{"id":11881,"date":"2010-06-15T19:06:43","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T19:06:43","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-06-15T19:10:52","modified_gmt":"2010-06-15T19:10:52","slug":"expensive-rent-a-cheap-attack-on-pelosi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/15\/expensive-rent-a-cheap-attack-on-pelosi\/","title":{"rendered":"Expensive Rent? A Cheap Attack on Pelosi"},"content":{"rendered":"

These days, what passes for “headline news” over at the San Francisco Chronicle is an expose<\/a> about Nancy Pelosi's high rent for her San Francisco District Office. Trying to hit on the “out-of-control government spending” meme, the opening paragraph is: <\/p>\n

\n

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has more than quadrupled the rent on her San Francisco district office, making the $18,736-a-month cost of her new South of Market space the highest in the House, according to a new report. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The article goes on to say that Pelosi's rent is nearly double that of the next highest House member, Jerrold Nadler from Manhattan. Again with the theme: Pelosi's spending is out of control. <\/p>\n

However, the Chronicle neglects to mention that the federal government owns the Federal Building<\/strong><\/em>. So the rent for Pelosi's office goes from one of Uncle Sam's pockets to the other. What's more, the federal government kinda has a monoply on that whole Federal Building business. So if Pelosi wanted to shop around for cheaper rent, she couldn't. <\/p>\n

The better question–and one left untouched by the oh-so-inquisitive Chronicle–is this: Why is the federal government charging $6.09 per square foot per month for an office building in the Mission? The average rent<\/a> for Class A office space in that neighborhood is $3 per square foot per month. Even in SF's most expensive office market, the North Financial District, the average rent for primo space is only $4.50 per square foot per month. If the government charged Pelosi the market rent for her office, it would cost $9,225, less than House members in New York, Los Angeles, and Sacramento pay for their District Offices. <\/p>\n

In the end, this is a story about the federal government gouging itself on rent. Not quite as sexy as trying to show that Nancy Pelosi is renting extravagant digs while the little people suffer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These days, what passes for “headline news” over at the San Francisco Chronicle is an expose<\/a> about Nancy Pelosi's high rent for her San Francisco District Office. Trying to hit on the “out-of-control government spending” meme, the opening paragraph is: <\/p>\n

\n

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has more than quadrupled the rent on her San Francisco district office, making the $18,736-a-month cost of her new South of Market space the highest in the House, according to a new report. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The article goes on to say that Pelosi's rent is nearly double that of the next highest House member, Jerrold Nadler from Manhattan. Again with the theme: Pelosi's spending is out of control. <\/p>\n

However, the Chronicle neglects to mention that the federal government owns the Federal Building<\/strong><\/em>. So the rent for Pelosi's office goes from one of Uncle Sam's pockets to the other. What's more, the federal government kinda has a monoply on that whole Federal Building business. So if Pelosi wanted to shop around for cheaper rent, she couldn't. <\/p>\n

The better question–and one left untouched by the oh-so-inquisitive Chronicle–is this: Why is the federal government charging $6.09 per square foot per month for an office building in the Mission? The average rent<\/a> for Class A office space in that neighborhood is $3 per square foot per month. Even in SF's most expensive office market, the North Financial District, the average rent for primo space is only $4.50 per square foot per month. If the government charged Pelosi the market rent for her office, it would cost $9,225, less than House members in New York, Los Angeles, and Sacramento pay for their District Offices. <\/p>\n

In the end, this is a story about the federal government gouging itself on rent. Not quite as sexy as trying to show that Nancy Pelosi is renting extravagant digs while the little people suffer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[8910],"class_list":["post-11881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-8910"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-35D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}