As San Francisco embarks on elaborate festivities for Super Bowl 50 this week, some in the city are not in a mood to celebrate.
Activists on a range of economic and social issues see the opening of Super Bowl City, a multi-stage event space on the city’s scenic Embarcadero, as a symbol of how San Francisco has lost its way. Known since the 1960s for its left-wing politics and bohemian bent, the city today is in danger of becoming just another playground for the rich, they say.
Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco director of counseling Tommi Avicolli Mecca said he hates seeing San Francisco, which is already facing a US$100 million budget shortfall, spending an estimated US$5 million in taxpayer dollars to host events leading up to Sunday’s Super Bowl.
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“The administration does not care about the poor and working class people, and is only concerned about giving the rich somewhere to have a party,” Avicolli Mecca said, adding that San Francisco rental rates have become unaffordable for many middle class people and that homelessness is rampant.
A spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee did not return calls seeking comment, but his office has said the city would more than make up for its expenditures through hotel and other taxes. While the bowl is to be played in Santa Clara in nearby Silicon Valley, California, the city is to accommodate many visitors and most pre-game events.
San Francisco Chamber of Commerce president and chief executive Bob Linscheid said that affluence and poverty exist uncomfortably side-by-side in San Francisco, but said any blame cast on the Super Bowl is misplaced.
San Francisco is hosting the “most philanthropic Super Bowl in the game’s history,” Linscheid said, adding that the city would more than recover its costs through spending by visitors at local businesses.
The charity arm of the non-profit Super Bowl 50 Host Committee has pledged to donate US$13 million to local charities that benefit Bay Area children and young adults living in low-income communities.
Conflict over the Super Bowl is rooted in dramatic changes in San Francisco’s demographics, partly driven by the super-charged growth of prosperous technology companies in Silicon Valley, including Google, Apple and Facebook. Highly-paid workers willing to pay top dollar for housing have flocked to the city of about 840,000 people in recent years, driving the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment to more than US$4,600, according to Zumper, an online apartment rental company.
The philanthropy promised by Super Bowl planners has not convinced activists that the event is a good fit with San Francisco. They have planned a range of demonstrations, including a march that took place on Saturday to protest the killing by police officers of a young, black stabbing suspect and an upcoming rally by Bloodstained Men and Their Friends, an anti-circumcision group.
A protest on behalf of the homeless is planned for tomorrow near Super Bowl City. The area is ordinarily populated by many homeless San Franciscans, but, in recent days, they have been far less visible on streets near the Embarcadero.
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