Some Root For a Tech Comeuppance In San Francisco 729
HughPickens.com writes: David Streitfeld writes in the NYT that cities do not usually cheer the downfall or even the diminishment of the hometown industry, but the relationship between San Francisco and the tech community has grown increasingly tense as the consequences for people who do not make their living from technology become increasingly unpleasant. "It's practically a ubiquitous sentiment here: People would like a little of the air to come out of the tech economy," says Aaron Peskin. "They're like people in a heat wave waiting for the monsoon." Signs of distress are plentiful. The Fraternite Notre Dame's soup kitchen was facing eviction after a rent increase of nearly 60 percent. Two eviction-defense groups were evicted in favor of a start-up that intended to lease the space to other start-ups. The real estate site Redfin published a widely read blog post that said the number of teachers in San Francisco who could afford a house was exactly zero. "All the renters I know are living in fear," says Derrick Tynan-Connolly. "If your landlord dies, if your landlord sells the building, if you get evicted under the Ellis Act" — a controversial law that allows landlords to reclaim a building by taking it off the rental market — "and you have to move, you're gone. There's no way you can afford to stay in San Francisco."
Why stay? (Score:4, Insightful)
I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area before and it's a real shithole (as is most of California). Why stay when there are so many better places to live?
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Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
No right to $500 rent in SF (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: No right to $500 rent in SF (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that SF has a long history of pretending that economics don't apply to its housing, based on the little I've read about it.
Bingo. This is just basic supply and demand economics. San Francisco restricts the supply of rental housing. 95% of all building permit requests were denied last year. Rent control laws discourage landlords from entering the market. Then when the inevitable shortage occurs, they blame tech.
Re: No right to $500 rent in SF (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that even if you make $100,000 a year you can barely afford a 1bd/1ba living solo.
Most (all) grade school, kindergarten, high school teachers, and even a good number of college professors do not make $100,000 a year. If you live in the city and your teachers can't afford to live here, the policemen, the firemen, the garbagemen, the street cleaner truck drivers, delivery men, chefs, cooks, waiters.... all the people that make the city WORK cannot afford to live here, how is the city going to function? The Golden Gate and Bay Bridges can only carry a finite number of people per day, especially at peak rush hour, Caltrain is at peak capacity as are the highways leading in to the city from the south. The city is surrounded on three sides by water and all available land is full or reserved for precious little parkland.
But you can't raise a family in a city without teachers.
Re: No right to $500 rent in SF (Score:4, Interesting)
Seattle is determined "not to be San Francisco", as the mayor said. Amazon is building 3 new skyscrapers downtown - rumor is approval for these was blocked until 3 new skyscrapers for housing could also be approved. Rents are high here, but not crazy-SF-high. Fully using the land is the difference, just as you point out. Forcing new housing to be built alongside new office space is also a good idea (not really fighting the free market, just making the timing work out well for everyone). Preventing new housing from being built is a particular level of crazy.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Interesting)
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Plenty of affordable accommodation outside San Francisco that you can move to if you can't afford to live within San Francisco itself.
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The "right to life" only means that other people can't kill you without cause. It doesn't mean that other people have to provide you with an apartment, let alone an apartment in one of the most expensive and desirable cities in the US.
Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Funny)
SJW
DRINK!
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SJW
DRINK!
Are you trying to kill off the Slashdot readership? That drinking game is a one way trip to alcohol poisoning.
Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Informative)
The translation of SJW is: "Anyone who doesn't agree with me".
''
Actually I thought that was the SJW's definition of a bigot, racist, etc.
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Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much, yeah. Don't like it? Buy. Can't afford to buy? Move. Really that simple.
Well, that'll do wonders for a stable society.
Artificial attempts to drive down the price of scarce goods have quite a colorful history. Summary: They always have exactly the opposite effect intended, effectively making those goods unavailable at any price except on the black market at 10-100x their "natural" price.
Re:You forget the Soviet option (Score:4, Insightful)
"Murder the fiscally responsible", love it! And to think some people call SJWs a bit over-the-top!
