San Francisco's Housing Crisis Explained 359
An anonymous reader writes "We've heard a few brief accounts recently of the housing situation in San Francisco, and how it's leading to protests, gentrification, and bad blood between long-time residents and the newer tech crowd. It's a complicated issue, and none of the reports so far have really done it justice. Now, TechCrunch has posted a ludicrously long article explaining exactly what's going on, from regulations forbidding Google to move people into Mountain View instead, to the political battle to get more housing built, to the compromises that have already been made. It's a long read, but well-researched and interesting. It concludes: 'The crisis we're seeing is the result of decades of choices, and while the tech industry is a sexy, attention-grabbing target, it cannot shoulder blame for this alone. Unless a new direction emerges, this will keep getting worse until the next economic crash, and then it will re-surface again eight years later. Or it will keep spilling over into Oakland, which is a whole other Pandora's box of gentrification issues. The high housing costs aren't healthy for the city, nor are they healthy for the industry. Both thrive on a constant flow of ideas and people.'"
The bay area used to have affordable housing (Score:2, Informative)
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Just the other day i was thinking about san fransisco...
hah, no i wasn't.
who thinks about san fransisco?, ever since i found out they really don't make rice-a-roni there i lost interest.
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"I'm into the leather scene."
Leather makes a fine recliner, but in the hot months your napping face still sticks to it.
"San Francisco used to be our Mecca. You know how Las Vegas is Disneyland for adults (tm) or something like that? Well, San Francisco is Disney Land for gay men. Or was."
Best quote ever was Like Disneyland on acid.
"Quite frankly, it's gotten too fucking creepy for me -- And I have no problem getting fisted by a midget while a tranny shits on my chest! I have friends that put the go
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s/black/poor/ and you might have a point.
Unfortunately for you, creating ghettos for the benefit of the rich has had a history of being a pretty amazingly bad plan. SF needs to figure out how to deal with this properly and fast (generally, the answer is, build more houses, faster).
Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor white people are not nearly as violent as poor black people. Check the stats yourself. Blacks are about 13-14% of the population but they commit 50% of the murders alone (usually they murder other blacks). Other violent crimes like robbery follow the same pattern. It is popular among blacks to celebrate a culture of violence, drugs and gangs. Until that changes the crimes will continue to be associated with their skin color. But that is a choice BLACKS THEMSELVES are making.
Do you ever question your own beliefs? Even your most sacred cherished ones? DId you ever stop for a moment and think that maybe, just maybe, the endless excuses people like you keep making for the blacks and their culture of violence, the limitless passes you give them, just might be perpetuating the problem and actually causing MORE people to suffer including those very same blacks? Ever wonder why things never change? Lack of necessary change can only indicate one thing - that what you are doing is not working. Time to take a different view.
At one time it was not politically correct to advocate heliocentrism either. But it was still a fact.
Black men can start by seriously trying to parent their children instead of leaving them to be raised by single mothers in broken homes in bad neighborhoods. All blacks can start by dropping this victim idea that nothing is ever their fault. None of the successful blacks I met ever thought like that. None of them thought being a thug was cool. None of them thought studying hard in school was "acting white". None of them thought working hard made somebody "uncle tom" either.
If you think that's coincidence then you simply are not intellectually mature enough to be reasoned with in an adult manner.
Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing (Score:4, Insightful)
Where's the mod option for "harsh truth"?
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The most racist thing I've ever heard, were the liberals whining about black people's "plight", making excuses for the bad behavior being "cultural". It is clearly the most bigoted viewpoint, and it isn't coming from "Tea Baggers", it is coming from the left. And some of the worst, is coming the black/african left. These people are poverty pimps and race baiters who DO NOT WANT a successful Black (see Ben Carson character assassination).
When success is rewarded with hateful words like "Uncle Tom", and "Race
Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor white people are not nearly as violent as poor black people. Check the stats yourself. Blacks are about 13-14% of the population but they commit 50% of the murders alone (usually they murder other blacks).
