Poverty rates near record levels in Bay Area despite hot economy (over 800,000 living in poverty)

[daredtowork]

Apparently the tech boom is just incapable of "lifting all boats". There are over 800,000 people living in poverty in the Bay Area, on the doorstep of some of the richest (and apparently some of the most oblivious) people in the world.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_27830698/poverty-rates-near-record-levels-bay-area-despite

I believe this is the poverty brief that that the article refers to:
http://siliconvalleyindicators.org/special-reports/poverty-brief-march-2015/

Meanwhile, in Berkeley, landlords continue to fall all over each other to flip their properties in the wildly inflated market and displace tenants into a city with no low or even moderate income housing. The mayor continues to push the development of luxury apartments that only the super-rich can afford: these pied-a-terres will probably sit empty most of the time like similar units in San Francisco. At the same time money meant for low income housing has been held in committee for years in order to force poor people to "decide" to move out of the city. This policy has notably white-polished the city just in the time I've lived here.

I just found out the true depth of the city political establishment's evil this evening. Apparently there is a huge transfer tax that goes to the city every time a property is sold. So it's not that they are indifferent to the housing crisis that has primarily impacted fixed income elderly and disabled people - they have been ACTIVELY ENCOURAGING it to line their coffers with transfer tax bounties!!! They WANT a "hot" property-flipping market rather than the stable one that promotes a sense of stability for renters and protects rent-control properties.

[RobertSF]

1. Oh, yes, that transfer tax

It's not a large percentage, but with million-dollar-plus prices, it amounts to a huge amount of money.

[daredtowork]

2. Even small homes in Berkeley are selling for over a million

A local cal professor wrote an article about how she couldn't trade up to a slightly better house because her neighborhood was now a million dollar neighborhood, and the article got gang-rushed by renters who couldn't afford to buy a house at all - or worse were being displaced from housing by the greed of property-flipping landlords in the hot market.

Damn Mayor Bates teeny tiny smoking charcoal lump of a soul.

Years ago he and his wife Loni Hancock (former Mayor of Berkeley, now a State Senator) rich'splained that we couldn't have low income housing in Berkeley because developing property downtown would clash with zoning laws and general aesthetics - and it was just impossible for Berkeley to grow any further. Now there are MULTIPLE projects for these luxury condos - some 18 story buildings going up downtown. Berkeley has plenty of room to grow for people who can pay $6000+/month!

The "lefties" on the City Council who tried to stop it were painted as getting in the way of progress, and, worse, housing. But no one who is losing their housing now is going to be housed in these condos.