Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Housing in the Bay Area

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–407 of 407 posts

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#401

Post by nojvek »

cloudjacker wrote: post #244
galdosdi wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think NYC is already there. It's so easy to find a tech job in NYC. Maybe it's even easier in SV, but I've never missed not being in SV. There's such a variety here. Plenty of startups, all the tech giants, and plenty of tech/IT jobs at "regular" companies, consulting opportunities, etc... And it's not _just_ tech -- plenty of other industries are headquartered in NYC. By contrast I can't think of any other industr…

so I've lived in both. The size of the campuses in Silicon Valley literally cannot fit in NYC. No comparison. Its fantastic that Google bought a block of Manhattan for 1 billion dollars, but Google's Mountain View campus is ALL of Mountain View. These are sprawling districts that cannot fit inside of a skyscraper. The next fundamental difference is the variety of VCs. NYC cannot replicate this, and there is nothing e…

To be honest I am always amazed how many homeless folks and dirty the place is. You hear billion dollar raises all the time but the city seems very fragmented. Vancouver on the other hand is insanely expensive but very well put together.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#402

Post by HillaryBriss »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #319
morgante wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is the point of peak beauty? 1900? 1850? Also, Hong Kong is a rather beautiful city.

Singapore looks like a giant shopping mall. It's nice in its own right, sure but I don't think I want every city in the world to look like it

don't worry. they won't. take LA for instance. most parts of it look like a giant traffic jam. looking like a nice shopping mall would be a welcome upgrade. LA will never look as nice as Singapore. Singapore has a huge amount of surplus investment cash. LA's budget is constantly at a breaking point.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#403

Post by davidw »

timr wrote: post #399
davidw wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cruel irony of this kind of job growth is that it doesn't benefit the people who are being displaced That's because they're being displaced. Because there is not enough housing. There are a lot of benefits to being in a wealthy area even for those who are not the ones with the highest paying jobs, as Enrico Moretti explains in "The New Geography of Jobs". And if you want to see what an actual bad economy does f…

"That's because they're being displaced. Because there is not enough housing." Nor will there be at any point in the near future, no matter how much housing gets built. But that's a red herring. If the question is "should we favor policies that encourage the tech industry, or discourage it?" , you have to do better than arguing that the tech industry is a net good in some ideal world that doesn't currently exist. SF…

I agree with you completely that 'special tax breaks' are BS.

I think there could certainly be enough housing to help a bunch of people at the margins, especially if density were allowed in a lot of the greater bay area.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#404

Post by davidw »

abalone wrote: post #388
avar wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well of course population growth isn't the same as demand, that's the point! What davidw was observing was that there's plenty of cities that do better at satisfying the demand for housing than San Francisco does. You can have a growing population in the same area while demand goes down, if you're building enough new housing to offset the demand. The examples davidw and I have been citing here show cities that have f…

> cities that have faced similar population growth You've simply ignored my point about the rate of growth in demand. That introduces a new factor, which is the need to control displacement of lower-income people and maintain healthy economic diversity. Also, the issue here is not that SF is opposed to density. SF has many high-density neighborhoods and virtually all new construction is higher density. The issue is h…

> the issue here is not that SF is opposed to density.

Sure it is. Otherwise, given the prices you could get for building higher buildings, someone would have done it. It'd be like printing money.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#405

Post by nostrebored »

joeskyyy wrote: post #222
s3r3nity wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I LOVE Seattle! Though research and folks I talk to say it's expensive to live there. Maybe I'm getting the wrong info!

All depends on where you live. If you're trying to raise a family, you definitely have to live in the burbs and commute in. I pay $1850 a month for a 496 sq ft "Open" one bedroom. It's basically a studio with a wall that segments off my bedroom. Which is more than fine for me :D Get to live downtown, get to walk to work, walk to bars, etc. But if you wanted an average 3br/2ba apartment, you're probably looking in the…

I live in Queen Anne in a 1000 sq ft 2br for $1850 a month. It's really not that bad. Even in the core of Capitol Hill when I was looking a few months ago I saw places for 1650/mo for 700 sqft non-studio.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#406

Post by pascalxus »

danjayh wrote: post #259
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…

With you all the way. I have 11 acres, horses, a goat, cats, a dog, and I live 15 minutes from downtown and 17 minutes from work. This is in a mid-sized midwest city (Grand Rapids, MI). While I realize that I could achieve a substantial pay raise on one of the coasts, a similarly sized plot there would cost millions. I paid under 200k 5 years ago with a 1500sf house on it, and it's still probably only worth the mid 2…

I'm seriously looking this place up on Wikipedia.org. =)

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#407

Post by HemanHeartYou »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #161
paulddraper wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fine line.

I'll bite: Is it ever ok for a person to argue against policies that increase population in the city where they reside? If so, what are some ethical reasons for resisting and/or advocating against population growth in a city?

Yes, to keep normies from diluting my freak culture.
Post reply on HN