Deputy CIO, Christian Deckart, discusses global small cap portfolio holdings to demonstrate the small cap life cycle, how M&As present a double-edged sword, and how the team continues to turn over new stones.
On this episode, we speak with Christian Deckart, lead portfolio manager of the Mawer global small cap strategy. We talk about a few of the holdings in the portfolio to demonstrate the small cap life cycle, how M&A situations present a double-edged sword, and how we continue to turn over new stones. Thanks for listening!
Why don't we start with some of the key characteristics of a global small cap business, Christian. What is it? Is it basically a startup with a listing? … Or is it just a number, like a market cap size? Let's start there and proceed into some of the details.
Yeah, pleasure. So, the first part of the answer: yes. It's not just a number to us. There are probably two elements that we would look at most. The first one is what I would call, the position of the company in the small cap life cycle. So, what do we mean by that? Companies start small and usually unknown to the broad public. It will be small; it will have little analyst coverage. But over time as the business is successful and grows, more people will follow that business. The company will be better known—also more appreciated by the public and by the stock market—and maybe at the end of the journey, it goes to an index, maybe a small cap index or large cap index. And so ETFs and passive investments are going to get interested.
Even all the household names we know today—most of them started very small and grew. The idea of the small cap life cycle is to participate in that as a company that's starts small, gets more known, gets onto indices, and just gets more appreciated.
On the pure business side…our style at Mawer is, "be boring, make money" so to be "boring," a company has to be established…ideally, it has a strong position already—there is a proven product or a service.
Ideally, it's in some niche where it's well protected. And it has the opportunity to grow just in that niche; grow out of that niche; or, take the business to other adjacent markets—in terms of their products, service offerings, or regions where they operate.
I'll give you an example for the business and the small cap life cycle: Gentrack, a business out of New Zealand that we bought 2015. What they do is billing software for utilities, so when you get your electrical bill, someone has to do that software that puts together that bill. It's quite important for the customer for the utility because if the bills don't get sent out, well, [then they] can't pay for that. And they also have software for airport operations, so, all the software you need to make an airport run.
When we first bought that business—maybe three years ago—it was a small market cap. Maybe a couple hundred million New Zealand dollars. It had little analyst coverage, but it was increasing internationalization. They did that through a sensible strategy of staying in their language backyard: they put more emphasis on Australia and the United Kingdom, did some and M&A, and all of a sudden: more people are following it and the companies is in the NZ-50 Index (the index of the 50 largest companies in New Zealand!
That, I think, is a good example of how the small cap life cycle can work and how the business cycle works. It wasn't a startup when we bought it. They have been around for decades.
A couple of elements I just want to round back into in your answer there. One could maybe conclude it sounds like it's just a popularity contest…there's this small cap business, and more and more people start following it, the price gets bid up, and it enters an index. This is a pretty clear example of how the life cycle can happen. It's not just a popularity contest, right?
Good point! Yeah, the business will not get into an index or grow if it doesn't have a competitive advantage. And if it doesn't do good things for customers. So this is where our work really comes in—otherwise, we could, systematically, on auto-pilot, just buy all small businesses and hope they grow. But as active managers, our job is to go out there, look at these companies, interview management teams, read the annual reports, do the whole due diligence, and then find out which businesses have the potential today (although not maybe fully visible to someone who just looks at it on the surface), which businesses have the potential to grow into a larger organization one day, and which company has the intangibles today to become a large company down the road.
And there is that element, you're right, of other people down the road appreciating [the company] maybe a bit more, but that is more of the result of good research in the first place—and if the company doing good things for customers. So, it's a side effect, which we're happy to take as well, but it's not the main goal of the exercise.
You mentioned keys to success that you're looking for…in terms of informing your investment decision. What types of factors do you evaluate?
These basically come back to our investment criteria—what we look for in businesses that we buy for our clients. The three criteria are: it needs to be a wealth creating business, run by an excellent management team, and we try to purchase these at a discount to intrinsic value. … A wealth creating business is a business that generates a return on capital above the cost of capital. Only then, really, is wealth created for shareholders.
Secondly, we need an excellent management team that's aligned with shareholders, acts in the best interest of shareholders, and takes the business forward. And in the case of small caps, takes it to the next level. Then, obviously, we try to not overpay for these prices because if it was a great business, with a great management team, but the price is too high—well, then the future performance will suffer. So we need a discount to intrinsic value.
These are mainly the three criteria you could call the "key ingredients to success of a small cap company" but it also happens to be the three investment criteria we have at Mawer for all our funds.
Can we go back to Gentrack and just cover why Gentrack ticked all those boxes?
But you write the code once and then you can resell it to many people. So there is a huge cost advantage at getting new customers on your per unit costs.
So that is a wealth creating business. Also because your customers are sticky, and because scale plays a role.
And management teams. Gentrack's management team…?
We've been very impressed by the people who brought it public. I shouldn't say the founders, but the people who ran it pre the IPO, and the people who run it now…they have track record of acting in the best interest of shareholders in allocating capital in a good way. [Also,] good what we would call, "strategic logic"—the thinking about what they're doing, whether they're expanding. As I mentioned before, the expansion into the UK, Australia—they seem reasonable steps to us. And then finally, discount intrinsic value…when we bought it, it was at quite an attractive evaluation in our opinion.
Thanks for that detail on Gentrack. If listeners want to hear a little more detail on kind of that same checklist with other companies, I'd directed them to Episode 7 with Christian. There are three or four other companies that you can listen to Christian talk through.
So let's switch gears a little bit, Christian … and let's talk about how the small cap market has developed in the past few years—maybe the past 10 years. Monetary easing has had a big impact … as a portfolio manager, what are some of the structural things that have changed in the small cap market?
Yeah, we've had a few structural changes I would say. In the past, a small innovative company would go to the stock market to raise more capital to expand growth. And…maybe because of the credit cycle, this has changed a bit. So many small innovative companies today don't go public any more. They're incubated in a private environment then go to venture capital. And then once venture capital has gotten them big enough, they're directly sold to the private equity, so totally bypassing public markets.
That's a shift. I don't know if it's better or worse, but it's certainly a shift. And often the companies that come to the market today—when we look at their balance sheet, well, it's just weak. Often there is lots of debt. Numbers have been, what we would say, "optimized" and…everything is stretched: financials, accounting, the balance sheet. Also, these companies have done price increases over and over and … but not necessarily increased the value proposition to their customers.
So these are the things obviously that are not of interest/or of little interest to us. But that's a bit how we feel the market has changed.
And to be clear, a business like that—with stretched financials, stretched balanced sheet, that doesn't create enough value for its customers—that's not the thing we're interested in. So I'm talking about the market in general here. And the situation I'm describing is a bit like…if you go to a restaurant and there are many things on the menu that you don't like … the challenge is, we still need to find something on the menu that we like, but the stuff coming onto the menu recently, the new arrivals, the new items are [often] just not things we're too keen on.
There are a few exceptions, but that's the case. ... In a way, it's a problem for us because it creates more work. We have to look at more things. But it's like (if I stay in the restaurant picture), on the other hand, it's not a problem because you only need to find one meal that suits you, so you can ignore the other 29.
And our universe is big. It's thousands of companies so, just because there's some added that aren't our taste—that's not problem per se, but it's certainly one of those structural changes you mentioned.
In summary, a 10 year bull market has just brought many less palatable items on the menu. So our motto is "choose wisely" in this context. And that's what we're motivated to do every day.
Let's transition to geographies. Are there any tailor-made for global small caps? So, are there any aspects of any single geography that say, "Yup! Great place for global small caps."
Well, I would say all places are great to look. That's why we have a global mandate—so we can look everywhere. But there are some that tend to be more fruitful than others when we look. Often the blueprint is a small country that's protected through regulation or a language barrier and where companies can have focus and become excellent through that focus. (This goes back a bit to small cap cycles.) They have developed that excellence in a protected market, made a competitive advantage out of that, and then applied that competitive advantage to a larger market.
So they left their home market and took that business model to neighbouring countries or global. Switzerland and Sweden are two European countries that come to mind for that. One example … if you think of Swiss chocolate, just because of the features of that market in the last century, Swiss chocolate companies started competing not on price, but on quality. So, you know Lindt today (you might've had Toblerone), in terms of quality, these are the higher ends…and they took that quality up to a high standard in their home country. Then, when they ran out of room to grow in their home country, they improved the formula there, then took it global.
New Zealand is one to mention as well (and will bring us back to Gentrack that we mentioned before). … They built strength [in New Zealand] and are trying to roll it out in the significantly larger United Kingdom.
So there are certain conditions that help to locally build a niche, then build up operations, and grow geographically. That brings us to a good segue into M&As (mergers and acquisitions)—companies that grow through acquiring other businesses. There are a couple in the portfolio right now that are under takeover offers. Let's just talk about how you make decisions around that within the small cap context.
As I said before, that's part of the small cap cycle. We try to buy businesses when they're unknown or unloved (or both) while they fulfill our fundamental investment criteria. And as these businesses are successful over time, the market just changes their perception, and eventually a competitor—or some other financial acquirer—gets to notice that, and so they make a takeover offer.
It's a two-edged sword really, because financially in the short-term it's very positive. Usually these deals happen at a good premium and we're happy to get that [laughs].
But on the other side, it means we have to look for new opportunities, turn more stones, get out there, and do our work.
So you have a decision to make when a company is either taken over or a company you own is taking over/making a purchase. Let's walk through that process. What are your decision parameters? What kind of decisions do you have to make in the those situations?
