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Housing in the Bay Area

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141–150 of 407 posts

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#141

Post by TulliusCicero »

abalone wrote: post #96

This is a contentious issue and in case you are not from SF and wondering why Y Combinator is taking a stand on it, it has to do with the politics of the tech boom. The plain truth is that the housing crisis is a combination of too much sudden demand fueled by the tech boom and too little supply. The tech community likes to deflect criticism of their sudden influx of relatively high-income workers and say "don't blam…

> The tech community likes to deflect criticism of their sudden influx of relatively high-income workers and say "don't blame us, it's a supply problem."

Well duh, ostensibly high-paying jobs are good, remember? Like, the tech sector is one of the few remaining industries with lots of jobs that pay well, and now we gotta demonize them too? Would it be preferable for everyone to be equally poor?

And it obviously is a supply problem. The California Legislative Analyst Office was pretty clear on that:

> While many factors have a role in driving California's high housing costs, the most important is the significant shortage of housing in the state's highly coveted coastal communities. We advise the Legislature to address this housing shortfall by changing policies to facilitate significantly more private home and apartment building in California's coastal urban communities.

http://www.lao.ca.gov/Publications/Detail/3214

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#143

Post by discardorama »

carapace wrote: post #65

I'm in favor of how "building in the Bay Area is approved by discretion", I call it having some power over what gets built. "Democracy" y'know? I'm from SF. I grew up here. I'm also a computer nerd. To me, the tech "industry" has been ruining the city I love since the Dot-Com boom. To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. The saddest part is, this city kin…

> What concerns me the most is that the newcomers might lack the environmental commitment, and tip the scales from valuing conservation to valuing rampant development.

Actually, if you care about the environment, dense development is the best option.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#144

Post by vasilipupkin »

fishtoaster wrote: post #94
carapace wrote: post #65

I'm in favor of how "building in the Bay Area is approved by discretion", I call it having some power over what gets built. "Democracy" y'know? I'm from SF. I grew up here. I'm also a computer nerd. To me, the tech "industry" has been ruining the city I love since the Dot-Com boom. To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. The saddest part is, this city kin…

This town won't be for the freaks and weirdos for long: they're being priced out. You can rage against the techies all you want, but unless we can build more housing, the techies will be the only ones who can afford to live here. It seems bizarre to me that those most fervently opposed to the influx of tech in SF are doing the most to harm the existing residents. If you make it hard to build in San Francisco, there w…

SF used to be beautiful. With tons more development, it will just look like Hong Kong/Singapore/Chicago/Manhattan, etc. and that beauty will be lost

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#145

Post by akhilcacharya »

nostrebored wrote: post #93
s3r3nity wrote: post #38

This is one of the top factors preventing me from moving back to the Bay Area. It's good to know there's at least SOME serious attempt at a solution (even if folks around here are mostly pessimistic.) It still surprises me that an industry that's all about connecting the world through the internet and allowing anyone to work with anyone else on anything says "yeah but you need to work in this small area of the countr…

Somehow the city with the highest average salary/cost of living usually goes unmentioned... Seattle has two huge tech companies, a lot of mid sized tech companies, and a growing startup scene... and it's not that far away from the bay.

All of the Big 4 are there :)

I just hope housing there is affordable without a roommate by the time I can graduate.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#146

Post by paulddraper »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #130
beering wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. This is xenophobia in another skin. There are a lot of people who don't want brown people coming into the country and changing the "feel" of their home too. Anyways, as long as we severely restrict housing, techies will continue to outbid the locals on what remains. Passing this legislation might give the weirdo-f…

Xenophobia is defined (by one source) as "intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries." Maybe comparing this commenter to "a lot of people who don't want brown people" is ham fisted and inaccurate. The commenter seems more interested in the culture, the freakiness or weirdness, of the people who come in, and not so much which country they came from. I do not see where the commenter mentioned…

It's a fine line.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#147

Post by epicureanideal »

This is good, except that I oppose subsidies for "below market rate housing". If workers are needed in an area, businesses will eventually need to pay them more. Subsidizing their housing is a backdoor subsidy to the business owners who don't need to pay their workers enough to deal with living in the Bay Area.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#148

Post by bagels »

BurningFrog wrote: post #136
birken wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 65% of the population in SF are renters. If it were simply homeowners vs renters, renters would win in a landslide. Who do you think was pushing for proposition I (an 18 month development moratorium in the mission) to pass? It wasn't homeowners, that's for sure. It was renters living in the Mission who were (not incorrectly) terrified that new development means they will get evicted and displaced. Why did 60%…

> It was renters living in the Mission who were (not incorrectly) terrified that new development means they will get evicted and displaced. This is such a bizarre idea. How exactly do renters get displaced by adding more housing?

Because the actual building they live in gets demolished to build another building. Or because the new building next door is filled with 'luxury' $5000/mo rents, which might drive the rent up in their building.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#149

Post by abalone »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #141
abalone wrote: post #96

This is a contentious issue and in case you are not from SF and wondering why Y Combinator is taking a stand on it, it has to do with the politics of the tech boom. The plain truth is that the housing crisis is a combination of too much sudden demand fueled by the tech boom and too little supply. The tech community likes to deflect criticism of their sudden influx of relatively high-income workers and say "don't blam…

> The tech community likes to deflect criticism of their sudden influx of relatively high-income workers and say "don't blame us, it's a supply problem." Well duh, ostensibly high-paying jobs are good, remember? Like, the tech sector is one of the few remaining industries with lots of jobs that pay well, and now we gotta demonize them too? Would it be preferable for everyone to be equally poor? And it obviously is a…

It's important to understand the other factors alluded to by the California Legislative Analyst Office, among others. Specific to SF is a sudden influx of wealthier residents. With such a huge gap between their income levels and say service industry or blue collar folks, they are going to throw the market rate for housing way high. Increasing the supply of market-rate housing alone may not bring things down enough, at least, not without much greater developer concessions than have been suggested.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#150

Post by hiphipjorge »

studentrob wrote: post #67
carapace wrote: post #65

I'm in favor of how "building in the Bay Area is approved by discretion", I call it having some power over what gets built. "Democracy" y'know? I'm from SF. I grew up here. I'm also a computer nerd. To me, the tech "industry" has been ruining the city I love since the Dot-Com boom. To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. The saddest part is, this city kin…

> Y'all "young gods" will just have to figure out some other place to hatch the singularity. Lol. I've always found it amazing how many people run towards SV. Software is cool because you can do it from anywhere. To each his own, I guess.

Your statement is not false, but if you're into software engineering it's awesome know so many people who are world-class engineers. I've heard from multiple people that they've grown more in a year of being in SV than the 5 years before. Why? Because a lot of their friends are engineers (Kinda sucks too but...), you casually meet a lot of people working in cool stuff, you go to a lot of really really good meetups, and what you're doing at work is probably only a handful of companies in the world are tackling (at least me and most of my friends are working on stuff like that).

Yeah, you can do software from anywhere! But SF/SV is probably one of the best places in the world to do for it.

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