As much as your racist mindset would like that to support your conclusion. It simply doesn't. Being 13-14% of the population does not imply being an even distribution within the demographics of the population. If all 75% of that 13-14% is poor (not unreasonable), but only 10% of the white people are poor (also not unreasonable), then that would give you pretty much the exact same number of poor people of either race. The result - an unsurprising 50/50 split in crime rates too.
Ever wonder why things never change?
No, because it's clear.
1) They do change. We've gone from blacks, women and gays (amongst many others) being ostracised, to many of them being productive members of society, and people like you being frowned upon. That's great!
2) The change is slow, exactly because of people like you, trying very very hard to make sure that these people get held back as much as you can. Thankfully idiots like you are getting rarer and rarer.
At one time it was not politically correct to advocate heliocentrism either. But it was still a fact.
That's an interesting comparison. You seem to be suggesting that we generally go from poor understanding of the situation, to more enlightened understanding of the situation. That our knowledge of the situation improves. One way that this has improved is that we've realised that the earth is not the centre of the universe, and then even realised that neither is the sun. Another way is that in the past, we thought that blacks, women and gays were somehow inferior, and not just normal human beings who happened to have a different pigmentation, sexual organ, or preference. Thankfully we've advanced past that point now.
Black men can start by seriously trying to parent their children instead of leaving them to be raised by single mothers in broken homes in bad neighbourhoods.
This is almost as laughable as "The poor just need to stop being poor, then they could afford health care."
Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me make it simpler on you.
Rational choice [wikipedia.org] + Social disorganization [wikipedia.org] = Crime [wikipedia.org]
Interestingly enough, when you break one or two of those two options, you're doing enough to break the classic situation which breeds criminal behavior. Reinforce it however, or do nothing, and it will continue to perpetuate itself.
Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing (Score:5, Insightful)
(And as he said, people can change to better. But they have to want to do this and it is not what is happening with the majority.)
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Numbers much?
There are 17 Million poor whites, compared to 10 million blacks in poverty. If poverty was the only indicator, the white demographic would be leading the charge, rather than the fact that just 6% of the American population ( Black Males) responsible for 50% of the murders. Can you stop being so reflexively hurt by facts that you can't approach things to find a real solution? Facts > Your feelings. Deal with it. Once you come to terms with the idea that were not all the same, we can s
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Paul Kersey?
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Poverty and drug culture (rather than race) are more closely linked to crime.
For an example of this look to Eureka, California. 80% White, less than 2% Black, and one of highest crime (both violent and non-violent) in the entire country.
When will they gentrify the Tenderloin? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:When will they gentrify the Tenderloin? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's happening. First, take a look at a map of the Tenderloin [virtualtourist.com], from "Areas to Avoid, San Francisco." Twitter HQ is in that area, between 9th and 10th on Market, and the long-standing "mid-Market area" around there is rapidly being rebuilt. In fact, just about everything south of McAlliister has been gentrified, except for parts of 6th St and a small section around 7th and the north side of Market. Rebuilding is underway along the Van Ness corridor too, and has more or less chopped a block off the Tenderloin on the west side. That's the old "Polk Gulch" area, once a gay rent-boy hangout.
So the SF Tenderloin is about half the size it was a few years ago. Progress continues.
Without reading TFA, but living in the area... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm going to go with 1. Limited resources. There just isn't enough space and more importantly WATER in the area. The water problem isn't just in a drought year like now. It's an on-going concern. 2. Regulations are off the chart. I heard it's $500k just for the paperwork to build in some of these areas. 3. Huge demand, duh. Tech and finance have high salaries, everybody wants to live near work, everybody knows these guys have money so they charge accordingly. Compare and contrast with Oakland and the East Bay in general. You're taking a "million dollar ride" across the bridge or through the tube. Yep, you spend a lot of time commuting but you've got to do what you've got to do. 4. Prop 13. Since there are some limits on taxes, the market accounts for that and charges higher prices accordingly. That explains the whole state being expensive. Since most people must finance their purchase, what was once paid out in taxes is now paid out to bankers in the form of interest. The bankers don't use it to build schools. Some people blame illegal immigrants for poor schools; but the decline began with prop 13, and it's not like there were no illegals before it.