The first one is, if a business we own buys another business. We obviously look at the deal because it's a capital allocation decision. In a way, the management team of the company we have invested in is taking money that, well, belongs to our client, to us—the shareholders, really. We look at whether we think that has strategic logic, whether that is a sensible thing to do. We look at their historical track record. And we've had cases…companies in the portfolio—after they did an M&A—we thought either more highly of management or not that highly of management anymore—depending on whether we thought that decision was in the best interest of shareholders.
So that may lead to trade decisions. From experience, I would say in both directions, either we think, "oh, this was really out of the ordinarily good," or, "it was really not in the interest of shareholders." In one case we might buy more, in the other case we might sell a bit, or sell the whole position if it's really bad.
And the second part of your question—if we are on the other end of it, if a company we own gets acquired—we have a choice of whether we sell the shares right away at that moment (usually trades at a discount to the purchase price), depending on what the market thinks. (How likely the transaction will go through, what the expected time to completion is.) Maybe something better might happen, or the risk that the deal falls through…and depending on how large that spread is, we may or may not take it.
We had an example this summer where one of our holdings was taken over and the regulator in that industry—the antitrust authority—had blocked M&A deals before, [so] when we looked at that transaction, we thought that in the end, there would be a risk that this transaction just wouldn't go through and the stock might lose a lot of the premium it had gotten through the takeover offer. So that is one where we didn't wait until the last day.
This is also where our job as active investors come in. We look at the parameters of every single transaction: what are the risks that the buyer can or cannot finance it? What are the risk that there's material, adverse change? Are there material adverse change clauses in the documents? What will the antitrust authorities say?
All these are factors to look at when making that decision—whether we hold an acquisition target until the very end, or whether we sell right after the announcement.
Okay. We're long term investors, so Christian, we usually would prefer to hold the business that we think fit our criteria for 10 years or longer—as long as it keeps hitting those criteria, we're happy to own it.
Well, to quote Warren Buffett here, "our favourite holding period is forever."
Great! So within that, if we look at the statistics on the Fund in terms of portfolio turnover, that's not reality. I mean, the last quarter you had five new names in and five names out. Let's talk through the decision-making process.
For new ideas, really, it's driven by opportunity. We're constantly looking at things … in 2017, we did some 580 company or management interviews. That includes interviews with management where we own the business. But you get a sense that we talked to a lot of new businesses. So we turn over many stones. When we find something underneath, well, then we inquire, we talk to customers, competitors, suppliers. Eventually, if we like what we find, if the first work on that object has been worth it, then we organize our thoughts in a report. [We] examine the quality of the accounting, do the valuation brief. We do a full due diligence and report on a business.
So for new ideas really, it's driven by: "what's the opportunity out there?" And we need to turn many stones. But as I said, that's our job as active investors.
For existing companies that are in the portfolio, what's driving the weight there or whether we sell it—that's "The Matrix" process as we call it. What is The Matrix? You have to think of it as two dimensions: on one dimension, we rank the quality, and on the other dimension, we rank the return potential of a business of a security. And that, here at Mawer, is really our key tool for portfolio construction. We constantly compare the quality and the valuation of our investments. And if things become either too expensive, or are our assessment of the quality of a business, the quality of management goes down—we might trim or sell the position altogether.
Just to connect the stones analogy: we're turning over stones constantly (the new opportunities), but we're also evaluating the existing portfolio and comparing against those unturned stones that we've done due diligence on.
We're comparing it against the turned stones—the things we have looked at, and where we have an opinion, but that we don't own already—yes.
So we're constantly comparing what's in the portfolio. In a way, … well, the way we think of the global small cap portfolio, is, it's a platform on which small companies from around the world compete for capital. And we try to make that competition as hard for these companies as possible, so we only allocate to those where we really think the quality, valuation, combination makes sense for our clients.
Okay. Let's hit those examples. Maybe that'll help pound it home.
One was dormakaba out of Switzerland. I think that's a good example. First of all, on the business, they're the global #2 door lock access control company. So if you think of either the key you need to unlock a door, or the card to get into an office, there's an element of recurring there, because once you have the lock, you might need a new key or you might need a new card if you lose it. So we like that—that replacement demand. There are engaged owners; there are actually two families that own large chunks of the business.
I think this one is also a good example of how our process works at Mawer. We first met the CEO two years ago in Switzerland at a conference. At the time, we didn't think valuation was right. And then things changed in the market and their stock price came back. … We kept track of it all the way and we like what they do, and so now we thought it deserves a place on The Matrix in terms of the combination of quality—which hasn't changed that much. But valuation has changed. So now it deserves a place in the portfolio.
So Dorma's a good example of something we bought—sounds like patiently. What's an example something exiting the portfolio and the reasons behind that?
From the recent past, Origin Enterprises is a good example. That is a business that mainly does agricultural distribution in the UK and in some eastern European countries and now also other parts of the world. That has just moved on The Matrix. So again, the comparison of quality and valuation. We had several changes here that we followed. One main one, really was outside management's control—that's Brexit. When we looked at the situation here several months ago, we thought, "yeah, the negotiations are tough and the odds are not great (that there's going to be a good deal)," particularly for the agricultural business in the UK. Farmers in the UK depend on relatively cheap labour from eastern European countries—so that might get cut off.
Also, selling from the UK into Europe might be more difficult, well in five months' time. And finally, farmers in the UK get subsidies—partly from the European Union. So there's a bit of uncertainty there.
So when we look at the risks of this business, we thought that, "yeah this has a worse risk ranking now" and so it moved on The Matrix to a point where it just didn't deserve a place in the portfolio anymore. Or, to say it differently: we have another stone that we thought looked a lot better in terms of valuation and quality so put that in there and sold out of our Origin position.
Great! Those are two good examples, Christian. We've had a good discussion of process, The Matrix, some good examples…volatility has picked up in the markets lately. I just want you to give us a sense of how you manage in a volatile time.
The process really isn't different in volatile times, so it's important as investors to stick to our process. The Matrix is the main tool here. (I mentioned that we have the two dimensions of quality and of return potential.) When stock prices are volatile, the "return" acts as how attractive the stock is. That can change very fast. … What we've actually seen not just in the last weeks, but in our opinion over the last maybe six months, is more dispersion between single stocks and so that allows us to replot things on The Matrix…to look where they stand [now] in terms of return potential. And if something looks more attractive, we can add to that. And if something looks less attractive—maybe because it's gone up a lot—then we can take out.
So it's really the same two dimensions that we always use. But there is more, I would say, a bit more activity in … looking at things and thinking about them than in actual trading. We look a lot at valuations these days, and price changes. And we ask ourselves where we can allocate capital for our clients to get a better return potential.
Thanks for giving us a really good overview of global small cap. We will have you on again, I'm sure! With that, thank you for listening, and thanks to Christian.


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Neeyamo to hire over 1,000 people in the next 12-18 months
July 03, 2022 - Updated 10:36 am IST
The company on Friday launched its first all-women Global Delivery Centre in Nagpur
By NARAYANAN V
Union Minister Nitin Gadkari inaugurating Neeyamo's all-women Global Delivery Centre in Nagpur
Neeyamo, a Chennai-based global payroll and Employer of Record (EOR) solutions provider, is planning to hire over 1,000 people in the next 12-18 months, according to a senior official of the company.
"Currently, we have over 3,000 employees spread across India and overseas. In the next 12-18 months, we are planning to increase our total workforce to about 4,000-4,500 employees," Rangarajan Seshadri, CEO, Neeyamo, told BusinessLine.
He was speaking on the sidelines of the launch of Neeyamo's first all-women Global Delivery Centre in Nagpur. The centre was inaugurated on Friday by Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari in the presence of Sameer Dattatraya Meghe, Member of Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, Hingna Constituency.
"Women make up only 28 per cent of the workforce in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) streams, and we at Neeyamo want to bring a change in this. We always believe in taking the next step in building a workspace where all our employees feel empowered. Our Nagpur all-women centre is a testament to this belief," Seshadri said.
Serving global clients
The Nagpur centre currently has 85 employees and Neeyamo is planning to grow it by 200 before the end 2023. The centre will have product developers, payroll specialists, implementation experts, and customer support executives to support global clients.
Founded in 2009, Neeyamo's payroll and EOR solutions cater to multinational and micro-multinational corporations in over 190 countries. . "We have a very robust training mechanism. We hire bright students from the campus and put them in training for 3-6 months. People from small towns are very committed," Seshadri said.
Nearly 30 per cent of Neeyamo's 3,000 plus employees are based outside India. Within the remaining 70 per cent workforce in India, employees from tier-2 and -3 towns alone account for about 40 per cent. In addition to Nagpur, the company also has global delivery centres in Chennai, Madurai and Pune in India and few locations outside India.
computing and information technology

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Gainsborough Trinity FC
'We didn't turn up' - Dave Frecklington says sorry after Gainsborough Trinity are dumped out of FA Cup
Slough scored five goals in the second half and missed a penalty
Dave Frecklington after his side's FA Cup exit at the hands of Slough Town (Image: John Rudkin)
Dave Frecklington issued an apology to Gainsborough Trinity fans after the Blues' FA Cup run was ended in brutal fashion by Slough Town.
Frecklington's side were smashed 6-0 at home by the Rebels in Saturday's first round tie in front of a crowd of 1,630 at the Northolme.
Slough, who play a level below the Blues in the Southern League Premier Division, could have even added a seventh late on but missed a penalty.
