I always feel so conflicted about these overly specific human interest takes on this topic.
- The rent increases are choices made by landlords, not Facebook.
- Even as quoted in the article, residents seem to believe that living in a place for a long time entitles them to continue living in that place longer at a price they find agreeable. I personally have been priced out of neighborhoods I loved living in twice in my life, once after living in the same place for 8 years and feeling a huge sense that it "was my home." It's sad and upsetting, but nobody is entitled to live in some place just because their family historically has lived there a long time or they personally have lived there a long time or theyhave some cultural identity to that place. It's not a nice part of reality, but that's just how it is. Playing on sympathies by hearing people say, "but we've lived here 10 years and Facebook doesn't care" is just an ineffective way to look at it, for all parties.
- As usual, the group of people most impacted (displaced tenants) is the group least capable of financially weathering the changing circumstances or politically lobbying for their preferences to be protected.
- If I were a Facebook employee, I would feel some measure of resentment towards the property groups doing this. One reason is because the property managers know the bad press will be flung at Facebook, not them. Another reason is that the property managers are essentially looking at the wages paid by Facebook as something they (the property managers) are entitled to (by raising rents to adjust for higher salaries). The landlords are not improving their value-add in any way, just raising prices to capture more of some other productive person's wages.
- And, of course as others have pointed out, it's largely driven by lack of new housing or high-rise housing.
No one might be entitled to that, but it's definitely helpful to the social health of an area if there is policy to ensure that the community stays somewhat stable.
I'm not sure that I agree unless we come up with some definition of "stable". Usually a neighborhood is healthy when people want to move into it, meaning it experiences growth, and it can lead to problems depending on how the growth is managed. But when a neighborhood stagnates and becomes known as a place that excludes certain classes of other people or makes them "unwelcome" then the neighborhood's only hope of survival is to contain a bunch of already wealthy people who entrench the existing classism or ageism or racism, etc.
When the neighborhood is working class and props up "stability" (in the form of not letting new people in unless they are 'like us'), it's a recipe for disaster.
This is an extremely hard problem to solve. I had a good family friend who lost her job as an elementary school teacher because a neighborhood rapidly gentrified and people moving in did not have children. Over about a 2 year period, rents rose and school enrollment dropped severely and the school had to cut staff.
But I also have a friend whose car was vandalized repeatedly in a neighborhood of Pittsburgh because he was associated with a tech company there that was popularly blamed for gentrification. He felt scared living there, which he should not have to feel no matter what the reason (i.e. he does not belong to any minority groups in terms of race, etc., but deserves to feel safe at his own home like anyone else does).
The idea of "stability in a neighborhood" is hard to pin down, because things can range from outright xenophobia to thoughtless gentrification, and market economics usually just acts like throwing gas on the fire no matter which end of the spectrum you're in.
- The rent increases are choices made by landlords, not Facebook.
- Even as quoted in the article, residents seem to believe that living in a place for a long time entitles them to continue living in that place longer at a price they find agreeable. I personally have been priced out of neighborhoods I loved living in twice in my life, once after living in the same place for 8 years and feeling a huge sense that it "was my home." It's sad and upsetting, but nobody is entitled to live in some place just because their family historically has lived there a long time or they personally have lived there a long time or theyhave some cultural identity to that place. It's not a nice part of reality, but that's just how it is. Playing on sympathies by hearing people say, "but we've lived here 10 years and Facebook doesn't care" is just an ineffective way to look at it, for all parties.
- As usual, the group of people most impacted (displaced tenants) is the group least capable of financially weathering the changing circumstances or politically lobbying for their preferences to be protected.
- If I were a Facebook employee, I would feel some measure of resentment towards the property groups doing this. One reason is because the property managers know the bad press will be flung at Facebook, not them. Another reason is that the property managers are essentially looking at the wages paid by Facebook as something they (the property managers) are entitled to (by raising rents to adjust for higher salaries). The landlords are not improving their value-add in any way, just raising prices to capture more of some other productive person's wages.
- And, of course as others have pointed out, it's largely driven by lack of new housing or high-rise housing.