KQED NEWSROOM: Priced Out, Barbara Lee

welcome to KQED newsroom I'm Thuy vu on tonight's show we're going to talk about the Bay Area's vanishing middle class we'll also talk with congresswoman barbara Lee about surveillance and policing but first have you ever thought about moving to a place where the cost of living is lower more and more bay area residents are considering leaving where are they looking to move here's Monica Lam lisa neuen grew up in San Jose and moved to San Francisco a year ago to work as a Sales Operations Analyst at a tech company but with a salary in the mid $50,000 range she says the cost of living here are starting to outweigh the benefits I realized how expensive the rent was and I just figured you know like how in the world would I ever save up enough to own my own place new in once imagine raising a family in the Bay Area but with the median home price at one point 1 million dollars buying a house in San Francisco feels increasingly out of reach it makes me really sad I grew up here I know the area really well and it sucks that I won't be able to share with my kids the same parks and schools that I went to the same favorite restaurants so I'll just have to make new memories I guess those new memories might feature Austin Texas I consider Austin a mini San Francisco the culture is very diverse it's up-and-coming and it just feels like if you want to plant roots there you need to do that now since 2011 the number of Bay Area residents searching for homes outside the region has soared according to real estate brokerage Redfin among the top places they're considering moving to Southern California Seattle Chicago and Austin Austin is the state capital and home to the University of Texas it's popular South by Southwest festival attracts thousands every year those are some of the ingredients that drew entrepreneur Katrina Lake to expand her startup stitch fix to Austin as we looked around in Texas Austin was such a great place for us in terms of this combination of art and science and there's UT and really talented people there I think they should come up with like a drugs for a nervous yeah stitch fix got started in San Francisco also Lakes hometown the company's fashion stylists use algorithms to personalize clothing options for women stitch fix recently opened an office in Austin Texas and just opened a distribution center in Dallas Texas is a really really supportive place to to open an office and so the Chamber of Commerce is really excited to meet with us and it just felt like we had a lot of support and growing their still lake isn't ready to leave the San Francisco Bay Area it's a high price to pay to live in San Francisco and to locate here but it really is worth it for us today so I mean I can't speak to what will happen in the far future but we love Austin and we love Texas and but San Francisco really from a talent perspective is so unparalleled in terms of who were able to attract here so San Francisco is you know our home stitch fix says it did not receive any government incentives to expand to Texas but the Lone Star State has been actively wooing businesses including this 2014 pitch to Californians Texas is number one for doing business why our taxes are lower our legal system is fair and our energy is affordable since 2003 a Texas state funded incentive program has awarded almost six hundred million dollars in grants to companies from around the country including Silicon Valley powerhouses eBay and Facebook which have opened offices in Austin John Hockey knows is an economic analyst in Austin Texas he says the city has seen a tech boom in recent years its explosive growth and what we're increasingly seeing now is companies in the bay area or saying you know what relative to where we are it's cheaper in Austin the quality of life is pretty strong and we can hire people there particularly people on the lower end there's no personal income tax in Texas which hockey no says is another incentive for companies and employees looking to move and that's a real inducement when you're trying to attract young technology employees because at the salaries younger folks are going to make entry-level folks there's just a whole lot better quality of life in a place like this than say in the Bay Area lower middle-income people are much more likely to leave California than high-income people are Jed Kolko is a San Francisco based economist even though the tax burden in California when you look at things like state income taxes and capital gains taxes do fall strongly on the rich it's actually lower income folks are more likely to leave California than come into the state the biggest factor of course is housing costs the median price of a house in Austin is $275,000 according to red fin that's a fraction of the price of a home in Oakland or San Francisco a person or family would have to make one hundred eighty-five thousand dollars to afford a median priced home in San Francisco according to red fin Bay Area native Rebecca Williamson did the math and decided to move ended up in Texas I've been here for five years I love it would not go anywhere else and it's been a really good move for us Williamson was surprised to meet many others like herself we moved here and it took us a year to meet someone I was actually from Austin and ninety percent of them were from California Williamson and her husband Chris are real estate agents they create a website called Austin versus San Francisco we do do a lot of business for with people from California they tell us a lot of the reasons why they're moving here is