Freck faces tough decisions
Spirit helps Blues beat Telford
Defender Jacklin hits brace
Trinity grab last-gasp leveller
Rebels boss John Underwood lauded the display as his side's "best performance in seven years in the biggest match of our lives".
Meanwhile, Frecklington took to social media to apologise for the performance on one of the biggest days in the club's history.
"Apologies to all Gainsborough Trinity supporters for that today. Didn't turn up. These boys have been different class. Keep the Faith," said the former Lincoln United boss on Twitter.
Speaking after the game, Frecklington said: "We didn't turn up from minute one. I was worried about that during the week because the pressure was on us. We were favourites going into the game and it was a big crowd.
"It just wasn't our day. We were punished in every attack, every chance they had they scored. There's a reason they're top scorers in their league.
"I asked the players to leave everything out on the football pitch and we didn't do that. We were well beaten by a fantastic side. The lads are hurting, they're absolutely devastated. There were tears in the changing room. It was painful to watch."
Slough celebrate one of their second half goals against Trinity (Image: John Rudkin)
The defeat ended Trinity's superb seven-match unbeaten run in league and cup. That sequence of results was built on the team's hard work and team spirit but Frecklington admitted that was sadly lacking against Slough.
"We're a team that relies on a lot of endeavour, work, togetherness and team spirit," added Frecklington. "That was missing today. All the ingredients that have served us well so far were somewhere else.
"A lot were fazed by the occasion, we were well beaten and it could have been more."
The Blues return to National League North action at high-flying Brackley Town on Saturday and Frecklington has called on the club to move on from Saturday's setback.
"We've got a good group and that's the second game we've lost in 10. It's been an unbelievable run [in the cup]. No-one expected us to get this far.
"It's just a shame that it didn't happen for us and all credit to Slough."


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Hazel Cochrane
Recommend Hazel's obituary to your friends
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Obituary of Hazel Cochrane
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Hazel (Gorman) Cochrane, 90, of Minasville, passed away Aug. 9, 2022, surrounded by family at Colchester East Hants Health Centre, Truro. Born in Burntcoat on Aug. 3, 1932, she was the daughter of the late Matt and Minnie (White) Gorman. Hazel is survived by her sons Laurie (Joan) Cochrane of Valley and Chris (Kathy) Cochrane of Fall River. Hazel treasured her grandchildren; Logan (Eliza) Cochrane, Keigan (Holly) Cochrane, Kelsey Cochrane, Ryan Cochrane and Angela (Jeremy) Watson. She very much enjoyed time spent with her four great-grandchildren: Harrison, Ava, Ella and Delilah. She spent most of her adult life, starting in her late teens, employed as a teacher. The bulk of her career was spent at Kennetcook Elementary. Her interests varied at different points in her life, from writing poetry in her early years to water painting in later years. She had a lifelong love of community, card parties and church activities. In retirement, she and Harry had fun joining friends for trips abroad. Even in her later years she retained a passion for world events. She loved to discuss the American political scene and kept up with the top stories of the day on social media. Most of all, she loved spending time with her family and friends. Any afternoon at home, surrounded by loved ones and close friends, was a great day for Hazel. The family would like to especially thank Kelsey for her devotion during a difficult time, Gail Singer for her considerable help and friendship and John Fortune for his long-time support. A graveside service will be held at 2 p.m. Monday August 15, 2022 in the Moose Brook Cemetery. No flowers, please. Any donations can be made to Moose Brook Cemetery- c/o Roma White. Arrangements have been entrusted to the compassionate care of the J. Wilson Allen Funeral Home, Hwy 354, Kennetcook, ph-1-902-362-2440 or please visit our website at www.allenfh.ca to sign the guest book and send private condolences.
To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Hazel Cochrane, please visit Tribute Store
Moosebrook Cemetery
Moose Brook, Nova Scotia, Canada
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Donations can be made to Moose Brook Cemetery- c/o Roma White.


We've got a wild one for you, this time, jungalistas! Wyldbnch is one of our favorite new plant places. Pop Annemarie, the boss lady behind Wyldbnch, shared with us that the name of her business comes from her love of curating a colorful funky plant selection. Pop Annemarie's love of color is also reflected in her continuously evolving space. She plays around with bold backdrops and switches up the vibe in her space, which is located in the Container Yard in the heart of the Arts District of Los Angeles. Pop Annemarie made sure that her plant space was located near the Container Yard's multiple skylights and accordion doors so that her plant babies would get ample light!
We caught up with Pop Annemarie to see what colorful facts we could learn about her!
That's a good question . . . I've erased those situations from my memory, ha! To be honest I've probably killed enough to count on two hands. Not sure if my plants with shorter lifespans counts (e.g. Calathea) as my responsibility? But then again as beautiful as they are, they are my fussier plants.
Do you play music for your plants? If so, what's their favorite song?
That I do! When I water and clean all 60ish plants at Wyldbnch, my plants and I enjoy listening to the Bossanova station on iTunes.
Who takes care of your plants when you are out of town?
I usually like to make sure that right before I leave I maintain all of them so if we are gone for two weeks, by the time I get back, it's time to give them some TLC again. You can kinda consider me a little over protective with my plant babies.
If I were a plant I'd want to be an aspidistra or an anthurium or even a golden ginger alpinia. All three have the characteristics of a flamingo and a giraffe which are two of my favorite animals. They're long and leggy and delicate in stature but are very sturdy and strong like a bull!
If you're in the LA area, you can check out the Wylbnch space in person. They will be hosting cutting swaps, classes on plant care, soils, and plant styling! If you live outside of LA, you can still follow Pop Annemarie's colorful plant space on Insta @wyldbnchplants.
Photography by Maricel Sison and shared with permission.
While the latest plethora of plantitious goodness is great, how about splicing it up with some actual design content? I lurve my plants, but I'm concerned that too much of a good thing can turn newbies off such a wonderful site. You know, when you can't see the wood for the trees?


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SF: Once a Mecca, Now a Mirage
by Andy Mannix January 6, 2014 September 29, 2020
Kevin Quintero (left) and Carlos Bandera have spent months searching for a place they can afford. Photo by Andy Mannix.
Part 1: Down and Out
It's been weeks since Kevin Quintero saw a decent paycheck. Money is running out, but it's a bright November afternoon in the Mission District and Dolores Park beckons. He spends most of his remaining funds on sandwiches for he and his boyfriend, Carlos Bandera, and the couple walks to the park to eat lunch and play a game of Magic the Gathering.
Quintero is 22 years old — 18 years younger than Bandera. He's boyish and cool with olive skin, a black Mohawk and a ring through his septum. Bandera is wearing a black leather jacket and trucker hat cocked to the left side. Tattoos crawl up his collar. His face is hard with bony cheekbones, his brown beard fading gray. They look like any other hip, gay couple in the park, except, unlike most, they are homeless.
Like many without a place to live, homelessness sometimes drops down the list of immediate concerns. Today, Bandera's withdrawal from methamphetamine tops the list.
They find a park bench and begin setting up the Magic board, and Bandera explains his plans to register for a rehab program run by the AIDS Foundation, called the Stonewall Project. If he passes three drug tests a week for 12 weeks, they will give him a $330 gift card. "It's a way to stay off," he says.
The story catches the ear of a man walking his bike through the park, who lingers conspicuously within earshot. Bandera stops his story cold. His eyes roll back toward the voyeur. Without taking his gaze off the cards he's dealing, Quintero tries to diffuse the confrontation.
"It's just a little awkward," he says.
"For someone to stop and listen to what is going on in a park?" the man retorts. "No. It's not awkward."
"You want to start?" Bandera snaps with the sharpness of a man five days into withdrawal. "You want to start this right now?"
"Words are not hands," says the stranger, now curiously overstaying his welcome. "Hands start things. Words are easily ignored."
But Bandera isn't ignoring them so easily. "I am so ready to beat the fuck out of you right now," he says.
"Hey Carlos, Carlos," Quintero says. "Honestly, it's not worth it."
Bandera restrains himself until the stranger finally leaves. They play a round of Magic, and, like any other denizens of Dolores Park, walk down to Bi-Rite to buy ice cream cones and lemonade.
This is the modern face of homelessness in San Francisco. Quintero and Bandera became vagrants for the first time in either of their lives last year. They both work part-time jobs, but don't collectively earn enough money to afford rent in even San Francisco's most reasonable studios. They have spent recent months crashing on the couches of friends and acquaintances while searching for a place to live. As of late, they have been staying in a small studio in Potrero Hill with two other men and three pitbulls. When there is no couch, they stay up all night walking the streets of San Francisco waiting for the sun to rise.
"It's extremely stressful," Bandera says. "I have a breakdown at least every couple days right now."
Long known as a mecca of acceptance for all sexual and gender identities, San Francisco is earning a new reputation as one of the nation's least affordable cities. According to Trulia, the median rental rate for a two-bedroom hit $3,250 in 2013 — the highest in the country — and eviction notices are up 40 percent from 2010.
In 2013, for the first time ever in its annual homelessness count, the city asked responders to identify their sexual orientation, and the results were staggering — even to some who have worked with the homeless for many years: 29 percent of homeless in San Francisco identified as LGBT, more than 2,100 people.
"You look at these numbers and you take a sense that a large portion of LGBT San Franciscans are a job loss or an eviction away from homelessness," says Bevan Dufty, the mayor's homeless czar. "That's very tough."
In the lives of Quintero and Bandera, tough is the operative word.
