A few days ago I was driving home down the 24th Street Corridor in San Francisco’s Mission District. Once the scenery to my childhood, the corridor has changed over the years. Latino-owned businesses began disappearing in the early 2000s, replaced by posh coffeehouses and other businesses that cater to the young tech elite (one of these cafes is actually called, "Sugarlump." Sugarlump? I hope whoever came up with that name pays heavily in the next life.)
While stopped at a red light, I spotted the building that was once El Discolandia, a Latin music store. El Discolandia is now long gone and has been replaced by Pig & Pie, an expensive and hip restaurant catering to yuppies. When its Cuban-American owner, Silvia Rodriguez, retired, neighborhood activists fought to keep the ‘Discolandia’ sign above the building’s entrance. The owner of Pig & Pie acquiesced, and the sign remained. The Lower 24th Street Merchants Association saw this as a “victory for the neighborhood,” but looking at the sign as it towered over a new business, I couldn’t help but think that it came off as a little impertinent. “We’re here to stay,” Pig & Pie seemed to be saying, “We’ve taken your homes and your businesses and the neighborhood belongs to us now.”
The Mission District began to transition into San Francisco’s largest Latino community in the 1950s, when Mexican immigrants traveling to Northern California in search of jobs settled here. Nicaraguans, Salvadorians and Guatemalans followed suit three decades later, strengthening the neighborhood’s Hispanic character. Around the year 2000, the dot-com bubble attracted wealthy young whites to the Mission. The bubble eventually burst, but not before the average price of proprty in the area eclipsed San Francisco's median sales price.The influx of moneyed whites moving to the area leveled off for a while before spiking again between 2010 and 2012 as Silicon Valley workers flocked to east San Francisco. Today, the neighborhood is unrecognizable.
Gentrification, defined by Webster’s dictionary as “the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents,” can have both positive and negative affects on a community. In the Mission, housing prices soared, a blessing for Latino families that owned their homes, but a blow for people that rented. Some families were able to make money from the situation while many others were forced to move. Gang activity and violent crime went down but the neighborhood’s unique Latin American atmosphere began to dwindle.
In other words, prosperity is currently sweeping through the Mission, but neighborhood natives are not only largely left out, they’re hurt by the “progress.” The tech influence has increased the income disparity between non-Hispanic whites and Latinos in the neighborhood. White Mission residents have a median income of $102,577, while Latinos make a shockingly lower $63,641. In addition, in the years between 2009 and 2015, no fault evictions in the Mission District increased by 62 percent. Clearly, gentrification is not a bloodless process.
Mission District residents protest unjust evictions during Day of the Dead ceremony
For the last 10 or so years, I’ve felt like someone who watches their city get sacked by a foreign army from the safety of a hilltop. I come from a white family fortunate enough to own their home, and thus have seen the Mission’s metamorphosis without having to fear the loss of a roof over my head. Some friends and neighbors haven’t been so lucky; some others have prospered, but no matter which way you slice it, the gentrification of the Mission brings San Francisco one step closer to complete homogenization. A city of wealthy, elitist whites who call themselves liberals but won’t hesitate to call the police on the homeless man sleeping on their front steps. At the end of the day, the Mission will never be the same and that means the City will never be the same. But while it may be time to say goodbye to La Misión, tax breaks for tech companies will never be able to wipe out my memories of growing up there. I love the Mission like I love a family member, but sometimes that means knowing when to let go.
A mural depicts a funeral procession for the death of the neighborhood
