Next City, February 1, 2024, Gentrification’s Roots In The Post-Industrial City
Thus in San José, one of the richest cities in the United States, the “capital” of a region whose name is popularly associated with opportunity and young wealth, the average service industry worker’s salary of $35,241 is shockingly close to the $25,800 it costs to rent the average studio apartment. This leaves $26 a day for all the remaining necessities of life, an absurdity in one of America’s most expensive markets.
Renting space in living rooms and garages is commonplace. A San Francisco closet went for $1,200 a month. One woman living in a three-bedroom house with a dozen occupants in San Mateo got Covid-19 and was forced to decamp to a closet: it was the only free space in her home where she could be sure not to pass the virus to her children. The faculty at Cupertino’s De Anza College, one of the top-rated community colleges in the nation, voted in 2019 to allow the 20% of students who are homeless to sleep overnight in their cars at the campus parking lot.