Bandera (left) and Quintero spend a sunny November afternoon eating lunch and playing Magic the Gathering in Dolores Park. Photo by Andy Mannix.
It's cold and damp on an early weekday morning in downtown San Francisco, still more than an hour before the sun will rise. On a block of Mission Street near the Civic Center, shopping carts and makeshift cardboard homes litter the sidewalk. A man wearing a spelunking light on his head peers into a garbage can.
Bandera sits on the pavement in front of a government building listening to Joy Divison through white earbuds and waiting for the General Assistance office to open. A half-dozen strangers have lined up behind him, all hoping to take a little something home today to help them get by.
"Worst case scenario, they give you $75," Bandera says.
Bandera doesn't have an appointment, so he and Quintero arrived at 5:45 a.m. hoping that someone who does have one won't show. There's no guarantee, but they need the money. Bandera spent the earnings from his last go-go dancing gig on food over the weekend, and now he's flat broke.
Quintero, who is not quite flat broke, has gone to drop off a key at a house where he was previously squatting. The line grows deeper as the sun begins to rise. No one says much. One man spins a folder around on the tips of his fingers. Another plays with a yo-yo.
"Time?" asks a woman in line.
"6:42," a man replies.
Quintero's been gone for more than the 20 minutes he'd estimated, and Bandera is annoyed. I knew this would happen, he says. "He doesn't listen."
Bandera sighs. "I don't mean to talk bad about Kevin," he says. "I'm just tired and hungry and cold."
He thinks about it. "If it wasn't for him, I'd still be shooting up."
Fifteen minutes later, Quintero returns. They kiss as Bandera's partner hands him coffee and a donut. Quintero is limping, and he shows Bandera his bandaged-up knee — a mishap jumping a fence, he explains.
They wait in line for another two hours and fill out some paperwork. Around 9, an employee announces they are not taking any walk-in appointments today.
It turns out that worst case is leaving empty-handed.
"Every day is a shot in the dark," Quintero says.
Part 2: An Unaffordable Mecca
Bandera and Quintero don't fit the common stereotype of homeless men, but their attraction to San Francisco does fit a profile of those ostracized elsewhere wanting to live openly gay here.
Three years ago, Bandera worked for the Snohomish County Sheriff's office just outside of Seattle, Washington. He thought he'd landed his dream job, but instead found the law enforcement environment unwelcoming to a gay man, he says. He lived mostly in the closet, and didn't tell anyone he'd contracted HIV two decades earlier in fear of being the butt of jokes around the station. In 2011, he got fed up, quit his job and moved to San Francisco to become a porn star.
He starred in a few movies, but it wasn't the glamorous life he'd hoped for.
"I'm not very good, to be honest with you," he says laughing.
He got a job as a personal trainer at a gym, but was eventually fired for not making his sales quota, he says. He found some work at bars, but nothing lasted. He and his live-in boyfriend broke up last year, and when Bandera had to move out in August, he couldn't afford a place of his own. He's been homeless ever since. He makes money by sporadic shifts of go-go dancing at bars, but those gigs have been scarce lately. He believes it's because he's been dancing too long, and the bar managers like to rotate talent.
"I haven't had to sleep in a shelter yet, although if I don't get more work by the end of this month I'm fucked," he says.
Quintero works as a sound and lighting technician, but still doesn't earn enough to make rent. Photo by Andy Mannix.
Quintero, who recently graduated from Saint Mary's College of California, works freelance as a sound and lighting technician for clubs, theaters and various other events. A good gig can bring in $250, but the work is inconsistent, and he sometimes goes weeks with little income. Up until October, he was in a relationship with two other men — a "triad" — and lived with them in San Francisco. The relationship ended, and Quintero, too, became homeless.
He'd met Bandera earlier in the year while Bandera worked at Truck, a bar on Folsom Street. They reconnected through the social networking app Scruff after Bandera's breakup. At first they hung out as friends, but within a few weeks they had fallen in love.
"We clicked so, so much that this relationship kind of started before we even realized it," Quintero says. "And by the time we did realize it, it was just like 'yeah, we're together.'"
For his first month without a home, Quintero squatted and crashed anywhere he could. In November, he began staying in the studio with Bandera — a temporary arrangement while they look for a home they can afford together.
They have considered leaving San Francisco for the much cheaper East Bay, but feel stuck. They both work nights, and normally finish long after BART stops running. Quintero also dreams of making a career as a lighting and sound technician, and believes he's well on his way, but must be persistent. For now, work mostly comes by way of recommendations, so moving to a new city would mean starting over again.
"Long term, I wouldn't mind leaving if I had a reason to leave," Quintero says. "But I do love the city. It's San Francisco. It's kind of like the gay Mecca."
San Francisco attracts a high volume of LGBT transplants who come here looking for a safe refuge. Many escape to the city from a hostile living environment, some from another country, only to find San Francisco isn't so welcoming for those without the money and resources to make rent, says Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition for Homelessness.
"It's not quite the Mecca they imagined," she says.
Still, says Bobby Spencer, a newcomer, moving to San Francisco is "something that every queer thinks about."
While working as an executive assistant at a drug regulatory company in Georgia, he daydreamed about romance and life in the Golden Gate city. In May, he left his job, packed up and moved.
Within weeks of arriving, his plans unraveled. His job working as a nanny for his former boss in Pacifica didn't pan out, and he spent his savings on hostels in San Francisco while he searched for an apartment. Without insurance, he stopped taking medication for HIV and got so sick he ended up in San Francisco County's Catastrophic Illness Program. Counselors found him a bed in a shelter — Multi-Service Center South — where he still resides.
His first night at the shelter, Spencer says, his bunkmate asked him how he got such a good bed. Spencer told him it was because he's HIV positive, and the man immediately turned cold and stopped talking to him. He often endures threats, and is subject to menacing glares and homophobic epithets like "faggot" from others in the shelter. He's still looking for an apartment, but has found it so far impossible to navigate San Francisco's channels for affordable housing.
"I moved here to be queer," he says. "It turns out in very many ways that my own community — the gay community — is very ostracizing, very intimidating and unwelcoming if they find out you're homeless."
Quintero and Bandera have also been discouraged in their efforts to get back on their feet. They recently got a lead on a small studio that rents for $1,300, but the landlord wanted bank statements verifying their annual income was three times the annual rent of the apartment, which they could not do. Neither makes steady, verifiable income. Bandera no longer even has a checking account.
"I don't have an identity, basically," he says.
Part 3: Breaking Points
Housing advocate Tommi Avicolli Mecca helped found the city's first LGBT adult homeless shelter. Photo by Andy Mannix.
Tommi Avicolli Mecca's breaking point came about three years ago. A young Spanish-speaking man walked into his office at the Housing Rights Committee with fresh bruises all over face, and told Mecca he'd been brutally beaten at one of the shelters by a group of men shouting gay slurs. He was too afraid to go back, and wanted a safe place to stay.
"The reality was, at that moment, I had nowhere to send him," says Mecca, a 62-year-old with long curly black hair.
The housing advocate could see the city changing. When he moved here in 1991, Mecca made enough money working for minimum wage at a bookstore to live with a roommate, and he still found time to be an activist. But as tech companies moved in and rent went up, those days slipped away. Gay men who could have once afforded a simple lifestyle in San Francisco were now living on the streets.
Brian Basinger was seeing much of the same. As director of the AIDS Housing Alliance, Basinger heard horror stories about abuse in the shelters all the time.
"There is bullying," he says. "There is demeaning behavior. There is ganging up on folks. It's everything we experience in high school, but take it to a prison level, and that's what you got."
At first, Basinger wondered why nothing was being done about it. "But then, almost in the same thought, I realized that I'm the one who's supposed to be doing something about it," he says.
Mecca and Basinger came up with the idea for an LGBT shelter in 2010. They were scouting locations to host sit-down vegan meals for homeless people in the Castro and Upper Market neighborhoods, a project Mecca had started years earlier. While touring an abandoned church downtown, they discovered the building's cavernous basement. A switch flipped in Basinger's mind.
"We could put a shelter down here," he shouted to Mecca.
The costs to bring the church up to code would have been almost $1 million, so the plans fell through. That year, District Supervisor David Campos held a hearing on violence toward LGBT residents in shelters, which eventually led Dolores Street Community Services to take on the project. The shelter passed the city's planning commission last year, and Dolores Street raised the remaining necessary funds to get it up and running. It will house 24 beds. It is expected to open this year. There are currently shelters for LGBT youth, but this will be the first such adult shelter in the country, Basinger says.
In the meantime, LGBT homeless people in San Francisco often avoid the shelters, instead preferring to sleep on the streets or in parks. On a recent afternoon, Andrea Suchyta, 19, and Bethany Haughton, 22, said they spent the previous night camping on a beach.
"I don't feel safe in shelters," Suchyta says. "I've been in two before. It made feel me really uncomfortable, especially being pretty young."
The women were playing ukuleles on a sidewalk near the Castro Theater in front of a sign reading, "Help Hobo Queers — Spare Change 4 Beers." They said they would be more likely to stay in a shelter that was created specifically for LGBT occupants.
"I think I'd check it out, definitely," Suchyta says. "I'd give it a shot."
"This isn't the life that I want for us," Bandera says. On a Tuesday afternoon, he sits across an uneven table in the waiting room at the AIDS Foundation, waiting for a Stonewall counselor named Chuck. "I don't want to be walking around the Tenderloin at 3 or 4 in the morning looking for something."
