Schuerman, Matthew L. Newcomers: Gentrification and Its Discontent. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2019.
The book, which is about gentrification and displacement more broadly across the United States, has three chapters dedicated to San Francisco. Chapter three covers geographic details about the Bay Area, the growth of financial institutions, and broader urban federal programs between 1966 and 1980. Chapter 7 covers major zoning changes, small increases in housing units, new tech industries, growth in population/ workers, median incomes, and housing prices between 1981 and 2000. Chapter 10 covers evictions, the Mission District, and protests against the tech industry between 2001 and 2018. Chapter 10 has similar information echoed elsewhere and explored in greater detail.
Shaw, Randy. Generation Priced Out. Berkley: University of California Press, 2018.
This book had a few chapters with Bay Area related content but I found the most helpful to be chapter 1 and 5. Chapter 1 talks about the difficulty of finding housing in San Francisco by low wage workers. A couple common housing options included single-room occupancy hotels (SROs) or moving to nearby areas such as Oakland. This chapter also has relevant statistics tracking rise in apartment costs and the loss of affordable housing. Chapter 5 is full of relevant statistics including rise in employment and stagnation of housing units. The chapter also describes the mechanism of downzoning and its function.
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. Narratives of Displacement: Oral History Project. 2015.
This zine is a collection made up of interviews, essays, poetry and images reflecting a turn in San Francisco history. This work gives voice to those affected by the ‘housing crisis’, ‘tech boom’, or ‘gentrification’. These oral histories are in conversation with one another, speaking truths and highlighting a unity of struggle. It is made up of three parts and includes ‘Narratives of Memory’, ‘ Narratives of Change’ and ‘Narratives of Resistance’. The document was created as a collaboration between the Anti Eviction Mapping Project, community organizations, students, and volunteers.
Chapple, K., & Thomas, T., and Zuk, M. Urban Displacement Project Website. Berkeley, CA: Urban Displacement Project. 2021.
The Urban Displacement Project is a group of researchers partnered between University of California Berkeley and University of Toronto that seeks to understand gentrification, displacement, and exclusion in American cities. It focuses on “creating tools to help communities identify the pressures surrounding them and take more effective action.” While the UDP studies six target regions, they have dedicated full research and analysis on the Bay Area. Their research culminated on interactive gentrification and displacement typology maps summarizing market dynamics, displacement, and gentrification risk into categories (typologies) at the census tract level.
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. Accessed May 13, 2022. https://antievictionmap.com/about-the-aemp
The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project is a data-visualization, critical cartography and multimedia “storytelling collective documenting dispossession and resistance upon gentrifying landscapes.” The Project has work based in the SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York City. It is made by volunteers that produce maps, software and tools, narrative multimedia work, murals, reports, and community events. Relevant maps include “Ellis Act Evictions, San Francisco, 1994-2021,” “All Sf Evictions, 1997-2020,” and a number of maps of properties owned by the Bay Area’s biggest landlords.
Chapple, Karen. “Income Inequality and Urban Displacement: The New Gentrification.” New Labor Forum 26, No. 1 (Winter 2017): 84-93.
This source covers the changing academic theorization on gentrification. Claims “Insightful as this research is, by focusing the long-standing debate over the causes of gentrification, it offers a narrow lens that misses the bigger displacement crisis. Only by shifting the focus from certain neighborhoods to the nature of advanced capitalism itself does the full crisis of displacement come into view.”
Knight, Kelly R. addicted.pregnant.poor. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.
This book is an ethnography about addicted, pregnant, and poor women living in daily-rent hotels in San Francisco’s Mission District. The book comprises four years of fieldwork documenting women’s struggles concerning streets, clinics, jail, family courts, and hotels.
Sparks, Tony. “Reproducing Disorder: The Effects of Broken Windows Policing on Homeless People with Mental Illness in San Francisco.” Social Justice 45, No. ⅔ (2018): 51-74.
The article explores the ways in which cities have looked to law enforcement to manage the visibly poor. ‘Order-maintenance policing’ seeks to remove undesirable subjects from the urban public. Rather than removing ‘undesirables’ tactics used by law enforcement and the institutions that some houseless people are channeled through only reproduces the same cycles. Proposition Q was especially relevant as it passed a police code that increased penalties for people who slept outside in public spaces. Policing of public spaces in San Francisco serves the wealthy elite that seek ‘safety’ as it pertains to consumption. On the same note, it directly harms people that are already marginalized away from resources like housing and punishes them for being visibly poor.
Domhoff, G. William. “Why San Francisco Is (or Used to Be) Different: Progressive Activists and Neighborhoods Had a Big Impact”. Who Rules America? November 2011. https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/local/san_francisco.html
This article explores the power of landlords and growth coalitions in cities. It investigates the way in which progressive activists have been able to fight coalitions to a standstill from the early 1970s into the 21st century. While the article has in depth historical analysis on housing issues starting in 1945, there is a lot of relevant information concerning the 1980s into the present. Some changes to SF that are especially relevant are the building of the Giants stadium, redevelopment of the Presidio, expansion of railroad yards, and a new biotech headquarters. Especially relevant is its information on office space construction and the Dot-Com Boom of the mid 1990s.
Oatman-Stanford, Hunter. “The Bad Design that Created One of America’s Worst Housing Crisis.” Fast Company. Fall 2018. https://www.fastcompany.com/90242388/the-bad-design-that-created-one-of-americas-worst-housing-crises
Extensive San Francisco History covering the ways in which the planning department catered to wealthy homeowners. It tracks early zoning laws and contains relevant statistics as well as maps. Most importantly, the article has a deep investigation into the 1978 zoning law that limited new housing in residential areas.