Bay Area's Young Tech's "Clusters of Affluence" Rattle Established Neighborhoods

The local impact of Silicon Valley's gold rush attained unwanted publicity in late 2013. At that time, some San Francisco and East Bay residents protested Google commuter buses whisking away young, prosperous tech engineers to their Valley employers. Beyond the free, employer-sponsored transportation, residents cited how the young tech crowd drove up rents, transformed working-class areas into hipster enclaves, and seemed largely disconnected to their established neighbors.

Mission Dolores
Image: Michel Mintaka/Flickr Creative Commons,
found on missionlocal.org

The Mission district, home to a large Hispanic population, has become a favored bedroom community for the young, the tech, the proud. A generation ago, I briefly lived adjacent to the Mission district. The area had the singular advantage of being in San Francisco's sun belt, which I enjoyed. My apartment's kitchen window looked out over the neighborhood and the Bay. Mission Dolores, after which the neighborhood is named, was a short walk from my residence. Very, very few of the homes or apartment buildings (and certainly not mine) seemed made to order for $10,000 per month rents.

Times change, and $10K per month is what a two-bedroom in the Mission neighborhood can now command. Who can afford them? You guessed it: the "I-can-have-it-all" tech employees. And are they paying? Yes, they are. The disruption to an established community such as the Mission's is palpable, ongoing, and in some circles, desirable.

Today's sfgate.com includes an article in which a data specialist identifies San Francisco's "clusters of affluence." The Mission neighborhood is among them. The story notes how legislation called the Ellis Act was used by some San Francisco landlords to shoehorn out lower-paying (but paying) tenants and welcome prosperous techies at substantially higher rents. (Ah, the "rule of law!")

Image: sfgate.com

The "clusters of affluence" notion makes a great deal of sense. New York (Manhattan and Whole Foods Brooklyn), Seattle, and Chicago, for example, include neighborhoods where the young, affluent, and tech-savvy can keep themselves company. Long-tenured residents? Well, they can move elsewhere, often drab inner-ring suburbs, can't they.

This phenomenon is making American cities more akin to European urban areas, in which the central city is home to the affluent and the suburbs (with certain elite exceptions) are for everyone else. It's an apt symbol of two Americas that does not bode well for the future.

Massive Machine Assembled to Dig First Tunnel Across San Francisco Bay

When one thinks of San Francisco Bay, one imagines its beautiful and not-so beautiful bridges spanning it. Tunnels in an active earthquake zone just don't seem to be the way the right approach to reach California's version of the Promised Land.

However, that perspective would be a mistaken one for utilities such as the area's water supply. Right now, the Bay Area is witnessing the beginning of a useful public works project involving the creation of the first-ever tunnel across San Francisco Bay. The Mercury News ran a story on the massive machine that will dig the ditch one hundred feet under the bottom of the bay. The dig will create a five-mile-long tunnel housing pipes for the San Francisco area's Hetch Hetchy water system. They will replace the current dual pipes, which are at risk of rupture in the event of a major seismic event. The photograph, from Jacobs Associates, the project's prime consultants, shows the area where the tunnel will be built.

If you thought the BART connection under the Bay, linking the City and the East Bay, was a tunnel, you would be mistaken. (I admit to being among the fooled.) The BART tracks are housed in a pre-constructed tube that sits on the bay floor, according to the Mercury News story.

For the Bay Area, this story is a big deal. I briefly lived in San Francisco, and I can appreciate how difficult it is to improve the area's infrastructure, and understand (as few East Coasters truly grasp) the impact of water and water rights in the West.

There's history in the pipeline story, as well, and not all of it is wonderful. In particular, the Hetch Hetchy dam, which provides the containment for the San Francisco peninsula's water supply, submerged a particularly lovely valley in Yosemite National Park.

Finally, there's the intersection of technology, hope, and necessity that the pipeline represents. It's an interesting story, even if one doesn't live in the Bay Area.