I thought this documentary started off really badly and only improved when former Labour Secretary Robert Reich made an appearance.
Reich makes it clear that gentrification affects many cities around the world be it New York, Vancouver or London and no one is sure as to how to deal with the disparity between the ever increasing wealth gap.
I have had the benefit of visiting San Francisco several times, I am well aware that people who work in the city live elsewhere be it Oakland or Mill Valley or some other nearby town. San Francisco is an expensive place to live in despite its hipster or bohemian or counterculture reputation.
San Francisco has a homelessness problem or what might be termed as panhandlers more because it has active ways in trying to deal wit the problem leading to administrations from other cities 'pushing' the homeless on to them.
I was well aware that in my last visit to the city that tech companies had offices in San Francisco itself, indeed my hotel was not far from Yahoo.
However it is unfair to say that tech hipsters have made the city affordable to live it. It was always an expensive city to live in, the new gold rush has just made it easy for developers to tear down old buildings and put new high rise buildings in its place with expensive swanky apartments.
Maybe San Francisco is affordable to the middle classes who could not buy a property like the former mayor in the city did in 1972, but buying a property in London is vastly expensive that it was in 1972.
At least the documentary made you ask questions which do not have easy answers but it took a while to get there.