obviously number one cost of living number two just quality of life and friendliness of the people but people who move from the Bay Area are finding some of the same problems they thought they were leaving behind including heavier traffic and higher home prices the median price of a home in Austin has risen by almost fifteen percent in the last year part of why Austin's also feeling an affordability crunch though is that just as home prices in San Francisco are higher than they are in Austin incomes are also higher in San Francisco than in Austin and it's particularly true for young people for households headed by Millennials those who are in the 18 to 34 range typical income is almost twice as high in San Francisco as it is in Austin still Lisa and Wynn says she's looking forward to a scouting trip to Austin that she's planned for later this year I am serious the real estate game is a serious place it's a shark tank so instead of swimming in this shark tank I'm gonna go to a different pool and joining me now to discuss the bay area's high cost of living are Fred Blackwell CEO of the San Francisco foundation which gives grants to Bay Area community groups and Jim wondermint president and CEO of the Bay Area Council a policy group focused on business and competitiveness welcome to you both Jim let's begin with you what does it mean to be middle class in the Bay Area now what you need to make well it means different things in different areas but certainly people are concerned about the cost of living in the Bay Area we have a fantastic economy here which is the envy of other regions in the country and around the world but things have gotten very very expensive and it's putting a challenge on people and families who would like to stay in their community city or the region but in some cases they're being forced out because of a higher and higher prices so something that we all need to address together so if you're making let's say a hundred thousand dollars a year is that a middle-class salary is that enough to buy a home in the Bay Area you know it depends on whether you're a young person just starting out and you can share an apartment with some other folks and have a fair amount of discretionary income and a pretty good lifestyle which a lot of people are doing which is putting pressure on the existing housing stock or if you're trying to raise a family of four or five or six on $100,000 this could sound like a lot of money it's certainly not so you know it depends on your situation then we're in the Bay Area but you're trying to make your life yes certainly probably not enough in a place like San Francisco Fred I wanted to ask you about the San Francisco foundation's recent study focusing on income inequality in the region and how that's affecting population shifts what are some of the key takeaways for you there were a few key takeaways in that first of all the first and most important thing was that really we're looking at a situation now where by 2040 we're going to be a majority majority people of color place and so that that's happening at the nation' level that's happening at the state level it's also happening here at the regional level and with the exception of San Francisco just about all of the Bay Area counties are going to be majority people of color the other thing that was a take away though is that when you look at the those changing demographics in relationship to issues that there have been a lot of hand-wringing around things like income inequality and the concentration of income and wealth or you look at educational attainment achievement or you even look at health disparities the very people that are projected to be the majority soon are currently being left behind in other words that when you look at the demographics and you look at who's doing well and who's struggling in the bay area the very people who we are going to be relying on to be the teachers the entrepreneurs the employees and employers of the future are really not being prepared to be the folks that we need them to be and that we're going to be increasingly really relying on a small proportion of the people to participate and benefit from the economy and frankly that's not sustainable so we've got an interesting situation now based on your study where we're seeing greater diversity in the suburbs places like Contra Costa County and San Francisco which is often considered to be one of the most diverse places in the u.s. declining in diversity it will be by projections by 2040 to be a white majority what does that mean in terms of policy implications for policy implications I think there are a few things I think one we need to think about what kind of bay area we really want neat and if we think that that's one that is diverse economically that's diverse from a racial perspective and diverse from the points of view that we've always benefited from here in the Bay Area we've got to take some steps in order to make that happen I think some of that has to do with housing policy I think some of that has to do with education policy and making sure like I said before that the people who we know will be the majority in the future are being prepared for the the jobs and the economic opportunities that will come to them and so there's some tough decisions that have to be made I think spending more on affordable housing is something that we probably need to be doing and with the loss of redevelopment that several years ago I think that's a challenge I think that we also need to be thinking about how we can have policies that connect in a very