California’s Suicide Attempt, Part 3: The Wages of Gentry Liberalism

The great thing about being a liberal is that it is an endlessly adaptable creed. Back in the 1960s and 1970s when white people moved to the suburbs and urban cores deterioration, it was called “white flight,” and the left decried it as racist, etc. But now that affluent whites have moved back into the urban cores, it is called “gentrification,” and it is terrible because it ruins old neighborhoods and pushes out poor people. See what I mean how fun and easy it is to be a liberal?

The latest out of Los Angeles is that the conscience-stricken folks who deplore gentrification are no longer going to just complain about it:

A new generation of anti-gentrification radicals are on the march in Los Angeles

. . . [A] coalition of scorched-earth young activists from the surrounding neighborhood — the heart of Mexican-American L.A. — . . . have rejected the old, peaceful forms of resistance (discussion, dialogue, policy proposals) and decided that the only sensible response is to attack and hopefully frighten off the sorts of art galleries, craft breweries and single-origin coffee shops that tend to pave the way for more powerful invaders: the real estate agents, developers and bankers whose arrival typically mark a neighborhood’s point of no return. . .

“Gentrification is not a trend for the ‘woke wide web’ or for the detached subculture of the left to consume,” they continued. “It is a vicious, protracted attack on poor and working-class people. And we are engaging in class warfare that leaves our friends, families, and neighbors, homeless, devastated, deported or dead. So get with down friends and make s*** crack.”

. . . “Gentrification is not a trend for the ‘woke wide web’ or for the detached subculture of the left to consume,” they continued. “It is a vicious, protracted attack on poor and working-class people. And we are engaging in class warfare that leaves our friends, families, and neighbors, homeless, devastated, deported or dead. So get with down friends and make s*** crack.”

Meanwhile, up in San Francisco housing is so expensive that communes of a sort (maybe just call them dormitories) are making a comeback for the professionals who don’t pull down Google and Facebook level salaries:

Shared bathrooms at the end of the hall and having no individual kitchen or living room is becoming less weird for some of the city’s workers thanks to Starcity, a new development company that is expressly creating dorms for many of the non-tech population. . .

Starcity residents get a bedroom of 130 square feet to 220 square feet. Many of the buildings will feature some units with a private bath for a higher rent. But Jon Dishotsky, Starcity’s co-founder and chief executive, said a ratio of one bathroom for every two to three bedrooms makes the most sense for large-scale affordability. The average one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco rents for $3,300 a month, but Starcity rooms go for $1,400 to $2,400 a month fully furnished, with utilities and Wi-Fi included.

This is going to end well.

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