Watch out, Oakland: Uber wants your soul

Two years from now — heck, two days from now — when you’re scrolling through a pile of hot takes about how painful it is to watch Oakland get flattened under the steamroll of gentrification, remember what Oakland’s current mayor, Libby Schaaf, said in an interview with KTVU this week.

Uber, Schaaf said, in reference to the ride-service company that just announced its purchase of a 330,000square-foot building in downtown Oakland, “chose Oakland for its magic — for its soul.”

One of the more curious things about the Bay Area’s local leadership is how rarely they realize their boosterism sounds like threats.

Schaaf wanted her listeners to believe that Uber’s decision to plop its $8.2 billion in venture capital money and its 2,000 to 3,000 staffers in downtown Oakland was flattering to Oakland.

I have no idea why Schaaf thinks that the biggest beneficiary in this deal will be Oakland. Uber’s purchase of the property was private, so the company doesn’t have to do a community benefits package if it doesn’t want to. Plus Oakland’s antiquated tax structure means that the city won’t even capture nearly the revenue it should for a company of Uber’s size and receipts.

Meanwhile, the wave of which Uber was a part has finally made San Francisco’s real estate too expensive for even the companies that started it.

Uber needs space to spread out and a city government still starry-eyed by technology to provide it with the star treatment it believes it deserves.

Uber needs cheaper lodging for its employees, and sadly what’s cheaper for Uber employees will quickly become out of reach for longtime Oakland residents.

A study released this week from rental-listing company Zumper showed that for every $1 billion in venture capital money that enters a city, rents rise by $69 for a one-bedroom apartment and $99 for a two-bedroom apartment. Uber has $8.2 billion in venture capital money.

So Uber is coming for Oakland’s soul, all right.

By coincidence this week, a 78-year-old Argentine who has spent his life considering the state of souls was making his first journey to the United States.

Pope Francis, who just last month called “the unfettered pursuit of money” nothing more than “the dung of the devil,” tried to show some restraint in his remarks to his unfettered-money-pursuing hosts in Congress on Thursday.

Toning down the brimstone for his trip into the lion’s lair, Francis said that “business is a noble vocation” as long as “an essential part of its service (is) to the common good.”

But because Francis is a good Jesuit — meaning that he’s educated enough to know better — he added, “I would encourage you to keep in mind all those people around us who are trapped in a cycle of poverty. They too need to be given hope.”

Which brings me back to Oakland.

A city that may have a relatively high poverty rate (20.5 percent) but not a high rate of what we might call hopelessness.

A city whose most famous residents, from Fred Korematsu to MC Hammer, are remembered locally not for what they owned or didn’t own but for their devotion to the common good.

A city whose residents have always understood that when the status quo isn’t working, the answer has been to look for relief not from government entities but from each other — through organizing, educating, and yes, protesting.

The reality of the common good hasn’t always worked in Oakland. But its residents have always understood the principle. This is the soul that Uber is coming for right now.

As a San Franciscan, having already seen how this story ends — all I can say to Oaklanders is that I am well and truly sorry.

Uber needs space to spread out and a city government still starry-eyed by technology to provide it with the treatment it thinks it deserves.