Along came the next phase change when Mayor Ed Lee enticed Silicon Valley tech companies with gold plates of tax free incentives so they'd relocate to nearby Market Street, with the intention that the area would receive an economic boost. This idea bottomed out due to a few oversights: The tech industry refused to buy locally and therefore failed to help neighborhood businesses, their overpaid employees demanded nearby Hayes Valley homes therefore accelerating rental prices that current residents couldn't afford, and the division of obscene wealth vs. heart-wrenching poverty became as wide as the parting of the Red Sea. Sadly, Hayes Valley became an utter gentrified mess of beige and its quirky personality was stripped clean. Droves of new hipster stores opened overnight, from restaurants, bars and trendy outdoor truck cafes - it was standard to pay $10 for a golf ball size ice-cream scoop in a plastic cup that'd take 1000 years to decompose. The beige lasted for eight years. It was painful to watch the lack of diversity.
Then arose Covid-19.
With life coming full circle once again, the homeless decided to venture outside of their Tenderloin 'haven' and explore the rest of the city, a city they'd been elbowed from since the inception of the tax free tech days. After eight years of being cooped up and frowned upon for roaming around their stunning San Francisco, the homeless immediately headed right back to Hayes Valley. Tents popped up like daisies, just like they did a decade ago yet this naturally caused havoc for the locals. So much so, rattled and irate businesses have just announced a new initiative: Make Hayes Valley a Tent Free Zone. They demanded the mayor move every homeless person out of their perfect streets. The city complied yet the homeless returned a few days later, and rightly so. Over 5000 area businesses have closed since Covid-19, San Francisco property prices (for selling and renting) have dropped more than 10% in the last month alone and it's been reported that around 200,000 residents are moving to cheaper cities, especially since working from home means they can work from anywhere. Interestingly, with 200k less people and property values heavily dropping, the city's population and home valuations will revert back to its 2012 number.
With irony in abundance, the gentrified, the hipsters, the woke, the whiter than white, the cancel culture crew that don't blink when they spend $5000 on a two day glamping weekend are disgusted by tents cropping up on their own street. They're so sickened by the homeless, they're relocating to other cities. Ironically, they initially moved to San Francisco to change the world yet those rules clearly only apply within the work place, and not their home environment where fixing the homeless crisis would certainly be marked as a world changing achievement. More irony, the tent dwellers are most likely camping outside the apartment they once lived in before the tech influx. If rental properties keep dropping, maybe they'll be able to re-rent their original home sooner than later.
In every city, there are rich and poor. This is critical for the culture of a region because it drives different thinking milestones, epic feats and historic changes morphed from conflict and collaboration. With the gentrified leaving in droves - being pushed out by tent residents that possibly once resided in the same building - the culture of true San Francisco is already regaining a stronger pulse of diversity. Isn't life funny?
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