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Lifestyles of therich and hatedBy Taylor Hatmaker on November 23rd, 2014

It’s hard to imagine what tense heights San Francisco’sculture clash might soar to. But then again, it’s also hard toimagine someone tossing in an extra million bucks to closeon a house that’s been on the market for less than a week.

The conflict between dudely tech types making their unholy pilgrimage to the Bay Area—historically a nexus of counterculture—and just about everyone else plays out onmany battlefields. But beyond the whimsically lofty

valuations for companies that have zero revenue, real estateis one of the most alarmingly quantifiable. With rentalprices through the roof, most Bay Area residents couldnever dream of homeownership. But the tech industry’sreimagined cast of robber barons are not most Bay Arearesidents.

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Screengrab via Zillow

Fort ZuckerbergFacebook’s headquarters might be 40 minutes south inMenlo Park, but Facebook cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to be right where the action is—sometimes, anyway. That’s why, in 2012, Zuckerberg

bought what some local press derisively dubbed “FortZuckerberg,” a four-story home near San Francisco’s hipepicenter, Dolores Park, and the perfect symbol of a city

gone haywire.

As SFist puts it, “Zuck has officially put the Mission on thepaparazzi’s radar. You’ve been warned.”

It’s no coincidence thatSan Francisco’s only

remaining lesbian bar

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Paying $10 million, a price cartoonishly above the $1.5million market value of the property in 2012, Zuckerbergclosed on the home in 2012. After that, a series of renovations on the property began in 2013. As of September2014, that construction is still well underway, tearing upthe entire block and driving neighbors crazy with constantnoise and aggressive parking-spot squatting.

Screengrab via Google Street View

Meanwhile, just a block away, Google’s lead electronicdiscovery lawyer, Jack Halprin, has been evading papers

summoning him to court for allegations that he unlawfully evicted residents of a property he bought on the MissionDistrict’s Guerrero Street. Halprin bought the 100-year-old

Victorian home for $1.48 million in 2012 and proceeded totake the building’s units off the rental market. The evictioncontroversy has become a rallying point for longtimeresidents and fair-housing advocates, wholed proteststhroughout 2014.

announced that after 18 years it will be closing its

doors.

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San Francisco’s Mission District, a historically working-class Latino neighborhood, has emerged as a hangout forexecutives like Zuckerberg. Pour-over coffee shops alongthoroughly gentrified Valencia Street house startup typestyping away on rows of MacBooks, and the nearby BARTstations and comped company bus rides make it all the

more alluring. As soon as this year, a startupcalled QuiQuihopes to start drone deliveries of drugstoregoods to San Francisco residents who download itssmartphone app. The startup targeted the Mission Districtspecifically as its testing ground. “The lack of tall buildingsand relatively flat landscape make our aerial mapping mucheasier. Since the drones can fly ‘as the crow flies,’ it makes ita great place to start.”

It’s no coincidence that San Francisco’s only remaininglesbian bar announced that after 18 years it would beclosing its doors. The Lexington Club, more often called“the Lex,” is located in the heart of the Mission District;owner Lila Thirkield can’t keep up with the skyrocketingmarket’s rent rates.

“A few years back, my rent was raised to market rate, andthough it was difficult, we seemed to weather it at first. But

as the neighborhood continued to change, we began to seesales decline, and they continued to do so,” Thirkield wrote,delivering the bad news. “When a business caters to about5% of the population, it has tremendous impact when 1% of them leave. When 3% or 4% of them can no longer afford tolive in the neighborhood, or the City, it makes the businessmodel unsustainable.”

Speaking to a longtime tenant on the outskirts of the

In 2014, San Francisco’smedian rent prices shotup 10 percent in just a

year’s time.

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Mission District, the influx of tech culture is palpable. Herecounted recently running into a startup founder eager to

build “community” with other members of the tech scene who were moving into the neighborhood for its convenienceand hip image. The influx of young, childless startup typesis so great that the city might be wise to consider building

“dorm-style nano-apartments”—150-square-foot homesthat could house members of the ballooning demographic

before housing demand outstrips supply even further.

Numbers through the roof

According to Trulia’s Chief Economist Jed Kolko, “SanFrancisco has the least affordable housing in the nation,

with just 14 percent of homes accessible to middle-class

buyers.

Screenshot via Trulia

“The median rent is also the highest in the country, at$3,250 a month for a two-bedroom apartment,” he wrote.

With the price of homes rising fast, incomes aren’t keepingup.

The Bay Area’s high cost of living is no deterrent to youngpeople hungry for jobs in the tech industry. Between 2007and 2013, San Francisco county’s millennial populationswelled by 68 percent, an influx topped only by the D.C.

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area and New Orleans.

In 2014, San Francisco’s median rent prices shot up 10percent in just a year’s time. It’s no surprise then that low

wage earners, defined here as individuals with an income below $35,000, are moving out in droves.

This year, for the first time, the median price for a home inSan Francisco hit the $1 million mark. As the San Francisco Chronicle observes, buying a home in SanFrancisco right now is a cutthroat endeavor in which more

buyers are willing to pay in cash—and well over the askingprice. “Many are tech workers with stock compensationfrom an initial public offering or takeover. Realtors callthem ‘Google kids.’”

The tide is turning against longtime Bay Area residents,disproportionately affecting low-income families, people of color, and the queer community—populations that tend toportend socioeconomic shifts on a larger scale. As SanFrancisco’s heterogenous charm withers, tech’s elite army of gentrifiers is moving in next door—and across the streettoo.

Photos via Pietro Zuco /Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0) and Payton

Chung /Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0) | Remix by Rob Price