Dispatches Against Displacement: Field Notes from San Francisco's Housing Wars

by James Tracy AK Press 2014 SKU: 9781849352055   “We are all too well adjusted.” says James Tracy, “to an economic system that evicts, downsizes, pollutes, and imprisons. This same system also comes equipped with a well-oiled public-relations system calibrated to rob us of something even more profound: our ability to imagine a different state of affairs.” In San Francisco, that system is eroding the city with waves of cash flowing north from Silicon Valley. Recent evictions of long-time San Francisco residents, outrageous rents and home prices, and blockaded “Google buses” are only the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath the surface is a long arc of displacement over almost two decades of “dot com” boom and bust. A housing activist in the Bay Area since before Google existed, Tracy excavates that history, exploring the battle for urban space—public housing residents fighting austerity, militant housing takeovers, the vagaries of federal and state housing policy, as well as showdowns