Do you own rental properties in Silicon Valley? Do you manage large rental complexes in San Jose, Los Gatos, Saratoga or Campbell? Well, could your tenants organize as these tenants in the Brooklyn did as you can see in this video from NY Times.
It appears the grievances of the Silicon Valley tenants have not reached a point where they want to organize into unions. But a San Francisco resident who works with my husband in Silicon Valley told my husband that he’s afraid of using the commute shuttles from San Francisco because angry tenants are blaming start-ups in the area for causing the massive rent hikes. He also mentioned that a high-rise building in San Francisco was purchased by a Google employee whose 1st action item was to evict all tenants including school teachers and elderly on fixed income.
The fact remains that rents in Silicon Valley have skyrocketed during the past year and they are part of the tech-fuled economic growth which is putting pressure on already short supply of affordable housing. And as we have written before the challenge of Silicon Valley affordable housing requires an effort which should include employers, landlords, transpiration concerns and regional governments. Compounding the problem is the stagnant wage increases for the past decade which is putting pressure on all minimum wage employees who are working at these high tech companies.
Whether organizing into unions or protesting lack of affordable housing, the challenge for Silicon Valley in the next decade is to find housing for the minimum wage employees of these high tech companies.
Where are the police, 1st responders, teachers and minimum wage workers supposed to live? That should be the concern of all of us since forcing them to move to Modesto is not going to solve the problem since they are orced to commute to Silicon Valley which is already suffering from traffic congestion and pollution.