Simple problem, simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to fix the Bay Area housing crisis is to build more fucking housing. Anything else is just shifting the pain around. This doesn't even need to mean high-rises; European cities manage population densities far higher than U.S. cities with buildings that are mostly 5 stories or less. But if people want to build skyscrapers, let them build skyscrapers unless there's a sound engineering reason not to.
Fixing the problem requires that the NIMBYs be crushed and that all non-essential regulations be eliminated. Obviously the buildings need to meet safety standards, but in a crisis situation like this, everything other than that should go. No "historical preservation" crap, no ability of "neighborhood activists" to block development, no convoluted environmental impact statements. Let's face it, the Endangered Species Act was passed because people cared about charismatic megafauna, not snail darters or burrowing owls. As things currently stand it's primarily a tool of NIMBYs.
This problem goes back decades. Up until the 1970s we could build like crazy. Empire State Building? Barely more than 1 year from groundbreaking to completion. Hoover Dam? 5 years. In contrast, the Big Dig took 15 fucking years to finish (1991-2006). And these examples are not atypical of the time periods in question. During the 1970s, we gave troublemakers of all stripes the ability to throw sand in the gears of development in a dozen different ways, and they all started to use it. Enough of this crap.
Re:Simple problem, simple solution (Score:5, Informative)
This map [imgur.com] (which shows the allowed building heights in San Francisco, where yellow is 4 stories. And Mountain View has forbidden Google from building more housing [mv-voice.com].
So as you can see, developers won't build more housing because they aren't being allowed to.
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This map [imgur.com] (which shows the allowed building heights in San Francisco, where yellow is 4 stories.
I can understand that. San Francisco traffic is bad enough already, imagine if it had a million more people, with a lot of them wanting to drive.
Increasing the building height limit without improving the roads would be a gigantic mess. You can't just raise the limit without planning for how the people will get around. And people in San Francisco don't really want to make it easier to move there.
Re:Simple problem, simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Tall buildings don't cause congestion, parking garages do. [streetsblog.net] Solution: allow developers to build as little parking as they feel the market desires.
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Streetsblog is an anti-car greenie propaganda site. When they say they want to share the roads, what they really mean is they want the private automobile gone.
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What would a truly level playing field for transportation look like to you? Would developers be forced, as they usually are today, to build more than the fiscally optimal amount of parking? ("Fiscally optimal" meaning the amount where the marginal cost of building another parking space (MC) equals the marginal revenue from building it (MR).)
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So instead of walking across their own parking lot Google has to bus them in from the surrounding community. This is the solution to the traffic problem?
Or, you know, they could build offices in cities with free capacity.
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Anybody can still build in mountain view or wherever.
No they can't.
FTFA:
Even more mind-bogglingly, Mountain View is discussing new office development that would bring as many as 42,550 office workers to the city. But the city’s zoning plan only allows for a maximum of 7,000 new homes by 2030.
do you even read, brah?
Re:Simple problem, simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
This doesn't even need to mean high-rises; European cities manage population densities far higher than U.S. cities with buildings that are mostly 5 stories or less.
I live in Europe and you might find our way of managing population density a bit, well, shall we say unamerican?
In Amsterdam, the local municipality decides how much rent you're allowed to charge in flats. It goes by a points system. Say a shower will be one point, while a bathtub will be 5. Add up all the points and you determine whether you are in a luxury (free market) apartment or social housing.
If you're luxury housing, you can charge whatever the market will bear, up to a point based on the luxury apartment formula.
