A part of a program on America's increasing urbanization, Huffington Post Live spoke with Gen Fujioka, the public policy manager at the Chinatown Community Development Center, on how " increasing urbanization in cities like San Francisco and towns nationwide mean for challenges like sustainability, education and economic development?" Fujioka's answer? In a lot of ways, we're screwed.
With "rents that average people cannot afford, we're losing our teachers, our artists, our nurses, in many ways, a huge part of our creative class that formerly made San Francisco a great place to live" Fujioka said in a segment that aired Wednesday.
Citing a median rent in San Francisco of $3200 (though a recent study listed it even higher, at $3,488), when asked if high-paying tech jobs didn't provide benefits to lower-paid workers like carpenters and hairdressers, Fujioka responded "the question is, where are the people who are working these jobs going to live?"
"The level of inequity is growing geographically," Fujioka said. "We have Google bus drivers who have to drive an hour and a half to get to jobs to drive a bus to get the Google workers from upscale neighborhoods in San Francisco to their corporate headquarters."
See the entire interview here: