Why Are There So Many Homeless in San Francisco

I just returned from the beautiful city of San Francisco, but beautiful for whom? Though it is a wonderful place to visit, not so much for the people that live there. It was shocking and another wake up call to see so many homeless people all over the major thoroughfares of the city. I’m not talking about one or two, here and there, but literally you could not walk a block without encountering one to five homeless persons https://sfist.com/2019/02/20/san-francisco-homeless-census-numbers-facts/. Along Ashby Avenue in Oakland near where I was staying there was a small tent city where the municipality has placed portable bathrooms, because they know that this is where people live and require some type of sanitation. What is driving people into the streets? One main thing is Gentrification.

Gentrification is hitting our biggest cities all over the country. When the affluent enter areas that have historically been lived in by the middle class, lower middle class, and the poor rents go up! In San Francisco a one bedroom apartment runs about $3500 to $5000 on average, and new renters, many that are the tech employees are paying it. The former San Franciscans that used to live in the city are now forced to travel in from Daly City, San Jose, and other cities that are adjacent, or within commute of an hour or more. Let us stop just right here. Why are rents being allowed to go into sky high rates? Who does this serve? It serves the landlords/real estate developers, but it doesn’t necessarily even serve the new renters as they become rent slaves, or perhaps they make so much money they don’t care. But people who are in the middle income bracket are forced to move further out, or who are in the lower middle class or poor are simply just pushed out into the street. One thing is certain that this type of invasion of territory destroys communities of people that have grown up or grown older together. The idea of community is non-existent in this equation. In this equation the rich get richer, and the poor are tossed out like trash.

When speaking to a Chinatown shopkeeper of Elie and Eva Company on Jackson Street, he said that some of the rents of the Mom & Pop shops in the area rose from $1500 - $3500 a month. One of the reasons that people go to Chinatown is because of the people, and the culture they have brought there, but this will become non-existent or replaced with stores that cater to the wealthy.

The increase of meth use has also hit the San Francisco area hard, and from what I have read the area’s mental health services are not functioning as they need to. In a city such as San Francisco where tech giants are impacting the city by bringing in new residents, increasing the property values as a result of their presence, the question is, are they bearing the tax burden that should offset the impact they are causing? This November San Francisco is considering taxing the tech companies that are going to go public. https://www.sfexaminer.com/the-city/city-weighs-new-tax-on-stock-options-as-tech-companies-prepare-to-go-public/

One of the reasons that we have such a wealth disparity in this country is because corporations stopped producing products in this country and eliminated blue collar jobs. Companies took manufacturing to other countries because they wanted to have bigger profits, and they didn’t want to pay the American worker a living wage. This happened in the 1980’s and we are reaping the harvest from this practice by having people out of work that would have fallen into this category. And now there is finger pointing to immigrants for stealing jobs when in reality they often take on the jobs that Americans will not do https://www.thetrumpet.com/2061-the-death-of-american-manufacturing.

One thing that can be done to stop this from happening to a neighborhood near you is to cap the rents. There needs to be a cap since there seems to be no end in sight. The landlords, realtors and developers are just laughing their way to the bank while communities are destroyed, people’s lives are disrupted, and according to a 2018 study by The National Institute for Health the mental health of the country finds itself on a downward spiral as a result. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5775138/ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hormones-and-the-brain/201811/the-scandal-inequality-and-its-effect-mental-health

There is already a precedence for capping with the city of Berlin freezing their rents for the next five years https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-to-freeze-rents-for-five-years/a-49248914. Consider that 90% of Americans make an average of $34,000 per year, while 1 percent of population has about 1/5 of the total wealth of the nation with an average salary of $6.7 million. Next, put a cap on salaries or increase taxes on the wealthy, tax corporations at a higher rate, do not allow corporations to take the money or jobs out of the country. The greed element has to be removed from a society that wants to continue its humanity.