Thursday, 28 Mar 2024

With a New Influx of Wealth, Is San Francisco Over?

Good morning.

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In yesterday’s newsletter, we explored why Montebello, a solidly middle class suburb of Los Angeles, was an unexpected target for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ire over unaffordable housing.

Today, my colleague Nellie Bowles takes us to a city where the housing landscape has been the target of way more outrage — and it’s about to get worse.

We’re talking about San Francisco. I’ll let her explain why:

Booms usually follow busts. But not in San Francisco today.

A new fleet of huge start-ups — among them Uber, Airbnb, Lyft, Slack and Pinterest — is preparing to go public, and the employees who have patiently waited for their stock options to turn to cash will finally have their day.

The trouble is: The city still hasn’t quite caught its breath from the last boom, which saw clashes between protesters and tech buses. There’s still not enough housing, still jarring inequality on the streets. And now thousands of the newly cash rich are going to be looking to put their stake in the city. Familiar issues are boiling up again.

So I spent a few days talking to local business owners, financial managers, real estate agents, housing activists, tech workers, ice sculptors and bike shops about what they’re expecting from the I.P.O.-palooza this year.

One note: A fair number have read it and told me, “Oh this is why San Francisco is over.” I would push back on that. When I was reporting this story, and as news came that even more of Silicon Valley’s engines are moving north, the realization I kept having is that San Francisco’s financial and cultural power is only beginning.

So what do you think? Is San Francisco beyond saving from the uber-wealthy?

Tell us about it at [email protected].

Here’s what else we’re following

(We often link to sites that limit access for nonsubscribers. We appreciate your reading Times stories, but we’d also encourage you to support local news if you can.)

• “They laugh and say, ‘When I was your age, I already had four kids.’ I tell them if I had kids now, I wouldn’t be able to do what I want to do.” Birthrates among Hispanic-American women have plummeted. Here’s why and what it means. [The New York Times]

• A historic court ruling extends more constitutional protections to migrants seeking asylum. The case, however, will most likely head to the Supreme Court. [The New York Times]

Hundreds of high school and college students in Sacramento walked out and marched to the Capitol to protest decisions not to prosecute the officers who shot Stephon Clark, and to push for reforms to laws surrounding the use of force by the police. [The Sacramento Bee]

The U.S. government tracked journalists covering migrant caravans as they headed toward the border — a possible breach of constitutional rights that an A.C.L.U. lawyer described as “really disturbing.” Federal authorities faced questions after NBC7 in San Diego obtained a government document. [The New York Times]

• Speaking of the Bay Area’s housing crisis, a Democratic assemblyman, David Chiu, dove into choppy political waters by proposing a controversial regional housing authority that would be able to put taxing measures on the ballot. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

The U.S. Census Bureau will tap Department of Homeland Security documents about immigrants, including some noncitizens, as part of its data collections. Experts said the move had plausible explanations and did not necessarily signal that the Trump administration is trying to side step recent court rulings barring a citizenship question on the 2020 survey. [The New York Times]

• Facebook just announced it has a plan to combat misinformation about vaccines. It follows other social networks like Pinterest and YouTube. Anti-vaccination groups have flourished on the platform. [The New York Times]

Today is International Women’s Day. A former head of communications at Google wrote this satirical piece about it. Now have some special-edition lipstick. [The New York Times]

More California stories

• A tour of Hollywood — the apartment complexes in classic movies figure prominently — with Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the sisters behind Rodarte, the fashion label. [The New York Times]

• In an era when bright, clean MedMen dispensaries have geniuses to guide you like at the Apple store, and when microdosing is as common as bringing your Labradoodle to your open-plan office, David Hochman, an L.A. writer, asks in this column: How do you tell your kids not to do drugs — at least not now? [The New York Times]

• Before California was West, it was North and it was East: the uppermost periphery of the Mexican Empire, and the arrival point for Chinese immigrants. Remapping L.A. [Guernica]

• An electronic music producer and Goldenvoice, the music promoter behind Coachella and other large festivals, is changing the name of a fest they’re planning in Oakland after local artists complained it was too similar to a grass-roots event named the Multivrs is Illuminated. But questions about displacement of the local art scene remain. [KQED]

And Finally …

For today’s recommendation, Tejal Rao, California restaurant critic, tells us how to get to Oaxacalifornia:

This week I wrote about a delicious moronga, or blood sausage, that traveled with the Romero family from Oaxaca to Los Angeles in the 1970s. About two years ago, Alfonso Martinez, a former musician, learned to make the sweet, chile-stained moronga from his in-laws.

He now serves it as a side dish at Poncho’s Tlayudas, a terrific pop-up in South Los Angeles where the city’s Oaxacan community gathers to share huge, folded tlayudas filled with beans, cabbage and stringy quesillo.

Every Friday, beginning at about 4, Mr. Martinez sets up behind the offices of the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations, a group run by Odilia Romero. And if you find yourself with a hankering for tlayudas on Sundays, you can find them at Smorgasburg.

California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: [email protected].

Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, went to school at U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter, @jillcowan.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

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