As Google and fellow tech heavyweights face the wrath of Bay Area residents who claim that the company's gentrification-driving presence contributes to spiking housing costs, higher eviction rates, and widespread socio-economic disparity between tech employees and locals, the tech giant has offered a quick fix: a donation of $6.8 million to the Free Muni for Youth campaign. The project, run by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, is designed to allow five to 17-year-old residents cost-free public transportation, and costs around $3 million per year. Currently, the program assists around 31,000 eligible candidates with transit costs. Google's donation is the largest yet from a private entity, and is expected to keep the program afloat for around two years.
The move comes as Bay Area companies and workers respond to the ire of the locale's traditional residents, particularly as employees use commuter shuttles from the city to the places of work. The commuter shuttles, which use standard bus stops just as state-funded vehicles do, are not subject to any fees in order to use the public bus stops. In another move similarly directed at easing tensions between residents and tech workers, tech companies will need to hold permits for their shuttle buses to use municipal bus stops. The permits are expected to run to the tune of around $100,000 per year.
Community members have welcomed the new development, though warn that while a hopeful step towards addressing the social discordance of the area, it's not quite a cure-all for the area's myriad issues. While the city struggles to quantify exactly how many buses and companies currently take advantage of the fee-free private shuttle situation, Mayor Ed Lee voiced hoped to glean more information around the unusual bus services to aid city planning and infrastructure efforts in the coming years. Writes the Shared City's Nancy Scola:
Beyond that, there's a bid in the plan to identify buses according to which company is responsible for running them - despite the moniker, not all the shuttles belong to Google. The city, [Mayor Ed] Lee said, will also get data from the companies that it can use in future planning, a point of contention that has emerged again and again in debates over quasi-public, quasi-private transportation. The city will also share that data back with shuttle bus operators.
Lee and state Senator Mark Leno are also working towards tightening eviction laws, thus making it more difficult for property owners to buy up blocks, evict the tenants, and then sell on the spaces for profit. Their efforts were lauded by Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff, a philanthropist who, along with his wife, once donated $100 million for a children's hospital. Benioff has also given $1.5 million to homeless families and $2.7 million to public schools, and it's anticipated that his donations - and standing as one of the industry's most respected philanthropists - will continue as the tech landscape evolves.
At the very least, it seems that the tech industry has acknowledged an image problem on its own behalf - even if that recognition appears, in this early incarnation, somewhat self-serving. Nevertheless, Sam Singer, a San Francisco communications specialist, pointed to flaws on both sides. "There is tension right now that shouldn't exist," said Singer to SF Gate. "The technology companies need to do more, which I think they're starting to do, but the people who are haters need to stop hating too."
The search giant concurs. "San Francisco residents are rightly frustrated that we don't pay more to use city bus stops," Google said to The Verge. "So we'll continue to work with the city on these fees, and in the meantime will fund MUNI passes for low income students for the next two years."