deliberate way people of color people who are from low-income communities to the economies of the Bay Area because one of the things that we know is that this is not an issue of prosperity there's a tremendous amount of economic growth that's occurring in the Bay Area the real question is who benefits will sit so Jim how do we go about doing that making that connect between those communities and economic opportunities well the Bay Area one of the most attractive things about the Bay Area that brings so many people here is the diversity of our region and San Francisco historically and these are real challenges and you know it's not in anybody's interest to see these trends continue so we do have to address them it's a very complex set of issues behind this so we want to have a strong economy we don't want to put a clamp down on jobs we haven't produced nearly enough housing over the last seven years we've only produced about 50 percent of the housing that the association of Bay Area governments projected who we actually need so we've shrunk the housing stock to the point where we've driven up the prices this is one of the factors that's there but it is a very complex set of issues and we have a tendency to oversimplify the problem and then we oversimplify the the symptoms and the cause and then the solutions that come out have a tendency to sort of be the old San Francisco rhetoric that comes out and we get into ideological warfare what we really need to do is have the different communities come together and try to heal and work on these extremely complex issues that's what the barrier council is about doing and that's why our partnership with Fred and the San Francisco foundation is important because you're not going to handle these things easily we're working on issues where we're trying to address the workforce and and have young folks trained in this in the jobs and the skills that can fit in the you know we're gonna see a lot of retirements and these middle skill jobs and companies like PG&E and AT&T and us baby boomers are going go out and there's gonna be some real opportunities in the future for people to have good wages and solid opportunities we have to train for that and that's something that we can really work on together not just for you know San Francisco but for the whole region well all this sounds very good and well and but its broad what can we do specifically now to make a difference you have proposals like San Francisco Supervisor Campos who wanted to have a moratorium on market rate housing in the Mission District it was voted down you have Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf who wants a regional approach and is suggesting that maybe San Francisco developers for the affordable units that they build build them in Oakland instead any of those that's for shutting down the economy be it housing or jobs is really the not the right way to go I think mayor shafts ideas far more creative than that we need to build more housing first and foremost in San Francisco in Oakland and throughout the region that's extremely important and begin to play catch up because we've fallen way behind and it's having a really disastrous effect in fact in the United States over the last couple of generations the Bay Area is at the very very bottom of housing production per capita in the whole nation and so that's a modern trend which is really disaffected us we love our communities people really want to care about you know what gets built in their neighborhood but the impact of that has been a real problem for our region so starting with building housing would be the first thing that we we really need to do right yeah I think that it's really important to think about this in a multi-dimensional way I think that housing is absolutely a key thing for us to focus in on and to have more funding streams for the production of affordable housing is important and I think having a good mix of housing being developed is important but I think it's also important to think about the economic aspect of this as well because as I said before there's a tremendous amount of prosperity in the Bay Area and I think if we approach this just from the housing point of view and don't think about how we connect more people to the economic opportunity in the region then we're kind of missing things and then the thing I think that's really important about this is that this is a strata benefits everybody and one of the other takeaways from this report that we did was that we found that if we actually had a more equitable distribution of the way that the economy was working there would actually be 117 billion dollars more in the Bay Area economy that is an extraordinary number and what that suggests is that this is not a zero-sum game but that actually by being more equitable by thinking about how we meet the needs of the most vulnerable in this population everybody benefits there's nobody who wouldn't benefit from having another hundred and seventeen billion dollars more circulating in this economy so then real quickly what should local government do and what what's the role of the private sector in this do you think sure on the local government side I think it's important not only to think about what kind of housing we're developing but whenever we're making a development decision that asks the question around who benefits I think a perfect example of how this was executed was in Oakland in the development of the Oakland army base where they actually went forward developed that army base created an army base situation where that was a going