How Urban Farming Is Making San Francisco’s Housing Crisis Worse
Turning vacant lots into vegetable patches makes no sense for a city with soaring rent.
By Conor Friedersdorf
Atlantic
September 3, 2014
Excerpt:
There have been harder times to be a renter in this city of 826,000. Room rates shot up during the 1850s and again following the 1906 earthquake and fire. But talk to tech workers, low-income families, or housing lawyers, and they’ll all agree on this much: There aren’t enough affordable places to live, and as a result, the city’s renters are pinched more than at any time in living memory.
The housing shortage is no secret.
Local politics is rife with talk of gentrification, displacement, and affordability. Costs have sent young people on a great migration to Oakland, Berkeley, and farther afield in search of cheaper digs. That’s why a Monday article in the San Francisco Chronicle, headlined in the print edition as “Tax Breaks for Urban Farming Kick In,” is so stunning. “A new law taking effect next week will mark another innovation for San Francisco: The city will be the first in the country to offer a financial incentive for urban farming,” the newspaper reports. “Owners of empty lots could save thousands of dollars a year in property taxes in exchange for allowing their land to be used for agriculture for five years or more.”
