Comment That Must Be Posted (because my ego will swallow you all)

you will always be able to "afford" something in the tower. but you will have to know people. my deal is really good only because the owner is a towerite and isn't too concerned about making a big profit. he owns enough other places that he can afford to help a Rogue creator stay in the neighborhood. but i am seeing so amny apartments staying on the market for longer now than i ever have and i know it's because the owners are trying to up the price just because the out of towners (who are buying up properties) are asking Bay area rent. Plus, the owners are trying to play off the "the tower is the only place to live" bullshit.what can we as a community do? i don't know. buy up property and refuse to let it go? i know i can't. petition the owners and play on their sentimentality? won't work. graffiti up the area and make it look like it did in the 70's and 80's? stage guerrilla drive-bys and throw rocks through windows with notes attached that read "rich coastie go home"? chance of jail time.it's funny. i've lived in the tower for a large chunk of my adult life. and it seems like no matter what might happen here, no matter what the national or state housing situation might look like, the prices hold in the tower and then go up.i live on the corner of white trash row and i'm only two blocks from livingstone's. my neighborhood is east of van ness and north of olive. the area is very diverse ethnically and affluently. i enjoy it, but most of the tower (read: affluent homeowners)don't. but they come in and swoop up any lot and home that's on the market. fix it up and put it back on the market. and tout the ethnic diversity of the neighborhood. the tower has become very hypocritical and very money-conscious. a house on van ness near brown is selling for $609,000. beautiful houses there, but how much?! we live in fresno for crying out loud. we have the worst air pollution in the nation. we are a homicide capital. my block just had a small child taken from his front yard tonight and the cops are everywhere. this is a city with a severe identity crisis, almost no awareness of its cultural richness and an inability to acknowledge the fact that it's repressed in every way imaginable.why would anyone want to spend unimaginable amount of money to not even live here? you have to love fresno and the tower. and, to be honest, it's really only natives and converts that see us for what we truly are.