BitchTapes: There Goes the Neighborhood | (Music) Bitch Media (Or... Tech Bros & Condos SUCK!)

Dear Seattle:  Your Brothers and Sisters In San Francisco Feel Your Pain!

"This week's mixtape is curated by Emily Nokes of esteemed Seattle pop punk band Tacocat!

This is...
An Ode to the Practice Spaces, Gay Bars, Weird Businesses, Affordable Housing, and other Long-Lost Treasures that Seattle has lost recently to:

Greyish-beige condos filled with bigots;  Tech jerks terrorizing service workers on the weekend in the very neighborhood they can no longer afford to live in; Queer/arts/ethnically-diverse neighborhoods dissolving into restaurant nightmares; Lavish marijuana shops selling government-approved wares on the same corner folks were busted for (and still doing time for) selling marijuana! 

Cities change and that's a fact. But Seattle musicians aren't going down without writing a bunch of songs about it first."

BitchTapes: There Goes the Neighborhood | Bitch Media: Songs from Seattle musicians calling out gentrification in their neighborhoods, curated by Emily Nokes of Tacocat.

A Conservative State - Utah - Solved Chronic Homelessness And Saved Millions!

Hey, California Governor Jerry Brown!!!

LOOK AT THIS:

"“If you want to end homelessness, you put people in housing,” Walker said in an interview. “This is relatively simple.”"
"... what has been perhaps the nation’s most successful — and radical — program to end chronic homelessness.

Now, more than a decade later, chronic homelessness in one of the nation’s most conservative states may soon end.  And all of it is thanks to a program that at first seems stripped from the bleeding-heart manual.

In 2005, Utah had nearly 1,932 chronically homeless.  By 2014, that number had dropped 72 percent to 539. Today, explained Gordon Walker, the director of the state Housing and Community Development Division, the state is “approaching a functional zero.”

Here's the link to the New York Post Article: Enjoy!

The Surprisingly Simple Way Utah Solved Chronic Homelessness And Saved Millions Of Dollars

Forget Mame: Realtors Are To Blame for San Francisco’s Housing Crisis

The Following is a True Story:

"Rents are skyrocketing in San Francisco because state law prevents the city from restricting rent increases on vacant apartments. Realtors get all the credit for putting the city in this policy straitjacket. In 1995, realtors’ won passage of the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act"

"Absent Costa-Hawkins, San Francisco rents on most vacant apartments would be at least 25-50% cheaper today. In cases like the Hayes Valley 1 bdrm units now advertised for over $4000, the rent would likely be 50%- 75% less."

"Realtors, not progressives, are also to blame for the fear of Ellis Act evictions throughout San Francisco... realtors have fought in Sacramento the past two years to preserve speculators right to evict longterm tenants for profit—a point too often overlooked in assessments of San Francisco’s housing crisis."

"Strong rent control and eviction protections are the core prerequisites for maintaining affordable housing. That’s why Richmond’s enactment of both measures last week is so critical (see my piece, “Richmond 1, Gentrification 0”)."

"Realtors have denied San Francisco the most potent strategies to protect affordable housing, which would be the enactment of vacancy controls and preventing speculator Ellis evictions. They should be called to account for what their policies have wrought."

(Excerpted From:)

Blame Realtors for SF’s Housing Crisis

by Randy Shaw