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Rent Control in San Francisco is a Golden Handcuff

Updated: Jun 22, 2022 08:15
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Image of Captain Cool from SF Gate.

It’s a hell of a thing to know
that once you have to move,
you can never come back again.
That this is the last place you will ever live,
in San Francisco,
the City
that you love and that you’ve given so much to.

Having already chosen a life of semi-austerity
where you skip many modern comforts
like washing machines,
and dishwashers,
in exchange for the low rumble of Mission Street mornings.

To live like you’re in a perpetual state of being a college student,
in the sense that,
you reside amongst mini generations of other people’s stuff.
Mixed matched spoons and cutlery;
a revolving door of roommates and their things.

Often times no one knows or remembers
where these droplets of ephemera even came from,
but now they are part of the house
and essentially part of your life,
because you can never leave.

Living in San Francisco,
and having rent control,
has become a sort of golden handcuff.
If you ever need to move,
or get evicted,
you have to essentially trade in your San Francisco citizenship.

The Visigoths are at the gates
and will gladly take your place,
thinking that they’ve moved into something special,
without realizing,
they are pushing out the specialness like spin art.

You are the drops of paint that make the color,
but the faster things spin,
all that’s left,
are the streaks showing where you used to be.


Like this piece? It’s in a collection of some of my best writing called Love Notes and Other Disasters. You can get it here for only $5.

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Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, is a travel writer, poet, TV host, activist, and general shit-stirrer. His website BrokeAssStuart.com is one of the most influential arts & culture sites in the San Francisco Bay Area and his freelance writing has been featured in Lonely Planet, Conde Nast Traveler, The Bold Italic, Geek.com and too many other outlets to remember. His weekly column, Broke-Ass City, appears every other Thursday in the San Francisco Examiner. Stuart’s writing has been translated into four languages. In 2011 Stuart created and hosted the travel show Young, Broke, and Beautiful on IFC and in 2015 he ran for Mayor of San Francisco and got nearly 20k votes.

He's been called "an Underground legend": SF Chronicle, "an SF cult hero":SF Bay Guardian, and "the chief of cheap": Time Out New York.