Phil Matier: Techie Tales Of The City

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — San Francisco is a popular destination for techies. They're living here, they're working here, but depending on who you ask—they may be wearing out their welcome.

Many people blame young techies for driving up the cost of housing in San Francisco and other places in the Bay Area.

And they do. That's a fact.

When this kind of money pours into anywhere, whether it's San Francisco, or other areas in the South Bay, the rents go up, and housing values go up.  These folks have the money to spend and they're spending it.

For somebody standing next to them, who's just been evicted out of a place, or just doesn't like the fact that they have private buses taking them to work, the anger starts to add up and eventually it reaches City Hall.

Columnist Willie Brown wrote in this past Sunday's Chronicle that these companies should start hiring more local people.

What Brown was suggesting is that there are politics involved in these situations whether it's high tech, or anything else that's moving in.

If you're moving in and taking up a lot space, what's the giveback?

Some would argue that there doesn't need to be any giveback—that generating money for the local economy is enough. But this is San Francisco—a semi-socialist state that's almost independent from the rest of the nation—and there is an expectation for some sort of a giveback.

Rather than giving to charities in the third-world, there is a desire for directing such efforts toward locals.

Brown's advice is also this: somewhere along the line, tech companies are going to be looking for a planning break, a permit, or something else from the city, so it's always smart to have local people on the table—whether it's kids from the Sunset or Mission Districts, or kids coming out of college—so when you go to City Hall, you don't rolled by all the non-profits and the neighborhood activists that will show up in force.

The only people who will be in your corner will be your paid attorneys.

Mayor Ed Lee has been hoping the tech companies would help with programs for kids but they haven't exactly opened up their wallets locally.

I'm not sure how many of them really have money versus having investments. That's a big question: do they really have money to spread around?

Much of what's happening now was triggered by the recent Twitter IPO which instantly created about 1,600 new millionaires. After that Ed Lee was in the New York Times, and eviction stories became the symbol of locals being forced out.

Everyone is going to pick up on this now, and there's nothing San Franciscans like better than a fight, especially when it involves a different class of people.

This new high-tech group is just being welcomed the wrestling match that's known as San Francisco.

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