He produces his muscular, tattooed bicep to reveal track marks. He is bruised. His forearm has been numb for months. "For me, I don't care. But I'm not going to drag him into it."
He and Quintero know plenty of people in the gay community who have fallen in deep with meth and never climbed out. A report released by the Center of American Progress in 2012 indicates LGBT communities are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol than the rest of the population. In San Francisco, the Stonewall Project sees about 250 gay men annually through its outpatient substance abuse program, and 350 to 450 during walk-in services. Another 2,500 use the organization's outreach or web services each month.
Bandera started on meth about a year ago. He smoked it in the beginning, but eventually that wasn't enough. He started shooting up every day.
At first he started reducing his intake because he just didn't have enough money to score. But after he began dating Quintero, he decided the time had come to begin weaning his body off the drug, even if the withdrawals made him tense and, at times, unpleasant to be around.
"I don't want Kevin to be with a drug addict," he says.
Bandera disappears into a room with Chuck, and Quintero takes the opportunity to run some errands. He likes to keep busy. He walks a few blocks down to Ruby Skye, where he was recently filling in for their regular light and sound technician. It was a good week — he picks up a check for $750. He runs into the normal technician, Allan, who says there might be more work in the near future.
"What's going on with your living situation?" Allan asks.
Quintero shakes his head.
He leaves Ruby Skye for the bank to cash the check. Being homeless isn't all bad, Quintero offers. He's young and living a bohemian lifestyle, and enjoys the freedom each day brings. Spending most of his time traveling around the city running errands and wasting time doesn't seem to affect his mood. That's not to say he wants to be homeless. After months couch surfing and roaming the streets, he's ready for something permanent. But being homeless also gets easier.
"It's once you don't have a house, and you don't have to worry about that bill is when you start putting that bill way down on the list," he says.
He heads back to the AIDS Foundation and spots Bandera walking toward him. Their eyes catch, and they run to each other to embrace.
"Did my first pee test," Bandera says. "Made $2. Woo!"
The city's homelessness count this summer highlights the enormous challenge politicians and advocates face in housing its displaced LGBT residents.
"We tell kids it will get better," says Kara Zordel, director of Project Homeless Connect. "But for 2000 San Franciscans, it hasn't, and we really need to do something about that."
Since the data came out, leaders and advocates have stepped up their efforts. In October, San Francisco held its first LGBTQ Connect event, a day of walk-in services for LGBT homeless people, offering everything from employment assistance to medical attention and haircuts.
"It was one of my favorite days of my career," Zordel says. "We saw people who have never felt comfortable walking through the doors of the agencies."
Other measures are in the works, Dufty says. He is working on a plan to identify people at risk of evictions so the city can intervene beforehand. The city is also working on educating staff at existing shelters on LGBT issues, and setting aside beds specifically for LGBT clients.
"Giving them housing is just part of the solution," Campos says. "There have to be services that come with that, including substance abuse services [and] mental health — so we have to increase the availability of those programs."
Housing advocates protest evictions outside City Hall. Photo by Andy Mannix.
Though many in the city recognize a problem, finding a solution is another matter. Evictions and rising rents are heated political issues right now in San Francisco that go far beyond the LGBT community.
Basinger and Mecca believe the answers could lie in community land trust, a system in which tenants own a building and a nonprofit owns the land beneath. In exchange for low rent, the tenants agree to sell the property back at a restricted price when they move out, so the house or apartment will be off the market and immune to the city's rising rent.
"The reality is we need to create housing, affordable housing," Mecca says. "And affordable housing that's going to be affordable forever."
Even with the city's efforts to curb the problem underway, Basinger says this is only the beginning. With 2,100 on the streets, a 24-bed shelter is just a drop in the bucket. And even a safe shelter is no substitute for a home.
"We need a Manhattan Project on homelessness," he says.
Part 4: Moving on
On a Wednesday night, Quintero picks up a lighting gig for a DJ set at City Nights in downtown San Francisco. He's still limping from jumping the fence earlier in the week.
"I banged it up pretty bad," he says. "I don't really have the money to go to the doctor right now, and my insurance is kind of in limbo."
Bandera has come along to check out the rave. He's wearing black leather pants with firefighter-yellow, zippered stripes, and a rosary around his neck. Asked if he's religious, he shakes his head. He bought a few of these from a stand on 18th Street, he says. "I need to put a hole in the bottom so I can hang it upside down on the rosary."
It's festive around them, but Bandera and Quintero are feeling anything but. Homelessness has moved to the top of their list of immediate concerns. They fear they're on the verge of overstaying their welcome with the friend whose couch they're crashing on, so they spent the day checking out long-term hotels — a cheaper option than most apartments. There were no vacancies.
The party is about to start, and Bandera isn't in the mood for dancing. He used to work at a place like this 20 years ago, but raves aren't his scene anymore. It's also been more than a week since he's been completely clean from meth, and the withdrawals take their toll. "I'm tired," he says. "Ever since I stopped doing crystal, all I want to do is sleep."
The music begins, and the ravers file into the room with furry hats and boots, hoola-hoops, flashing lights, leather, glow-in-the-dark necklaces and bracelets, low-cut tops, nylons, panda bear ears, bleached hair, chains and neon. Three women climb up into a cage above the DJ and one lifts herself off the ground and twerks. A young man tears his shirt off and swings it above his head. The lights flash, and the young crowd shrieks in ecstasy.
Bandera looks down on them all from the raised sound booth across from the stage. He sits stone-faced and bobs his head to the beat.
A week before Christmas Eve, Bandera and Quintero are still crashing at the Potrero Hill studio. They come down to San Francisco General Hospital's Building 80 — where the AIDS Clinic is located — to meet with a social worker. Bandera isn't feeling well, but he is hopeful today: He finally has an appointment with General Assistance set for the next morning, and the social worker is going to help him enroll in Healthy SF — San Francisco's subsidized health insurance program — and navigate his other options. He hopes his HIV status will be enough to qualify for temporary disability, and regular income will help him get back on his feet.
As for a more permanent source of money, Bandera is at a loss. Dancing gigs have dropped down to once every three weeks, and he has no plans to go back to work as a personal trainer.
"I have no idea what I want to do," he says. "I have no freaking clue."
He stopped going to the Stonewall Project, in part because he grew tired of the long commute every other day. He explains he got angry in a meeting one day when he overheard two men talking disparagingly about a form of sexual role. That's when he stopped going to the treatment project. Sitting on a bench outside Building 80, Quintero laughs as he turns to Bandera and caresses the back of his head.
"Have you noticed that I haven't tried to start a fight in a long time?" he says.
His boyfriend smiles and concurs.
Despite quitting the rehab program, Bandera says he's stayed clean this whole time — now going on a month.
Quintero is also feeling optimistic. His persistence in trying to find work is starting to pay off. Beginning Jan. 1, he's going to be working regularly doing sound and lighting for an events company.
"It's a couple events a week, plus the club events I do normally anyway," he says.
Their days of crashing on couches appear to finally be over. They are in talks with a mutual friend who is looking at a two-bedroom, and needs someone to fill the second room. With a bump in regular income on its way, the couple believes they can finally afford a room in San Francisco.
It's an encouraging development on this sunny December day, and they are looking forward to finally have space of their own, but nothing is certain yet, Quintero says. They have yet to sign a lease, and the apartment is only a sublet.
"It's kind of semi-temporary, because I think it's only for a month at a time," he says. "It's definitely not permanent."
But on Jan. 6, the day before publication, Quintero says the prospective apartment didn't work out after all. Once again, their search resumes.
Andy Mannix
Andy.Mannix@missionlocal.org
Andy Mannix is a national-award-winning investigative reporter. He studied journalism at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, where he worked as in-depth projects desk editor for the Minnesota Daily, named the best college newspaper in the country by the Society of Professional Journalists during his senior year. After graduating in December 2009, Andy spent three and a half years as a staff writer for Minneapolis alt-weekly City Pages, writing long-form, in-depth stories on state politics, city government and the criminal justice system. He's now a freelance writer pursuing a master's degree at UC-Berkeley's graduate school of journalism.
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Carlos Morales says:
Its unfortunate that this piece focussed so much on the wrong issue, addictions of all kinds have always existed in San Francisco and they have been addressed and dealt with and we will continue to survive as a city which prides it self in diversity and non-judgement. I wished the focus had stayed on the REAL problem. The out of control allocation of funds to cater to the ultra rich diaper wearing techies who have no concept of the importance of a robust middle class in any growing economy. When the middle classworker in our city has been eradicated, as its at this very second happenning, whos going to be left to teach our kids in schools, to manage the Dry Cleaning and convenience corner shops? whos going to be left doing the barista jobs at your high end corporat coffee boutiques or washing your Teslas, BMW, Benzes and Lotus's at the cornercar wash?When all theres is left is chaos and anarchy and a new highon the cities crime rates, what are the tech-toddlers going to do? Hope that mommy or dadda can fix their booboo? Or move to the next city takeover? This is a wake up call to city officials and city planners single handedly you are destroying the landscape of San Francisco by not allocating equal resources to empower and maintain your middle class thriving.
If there's one thing I've learned is that the Mainstream Gay Community is no different than the Mainstream Christian Community in that they claim to be all loving, all accepting, and all benevolent; but in reality they are self-righteous, self-serving, hypocrites perpetuating a status quo that only serves upper-class, white, hetero-normative, middle-aged, males.
