San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, 61, began his career as an advocate for public housing tenants in San Francisco’s Chinatown. As an elected official, he’s supported tax breaks for tech startups that have alienated some of his former housing advocate supporters, the New York Times reports.
Last month, protesters alarmed at the impact of tech workers moving into San Francisco on home prices and rents blocked shuttle buses taking workers to Google and Facebook and stopped outside of the headquarters of the San Francisco Association of Realtors on their way to a demonstration at City Hall.
Now Lee has proposed an “affordability agenda” that would build 30,000 affordable housing units in the city by 2020. The mayor has brought 30 of the city’s tech executives together to brainstorm how they could help with the city’s affordable housing shortage.
“I do think that tech needs to help me with the affordability agenda,” Lee told the Times. Source: New York Times.