The SF Chronicle writes today about upcoming negotiations with city workers, some of whom find that they have good salaries, but are increasingly getting priced out of the city’s housing market. One of those, Claudia Flores, found that she did not make enough to rent a smaller room in a Mission District condo that was rented out to two tech workers in their 20s.
Flores is not a twentysomething fresh out of college making a go of it in the big city. She’s a 36-year-old professional who has worked in the City Planning Department for eight years.
Even some San Francisco public employees – whose pay and benefits are often the envy of peers in government and the private sector – say the city has become too expensive for them during this tech boom. They are looking for raises after years of givebacks during the recession. READ MORE
Et tu, Claudia?
One reason that industrial capitalism grew was because the people who manufactured Model T cars on the assembly line were paid enough to purchase a car of their own.
Claudia Flores is not so lucky. Her job is to carry water for developers who finance the political campaigns of the mayor who appoints her boss. In so doing, she is paid to “plan” for housing which she will never be able to afford.
At a certain level, Flores is reaping the bitter fruit of the toxic urban planning seeds she’s made a living getting paid to sow.
So the folks who build luxury yachts and private planes should be able to afford them, according to you?
She can’t find a place to live in SF on a 77k, 32-hour-a week salary? Seriously? Does she know how to use the interwebs?
Here, let me help her out with this:
– Go to craigslist.com
– search for apts/housing for rent
– add an upper bound for pricing of, say, 1300/month
– limit your search to SF
– but expand your search to more than just one neighborhood…
and, wha la! plenty of options.
She can find a place to live within the city bounds. It may not be her first choice, but that’s life in the big city.
Yes, her real complaint is that she cannot find a des res in one of the better neighborhoods in one of the most desirable cities on the planet.
Why would she expect to? Who told her a city job is the path to affluence? And would a fifteen minute BART commute from Oakland every morning kill her?