Ralf says:
Sad to see how many gay people choose to move to a bigger city for usually the wrong reason.Very often, in the US especially I guess, I'm from Europe, for just the sole reason of starting a so called "gay lifestyle" and being able to be themselves and not checking that the foundation, a steady income is present. Understandable,certainly, I did the same thing, it was a career move in my case and my newly adopted city happened to have a large gay scene, but they do tend to forget that big cities are extremely expensive to live and it might be hard to keep your head above water. And a lot of them feel peer pressure or obliged to live to, what they think, is expected of you in a gay scene and don't want to be left out and therefor start using drugs. I wish some guys would prefer to be an individual and stay true to themselves instead of joining the masses, the losers who cannot stand the luring of meth and all other shit that wil ultimately destroy your boyish good looks and empty your wallet
Moby says:
The fact I know one of the individuals involved and that there is much more to this story is completely irrelevant to the author's rather sad attempt to find a booger man where none exists.
Ignoring the expected bias here, the problem is not as everyone so loves to tout, gentrification. Gentrification is a given no matter where you live. The idea that it can be stopped is silly. However, that is not to say it isn't a symptom of a bigger problem.
We've allowed the homeless problem here to grow and flourish for over a decade by a board of sups who led with personal agendas and ideology over thoughtful balanced attempts to manage the problem. We continue to make it easier to be homeless in the city vs discouraging it.
We have homeless outreach programs, due to how they get funded, that actually fight against real attempts to reduce the homeless in this city.
Our city is out of rental units. Too many have been converted to condos and with ridiculous height restrictions in SF, it is very hard to build replacements. Bringing back a required percentage ration between sales and rentals would go along way to help reduce the extreme demand. At current, there is simply no supply to meet the demand. The fact those who work in tech can afford to pay higher doesn't make them the enemy, it makes them fortunate. (And no I don't work in tech.)
Just yesterday at Safeway, a resident was gathering signatures for a petition to prevent any new height relaxations AND a petition to tell the city to improve middle income housing. When asked how he expected the city to do that with both petitions, he just shrugged. He had no solution but his ideology clearly was more important.
SF is not a town, it is a city. And anytime you have a city as desirable to live as SF has been, there will always be a demand. You can slow the growth, and therefore gentrification, without trying to stop it completely.
For the homeless, we need to take an active approach vs trying to just push the problem around and blaming everyone else. Converting cash payment to vouchers alone would reduce the abuse. Add in a unified homeless outreach network, escalating mandatory drug and alcohol rehab programs, and less tolerance of loitering/camping/defecating on public property all would help reduce our homeless population drastically.
Writing an article full of half truths and bias only serves to increase the frustration and does nothing to help the problems.
Ruben Mendoza says:
they claim to be all loving, all accepting, and all benevolent; but in reality they are self-righteous, self-serving, hypocrites perpetuating a status quo that only serves upper-class, white, hetero-normative, middle-aged, males.
Is your name Ruben or Mark?
It's hard to tell.
Hetero-normative? Huh? Really? you missed a cliche – you didn't slip a CIS-gendered in there.
No Time For Games says:
This article should be about how people should be more careful about their choices and actions…and that we need to own up to the consequences of the bad choices we make.
It feels like they're placing blame on the community and society for putting them in their current situation, but it all comes down to the choices that dictate which direction you want your life to go.
If you cheat on your partners who helped you get through college and they kick you out, you have no right to call foul. If you're a 40 year old go go dancer and you're wondering why you're stuck in a rut, it's time to reevaluate your priorities and start building YOUR life back, not worrying about where you and your bf live.
Life's not always rainbows and unicorns. Everyone makes sacrifices. If you have to live outside of SF to live within your means, grin and bear it. If you work at it, then you'll get back to where you used to be.
GentrifySF says:
As if anyone in their right minds would believe that some middle-aged gay meth user with facial wasting and a bitchy attitude would be highly sought-after to be dancing in the Castro or SOMA gay bars or joining the ranks of male porn models @ Treasure Island Media. HA! Being gay in SF is expensive if you wish to mingle with the "A-gays": either make $50K/year or get a sugar daddy who lives in Upper Market, Twin Peaks, Diamond Heights or Noe Valley. Other than that, good luck!
i keep reading people on here trying to dodge or justify the gentrification issue and just blame the drugs.
yes drugs may hurt your life if you do not have enough money to hide, manage, or ignore your habits.
But don't for a second ignore that gentrification is the major problem.
also the fools that talk down to others or about others may one day be in the exact same place.
Tony Wichowski says:
Want to know why I am not homeless? Because I put myself through college, got a job and don't do Meth. I didn't plan on Porn and go go dancing as a career and then get surprised when that didn't pan out. When I get paid, I pay my rent and my bills and save for the future and THEN spend what's left.
Sure, I have been lucky in some ways, but get your shit together, people. No one owes you a job. No one owes you an aparetment. If you can't cut it in the city, move back tot he crap town you came from and quit complaining that we owe your lazy, disease-ridden, drug-adled bodies something. The rest of us work for our keep. You should try it.
58Mike says:
SF has just 30,000+/- more people today than it did in 1950… yet I would guess there are thousands of more living units, apartments, TICs, co-owners and joint tenants spaces to live and set up house ….. THERE SHOULDN'T BE A HOUSING SHORTAGE …… except for the fact that there are many 2nd home/ vacation units owned with part time occupancy's taking up the space… those units are empty most of the time, seeing the occupants when they blow into the City for street fairs …. do something about that, and the housing shortage will disappear…
Mike, you want to pass a law forcing me to have someone live in a home that I do not want to have anyone living in?
40% of San Franciscans now live alone. Can we force the misanthropes to get a roommate?
Nobody cares about the homeless LGBT community, plain and simple. If they did, the gay "community" would be doing more to help them and forcing Mayor Lee to do something. The "A gays" and the young techies will move into all the new housing developments in the Castro and the lower-income/homeless LGBT will not be missed at all. Even the gays turn on their own after reaching a certain income level and social status. Who cares about your gay homeless brothers and sisters when you can walk around with your smartphone while logged into Grindr, Scruff, Adam4Adam and BarebackRT?
Durwood says:
Kevin Quintero, you are NOT homeless. You have plenty of places to go, and friends that you can lean on that you have not treated kindly. You have had financial assistance to go to school (which friends have helped you with), two jobs with reputable companies that are 'no longer' (which friends helped you to get, including your current one). My partner and I have sent you information about places to stay, with no response. Mr. Quintero, you are no homeless person, and it's disgraceful to everyone in this city that's actually struggling and trying to make it work. By all accounts, your actions have been your own doing. There are people that I step around while going to work that have no loved ones, that are sick, that are addicted, and want one CRUMB of comfort in life. Could you imagine how they would feel if the only thing they had to do was to put in an application somewhere, and answer a text message? This is VERY disappointing, as is the misrepresentation of this article. San Francisco offers AMPLE opportunity to live any way you want to live. If you choose to be homeless, and addicted to drugs, there are plenty to choose from. If you want to get clean, then several of my friends have proven that the city offers extremely help programs to do this as well.
Drug Rehab San Francisco
http://www.drugrehabsfca.com
Drug Rehab Consulting
drugrehabconsulting.com
601 Van Ness Ave
Pacific Hills
http://www.pachills.com
715 Golden Gate Ave
Alcohol Drug Abuse Rehab San Francisco
sanfrancisco.thealcoholdrugrehab.com
1610 Evans Ave
Baart Programs
http://www.baartprograms.com
433 Turk St
Bottom line: There is opportunity here. Opportunity to do your absolute best, or your absolute worst. There is no mirage, but a thriving mecca of people trying to make their own way, as my partner and I have been doing since we came here a few years ago.
So Kevin & Carlos….how much do you want out of life? It's all right here in this city if you choose it, but NO one can change your behavior but you.
Don't you get it? He's a addicted to meth. No amount of referrals or links to community programs is going to help. Yes, his life's destruction is 100% of his own making. But you know there are quite a few homeless people out there that are addicts. It is actually a leading cause of homelessness (along with mental illness).
The blame should be placed on the authors of the article who seem to tout these two as victim gentrification rather than the obvious outcome of crystal meth use. There are a dozen books even biographies out there that chronicle this exact same story.
Stonewall is the right place for him but obviously he is not ready yet.
My blame is not misplaced Alex, I wrote the "award winning author" before I wrote the comment. I insure you that I'm am no stranger to addictive patterns. The only way to break a mental cycle is to have the person realize what their options are. There are plenty of places in America where this article would be viable, but definitely not here in San Francisco. There is no 'mirage' here. Its what you make it. If someone wants a 'mirage', then I'll give you a location; North Carolina. Go there and see if you can get drug rehab, HIV treatment, PREP, PEP, or any acceptance whatsoever. People do not realize what they have here, and the only thing I can do is to hand out a pamphlet, which was my comment.
poor.ass.millionaire says:
"The blame should be placed on the authors of the article who seem to tout these two as victim gentrification rather than the obvious outcome of crystal meth use. "
I know Kevin, and what I thought was very well. I am also very close friends with his former relationship. And while I do feel I got very close to Kevin. Hell I flew from Philadelphia to San Francisco to DJ his college graduation party as a gift. The rapid demise of his previous relationship and rapid spiral into what he is now after meeting Carlos, whom I never meet, made me think twice about his priorities. He basically started dating another man while still living with another couple who he broke up with and moved on instantly, makes me not have the most remorse for his current situation. He flat out choose this situation to be in. And if they are so broke, why are they out every Sunday at Beer Bust and how is Carlos able to afford and continue using Meth? This very story indicates that he is only days clean with having withdraw. Perhaps that drug money should have been used for other reasons.
