest trick the NIMBYs ever played was getting people to believe that tech employees were the problem"

You write this assured that a bunch of rich idiot engineers with no social skills wanting to build an almost entirely white and rich monoculture based on shit we don't need isn't a problem.

mr choppy has room for all kinds of necks iirc

Yeah, I don't know about the problem, but if income inequality is a problem in the Bay Area, the unstable tech goldrush has contributed to it.

OTM.

Yes NIMBYism is now a problem. (My brother is working with a YIMBY group in Berkeley.) Yes income inequality is a problem.

Most of the discussions among techbros that I'm privy to seem to reach the conclusion that the best solution is to give a blank check to developers. To me that seems like the worst plan. For a long time the NIMBY mantra was "We don't want SF to turn into Manhattan." I think there's a valid point there. Until around the turn of the millennium, SF had a distinctive culture, which despite major injustices such as 'urban renewal' had reached a fairly sustainable balance between growth and preserving the city's character.

The massive surge in demand caused by the tech boom is what broke that model. It seems that now it's been exacerbated by AirBnB, investment properties, and marijuana legalization, but the root of the problem really is the ungodly pay in much of the tech industry, and the Bay Area in the space of a couple of decades having rapidly transforming to a global capital of tech. In my view there's no reason to assume that is sustainable, except that there's so much money locked up in local real estate that it creates its own political/financial momentum just to prop up the property values.

But what's this wealth tax everyone keeps talking about?

"My brother is working with a YIMBY group in Berkeley" is that with Daryl Owens (who I only know via twitter and nextdoor, occasionally)?

I've taken some very long walks around south berkeley this week. I've lived here since 1991. I'm glad to see more development but dismayed almost all of it is in my neighborhood and adjacent (ie: very south, very west berkeley). That entire area south of campus needs more apartments, more four plexes, etc. So much of it hasn't changed an iota since I moved here.

(by 'dismayed' I simply mean I think it should happen in other areas too, not just concentrated here; I'm pro development anywhere)

Not sure tbh, he's been really busy lately so we aren't in close touch. Plus I sort of tuned him out on social media right around Jan 5 when he was like "some of these Republicans standing up to Trump are kind of reasonable". Yeah the same guy who didn't give a damn when Stacey Abrams raised the issue of suppressing black votes with him last year? My brother T. is usually solidly progressive but he reads the Atlantic a little much for my tastes. (Our third cousin or something is also the first woman who went to the Citadel military academy in SC, she's the one who just flipped the House seat near Charleston back to red, and she briefly stood up to Trump then promptly backed down again. It's nonsensical imo.)

I can't speak to what areas they're focusing on building housing in now, it seems like in Oakland the development corridor is extending north along Telegraph and there's been some buildup along there in Berkeley already so it would make sense to continue expanding. I think the main goal should be that any development primarily focuses on providing genuinely affordable housing, particularly to marginalized populations.

Good luck with that.

I mean, I'm only writing that partially in jest, but given what's considered affordable, I don't see it happening...or I see the wait list being so long as to almost negate the impact of the affordable units.

Yes you're right that's the sad reality of course. I have another friend in desperate straights in Oakland, he's at retirement age and no chance of getting into subsidized housing.

You can't wait for private money to come in on affordable housing... oh they'll set aside two units in the back alley (that get 13 minutes of sunshine a day in the summer) but that's just so they can get the height limits waived.

I know people talk a lot of grief about the old housing projects, and there are some rough ones, but they're at least apartments and not pup tents.

I think commonly the issue is: where does the money come from to build affordable housing?

One answer is: market rate housing.

I spent years going to meetings in support of the Balboa Reservoir Project, which is this model. Lets see how it works.

As a tech worker since I showed up here twenty years ago, I argue that the problem isn't the salaries of the employees as much as the baseline profitability of the industry. Tax and regulate that folks.

Or you know, just have high income taxes!