But waitasec - Doesn't your fear of guns override your desire to take away the incentives for people to bother earning their living?
Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Insightful)
I certainly have moved away from places I liked and where my friends lived because the area got too expensive and I couldn't afford it anymore. It's basic, responsible financial decision making. I have no tolerance for people who whine and complain about it.
Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Insightful)
reduce the kinds of societal tensions that can really be disruptive and destructive to people's lives
All sorts of disruptive and destructive things are tolerated every day; hundreds of H1-Bs displace citizens from their livelyhoods, small midwest communities are expected to absorb Syrian immigrants into their schools and hospitals without complaint, property owners in border states live in fear of smugglers unimpeded handcuffed border patrol... Funny how we only indulge this "societal tension" language when it's comfy SF gentry being disrupted. In all other cases it's `racism' and/or `intolerance.'
Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Interesting)
One problem with advocating for various "rights" is that recognizing "rights" doesn't guarantee a fair or equitable outcome. As long as the conversation remains rooted in trying to declare various "rights" for everyone, you will probably end up with a system in which no completely fair or equitable outcome can be achieved.
By way of example: 20 years ago I moved out of the southern California area to another part of the country so that I could afford to buy a house in a neighborhood in which I could raise a family. I ended up buying a lot in a very quiet, fairly secluded area, then had a house built. I started a family, and life in our quiet secluded neighborhood was good until about 5 years ago when my backyard neighbor sold his house to an individual who turned it into a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic. We asked how a business could be introduced to a residential neighborhood, and we were told he had the right to do so because it was a "group home," and the people he was treating had a right to live someplace. Ok, we shrugged and got on with our lives, although the noise from this property was much greater than when a family lived there. Then he bought another house that adjoined both our property and his original property, and added on to his business. Again, he "had the right" because he was helping people who needed help. When he bought the third house (that bordered our property) we decided to move. Not because of the "drug and alcohol" aspect, but because our neighborhood was no longer a neighborhood - we had upwards of 45 people a day driving in and out of our small street, 3 shifts of workers a day, all strangers. We were becoming surrounded by a very profitable business that acts nothing like a "home", which filled our small neighborhood with strangers.
We had "rights", but the people who were being treated also had "rights" and the guy running the business had "rights". All well intended, I'm sure, but the outcome was not fair or equitable, at least as far as we are concerned. Our relocation was traumatic because it wasn't anything we had been prepared for and came at a very inconvenient time for our children's schooling. Balancing various needs resulted in a year-long split between two halves of my family living quite some distance apart, and has seriously hosed-up my completing an advanced degree, but we are now in what we believe to be a much better living situation.
San Francisco and other communities that become overwhelmed by unbalanced economic forces will probably not solve their problems by focusing on "rights." The problems also won't be solved by pointing the finger at people of different political persuasions, either. The solutions will not come quickly, and individuals will need to make decisions for themselves with respect to how long they want to fight versus get on with their lives. And the outcomes won't be "fair and equitable" to everyone. That's life.
Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Funny)
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California passed Prop 13 in 1978 to address this very issue. This proposition caused all property assessments to be reset to their 1975 values. It also limits increasing of assessments to not more than 2% a year. Property can be reassessed when ownership changes or if the property is improved (for example, adding a bedroom and bath results in the assessment being increased by the current value of the two new rooms). Various other laws have been passed over the years that extend Prop 13's reach (for example
Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Strawman. No one made it illegal to be a teacher (or fireman or whatever), and no one made anyone take that job either. If it's too expensive to live in SF as a teacher or fireman, then teachers and firemen start to disappear. If they are important, then their local salaries will get raised until they stop disappearing. That's how economics works.
Now clearly this causes lots of undesirable dislocations. But the fundamental problem here, as far as I can tell, is that SF's government appears to have discouraged building new housing, and been depending on mechanisms like rent controls which have KNOWN serious problems. You can pretend economics doesn't matter, but it does, and it causes lots of easily predictable effects. The SF city government appears to have let a problem fester, with (again) predictable consequences. It is entirely appropriate to be sympathetic to the many people harmed by the SF government's bad policies. Yes, they need help, and I think they SHOULD get help. But part of that help needs to be acknowledging that ignoring economics doesn't work.
Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Insightful)
Got it. "Arts" people have rights other people don't have. Thanks for letting us know.
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yeah fine. arts people don't have special rights.
but we get driven out, find some shithole that no one else would even think of living in. fix it
up, build a community, then the rich assholes come in, drive us out, and we're left
trying to find another shithole to convert. when you're a 50 yr old artist whose had
an established place for 30 years, thats pretty sad.
the problem is in the bay area is that we ran out of raw material to process. its all
expensive, except west oakland which is still pretty gangbanger
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We should care about your problems? Why? Do you care about ours?
Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Interesting)
the rich assholes come in, drive us out, and we're left trying to find another shithole to convert.
Did you buy into the underdeveloped area when prices were low? Did your peers cash out as soon as the area became more desirable? If the hipster art community which made a crappy area into a desirable one owns the buildings, how are they driven out?
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You never "own" property. Try not paying taxes on it and see. It's like "owning" a movie on DVD.
A lot of people "owned" property free and clear, but then someone came in, gentrified the neighborhood, property valuations skyrocketed, and the "owners" couldn't afford the higher taxes.
Some take the money and run. Some have a value system based on other things than money.
Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Informative)
Interestingly, what you described couldn't happen in California since 1978 because there is a state law that limits property tax rate amounts and increases, and also only allows reevaluation of the property value when the property is transferred.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Informative)
The old gentry doesn't like the new gentry.
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While it is tough....do we always have to cater to the lowest common denominator?
Are you guaranteed to be able to live in one place all or most of your life?
With progress comes gentrification...shit happens, move on with your life
Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem here is that some of the problem is actually caused by the same kind of thinking expressed here. People think they have a "Right" to tell others what they can and cannot do. They put in rent controls, and when people finally get to the point where it doesn't make sense for the owners to keep renting, and sell, change occupation, move on, leaving NO place for renters people are somehow offended.
The issue is that in a free market, it moves with efficiencies, with less than free markets, it still moves, but with less efficiencies. To the point that people get used to inefficient markets and expect them to last forever, which is impossible. It is like basic economics aren't understood.
Guess what? Rent Controls will always fail, eventually. Just like all forms of socialism based economics. Just because it works for a short period doesn't mean it works.
Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quality of Life, in Bay Area?
Not my quality of life. Yeah, you're idea and my idea aren't even close to the same. I would rather have a back yard my kids could play in than a six figure salary that went to keeping up with the Jones'
I've seen the Families that raised their kids in the Bay Area, they all complain about the same things they chase. They complain about "Wall Street" while working for the same companies that fuel the speculation that made the bubbles that caused the irreparable harm to our economy. They'll vote for Bernie, and more "Big Government" to fight the "Big Government Crone Capitalism" not realizing that Big Government is actually the problem.
These are the people who vote for "High Speed Rail", but would never ride it, because they are too good for it.
These are the people who vote for Rent Control, not realizing it creates the slums they have to live in because they can't afford to live anywhere else. And call it "Quality of Life".
Meanwhile I live in a nice yard, have a nice veggie garden in my back yard, 50+ rose plants to brighten my wife's day and an eight minute commute. No, I don't have six figure income I'll take my Quality of Life, thank you very much.
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what happens when you get fired?
I get another job? I work for myself? I get into a different industry? (all things I've done before).
My training (College degree) is in Finance (Financial planning). I work in IT because when I graduated, there were 200,000 newly unemployed financial people in the market. People who aren't flexible will always have problems. I've been a lifeguard, restaurant worker, pool care guy, car salesman, IT worker and financial adviser.
The free market is terrifying,
Freedom is terrifying. It is messy. I still prefer it over security of slavery. W
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I guess it depends on what your quality of life metrics ARE...and how you measure each of the variables.
I"m guessing they are different than mine, and both of ours are different from others spread across the US.
