They told the families to trust the system. San Francisco had rent control, tenant protections, just-cause eviction rules. The strongest in the state, maybe the country. You do everything right — pay on time for ten, twenty, thirty years — and the law says you get to stay.
Turns out the law is a goddamn suggestion when AI money walks in.
Eviction notices up 44% this year. Not because families broke the rules — because landlords rewrote them in real time. Switched the payment method without telling anyone, then slapped nonpayment notices on people who paid the same way they always had. Filed Ellis Act evictions so they could sell the condo for a million over asking to some kid who was still in high school when these renters signed their lease. Bought a building in Chinatown full of elderly Cantonese-speaking residents, called their belongings ‘hoarding,’ and tried to throw them out on the street.
The average one-bedroom costs $4,400 a month now. A family of four needs a place and the city offers $10,000. That is not a home in San Francisco. That is barely a deposit.
Nurses and janitors live in their cars between shifts. Showers at the YMCA. Seven percent of union members could afford this city and that was before the latest spike. People are rationing their damn insulin, skipping meals, and choosing between rent and the bus fare to a doctor they can’t see anyway because they can’t afford the time off work.
And the mayor declared a ‘rent emergency.’ Nice guy. Ask the woman sleeping in a shelter last month if the declaration kept her bed.
Anthropic and OpenAI set up shop and the waitress at the diner got an eviction notice instead of a raise. The boom got the yacht. The house cleaner got the invoice.
This is the same betrayal wearing a different city’s zip code. They promised protection. They delivered the landlord’s lawyer. Somebody cashed the check in the gap. Go to hell.
Source story: San Francisco eviction notices rise 44% as AI boom reshapes rents.