I don't know Carlos, so not that concerned with his situation, however I did feel I loved the Kevin that I thought I knew, so I hope them the best. I just think this story portrays the truth slightly incorrectly.
Well the first rule about drug addicts is they lie and you can NEVER trust a thing they say…
lehandro says:
I don't know what fantasy this guy is living in, but there is no way he was a porn actor or gogo dancer. He's a middle-aged HIV+ guy with facial wasting… Pretty sure that's the meth talking….
Mike k says:
Also thinks he is a tough guy. Should go ask people in tougher neighborhoods to walk. Easy to act the tough guy in Dolores Park.
Also if he is a personal trainer why not do that again?
Beneath him to work for a living.
Don't be so sure. Meth makes one age very quickly. http://rough-gods.tumblr.com/image/11151515930
I'm sorry but two meth-heads should not be the face of "gentrification" in SF. There are many families and long-time residents who are being pushed out. As someone who has worked with meth addicts, this i 1000,0000% their own doing. They aren't being pushed out by yuppies, they are on the street because of the toxic effects of their addiction. I hope to god they get clean, but sadly its low probability.
Kevin Smith says:
There are 7 billion people on the planet, if we assume 10 % are gay, does that mean if 700 millon people show up in SF and say we are gay, house us, it's our right, we have to ? Shear lunacy is what this is.
I love the idiots the the HOMES FOR PEOPLE, NOT FOR PROFIT banner… If it were not for profit , there would not be any apartments , condos or home in San Francisco They were ALL built for profit ! Talk about tilting at windmills !
You are right, they have no profit in homes in Cuba and none have been build for 55 years…The old ones they have, have not been maintained and are crumbling
Mission1 says:
SF is still a gay mecca. There is tremendous opportunity and acceptance for gays here. But, gay or not, you still have to be responsible.
Moving to SF to become a porn star–and then getting hooked on meth–shows bad judgement. Its not a question of rents at all. Could these guys afford an apartment even if rents were 1/3 less? I don't think so.
Another irony is that it is the gays who are major forces behind the gentrification of the Mission and elsewhere in the city.
Close to me there are several gay couples who bought million dollar homes and spent a fortune doing them up to the point where they are now worth 2-3 million.
Two jobs, no kids, can go a long way towards making homes unaffordable in SF.
And of course nobody will criticize them for it because of fear of the gay card being played.
What we are really seeing here is a dichotomy between the gays who arrived before 2000 and made serious bank in real estate, and those who arrived afterwards who cannot.
Yes is a crime to fix up and improve your home ! San Francisco needs to reject the politics of the HOMELESS INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX where losers are needed and celebrated to fund the overpaid government money wasting employees. . BRING ON MORE GENTRIFICATION !I
Wagnerian says:
Oh yeah, blame Gay people for gentrification. They ruined San Francisco, cause they are so wealthy!
Listen, there are more poor gay people than there are rich gay people. Studies prove this. Gay people suffer economically because of heterosexist society. Don't even front.
The Castro (gay) is gentrified. The Mission (straight) is not.
The first sign that a neighborhood is gentrifying is when gays start buying up the homes and going all Martha Stewart on them.
MissionBernal says:
Clearly you have never been to the Mission. San Francisco's Mission District has more lesbians than any other part of San Francisco. What, are you only talking about gay men because all gay men are rich? There is so much idiocy in your argument that you should just stop talking before your ignorant stereotyping rhetoric completely defines you as a bigot.
Yes, I was talking about gay men. I thought that was obvious from the context of the gentrification of the Castro.
Except, of course, that that correlation has been widely noted and, in any event, isn't prejudicial at all. If anything it is a compliment.
But if you want to see hate everywhere, no doubt you will find it regardless.
J Mo says:
Mission district is very gentrified, very hipster, and not very straight.
Freedom and responsibility go together, in fact need each other. Irresponsible people cannot be free nor do they deserve to be free.
If the current rate of housing construction can keep up for a sustained number of years, we will see the cost of living and housing start to drop, which will help everyone.
I regret that when I was young and foolish, I supported the "progressive" anti-development agenda thinking that is was a battle between those with love and community versus greedy developers. I've come to realize that if you have love in your heart, and you want to support the communities of SF, you need to support the development of new housing, or you will price people out of homes — which is happening now as a results of such a long period of anti-development policies.
Luckily the city has learned, and is correcting past wrongs, and is building housing as fast as possible — but it is going to take a while still before that translates into cheaper rents. Hang in there everyone!
Yes, I agree, SF is finally getting serious about building new homes for the 200,000 more people who are estimated to be arriving in SF in the next decade or so.
There really is no alternative to investing in progress for the future.
We are now in a drought, not going to have water for any or those homes…..
You are still foolish, if you buy your home, you do not get priced out! It is the ONLY way.
Gosh, if only we built a ton of highrise apartment buildings and massively increased the number of units, ignoring the fact that we don't have the actual infrastructure for it, then we could be jsut like New York City where the rest is dirt cheap…
We do have the infrastructure for it if we build high in the right places,
For instance, the most under-utilized part of the city is the south-east part, from Mission Bay all the way south.
Yet that area has excellent infrastructure with a streetcar, CalTrain, 280 and 101, and so on.
Meanwhile Market Street can take higher densities and we are seeing various mid-sized blocks going up there. But there are still quite a few one-floor structures there which makes little sense.
And then there could be much higher densities by BART stations and there is already a promising project slated for 16th and Mission.
So we can do a lot starting now. Those new workers are coming here whether we build or not.
sfreality says:
Very interesting article and glad it was written. Like myself I could have ended up in this type of situation. I don't see a link to gentrification, the housing issue started in 1979 and continues to today. Maybe the lesson is to make sure you know what you are getting into when you make the move to any major gay mecca like the cost of housing or with freedom to live a certain way or make a choice or to be peer pressured into doing drugs that this can be the result. I wish these guys the best and hope they can stay together and stay in the city.
SF's housing issue didn't start in 1979. It started before then. But what happened in 1979 was that the housing problem was amde much worse, because that was when rent control was introduced.
The effect, as by now we all know, is that landlords started a long process of avoiding long-term rentals, and either going for short-term lets, converting to TIC's and condo's, or even leaving their units empty.
"Long known as a mecca of acceptance for all sexual and gender identities, San Francisco is earning a new reputation as one of the nation's least affordable cities."
These two things are not directly related. San Francisco is still a place where people of all sexual and gender identities can be accepted, regardless of the problems it faces around affordable housing. Those problems face people of all backgrounds and are not directly linked in any way to gender or sexual identity. The two individuals in this article are facing a lot of hurdles. This article, while an interesting story about two guys facing obstacles, has no direction. Is it about drug addiction, homelessness, LGBTI issues, affordable housing, or just a narrative about two guys trying to survive? Perhaps it's all of the above. There is definitely a story here…it's just hard to find it when the article has such a lack of focus.
Yes, I noted earlier in this thread that stereotyping people and identity politics does not help with whatever cause is being espoused.
Moreover, this diffused lack of focus is exactly whay the Occupy movement failed so quickly and spectacularly.
Focus, ML, focus.
Michael Andersen de Andrade says:
Agreed. There are multiple issues addressed in the article, but there is no focus.
nutrisystem says:
This is a depiction of reality, so we can't expect it to have the dramatic arc of a TV show or novel that someone has written. Reality just happens the way it happens.
And why would one think that such a piece is (or should be) espousing any cause? It's not advertising, it's straight documentary.
Calling it a straight documentary would have more credibility if ML devoted equal time to, say, landlords who struggle with low-rent tenants who behave badly. Or focus on newly-arriving tech workers who struggle to find a place to live because all the cheap rentals are hoarded by existing residents.
But ML really doesn't reach out to give that side of the story, choosing to focus instead on the poorest and most deprived folks. and while that makes good copy, and might ring some populist bells, it does vacate any sense of neutrality and balance.
What ML chooses to cover says as much as how they cover it. When will they produce some articles about capitalist and business successes and local residents making good?
It's not all bad in the Mission. Great restaurants, a booming economy, and many of us are making bankable scratch out of RE, tech and stocks.
Let's hear about the good times too!
Agreed. Missionlocal attempts to be a micro blog about the mission, and should cover a wider angle. They do cover some restaurants, etc., but they distinctivly stay away from anything (real or positive) related to,landlords and tech people (unless it's some nonprofit or after school program.) my guess is that they are chicken shit of offending all the anti housing people and biased politicians like campos, etc.
Backbone people! Missionlocal needs to get a backbone.
No,wonder guys like John post a lot here. He's trying to present a perspective that seldom gets attention here. Good for him.
ThatGuy says:
Amen John. The reality is that the Mission is going through some very positive growth. Nothing's ever reported about the local shop guy who's making it big thanks to bigger spending. The restaurant owner who can now take a vacation. There's got a be a love story in this neighborhood too!
Of course, with change comes just that: change. A lot of people hate it but c'est la vie.
Long live the Mission!
ps. Been here for 20 years.
OK, fair enough. There should be some documentaries about the economic winners as well, since there is clearly a shortage of adoring stories about Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, The Twitter Miracle, etc.
I propose a story about the guy who parks his new $200,000 Lamborghini on lower 24th, in front of a store where day laborers buy their groceries.
Who is this douchebag showoff? How did he earn all this money? I would like to know more about this person.
nutrisystem, those names you cited do not live in SF, let alone the Mission.
