Increasingly, graffiti has appeared around town complaining about the buses.
“Google scum,” read one notice pasted to a light controller at the corner of South Van Ness Street, a major artery for the commuter buses, photographed by local resident George Lipp on Sunday. “Keep catching your bus,” read a notice on the other side of the light controller.
The commuter-bus situation “has become very symbolic of what’s happening to the city in terms of gentrification,” said McElroy in a phone interview. “It’s creating a system where San Francisco is being flooded with capital, and creating a technology class where other people can’t compete.”
Heart of the City is planning a demonstration on Tuesday against a developer that plans to evict residents from rent-controlled apartments, she added. The total number of evictions jumped 25 percent to 1,716 in the 12 months ending in February 2013, according to a report by San Francisco’s budget and legislative analyst, despite strong tenant-protection laws.
San Francisco protests against gentrification and evictions have occurred with growing frequency in recent months.
Last month, message service Twitter’s IPO sparked a demonstration outside its headquarters.
Many residents feel left out of the technology boom and blame it for rising rents.
The median rent on a two-bedroom apartment rose 10 percent over the last year to $3,250, more than any other city in the country, according to online real estate company Trulia. Rents in greater New York rose just 2.8 percent
The current situation evokes the late 1990s, when a slew of small Web start-ups popped up throughout the city, causing tensions over rising rents and traffic.
(Reporting by Sarah McBride; Editing by Richard Chang and Paul Simao)
Article Appeared @http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/10/us-google-protest-idUSBRE9B818J20131210