If you're social housing, only social housing tenants may live in the apartment. Social housing rents are subsidized and they are VERY low. Like say $400 for an apartment in city center. The social housing buildings are owned by non-profits whose sole purpose is to provide social housing.
Now you might think this is similar to the US, but here's where it gets a little different than the US (and a bit unamerican).
Social housing income thresholds are very high, something like the equivalent of $100k a year in the US. Yup, that's right, social housing is designed not just for the poor but the middle class. You might miss having a bathtub, but you won't mind when you live in the city center and don't have to pay ridiculous rent. Of course, to get in social housing you'll need to apply and wait a few years for a vacancy to open up. You can apply once you're 18, I suggest doing as the dutch do, applying once you go off to University. Then, by the time you look for a job, you'll already have a slot. Or you might find an emergency. For instance, if you were just divorced and living in your ex's house maybe you have a reason for priority.
Of course maybe you don't want to pick the city you live in when you're in college, or you made a bad choice. You still have options. "Luxury" apartment rents are capped based on a certain formula. You can get a much higher rent from a luxury apartment, but you'll never be able to charge above a certain rate. So even though you might pay a lot of rent, you won't pay as much as in America. (My 2 bedroom "luxury apartment" rent in Amsterdam, walking distance to city center, is less than the rent on my 1 bedroom apartment was when I lived in Boston -- and I could only afford to live in a suburb, Malden, almost at the end of the orange line).
And, if you were smart and applied when you were 18, you may be able to rent out your "social housing" apartment, and rent a new apartment in your new city with the money. It's technically illegal, but as any economist will tell you, when you apply artificial constraints to supply or price a booming black market is sure to follow.
And "Living Fraud" is a big crime here and there's actually police who check to see if you're following the laws.
Additionally, because of the artificial constraints on rent you can forget about property values reflecting what you could get without these controls. After all, who will pay $1 million for an apartment when you can rent an apartment for $400 a month?
Still want to import European housing policies to the good old USA? The good news is you won't need to hire new police officers you can just maybe reassign DEA agents when you get a more sensible drug policy.
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Los Angelean here: I make pretty good money as a software engineer and I have a shower and 350 beautiful square feet. I don't pay a huge amount, comparatively speaking, but that's because I'd rather spend my money servicing my student loans and other debts and making sure my retirement is being taken care of. The "luxury" apartments don't appeal to me all that much.. I mean, they're nice, but not worth spending half or greater my income on it (I mean, what's the point of making a lot of money if you're jus
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This is a similar reason why I would never live in NYC (and think twice about Boston). Housing just costs too damned much. And worse, if housing costs a lot all the other living expenses cost more. Groceries charge more because they pay higher rent, ditto for any other basic needs..
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There is is lots of affordable housing for middle class people all around the country.
What you want is cheap housing for everybody in expensive neighborhoods, and that's logically impossible.
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Price controls don't do anything to increase the amount of available housing. It just means that people cannot find housing at all, and that the buildings aren't updated.
Eliminating Prop 13, and making the market more liquid and reasonable would help a bit..
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Re:Simple problem, simple solution (Score:5, Informative)
Rent control is the CAUSE of housing shortages. Notice that all American cities with perpetual housing shortages have rent control, and heinous building regulations. What developer in their right mind would build something in this environment? You never hear about Chicago having citywide housing shortages. Why? Because there's no rent control. And rents are a hell of a lot cheaper than "market rent" in cities with a lot of rent controlled apartments.
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NIMBY is an unavoidable phenomena in advanced economy. With enforcement of environment protection laws, you can be sure of hazard over development and pollution, like in China for up to now. Then once it became a significant problem, people would rise up and complaint and started creating/enforcing environment laws -- China is now at this stage. Then once there are sufficient laws, some people will then start abusing the laws to protect their own interest, thus NIMBY -- even China now has had quite many lar
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High densities in Europe are reached by going quite a bit higher than the 4 stories you are allowed to go in most of San Francisco. Most of Madrid, for instance, goes to 10-15. 5 story areas are extremely expensive old buildings where any condo goes for well over a million dollars.