to be an economic engine for the city but set policies in place that said that half of the construction jobs and half of the permanent jobs needed to go to Oakland residents and put job training and placement programs in place so that folks could be having access to those jobs as you went forward not those are the kinds of things that make this a win-win you get the development but you also get the benefits that you're looking for at the community level now I would say we do have a tendency in our region to have in our state to have government play a very very big role which is attractive on one level and I think all the issues you raise are important but on another level it has a tendency to make us less competitive than other places ultimately we want to have jobs come here and we want to be make sure that our population is properly trained and can take advantage of the economy that we've created so I you know I fully agree this has to be for everybody and the best way we can do that is by working together all right Jim and we will have to leave it there thank you both gentlemen Jim Wonderman with Bay Area Council and also Fred Blackwell with a San Francisco foundation all right thank you for the past 16 years barbara Lee has represented Oakland and Berkeley in Congress nationally she may be best known for her votes against the Patriot Act and authorizing the war in Iraq Scott Shafer spoke with congresswoman Lee about the impact of those votes and the upcoming presidential election congresswoman barbara Lee welcome my pleasure happy to be with you well right after 9/11 you were the only vote in Congress to vote against authorizing military force you were one of a few dozen to vote against the Patriot Act and I'm wondering now that the Patriot Act has been really scaled back what are your thoughts about it did the president go far enough did Congress go far enough of course I don't believe we went far enough but this certainly is a heck of a lot better the new law that was signed a heck of a lot better than the initial patriotic the initial Patriot Act was negotiated which was a reasonable policy and then the day before we were to vote on it the Rules Committee met and completely rewrote it and it came out in such a way that many of us I think was 66 no votes could not vote for actually Democrat yeah and so it was a terrible process and it was a terrible bill does it surprise you it all the way many Republicans have come around now Rand Paul among many others to see it as overly intrusive not really I think if you really care about the balance and finding a way to ensure national security as well as privacy you altima League ette to the place where you want to make sure that those goals are achieved this government intrusion into people's personal and private lives is very dangerous yet on the other hand we live in a very dangerous world and so this is a new day and we have to really find that balance and I think we're moving in that direction what more would you like to do or see Congress do well I think allowing telephone companies to turn this over needs a heck of a lot more oversight and we need a heck of a lot more due diligence with regard to the private sector now being responsible for responding to the NSA I don't believe there were enough safeguards in that respect but it's certainly a heck of a lot better than NSA collecting everybody's phone conversations and holding them until they decide they want to use them if in fact that's yes of course so much of this came to light because of Edward Snowden the former CIA contractor who is now in Russia it with asylum would you like to see President Obama give him amnesty essentially and allow him to come back to this country no you know I think the criminal justice system if that's appropriate at this point or whatever federal laws and rules would regulate or at least charge him for what the feds believe crimes were committed I think that justice should be part of what takes place you know there's some who believe that he did the right thing others believe he put our national security at risk we don't know and so I think you know he should come back and we should be able to understand what and why and allow justice to prevail I think that's the most critical part some see him as a traitor some see him as a hero yeah well shall we I want to see what certainly he opened up this debate no one can deny that but certainly he did compromise our national security and violated the law and so you have laws on the books when people violate them you get charged with a crime but you can't forget though that there's some laws that you know may need to be looked at again and so I think that I'd like to see him come home and I'd like to see an objective kind of process take place and I certainly think that we would want as the gold justice and doing the right thing let's talk about Cuba you've been an advocate for decades of normalizing relations with Cuba the country is now moving in that direction under President Obama why do you think it's taken so long because of a few members of Congress who really don't believe in normalizing relations with Cuba who were really part of the old Batista regime in terms of their families and it's really been a problem for many many years for me to even understand and I've been going since the 70s of course keep is a different society it's a communist socialist society so as China so is Vietnam I and we have normal relations with them and so the differences that we have with countries are real differences and we should be allowed Americans