Who Is Responsible for Making Sure San Francisco Is Accessible to Everyone, Not Just the Tech Elite? San Francisco is having an identity crisis. As we wrote about in a front-page article that appeared Monday, the prospering of tech companies has been accompanied by evictions, rising prices and growing resentment. Yet in San Francisco, the boomtown story is a familiar one. It stretches as far back as the Gold Rush and was repeated during the tech bubble of the late 1990s. "This is an extraordinary overnight city that did not develop in a slow, patient way as did the great cities of the agricultural frontier," said Kevin Starr, a professor specializing in California history at the University of Southern California. Because of the Gold Rush, it sprung instantly into a kind of civic or urban maturity. That DNA code has stayed within the city. Still, the latest boom has some differences. For one, this time the billionaire founders of tech companies like Facebook and Twitter are choosing to buy homes in the city, not just in Silicon Valley, as Mr. Starr pointed out. The protests are smaller this time, said Rachel Brahinsky, faculty director of the urban affairs master's program at the University of San Francisco, who has studied development in the city. That is largely because the city already lost many middle-class workers, artists and activists in the first tech boom, and the displacement of Hispanic families in the Mission district was well under way then. But the anger is more widespread this time. "It's not just difficult for artists in the Mission," Ms. Brahinsky said. It's always been difficult to be an artist in the big city. But now it's hard to be a middle-class person with what used to seem like a really good salary in this city. If that is the case, should someone be responsible for making sure San Francisco is an easier place for more people to live? That has been a topic of lively debate in the comments section of the Monday article, "Backlash by the Bay." Many fingers point at the tech industry. "They come to San Francisco," said Peter Cohen, co-director of the San Francisco Council of Community Housing Organizations, referring to workers in the industry, "they're paid a premium for whatever they do, they don't know the impact they're having." "But I think there's a point at which you become complicit and you can't just say, "I'm doing my job and I don't know what's going on,"" he added. Ron Conway, a tech investor and elder statesman in the industry, said, "The tech community understands its responsibility," and cited the jobs and tax revenue the industry generates. Last year, he started a nonprofit group of tech companies with the dual mission of finding solutions to city problems like homelessness and traffic while promoting industry interests like business tax rates and recruiting. Ms. Brahinsky said it was unfair to blame the workers. "They're sort of a new proletariat," she said. They are working tremendous hours. They want to live in San Francisco because it's San Francisco - for the cultural experience that's changing because of their presence. But I think it's a mistake to blame them individually, personally. They are part of this larger structural process that's happening. Mr. Starr said it was the responsibility of politicians and real estate developers to support the middle and working classes. "If you leave it to the free market alone, the system will collapse because you won't be able to run a city," he said.