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High densities and affordability in Europe are also achieved by keeping apartments and condos much smaller than in the US.
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com... [shrinkthatfootprint.com]
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Yup. I imagine lots of people would love to work for Google but are turned off by the fact that they tend to want people to come into the office, and they put all their offices in the middle of major urban areas. If I have a need to drive into work at all it only takes me 25min in the middle of rush hour, or 15-20min otherwise. I can also afford a modest house.
Sure, working at Google would be more fun, but it just doesn't seem to be worth the hassle.
Re:Simple problem, simple solution (Score:4, Informative)
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It's more than just that. The United States post-war economic expansion was coming to an end. The rest of the world was starting to catch up, and the U.S was no longer the center of the universe. The steady decline of the American middle class is more because of this than anything else.
Set up shop in Morgan Hill or Gilroy (Score:2)
Gentrification? (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't gentrification. This is super rich people pushing out very rich people, as compared to everybody else in the country.
If you're paying more than $1,500/month rent to live in a one bedroom apartment anywhere in the US, you're very rich. If you're paying $2,500/month to live in a one bedroom apartment anywhere in the US, you're super rich. The last time any poor people lived in San Francisco was the 1960's.
The rest of the US population not living in San Francisco doesn't have very much sympathy for you, except maybe the unfortunate souls living in Boston or New York.
I use the terms very rich and super rich, but feel free to substitute "less affluent upper middle class" and "more affluent upper middle class," if it makes you feel any better.
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I'm not sure that getting a mortgage is all that hard. Well, assuming you're not trying to spend more than 1/3rd of your income on debt, and that you're not trying to finance more than 100% of what your home is likely worth. If your housing prices never returned to ~2003 levels after the crash then I could see why a bank wouldn't want to let you borrow 105% of that with a payment that requires 2/3rds of your income.
The last time I refinanced I didn't find the process particularly difficult. Sure, it requ
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A cheap car (like a Toyota Corolla or Honda Fit) costs about $5000+/year to own. If you get rid of that car and live in a place where you don't need one (i.e. San Francisco) you've got about $400 extra per month that you can spend on rent. So you don't have to be rich to spend $1900/month, which is plenty if you want to share a 2 bedroom apartment with someone in SF.
http://consumerreports.org/cro... [consumerreports.org]
It's not for everyone but obviously a lot of people like it enough to do just that.
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If you're paying more than $1,500/month rent to live in a one bedroom apartment anywhere in the US, you're very rich.
A decade or so ago, I knew a number of graduate students living in Boston (mostly Cambridge) who were paying well over $1000/month for one-bedroom apartments -- while living on graduate stipends of something like $20k per year. Definitely a few paying $1200 or $1250. (Maybe they made $25k.) A decade later, I assume rents may have risen by a couple hundred dollars in places, so it gets to your range.
Anyhow, these people were NOT "very rich" or even "rich." They were often struggling. BUT - If you were
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Not really. I know a bunch of people who live in $2500/month apartments, that they have to share with 5 other people so they can afford it. Seriously, not even kidding. Girl I was dating paid $400/month to sleep on a couch in the living room with 3 other people, with 4 other people splitting the 2 bedrooms. I have friends in SFO who do similar. Just because the rent's $1500/month or $2500/month, don't assume circumstances...
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I'll use Thomas Sowell's example: People like to live by water, on a shore.
There is only X shoreline.
There are two ways to apportion that shoreline.
1) money: let people buy and sell it, or
2) you can divide it up, and give a piece to everyone; of course, this results in uselessly small pieces (and you have to forbid transfers or you end up with #1), complications with inheritance (is it heritable? How do you deal with death? Marriage?)