should be allowed to travel to Cuba and businesses should be allowed to do business there's still repression there of course for gay folks and others what changes would you like most to see the Cuban government make well I first want to see the US government and the Cuban government decide what the issues are and what the dialogue should be and how to move forward with the negotiations there are certainly issues of human rights that need to be addressed in Cuba but again on the other hand when you look at the fact that 70% of the prison population here in America African American and Latino men you've got human rights issues that I know both sides would like to put on the table and so in a negotiation you have to be objective and fair and it's not a one-way kind of deal let me ask you about that you bring up african-americans and incarceration rates you're the mother of two sons and you have two grandsons as well do you think are we going to see the time well they see the time in their lives where African Americans especially men are not on the short end of all those statistics longevity incarceration and right on down the line I certainly hope so and my life has been about addressing these really very serious inequities and in Justices and you know you know what's taking place now I think is you people beginning to understand why African American parents have had these conversations with their kids I had these conversations with my children in the 70s my belief about police this was in Berkeley and Oakland ended in Washington DC this is not the new and you know as I see what is taking place now and work to try to correct these and justices from a legislative level you know I think that you know this is not the American way to raise a family you know for me it was normal it was natural but I think now those who are not african-american are beginning to feel the pain and feel like how do you sit down there and talk to your children about such serious issues when they're five and six years old what we do that and that should not be in our culture it should not be in our society the Oakland Police Department of course has had a very troubled history with the city it's been under federal oversight for many many years that's coming to an end now do you think that OPD has made enough changes are they ready to slip free of that over well I'm pleased that they're moving forward and progressing I think the monitor has said that we're making a lot of progress compliance with majority of the requirements have been made and so we'll see but I so please the judge felton Henderson has had stepped in and insisted that these reforms take place and I think they be necessary and I think the police chief and the police department you know are moving forward to try to comply with all of the federal requirements let me ask you about Hillary Clinton many on the left in your party would have liked to see Elizabeth Warren run would you also have liked to see her run would you like to see more competition in the Democratic primary first of all I think Senator Clinton is on the right side of history and she's on the right side of the issues secondly we have senator Sanders who's a good friend of mine out there talking about these issues in a very bold bold way that can't do anything but help the debate and help us move forward in a progressive fashion so that the nominee and we all believe it will be senator Kennedy and I believe that she I mean excuse me Clinton will you know embrace these issues and she has and we you know see this each and every day are you concerned about all the questions raised over the finances of the Clinton Foundation I mean it does seem sometimes that they play by a different set of rules well certainly what has been disclosed and exposed over the last few months you know raised concerns but I think that they have been forthright they're talking about any issues that have been that have come to their attention and public's attention they're trying to correct and will correct and I believe that the American people will understand this is a campaign also and we have to really know that this is going to be part of this campaign process on all sides but as long as you know candidates are willing to acknowledge that there could have been errors or mistakes and move to correct them then I think the public understands that and gets it last question we're talking before the NBA Finals are over the Warriors are coming to San Francisco it looks like the A's and the Raiders may leave as well why do you think Oakland is having such a hard time keeping its pro franchises well first I personally want to see all of our franchise stay but you know we have issues around taxpayer funding of new facilities there are many many issues that Oakland residents are trying to address and I have to say I think our city and our Coliseum commissioners and all of our county commissioners are doing the best they can do to try to make sure that Oakland retains its sports teams and I think the residents want to see that but I think they want to see it done in a way that makes sense and its cost effective and that you know the teams and the residents and the taxpayers benefit from alright congresswoman barbara Lee thanks for coming in thank you thanks for joining us and for all of KQED snews coverage please go to kqed news.org I'm Thuy vu have a good night

Channel: KQED News

Views: 69,874

Keywords: housing, bay area, austin, real estate, barbara lee

Id: yXWBE38QL0c

Length: 27min 46sec (1666 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2015