The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Peak Hipster’ in San Francisco

Posted on | March 30, 2015 | 54 Comments

“Affordable housing” is one of those phrases, like “social justice” and “sexual equality,” that sounds like a good thing, until you realize it’s a license for totalitarianism. For most of us, “affordable housing” means living someplace where we can afford the rent. The advocates of “affordable housing,” however, always want to live someplace we couldn’t afford to live — a trendy urban location — and demand a system of taxpayer subsidies and/or burdensome regulations to force others to allow them to live in a high-rent community at below-market rates. To put it as simply as possible, they’re moochers and “affordable housing” is about protecting their right to mooch.

The enemy of affordable housing is “gentrification,” which is what happens when people with actual jobs who can afford to pay rent at market value start moving into a trendy urban location where the moochers live. Regular Right Guy calls our attention to the gentrification crisis in San Francisco:

On a sunny Monday afternoon in early March, tenants from Station 40, an affordable housing complex in San Francisco’s rapidly gentrifying Mission District, joined with activists from the Housing Rights Committee and Anti-Eviction Mapping Project to hold a press conference condemning one of the latest evictions happening in the city. In late February, Station 40 tenants were slapped with an eviction notice from their landlords, Ahuva, Emanuel and Barak Jolish.
The complex houses more than a dozen tenants at 3030B 16th Street in the Mission. It sits right across the street from the 16th Street Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) stop. Station 40 has provided affordable housing for its residents for the past 11 years. It is also known for housing members of activist groups like Food Not Bombs, which shares home-cooked, free meals on the 16th Street BART plaza every week, and Coffee Not Cops, which shares free coffee and pastries at the same plaza and organizes against police patrols in the area.
“Station 40 has been home to anarchist, queer and transgender refugees, broke people, veterans against war, those healing from the prison system, lifelong San Franciscans, immigrants, people with disabilities, and those who were previously homeless,” according to the groups’ press statement. Station 40 has also “hosted and/or organized hundreds of anticapitalist-oriented events, including fund-raiser, critical discussions, film screenings and performances, assemblies, book releases, art shows and workshops, and indie media projects, contributing to the rebel spirit of the Bay Area.”

Gosh, we’re sorry to hear about the end of your anti-police/anti-capitalist “anarchist, queer and transgender” scene, hipsters.

Maybe you can organize for social justice in Mom’s basement.

 

Category: Economics

Comments

54 Responses to “‘Peak Hipster’ in San Francisco”

  1. arcadius
    March 31st, 2015 @ 3:57 pm

    Right. All economic problems are due to capitalism. The State is always right.

  2. tricknologist
    March 31st, 2015 @ 4:39 pm

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting.

    I lived through government sponsored blockbusting when the City of New Orleans dumped the inhabitants of the two worst housing projects into New Orleans East which was a white middle class area.

    All for the sake of pushing white voters out of the city and getting Louis Ivon off the City Council.

    It went from 90% white were the worst crime was underage drinking and weed smoking into a 90% black ghetto with regular shoot outs and gang warfare in the space of a couple of years in the early 90’s.

  3. M. Thompson
    March 31st, 2015 @ 6:42 pm

    No need to send the trash to the neighbors.

  4. News of the Week (April 5th, 2015) | The Political Hat
    April 5th, 2015 @ 8:29 am

    […] “Peak Hipster” in San Francisco “Affordable housing” is one of those phrases, like “social justice” and “sexual equality,” that sounds like a good thing, until you realize it’s a license for totalitarianism. For most of us, “affordable housing” means living someplace where we can afford the rent. The advocates of “affordable housing,” however, always want to live someplace we couldn’t afford to live — a trendy urban location — and demand a system of taxpayer subsidies and/or burdensome regulations to force others to allow them to live in a high-rent community at below-market rates. To put it as simply as possible, they’re moochers and “affordable housing” is about protecting their right to mooch. […]