The problem with #1 is that as the resource is finite, the prices will b
Explain to me why the city can't just be full? (Score:2)
I know absolutely nothing about these things; so I'm actually asking here. Why does the city, I'm not saying every city, but I am saying any city, need to support infinite growth? There's water, there're hills, maybe that's as many people as can fit. Period. You're welcome to live anywhere you like where there's room. I'm sorry, there's no more room here at the inn. Find another.
I've zero interest in my city becoming a huge metropolitan core. I left the one that I was in to find fresh air, less traff
Time for some new housing ideas! (Score:2)
Instead of building a giant floating barge as a sales tool, perhaps Google should have think about building a giant floating apartment buildings out in the Pacific for their employees.
The cost per square foot would probably be lower for their employees than a San Francisco apartment, and they wouldn't have to put up with San Francisco's ridiculous tax laws and building regulations. Besides, the commute to Mountain View by boat would beat taking a bus on the 101!
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They Bay Area is one of the few economically active places in the USA, that's why housing is expensive there.
If you want cheap housing, go to an economically dying area, like Detroit; or a place with no regulations such that chemicals leak into your house or explode in your face, like Texas.
Re:BS (Score:5, Interesting)
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I was talking with a friend(another ex-Pittsburgher) and he reminded me that both Apple and Google have recently opened relatively large campuses in Pittsburgh.
150 employees in an old cookie factory for Google, and 100 employees for Apple retail is hardly "relatively large"...
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Yes, it is quite large, in relative terms. The city of Pittsburgh is only about 30,000 people, meaning the % of the population in those 2 centers alone accounts for roughly 1% of the population.
Off by a factor of over 10; as of 2012: population of 306,211. That's 0.08%, not 1%.
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... or toxic waste from the oil industry?
Houston, Dallas, Austin (Score:2, Insightful)
All with very healthy economy and housing prices are still affordable. Everywhere you look there are new construction popping up all over the place. And this boom in Texas should very least last a decade more with newly discovered oil in West Texas. I get the sense living in one of the top 3 cities in Texas is comparable to hustle and bustle of New York city during the early parts of last century.
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They Bay Area is one of the few economically active places in the USA, that's why housing is expensive there.
If you want cheap housing, go to an economically dying area, like Detroit; or a place with no regulations such that chemicals leak into your house or explode in your face, like Texas.
Surely San Bruno would be more to one's liking...
Stated like someone who has never lived under an airport noise footprint. There's a reason that you see all the boarded up houses right under the flight path in all the movies... no one actually wants to live there.
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A couple decades back a blue collar worker could buy a house on 3 years salary. Can you do that today?
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A couple decades back, house prices and lot sizes were a lot smaller.
Re:BS (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple decades back, people were living in the exact same houses we're living in today.
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A couple decades back the impact of Prop 13 wasn't yet horribly visible.
Worse, thanks to Prop 13, corporations pay far far less, and thus are less likely to give up property for sale.
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In Texas, yes. [forbes.com]
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I could buy the house I currently own in less than two years. What's your point again?
Re:BS (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple decades back a blue collar worker could buy a house on 3 years salary. Can you do that today?
A couple of decades back people actually saved their money. I remember a time when almost no home had more than one TV (some not even that), Cable was considered a luxury (if available), not a necessity. You made a down payment on a car and kept it for years after it was paid off. Now it's more popular to lease a new car every three years or so. Even though most cars will last for well over 100K miles, if not 200K miles. If you wanted a house, you didn't buy new cloths every season with some designers name plastered on your ass and everything else you owned. You can actually survive without the latest iPhone. But most households have one for each person. That shit adds up fast. You also didn't buy things on credit. If you didn't have the cash, you saved for it. People who rent are probably two years salary in debt these days.
So yes, you can afford a home as a blue collar worker. But it has to be important to you. At least more important than much of the frivolous shit that most of us seem to think is a necessity today. I remember, years ago, refusing to get cable because I thought $5/ month was insane. I'm paying more than 20 times that for satellite now. And cable is even more expensive. I've been wanting to cut it off for years because there's very little worth watching, and I almost never turn on the TV. But my wife and daughter seem to think we must have it.