That's the nice thing about most states' rights in the US, if you don't like how it is done in one place, you are free to move
Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Insightful)
People who have made their lives in San Francisco, especially in the arts, have a right to stay where they are
And that sentiment, right there, is what's wrong with this country. A whiny sense of entitlement that makes claim to something scarce simply because they want it. This is especially amusing (or would be, if these people didn't vote) in its predictableness, coming from the usual lefty/artist/aging-or-rebooted-hippie sector. Ask those same breathless progressives if they think that, say, the people in a Kentucky coal mining town have a "right" to things staying exactly as they are.
Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Insightful)
San Francisco is literally a shithole [mashable.com]. They can talk to us about coal after they solve their own problems.
Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Insightful)
If your line in the sand is "affect others" then guess what, some starving artist who has a "right" to stay in his apartment is depriving someone else of living there. That is certainly an effect on others.
Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, they want to keep the money they earned in their paychecks. How dare they? They think they're entitled to money just because they spend their days working for it? And just because their employer voluntarily offered the money in exchange for the work?
These rightist people have no idea how hard it is to get by for people who don't want to do anything for anyone.
Re:Why stay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, they want to keep the money they earned in their paychecks. How dare they?
"Paychecks"? Oh, my sweet country mouse...
Rich people by and large don't get most of their money from paychecks, and those aren't the taxes they concentrate on. They fight hard for new and better tax breaks for things like capital gains, inheritance, second homes, etc. These are situations where they barely lift a finger (if at all). Paychecks are for suckers like us.
Re:Why stay? (Score:4, Insightful)
People who have made their lives in San Francisco, especially in the arts, have a right to stay where they are.
Apparently your education was somewhat lacking as you have no concept of the difference between a right and a sense of entitlement. If you want to stay where you are then purchase the property, otherwise if you can't afford to live there then it's time to move. Welcome to capitalism, the worst system imaginable, except all the others.
Ownership vs. Renting (Score:3)
Re:Ownership vs. Renting (Score:5, Interesting)
If you didn't get in in the good old days of, hell, the 90s, buying is not really an option anymore. A house I was looking at sold for $360k. For a 450sq foot house. Just barely bigger than my apartment.
Rents and Housing are absolutely out of control all over LA, not just SFO. I have no idea how anyone affords it on anything less than tech wages unless they're shacking up with 3 people. What's the point of making good money if you're spending it all on rent?
Re:Ownership vs. Renting (Score:4, Insightful)
$360k buys you a hell of a house in most of the US.
Get a remote job.
Re:Ownership vs. Renting (Score:5, Funny)
Damn Choices! I want a 3500 sq ft home for $150k but I want to live in Silicone valley where you can't buy shit for $150K. There ought to be a law! I demand it!
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Part of the post was hyperbole, designed to make a ridiculous point more ridiculous.
I live in a nice neighborhood, in a nice home, on 1/4 acre lot, 200K sq ft and don't make six figures. My commute is eight minutes, and I work in Tech.
My kids could walk to school, we have nice parks and beautiful tree lined streets and a cute downtown. We don't have Major city perks, nor the problems that also come with big city.
My point is you have choices in life. Don't complain about the choices you've made. And don't pr
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A 200,000 sq ft home...how do you keep it clean?
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Most people don't want to move up the ladder. Just get paid better.
Remote jobs let you work more than one at a time...
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Re:Ownership vs. Renting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ownership vs. Renting (Score:5, Interesting)
That's because Prop 13 distorted the market. Without it, and without rent controls, people who don't need the housing would stop hoarding it because they're grandfathered-in to a below-market deal, making it (counter-intuitively) more affordable for everyone else. Reasonable zoning codes that would allow for an increase in density would help too, of course.
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If you own you can be forced out through tax increases, special assessments, and eminent domain. I've seen all 3 happen.
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Re:Ownership vs. Renting (Score:5, Insightful)
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Assessments and Eminent Domain means that you get at least most (if not all) of your monetary investment back (via the sale of property to the local gov or to someone else).
Eviction/termination-of-lease for any reason means that you get $0.00 in compensation - in other words, you're just fscked.