I'm talking about some balance here. Let's see some articles on those making it as well as those who are not.
How about a "Millionaires of the Mission" series to inspire young people here to create and achieve?
Journalism usually has focus. This is High School English class lesson number one. What's your theme? What message are you trying to impart to the reader. The author could have taken this one article and split it into 10 very interesting articles. Or better yet, a series! Combining it all into one just saturates it and all of the messages end up getting lost.
Thanks Mission Local and Andy Mannix for producing this piece. I find this sort of zoomed-in life study to be a great compliment to the more statistical sort of information we often get, and the antidote to the dismal trend towards sound bite and oversimplification.
FYI. This is not "the modern face of homelessness in San Francisco".
Drug addicts make up a large portion of the homeless population.
Did you read it? One of the 2 men IS a meth addict. This piece is certainly not whitewashing homelessness.
Meh says:
These guys would be homeless in Topeka, KS. Since when are we responsible for housing the willful addicts?
racecar says:
stop spending your money at bi-rite if you are low on funds. seems so obvious, yet…
"meth amphetamine" is one word. this is getting pretty bad.
please proof read your work product before publishing. If you want to be taken seriously, take your work product seriously.
For example, "Quintero is 22 years old – 18 years younger than Bandera." Bandera would be 4 years old.
Seattlite says:
No, if 22 is 18 years younger than x (Bandera's age), then x = 40. Do the math! How good were you at solving story math problems in school?
High praise to Mission Local for this in depth article. Very moving and important to share the real life struggles that many people face, here and throughout the nation.
The only practical assistance I can personally offer is food sharing with Food Not Bombs. We have a weekly sharing on Thursdays at 7 PM at 16th/Mission BART Plaza and on the last Saturday of the month at 5 PM at Haight and Stanyan.
Everyone is welcome. More details here: http://sffnb.org/serving-schedule/.
Eddie, it's good to see someone here offering practical help rather than endlessly whining for policy changes.
While I agree the article is "deep", it isn'ty very broad. why feature only gays? Lots of straight people are homeless to. And women.
Turning the homeless problem into an identity politics issue isn't helpful.
"A young Spanish-speaking man walked into his office at the Housing Rights Committee with fresh bruises all over face, and told Mecca he'd been brutally beaten at one of the shelters by a group of men shouting gay slurs. He was too afraid to go back, and wanted a safe place to stay."
Unless you believe that these are hyperbolae, I would ask you to consider that these might merely a small sampling of what occurs with some frequency within the shelters. I don't know. I'm not homeless.
But if I was, and I were gay, I would DEFINITELY appreciate a shelter for LGBT persons. Hell, I do appreciate that there is one.
Additionally, there are plenty of stories to be found about homelessness in general, and I've seen stories that do focus on homeless women, homeless folks with children – Why not feature only gays? I presume you have read more than this one story. And I encourage you to keep reading.
The point is more that introducing identity politics and stereotyping isn't generally conducive to persuading people to join your cause.
It isn't stereotyping to say that LGBT people are at disproportionately higher risk for homelessness than other populations. It's a factual statement. LGBT people frequently lack the social safety net and family support that keep other populations from becoming homeless in the first place. And the fact that LGBT people are exposed to harassment and abuse when trying to make use of available services is a problem that needs to be addressed. Problems are not addressed unless we hold them up to the light of day.
You mean enabled, so mass populations people who don't even belong here can keep the city a toilet and the HOMELESS INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX funded and employed….
OK I read the entire story. These two guys are seriously on the margins. They can't realistically expect to settle in SF. One guy has a serious drug problem. They can't show steady income. They can probably find a flat in Oakland where the landlord will be less demanding of paperwork. Much cheaper too. It's their best option to try and stabilize their life; otherwise they risk a much worse situation.
They should get settled. The one guy needs to deal with his drug problem pronto. He can probably qualify for some disability benefits too. The other one is doing better, but may get dragged down with his partners problems. I understand they are in love, but they are flirting with disaster by screwing around in SF. They need to get settled into an affordable apartment soon, and a place like Oakland is where they can make it happen. I wish them luck, but they are testing their fate. Rainbows and unicorns are a rare find in SF now.
Yes, they hardly dress and look as if theyw ant a job.
Moral: You can choose to be and look "alternative". but not if you want a job that will enable you to live in the most expensive city in the nation.
Fairly simple choice. conform or move.
C. Russo says:
"Conform or move." You know, like Rosa Parks or Harvey Milk.
The troll gets creepier by the day.
Are you saying that when you go to a job interview, you don't smarten yourself up because that would be "conforming"?
Aren't you the little rebel?
Karlyn Isaac Lotney says:
"conform or move"?
This statement literally made my eyes bug! This is SAN FRANCISCO—the country's long-standing stronghold for *nonconformity*! Why are you even here? You're taking up a space from some Midwestern refugee who really needs it.
I've lived here for join on 29 years and I am just sickened to see what is becoming of my City.
Karlyn, you have a fantasy view of what this city is, or at least was.
We all make compromizes to flourish or survive. Do you get dressed up for a job interview or court appearance? Then you are conforming in just the say way.
Obstinately being a Peter Pan only gets you so far. The world has changed.
I'm very glad that you at least mentioned the point that they are in love. Some people don't realize how powerful an emotion it is. Those are the people who keep telling others who have lost loved ones to "just get over it". Those are the people who have never really been in love. In cases of REAL love, moving on to another partner is as impossible as moving on from gay to straight. Don't be so quick to dicount peoples' relationships. I would rather be in love and homeless than wealthy and all alone.
John- forget tech workers, here are some choice tenants for you. Let us know if you have any vacancies. Thanks bro.
There is money to be made from housing the homeless. The SRO's can do quite well because it can cost $40-$60 a night to stay there if the residents cannot afford the weekly and monthly rates. And the residents get moved on every 30 days so that rent control doesn't kick in.
But of course the costs of running SRO's is very high, made worse by countless city regulations that pile on the costs. The last straw for many was installing sprinkler systems. Many closed then.
THC makes a nice bundle of scratch too, as evidenced by Randy Shaw's 2 million dollar home in the Berkeley Hills.
For all the criticism hinted at in this article about the homeless not getting enough help, the simple fact is that SF gives them lots of help. Perhaps too much, which is why they are here in the first place.
We cannot save everyone, and some of these people really should consider other less expensive options for a place to live.
For LGBT people, a "less expensive option" might be no option at all. Outside of SF it can be difficult to avoid anti-gay bias and hostility, making it hard to get a job, hard to find a place to live. And even if you happen to find work, secure a place to live, then what? LGBT people move to population-dense areas in order to connect with a community. What kind of love life would they have? Without that, without a community, and in the face of hostility, a "less expensive option" is worth nothing.
That was much more true in the 1970's and 1980's than now. And while SF might be more fun for a young gay man than Peoria, should we really be setting our housing pollcies to favor people who are not straight?
Queer Midwesterner says:
"outside of SF, it can be difficult to avoid anti-gay bias"…that's just ridiculous. I grew up in Iowa. I currently live in Ohio. I've been out for half my life. The *only* time anti gay bias has been an issue was the four years I spent going to college in the south. There are certainly places in this country where anti-gay bias remains, but let's not act like San Francisco is the sole oasis in a desert of homophobia. There are plenty of affordable, employable options for queers. Actually, I'd suggest that any city north of I-80 and west of I-25, excepting a certain location on a salty lake, is a safe bet.
San Francisco isn't a good option for most people, gay or straight. The prices are stratospheric and unless you hold certain key skills, the wages can't keep pace with the cost of living. It's actually a terrible choice for anyone who doesn't arrive with connections, specific skills or a trust fund. You set young gay men up to fail when you tell them that it's either San Francisco or grinding intolerance.
Homelessness is a serious problem, no doubt about it, and I'm not blaming these people for the predicaments they're in. It's clear there are mental health issues, issues of social isolation and other health issues that have predisposed these the subjects to their circumstances. Let's not pretend that Homelessness is the result of homophobia though. That's every bit as questionable as saying it's the result of laziness.
dude says:
the corporatization and fascist state that America is now in dictates the complete and utter plutocracy of San Francisco. I went to school in the city i lived there for years. What people fail to mention is the middle class has been almost completely gotten rid of. The rationalization that people who are poor should find alternattive places to live is a load of crap. Some of these people were once able to live a somewhat lucrative life but things happen. There used to be signs on buses in the city that said "homelessness happens" meaning it can happen to anyone. So if anyone thinks they are exempt from homelessness or that they are so rich they are above it all. Look at what happened when the bubble popped in 2008.
I cannot believe you turn everything into an anti-gentrification and anti-eviction article. This is an all time low for you guys. Seriously, shame on you.
Yes, you just sink lower and lower trying to justify "compassion" for Meth addicted losers. There are thousands of them in SF. I bang lots of the cute ones on A4A until they get too sketchy…..
you're a disgusting predatory sociopath. I hope you contract HIV from one of them…
Wow … Says the pot to the kettle….
I wish evil upon people who prey on the weak. This guy clearly does. So you can call me a jerk for that comment but I'm not a predatory sociopath and therefore not a hypocrite.
Achilles says:
I am neither EVIL nor WEAK .. but I do have HIV . And if you are going to serve sirloin to this douchebag try not to serve it on a garbage lid ..
Believe it. If gentrifiers had not been so self-involved, they would have seen this coming.
Seen what coming? An article in ML?
I suspect that the gay white male tech workers who are gentrifying the Mission can live with that.