Gentrification - Entropy vs.Communism

wow, that's a heady title. ...hehe...

Anyway, I don't know if you've noticed, but San Francisco is fighting a battle of gentrification. .....

This article, put out by The Examiner, talks about different ballots that may be put on a bill come November.
http://www.examiner.com/a-1435389~Measures_for_November_ballot_put_forward.html

Socketsite sums up the article like this:
"At least five real estate related measures are now six supervisor votes away from making it onto the November ballot. Yesterday’s introductions from supervisors Peskin, McGoldrick, and Daly:
1. Increase property transfer tax on sales of $2+ million from 0.75 to 1.5 percent (Peskin)
2. Establish staged tax increase on property sales starting at $1 million (McGoldrick)
3. Prohibit harassment by a landlord/provide rent reduction fines (Daly)
4. Prohibit OMI evictions of units with children (Daly)
5. Place two-unit buildings into the condo-conversion lottery (Daly)" http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2008/06/potential_november_ballot_measures_twounit_condo_lotter.html

Some people might focus on the details of the battle, like tenants vs. landlords and TICs vs. rental units, but this is really a battle over the rights of rich vs. richer-than-you vs. poor vs. poorer-than-you. How do you choose which side you want to win? It seems hard to draw lines as to where rich and poor really are in San Francisco in the first place…especially when an average starter home is easily around $800,000. …Should we all give up and move to Portland where housing is cheap? If we do that, we’ll drive up the price of real estate there even more, and we'll force Portlander’s to create tenant rules so that they can keep living in their city too. (Which they actually started to do, and they have looked into TIC rules as my Agent friend in Portland has told me.) This is somewhat ironic because most Portlanders want to live in Portland and most San Franciscans want to live in San Francisco. Meanwhile, India, China, England and yes, even Canada, have been buying their second/third homes in SF - where everyone wants to live and the dollar's so gosh darn cheap.

Can we save San Francisco from the Canadians? If we draw a line around who we decide is rich and who we decide is poor, will it work and let all of us poor people stay as renters? Are our options really that polarized?

....Barak Obama talks about people tending to polarize things in politics. Either you're a Democrat or a Republican. ...and somehow our country got into an "us vs. them" mind frame, when we really need to figure out what makes sense and what's best for everybody - be it a Republican's idea or a Democrat's. Well, I think that San Francisco is just as polarized as the rest of America. It's not really surprising, considering we're a smaller part of the larger USA. But we are trying hard to figure out how to stop the Canadian invasion by enforcing more and more communistic rules. (I make note, I feel I have license to mock Canada...as I am half Canadian ;) Anyway, we seem to be making all of these micro-management rules in order to support one side of a very polarized debate or another, and I’m not sure if it’s just buying time or what. Perhaps we need to refocus the issues and stop thinking of it in terms of a debate in the first place.

How would it be like to live in a San Francisco where landlords could evict tenants ...when they wanted to? I'm not suggesting that's a great idea. ...How would it be like to live in a San Francisco where landlords gave up, sold their buildings and bought in Tracy, or Sac or anywhere else where investments are cheap...where they can then rented their new units to the San Francisco firefighters? Making landlords follow so many little rules, which are mostly aimed to hurt them, is not a great motivator for getting them to own and maintain their rental units. If the government wants to keep housing at a reasonable price, then perhaps they should own units and manage them themselves. Oh wait, they do that and it's called subsidized housing. Perhaps it's time to beef up those issues instead and just come to terms with the fact that a lot of San Francisco cannot afford a $800,000 starter home. Also, we might want to make sure that the firefighters and teachers who work in SF really live here too. ...because when the bridges break/get backed up during the next earthquake, how will the firefighters get over in time to tackle the flames and save the city? When they're rebuilding, how will the teachers commute to teach our next generation?

I'm tired of all of this bickering and fighting over which side is just and fair. There's got to be a better answer. I don’t think we can find one in our current model of government. ...I don't actually have one. If you do, and it's great, send it to me and I'll post it. ;) ...or you can make a comment! :)