So, uh, LEAVE (Score:5, Interesting)
There are too many people in California in general and too many people in San Francisco in particular. (Not as bad as LA, but anyway...) If you moved to a place you knew you could never afford to buy housing, which was one of the most highly desirable real estate markets in the world, and then rents spiraled out of control, you have only yourself to blame. I have sympathy for people who are born there as renters and can't afford to leave. I have zero sympathy for people who moved there and then complained that they couldn't make it.
This is a problem faced by the whole wide world, and unless you want to skip socialism and head straight for communism, there's no fairer way to decide who can live there than by who can afford to live there. If you think you have a way to implement a meritocracy in our society, I'm interested, but mostly for the sake of amusement.
Our whole society is founded upon the idea that might makes right, and he who has the gold gets to decide who gets to live where. I'm highly sympathetic to the notion that this is harmful, but it really is our founding principle. If teachers can't afford to live in SF, then maybe people unwilling to home school should start moving their families out, too. Big dirty cities (SF fits this description admirably, if you include environs, needed for "big" though not for "dirty") are no place to raise a family in any case. Maybe SF doesn't need fast food restaurants. Maybe it's not just okay but actually desirable to gentrify some cities, and let the culture in them disperse to other areas that could use some that isn't growing between someone's toes.
TL;DR: If what is going on with SF rents is wrong, then our whole society is wrong, and you can't fix SF without fixing everything else, too. They can enact local laws, but as long as the state works against them, it's always only masturbatory.
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I have sympathy for people who are born there as renters and can't afford to leave.
That's the boat I'm stuck in now. I've been in my studio apartment for over ten years and paying several hundred dollars less than market rate rents since rent control caps rent increases to 8% per year. I've been wanting to move for some time, quite possibly from Silicon Valley to Sacramento. I'm still recovering from the Great Recession and rebuilding my finances. Maybe next year.
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I would also consider that sentiment for the tech companies. Why *must* you have your tech company in SF area?
Re:So, uh, LEAVE (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a problem faced by the whole wide world ... TL;DR: If what is going on with SF rents is wrong, then our whole society is wrong, and you can't fix SF without fixing everything else, too. They can enact local laws, but as long as the state works against them, it's always only masturbatory.
Exactly. Property value has ALWAYS increased near population centers. It has ever been so, and will continue to be.
This has nothing to do with San Francisco specifically. It has happened and continues to happen in every city and every town through all of history.
A central district will have the primary draw where everyone wants to be. A central business district, a big employer, the marketplace, whatever. There are places where people want to be for economic or social opportunities. Location, location, location.
Tools like rent control can "help" for a short time -- in that they make it a little easier for some individuals -- but they cannot stop the reason behind it. Consider the long view. Either demand for the services will drive everyone's wages (and costs) up, or the inability to have workers drive the property values back down as the region enters a decline.
As people are priced out of the market there will be fewer good teachers, meaning worse schools, meaning less draw to the area as it falls to decline. Alternatively, the people will demand quality teachers and increase wages to get them. Fewer service people mean stores and marketplaces can't keep people employed, so either the store workers will leave the area for a better life balance, meaning less draw to the area as it falls to decline, or the demand for shops will mean higher costs so they can pay higher wages.
No matter their wealth, the kings and castles rely on the services of the townsfolk. Either they all grow together or the kingdom declines.
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No matter their wealth, the kings and castles rely on the services of the townsfolk. Either they all grow together or the kingdom declines.
As Machiavelli said; you (the Prince) should always take care of the people before you take care of the nobles. You can make and unmake nobles daily but you are stuck with the people (and if they come after you, you are in big trouble)!"
Re:So, uh, LEAVE (Score:4, Insightful)
It directly does have San Francisco to blame. There are a whole bunch of "Not in my backyarders" who vote down new high capacity housing projects.
Normally when housing prices spike like they have in San Francisco developers will come in an start building new apartments since they can turn a large profit. But the developers currently can't as any proposed projects keep getting turned down.
So while prices in major cities and towns have generally always gone up. Areas like San Francisco are well above the norm. And this isn't accounting for all the foreign investment from China buying up property as quickly as they can which causes prices to jump when lots of places sell above asking price due to bidding wars.
