Blame Zoning, Not Tech, for San Francisco’s Housing Crisis
22nd March 2016
For San Francisco’s many discontents, tech is a boogeyman, an “inescapable” presence, per The New York Times. But the tech monster is only an agent of chaos. The real fright-feature is the lack of housing. And the nightmare behind it is other people.
Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan has a wake-up call for San Francisco: Responding to David Streitfeld’s story in the Times, Nolan says that tech isn’t the problem, at least not the way that the Times paints it. The problem is that San Francisco won’t build housing, and making matters worse, residents work tirelessly to prevent more housing from being built.
“Acting in a way that prevents everyone else from living in your pretty little city because you already have a place that you like does not make you a progressive,” he writes. “It makes you greedy.”
Well, really, the two are hardly incompatible. Most ‘progressives’ are pretty damned greedy, in my experience.