We've said it several times, and now progressive former mayor Art Agnos chimes in for NPR in a national story about how shitty San Francisco's real estate market now is for the middle class.
The story is specifically about the rental market, and NPR's Morning Edition just caught wind of the rapidly multiplying cases of Ellis Act evictions.
But Agnos is quoted on the topic of how rising rents are specifically impacting those middle-income earners, people who are not poor but are not rich, which in this city means they make less than $150K.
"Once the advocates and the organizers and the artists are gone, who will be left to care about our city?" [asks Beverly Upton, director of the San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium, who's facing eviction from her apartment of 25 years.]That's a big concern in San Francisco, where traditionally there's always been a balance between the comfortable and the nonconformists, says former Mayor Art Agnos.
"The struggle to keep people who make between $60,000 and $150,000 a year is what we're facing in San Francisco. That's who the struggle is for today," Agnos says. "Frankly, it's all but over for the poor in this city."
Even those of you who do make over $200,000 a year and are considered among the comfortable should consider this especially those of you who bristle at the idea that "affordable housing" is important or that anyone who earns less than you has a right to a nice apartment. Will this still be as awesome a city to live in when all the cool kids are gone and it's just a bunch of craft cocktail bars and high-end restaurants?
Also this week, there's an editorial in the USF newspaper, the San Francisco Foghorn, discussing the Ellis Act and the ways in which it's being employed, illegally, as a bluff to get some tenants to relocate on their own.
[NPR]
[SF Foghorn]