Re:So, uh, LEAVE (Score:4, Informative)
The problem here is that a city, even in the Bay area, needs low and mid wage workers too in order to function.
Think about it this way: How is the Bay Area tech industry going to function when there's nobody left to staff their Starbucks'?
Re:So, uh, LEAVE (Score:5, Insightful)
San Francisco is a poorly run city, but that's the business of San Franciscans. There will always be poorly run cities (and other organizations, public or private) in the world. You can't "fix" that.A far better solution is to let cities and states make local choices and force them to live with the consequences of their choices. That way, San Francisco can fail, Fremont can prosper, and people can vote with their feet. If you try to "fix our whole society", you just risk such problems become national and taking away any ability of people to get away from bad government.
What annoys me is the massive state and federal subsidies that flow into San Francisco, to help the poverty and social problems that its misguided policies create, to help it cope with its dysfunctional transportation issues, and to subsidize both its corporations and residents merely for living there. Stop pouring money into SF from the outside, SF prices will drop, and some degree of sanity will be restored.
Re:So, uh, LEAVE (Score:4, Insightful)
It's going to be really funny when the well paid techies discover there are no schools, no police, and no fire department because nobody doing those jobs could afford to live anywhere near there. Perhaps it will take the next great fire to convince people that the current plan is a total loss.
The real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope it does go down though - I hope the tech industry increasingly decides to just say "F**k San Francisco" and moves elsewhere, where there's more land, cheaper cost of living (because at this point almost anywhere is cheaper), and less insane/stubborn neighbors. San Francisco has its upsides, sure, but none that are worth enough to make me want to live there unless you're offering me 4-5 times as much as I make elsewhere. Let San Francisco's economy tank, because that's what they clearly would prefer to actually dealing with the boom that most cities would bend over backwards for half of.
Re:The real problem (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, but how democracy works is people have the ability to decide what their city is like. Democracy is more important than markets.
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They can decide to make it however they like; it's just silly to prevent housing expansion and simultaneously complain about housing costs.
Re:The real problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, but how democracy works is people have the ability to decide what their city is like. Democracy is more important than markets.
Yes, and the people of SF have apparently decided that forbidding additional development is preferable to lowering prices by increasing supply. So they should either shut up about the cost, or allow development.
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They can grumble about whatever they like. Perhaps it's more complicated than you think and something else could give. If it is actually that simple, all that happens is that they grumble about something that can't be fixed given their starting ground. It's hard to tell if something else can give, so the grumbling isn't necessarily pointless.
They are deciding what the city is like (Score:4, Insightful)
San Franciscans have decided what they want the city to be like - a place where no-one but the richest can afford to live.
They may say otherwise but all of the ACTUAL CHOICES they make reinforce the notion that SF wants the city to be for the rich.
On a side note, I can only assume that San Franciscans really enjoy watching homeless people suffer since choices they make also lead to that outcome.
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Sorry, but how democracy works is people have the ability to decide what their city is like. Democracy is more important than markets.
And the voters can vote that the sky should be a deeper shade of blue on Sundays, and that the value of pi should be a nice, round 3.
Democracy doesn't changes the laws of physics, mathematics or economics. If demand increases and supply stays constant, price goes up.
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The real problem is that San Francisco adamantly refuses to build more housing to meet demand.
Even if San Francisco did allow more housing, developers will want to build more luxury housing and apartments to maximize their profits. My apartment complex in Silicon Valley had three different corporate owners in as many years. Each one slapping on a coat of exterior paint, redoing the landscaping, charging "luxury" rental rates and selling the complex when they don't get their expected return on investment. The current corporate owner is actually renovating the apartments since exterior paint and lands
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And then the not-so-wealthy will move into their old apartments, and then the less-wealthy-than-that into theirs, and so on.
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And then the not-so-wealthy will move into their old apartments, and then the less-wealthy-than-that into theirs, and so on.