Why save? (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, a couple decades ago you could go to a bank an open an account where the rates were at least competitive with inflation. These days, the typical interest rate is well under 1% with the Fed purposefully keeping inflation above 2% on the belief that inflation is good. Well, inflation isn't good, having inflationary expectations discourages people from saving money. Granted, you don't want long stretches of deflation either, but we're getting exactly what should have been predicted.
What's more, comp
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Seriously, a couple decades ago you could go to a bank an open an account where the rates were at least competitive with inflation. These days, the typical interest rate is well under 1% with the Fed purposefully keeping inflation above 2% on the belief that inflation is good.
That also keeps mortgage interest rate extremely low. My first mortgage, several decades ago, was 8.5%, which was really good at the time. We moved last year and I think it's under 3.5% now. From 1975 to 1990 the average fixed rate 30 year mortgage barely dipped below 10% and was as high as 18%.
Well, inflation isn't good, having inflationary expectations discourages people from saving money. Granted, you don't want long stretches of deflation either, but we're getting exactly what should have been predicted.
Inflation in the 1970's is part of why the mortgage rates hit almost 20% in the late 70's through the early 80's.
What's more, companies don't pay people based upon their value to the company these days, they pay the bare minimum they can get away with in most cases. Sure there are exceptions, but those exceptions have a harder time staying in business.
That's always been the case. The difference is that there is no loyalty to anything anymore. Employees
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But my wife and daughter seem to think we must have it.
So you're not really the man of the house. You are pussywhipped in the case of your wife and a people-pleaser in the case of your daughter. Gotcha.
No. I just know what's worth making an issue about and what's not. But at least I'm man enough to not post as an AC.
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Irrelevant.
What was interest rates back then?
The relevant number is the % of income spent on paying interest on your mortgage.
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If this was true I could have a 100 year mortgage with really low % of income and end up dying and never owning the damned house in the first place.
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Well, except that it is very, very hard to start buying real estate in the Bay Area on a junior engineer's salary. In my area, I would not want to live in most of the neighborhoods where you can get something for $800K. Your well-founded admonitions don't align with most peoples' reality.
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If you can't afford to live in the Bay Area, then don't. You can always find a good place much cheaper if you just expand your scope a bit. So you may have to add 45 minutes to your commute everyday. The idea is to build your wealth over time and not demand instant gratification.
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Then move to the east bay. You can find decent family housing with good schools in Castro Valley for under 600k.
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I, personally, have no need to move, having gotten in some time back and now have a house that has gone *up* in value over $800K over the past few years. The housing prices are a problem because it makes it difficult to hire people, because the commute from Castro Valley and other points East is... ummm... unpleasant. Your attitude seems rather parochial and insenstitive, and doesn't really move the ball forward in either clarifying the problem or suggesting a solution.
Banned From Mountain View? (Score:2)
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You're right, I am happier in Mountain View. I am "free to accumulate", meaning that instead of going broke paying for an overpriced, rundown condo in SF, I can live in a slightly less overpriced, rundown condo in MV and put away at least a little money for retirement. If I forget to take off my employee badge when leaving work, I won't get attacked by angry mobs. And both the weather and the people are actually nicer than in SF.
As a long time SF resident, I haven't regretted my move down to MV.
Re:BS (Score:5, Informative)
Because, as TFA points out, the problems San Francisco has are entirely self-inflicted. It's amusing to see karma on such a large scale.
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Almost all problems experienced by groups of humans are self-inflicted.
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It's an interesting thought... Usually new people move-in, change the demographics, and out-vote the old Luddites. But if the Luddites start-off by demanding building restrictions before others can move-in, then those who would vote against them simply aren't ever allowed to move-in, so they don't ever get a vote.
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But if the Luddites start-off by demanding building restrictions before others can move-in
That's apparently not how it's working out, though. Those moving in have money, and it costs $500,000 to build a single 800 square foot unit. Guess who gets the unit?
