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Indybay Feature

Press the press on homelessness

by David Giesen
Inforum at the Commonwealth Club hosted a panel of journalist biggies who didn't finger community-generated land values as the key to addressing homeless issues.
Yes, San Francisco has plenty of cool and grey and over-the-top land values. The latter reflect the growth of the city in so many ways--technomania, hipnogaga, and yes, something as banal as population--, but Gary, Gary, Gary needs to call for the city to be more than a city of love. Mr. Kamiya and his fellow uppercase ink-spilling seatmates on panel at the Commonwealth Club on Post Street Wednesday evening need to cut to the chase. Land values.

The whole Bay Region, but certainly San Francisco, is drowning in high land values. Is it any wonder folks are drowning in displacement blues and moves? Is there any wonder where to look for public revenue? Land values. Down Nob Hill Jane Kim calls for a State of Emergency on Homelessness. Where's the SF Chronicle's lean and hungry reporters on the story connecting high land values and homelessness? To be more exact, where's the story connecting privatized land values and homelessness? Were land values socialized, land speculation would be abolished. Were land values socialized, employers couldn't sit on land rent as a device for driving down wages. Were land values socialized, mere speculators in real estate would be left with nothing to do but build housing and businesses. And if all that didn't make enough of a dent in homelessness in San Francisco, the billions of land rent dollars placed in the public coffers would well fund homeless services and every other social service--from MUNI to MOMA--the city needs and wants.

The estimable Professor from the University of California at Berkeley who sat on the panel has credentials in Economics. Did he press the Mother Jones editor on the question of economic rent? Or did she of Mother Jones goad her panel peers with fiery, on-target Henry George quotes on the issue of who owns Mother Earth?

In terms of high journalism, hors d'oeuvres were to the left, palaver to the right.
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