This would be true in an ideal market where the population is relatively stable. San Francisco has too many people who want to move into town. The landlord of the old apartment will slap on a coat of paint, install new carpets and granite countertops, and jack up the rent so much that only an outsider can afford to pay.
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Even if San Francisco did allow more housing, developers will want to build more luxury housing and apartments to maximize their profits.
That just shows how much demand there is. At some point, there will be no more rich people who want to live in San Francisco, and developers will start to concentrate on moderately priced housing.
It really does seem like the problem is simple - more people want to live there than the existing housing supply can support. So you can either build more housing or (as the article suggests) hope to crater the economy so fewer people want to live there. If it were me, I'd choose building more housing.
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At some point, there will be no more rich people who want to live in San Francisco, and developers will start to concentrate on moderately priced housing.
It's not San Francisco. It's a nationwide problem as developers are focused almost exclusively on luxury housing.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/05/22/3662239/luxury-housing-80-percent-developers/ [thinkprogress.org]
Don't be a gentrifier; do tech somewhere else (Score:3)
Okay, maybe if you literally get a job with Google, move there. But otherwise, why? The pay premium you get from living there doesn't make up for the sky-high housing costs. And most of these people live in San Fransisco and then do a long commute out to a suburban area. It's really not worth it.
The tech market is hot. The main implication of that is you don't have to move to a special city to do tech. You can work somewhere like Chicago instead. There is still a big tech community, the opportunity to work with cutting edge tech, a much bigger city, AND you get to live in a four bedroom house on programmer pay and only commute a half hour on the train.
If the people of San Fransisco don't want you, don't bother them. You can live anywhere. Probably somewhere nicer.
Demolition Man? (Score:2)
Supply and demand (Score:2)
My heart goes out to those evicted, or fearing eviction. To my untrained eye, the problems seem like an obvious result of supply-and-demand. SF has limited land, hasn't built much in the way of housing for a long time, and is in high demand. Of course the housing prices will go way up. The only solutions are to make it less desirable (lower demand), or increase housing (increase supply). Here's an interesting article: https://medium.com/@Scott_Wien... [medium.com]
Other cities have done this, e.g., DC has aggress
SF Tech Bubble 2.0 (Score:5, Interesting)
It's really amusing to watch this whole dotcom bubble from the late 90s being replayed almost exactly the same way. VC valuations lead to IPOs that lead to temporary market insanity, and it all comes crashing down when people realize it can't last forever. And just like the first dotcom boom, the products are websites, phone apps and other software.
I guess the thing SF and California in general have going for them is the climate, so it's not like San Francisco is going to become some Rust Belt city when the bottom falls out. But, the reality distortion field around SF, SV and Los Angeles is really powerful. Coming from a place where a Lincoln Town Car was an aspirational vehicle, and seeing 25 year old kid CEOs driving Maseratis and Mercedes is a big shocker.
I do feel for people who have normal jobs or are artsy types in SF. Can you imagine being, say, a cop or a civil servant in the county clerk's office making the statewide civil service wage, and having to compete for housing with someone who's making $250K working for Google or Apple, and just wants to live in hipster land? (That's another interesting phenomenon -- these techies could easily afford a house in SV closer to work, but they choose a multi-hour commute so they can live in a hipster loft.
They would prefer Detroit? (Score:3)
There are plenty of affordable homes in Detroit. Probably thousands of properties that can be had for almost nothing from HUD.
It was a thriving and prosperous city until its golden goose moved away.
Flaw in Economic Data (Score:4, Interesting)
Not exactly on topic, but the article, San Francisco's situation, and the conditions over time not just in cities, but states, nations, any identifiable economic area all point to what I consider a flaw in Economic reporting, that, to my amazement, many people fail to grasp.
The strength of any economy is reported as good, bad, improving, failing, the "world's best", the "world's worst" ... whatever rank you care to put on it ... based solely on the inflated value of the whole. City A is twice as prosperous as City B if the rents, wages, and prices are all twice City B's. No matter that an hour's wages buys the same square foot of land, the same block of cheese, the same latte, the same month of cable TV in both cities. City A is clearly "better" based on the Economic Data. If City A happens to be the most expensive city on the planet to work and live then it's defined as the wealthiest city on the planet, the most successful economy, the "place to be". Except as far as the day to day goes, it's just another, ordinary city.