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But so were San-Francisco _advantages_. Yes, I read TFA. And simply turning everything over to an invisible middle finger of market will only make it all worse.
Actually, studies comparing areas with rent control to areas without, controlling for other factors, indicate that rent controls cause lower housing supplies and higher rents. The market actually does a pretty good job -- certainly far better than planning commissions achieve.
Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a great place to live if you're rich, and virtually impossible to live if you're middle class or poor.
Considering that California is the most populous state in the nation, I think you might be exaggerating things just a bit. Clearly, lots of people live here, and not all of them are rich. Me, for instance.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
California is only gaining population due to immigration from outside the US. You need to figure that those immigrants are lower educated, lower income people who are a net-drain on the system (for the first generation, not for the second+).
Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a huge amount of land in California the middle class can afford: the Central Valley. The air is so bad you are almost guaranteed to experience asthma or allergies, but you can swing it on as low as 30k per year in my opinion. Those kids living in LA, SF, SD who make 30k per year? They basically live in squalor(for America). They value the coolness of those cities so much they are willing to live 4 to a 2-bedroom, or get their own place and live paycheck to paycheck, or live with their folks.
Middle class can't afford San Francisco. A cheap house there is 800k. It isn't a question of sacrificing on a cell phone plan. The values are stratospherically out of reach for middle class earners.
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That's not the only affordable area, by far. Half the state is desert, starting from just outside the L.A. Basin, and rent is extremely cheap there. The freeways make it possible to commute from bedroom communities there to large cities every day. And the air quality out there is great.
Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention, a lot of those "rich areas" were "cheap areas" when those roots were laid down. Which is kinda what the people in SFO are bitching about: "It was cheap and perfectly fine before the .coms showed up. Now everyone wants to live in the cool part of town, and I'm part of the reason it's the cool part of town, but because they make so much money, they can price me out of my own home. So I move, but where? My job is down the street and I can't afford to live in the neighborhood, so where to? Oakland? HA!" And there's plenty of people who would say "tough titties, life's a bitch" to that. It's even worse when you've got someone living on fixed income and suddenly finds themselves having to move at age 80. Can you imagine apartment hunting at that age? I certainly can't.
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I could pack up and move to Hemet (fucking) CA if the only consideration was cost of living. But I also don't want to drive 3 hours to get to work and there's certainly no work in Hemet. With modern "corporate" america killing telecommutes (because it makes the managers nervous that you might be fucking off on the internet) but have no qualms about outsourcing that same work to some guy around the globe, who may or may not be fucking off on the internet or even qualified for the job, but he costs a third
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THE reason California's personal income taxes are so high is that nothing can be collected through property taxes. Property taxes in California are in a perverse way the same as rent control. The property tax pricing has gotten so far out of whack due to Prop 13 formulas that the only way the state can get any revenue is on personal income tax. Of course where people always own home, personal income tax is cyclical so a lot of the boom - bust cycle plays out in California's budgets because the state is leve
Re:As long as the Republicans... (Score:4, Insightful)
blink... blink... wow. there really are people in the world who think like this?
Supply and Demand my friend. If you want rent prices to go down, you need to flood the market with more housing, not less. Only an idiot would think that limiting the increase of available houses while the population is growing would reduce the cost of said houses. But then I notice that you post as AC and I am probably poking a troll.
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It's not quite so simple as supply and demand, however. The problem is that if you flood the market with more housing given the current price levels and demand, prices would take a LONG time to head back down once the demand is met (and that's assuming that the demand is ever met at all). Simply put, there's just so much existing scarcity that even massive amounts of new development would only serve to blunt the increasing trend in housing cost, rather than actually hoping to bring it down.
That's not to s
Re:As long as the Republicans... (Score:4, Informative)
Right, all those San Francisco Republicans... Did you eat paint chips as a kid?
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Just set up an Omni Consumer Products division and take over Detroit.