cawacko
Well-known member
I've written here before about the protestors who have blocked Google and other large tech companies buses leaving San Francisco heading to the Silicon Valley claiming the tech workers are causing rents and prices to rise in SF and forcing creative types out of the City.
It looks like this tactic is moving northward to Seattle.
I think good to high paying tech jobs are a great thing. If these mostly young workers want to live in urban areas then that is their choice and if it means lower earning people have to move out of the City to a cheaper suburban community then that is the market forces at work. (We also saw this before with the dot com boom of the late '90's and then when it crashed many people moved out of SF and rents fell greatly.) The local argument is that by forcing the creative types out the City is losing its soul.
I think these bus protests completely miss the point and are quite frankly just dumb. However I am open to hearing others opinion's as maybe I'm missing a certain perspective here.
Tech bus protests spread to Seattle, target Microsoft
Protesters in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood took a cue from San Francisco and blocked a tech company bus Monday morning, contending that tech workers are gentrifying their neighborhood.
The Capitol Hill Blog posted photos and a story about the small protest this morning; it appeared to be a couple of people standing in front of a Microsoft Connector bus with a big sign.
“In the past decade, well-paid tech industry employees have flooded Seattle’s neighborhoods, driving up the cost of living,” a flier stated. At the bottom of the flier, it says, “Fight Development, Join the Counterforce.”
This is one of the first protests in Seattle blaming tech workers for gentrification. A new report has linked the neighborhoods where high-tech workers tend to live with increased property values and expensive restaurants.
Microsoft has at least 74 Connector buses that drive around the Puget Sound area to pick up workers and bring them to the company’s Bellevue offices and the Redmond campus. The free service was launched in 2007 to help encourage Microsoft employees commuting from Seattle to ride the bus instead of driving. The company increased the number of routes in 2011.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2014/02/tech-bus-protests-seattle-microsoft.html
It looks like this tactic is moving northward to Seattle.
I think good to high paying tech jobs are a great thing. If these mostly young workers want to live in urban areas then that is their choice and if it means lower earning people have to move out of the City to a cheaper suburban community then that is the market forces at work. (We also saw this before with the dot com boom of the late '90's and then when it crashed many people moved out of SF and rents fell greatly.) The local argument is that by forcing the creative types out the City is losing its soul.
I think these bus protests completely miss the point and are quite frankly just dumb. However I am open to hearing others opinion's as maybe I'm missing a certain perspective here.
Tech bus protests spread to Seattle, target Microsoft
Protesters in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood took a cue from San Francisco and blocked a tech company bus Monday morning, contending that tech workers are gentrifying their neighborhood.
The Capitol Hill Blog posted photos and a story about the small protest this morning; it appeared to be a couple of people standing in front of a Microsoft Connector bus with a big sign.
“In the past decade, well-paid tech industry employees have flooded Seattle’s neighborhoods, driving up the cost of living,” a flier stated. At the bottom of the flier, it says, “Fight Development, Join the Counterforce.”
This is one of the first protests in Seattle blaming tech workers for gentrification. A new report has linked the neighborhoods where high-tech workers tend to live with increased property values and expensive restaurants.
Microsoft has at least 74 Connector buses that drive around the Puget Sound area to pick up workers and bring them to the company’s Bellevue offices and the Redmond campus. The free service was launched in 2007 to help encourage Microsoft employees commuting from Seattle to ride the bus instead of driving. The company increased the number of routes in 2011.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2014/02/tech-bus-protests-seattle-microsoft.html