[Somewhat more on topic] And then we get the issues regarding the transition from a City B economy to a City A economy ... there are people on fixed incomes or working in fields where the high wages aren't sustainable, who get stuck in the old economy when their fellow citizens are part of the new economy. They need each other ... someone has to build the homes, make the cheese, pour the latte ... but they can't afford each other. Similarly, if a visitor from City A comes to City B for a vacation, they seemingly have twice as much money to spend. But not at home, where twice as much buys just enough.
The economic realities are constantly shifting and the solution for SF residents of today is the same as it's always been ... wages and rents must go up, and some people must move to a City B (or even a City C) economy.
This is not really new ... time to roll the ubiquitous "is this news?" Slashdot comment. (Just kidding).
Oh, bullshit. (Score:3)
Do we have to have this argument every year? The reason SF is expensive has very little to do with recent trends in the tech industry -- they're just a current, visible scapegoat. There's a good, thorough overview here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/... [techcrunch.com]
I was born in SF in the 70s and stayed in the area until after college. It has ALWAYS been expensive. It's a great place and I'd move back in a second if I could afford to, but I can't, so I don't. Yeah, it sucks that police, firefighters, and teachers can't often afford to live nearby, but it's been that way for DECADES.
There's a simple solution... (Score:3)
The City should use eminent domain and take over large blocks, and rent them to public school teachers, college instructors, and make it available after that for people with an income up to 1.5 times the poverty level.
And you libertarian assholes, as Phil Ochs sang, "go find yourself another country to be part of".
mark "oh, that's right, you don't believe in countries"
Re: (Score:3)
The best reason to be wary of Austin is traffic. The city has seen tremendous growth over the last decade and their transit system is inadequate and hard to fix.
The second best reason is because the state politics are bonkers (California's politics are crazy in a different way).
Still, Austin's a very nice city in a lot of ways.
Re:I can't afford to live in Manhattan, so I don't (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:SF is finished (Score:5, Interesting)
When they learn I'm an old school mainframe programmer, their eyes glass over.
When I was a lead video game tester, I shocked the new testers out of high school by informing them that I played video games in the early 1980's (most are surprised to learn that video games existed before the Sony PlayStation), introduced them to a tester who assembled arcade machines for Atari and Midway in the 1980's, and to another tester who tested pen-and-paper games in the 1970's. It's always important to instruct youngster to respect their elders.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
He had no idea how to do a simple replace in vim or even how to save a file.
Did he know how to Google? I know a lot of stuff in general but I don't always know the particular details. I'm often assigned unsolvable problems at work because I can almost always find a solution through a web search. Or, if I didn't find a solution, no one else would either.
Some places, like mine, actually REQUIRE you to know *nix and know it beyond installing Ubuntu.
As an engineer once told me on my internship in 1997: "Installing Linux is not the same as knowing Linux." Back then nothing worked out of the box. Compiling the kernel and device drivers was a necessary evil. Something most kids don
Re: (Score:3)
I was somewhat alarmed by this young candidate, because he emerged from a prominent 4-year institution with a CS degree, yet knew nothing useful about vim or *nix.
When I worked at the Google help desk in 2008, I had to walk a newly hired university graduate the process of turning on his own computer — "Please press the power button. If the computer doesn't explode, you may login into Windows." — since the university computer labs always had someone standing around to turn on the computers. It was a hard lesson for him to learn on his first day of the job.
Re:Services (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it would be fairly interesting to see what happens as nearly all food and cleaning and basic services workers get largely priced out of working in the city.
That's a common misperception. I make $50,000 per year, put 20% away in savings, rent a studio apartment in Silicon Valley, and most people consider me "poor" because I live a modest lifestyle. Meanwhile, I'm rubbing shoulders with the minimum-wage people on the Express Bus to clean up the same toilets I'm using at work. They may have three or four people under one roof to pay rent and utilities.