Housing in the Bay Area • Hacker News Board

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#231

Post by bbcbasic » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:16 AM UTC

epicureanideal wrote: post #147

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.

> If workers are needed in an area, businesses will eventually need to pay them more.

To me this is a sensible solution. Let the city start to suck a bit (expensive or closed restaurants for example) and then other cities can share the burden of being go-to places to live.

> 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.

Not to mention subsidizing the property investors, and driving up demand.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#232

Post by jeffdavis » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:17 AM UTC

I've wondered for a while weather housing exclusivity can improve economies in some respects. Do the high housing costs create a strong selection bias to bring in only the most determined to take part in the SV culture?

Obviously, lower housing costs would cause a higher absolute density of people. But maybe the presence of people with other unrelated interests would somehow dampen the tech economy, even if the absolute density of tech people remained the same.

Let me be clear that I support more residential construction on the peninsula, so I am not saying this as part of a weird socio-political agenda. It's purely out of curiosity.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#233

Post by shostack » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:19 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #50

honkhonkpants wrote: post #40

When I look at this bill I have to wonder if it will really help. Outside of the city of San Francisco itself, almost nothing is being built, because the construction costs are too high. Not the permitting and planning costs, but the actual guys-with-hammers-and-saws costs. For example in Oakland there are number of properties that are fully entitled to build and have been sitting that way for years. So how does Brow…

Have you really been looking outside of SF? Redwood city, about 30-40 min south of SF, has been booming with building growth. Developers are building, but can't get approvals with local governments fast enough.

Don't get me started on that. RWC resident here, and there have been major issues with the city rubber stamping development without enforcing minimum parking requirements, or giving any major thinking to how to solve the cities insane traffic/parking problems (particularly compared to neighboring cities).

Oh, except the thought they had to make Farmhill suddenly go from two lanes to one lane. Yeah, that's a great solution on a main connector to 280 in a city that already has major rush hour congestion issues.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#234

Post by threatofrain » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:21 AM UTC

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…

I don't think the tech community is deflecting criticism. As a minority voting group, what are they supposed to do about the problem?

The limited supply is not their fault. The refusal to bid in the market would be a meaningless self-sacrifice. The lack of healthy leverage and organization by workers in other industries have nothing to do with tech workers, who, again, are a minority power in politics.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#235

Post by gorkemyurt » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:21 AM UTC

chuckcode wrote: post #151

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…

While the cost of housing in the bay area gets a lot of press the entire infrastructure of the bay is getting stretched by the current tech boom. The traffic is already the second worst in the nation [1], and existing public transportation like bart[2] and caltrain[3] are already overloaded. While I'm generally in favor of development I think that this simplistic approach of just going around local planning departmen…

With the right projects like, the transbay terminal and I-280 city can actually allow development and create funds for transit at the same time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Transbay_Termina...

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Transit-plan-to-r...

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#236

Post by davidw » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:22 AM UTC

calbear81 wrote: post #224

jevinskie wrote: post #160

There is so much pressure, career-wise, to move to either the Bay Area, the West Coast in general, or a major urban hub. I honestly like living in a semi-rural part of the Midwest. I like seeing fields and forests while driving to work. If I want to get out to some wilderness, I can do so in 15-30 minutes. I travel in a car that, I feel, offers me freedom. To boot, I have a nice, reserved spot in the garage below my…

The cost of living is definitely infinitely higher than living in the midwest but you certainly can find fields and forests (and actual mountains!) in the SF area. For example, the minute you cross the Golden Gate bridge, you are in Marin County, a county with a rich agricultural history, amazing natural places like Muir Woods (the setting for the ape's home in the latest Planet of the Apes), and 85.5% of it's land p…

Sadly, Marin County is "the boss-level kingdom of California NIMBYs":

https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/735561614368202752

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#237

Post by muzz » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:24 AM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #232

I've wondered for a while weather housing exclusivity can improve economies in some respects. Do the high housing costs create a strong selection bias to bring in only the most determined to take part in the SV culture? Obviously, lower housing costs would cause a higher absolute density of people. But maybe the presence of people with other unrelated interests would somehow dampen the tech economy, even if the absol…

I've wondered this myself too. It makes sense that the high housing costs do cause a self-selection for the most determined.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#238

Post by muzz » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:27 AM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #119

foobarqux wrote: post #4

Apparently not all economists agree that increasing housing supply would make rents cheaper.

Technically increasing the housing supply would make rent cheaper. But realistically it won't because it's not possible to build enough housing to increase the supply enough to tip the scales in demand versus supply. They start building more and those houses are going to be just as expensive as the existing housing.

By technically you seem to mean "all else being equal". The difference between that and reality is that when housing is created, it does indeed change things. Build some nice housing in a decrepit area (Shipyard, etc) and housing values will indeed go up because desireability has increased.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#239

Post by gorkemyurt » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:30 AM UTC

kayone wrote: post #212

gorkemyurt wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A one bedroom condo in downtown Vancouver is very affordable compared to San Francisco.

I think what you mean to say is cheaper, not affordable. a software engineer makes over 80K if he is lucky, you would be considered an exception if you make anything over 100K. also pretty much everything else costs more in Canada than it does in US which leaves even less money for housing, so cheaper yes, but definitely less affordable.

http://www.vancouver-downtown-condo.ca/details.php?id=31618&...

$300k (USD) 1 bd room apartment in Yaletown, equivalent of this in SF is at least $750k. Plus property taxes in SF are around %1.15 for a $750k condo that comes down to 10k a year, just on property taxes. Not sure about the rules in Vancouver but the link I posted above claims $1,008 in property taxes. So yea I think Vancouver is affordable.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#240

Post by calbear81 » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:31 AM UTC

davidw wrote: post #236

calbear81 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of living is definitely infinitely higher than living in the midwest but you certainly can find fields and forests (and actual mountains!) in the SF area. For example, the minute you cross the Golden Gate bridge, you are in Marin County, a county with a rich agricultural history, amazing natural places like Muir Woods (the setting for the ape's home in the latest Planet of the Apes), and 85.5% of it's land p…

Sadly, Marin County is "the boss-level kingdom of California NIMBYs": https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/735561614368202752

I support development but I'm kind of okay with not too much in Marin because there's no viable and fast public transit from there to SF so adding a bunch of people there doesn't make as much sense (I could also be rationalizing a bias towards keeping Marin green and "country" since I want to eventually settle down there..)

I really support development along established rail corridors along CalTrain and BART lines. There should be ridiculously tall housing towers in cheap places like Hayward and open places like Walnut Creek and Pleasanton, if only the BART was not so damn slow and so freakishly expensive.