Duh! San Francisco Has Gentrification Problems

This is not Google's fault, they didn't pass a single law that prevented enough homes from being built. They didn't waste billions on programs to increase property prices. All they did was move into an area where the political elite wanted them.

It might seem odd, government officials, both Democrats and Republican's work very hard to kick poor people out of their houses by socially engineering gentrification. Yet this article is primarily about Democrats because they rule San Francisco with an iron fist.

Government planners tend to see places as more important than people, while politicians of both stripes seem to like to brag about spent, and most especially - increases in property prices as if that was their goal.

The problem is that spending big on infrastructure to increase property prices, efforts to artificially increase home ownership, and zoning laws to prevent new or affordable homes from being built, all (Gasp! Feign shock) increase home prices.

All of this will force the low income people who can't afford to move, to move.

This problem is aggravated by the fact that higher business taxes and more expensive regulations help large companies while hurting small businesses. This is because big businesses can afford people to deal with regulations, but small businesses can't. In other words San Francisco and California's liberal policies hurt small businesses and low income people more than they hurt big businesses.

In order to protect low income people while growing a local economy you must;

Include plans to help businesses which employ ordinary people expand, and include plans to make self employment easier, so that better jobs are created for most people, especially the people already living in a region, who local economic development is supposed to help (such plans must involve making running businesses more affordable),

Develop educational programs that actually help local people find jobs by working with the local industries, not just the industries you want to have,

Reduce zoning and other regulatory burdens to building affordable apartments and houses, similarly laws need to be in place to allow people to build more high income housing so high income people aren't forced to move into smaller apartments,

Never, ever, ever, ever, try to increase property prices. In fact, instead of looking at property prices as a benchmark for economic development you should have the goal of; Increasing people's Median discretionary spending. That is, spending after they've paid taxes, medical bills, housing, and general food requirements, which means that increasing property prices hurts the goal of making low income people better off (duh).

See, the problem low income people have isn't that they don't have fifteen billion dollar trains, it's that they don't have a high enough income, and spending more money than all low income people in a city earn on a train that will only serve fifteen percent of them isn't really going to change that.

But hey, San Francisco's population has asked for government intervention and control time and again, so welcome to the wonderful world of governmental control, and remember that politicians can afford to do all this, because as the people they kicked out of their districts are forced to move to make way for new people, no one is left to be angry at them.

Plus, apparently people aren't capable of realizing that certain government policies are the primary contributor to gentrification problems.

In fact, the saddest thing about San Francisco is that the lesson people will take away from it is that they need to elect more of the same, rather than building a balanced government, or coming up with plans that actually make sense.