I have to wonder if the prices will be stagnant or falling by the time they put a ceiling in place. I don't see tech industry investment, or Chinese property purchases as likely to continue at the levels we've seen recently.
In Silicon Valley Suburbs, Calls to Limit the Soaring Rents
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Re: In Silicon Valley Suburbs, Calls to Limit the Soaring Rents
#22Every time one of these articles appears it seems like the comments always mention prop 13, rent control, NIMBY and environmental regulations, and a difficult permitting process as the underlying reasons for the high rents in sf. It seems pretty obvious that if the market had its way the whole area would look like Tokyo. Why can't we move beyond this and say "OK keep your 100 year old row houses and vineyards", lets…
There's something to be said for being in close proximity with a lot of other people working in the same profession. I came from working in tech for 8 years before moving to Silicon Valley and it's a world of difference.
In other words, Country Music will always exist outside of Nashville, but if you make Country music, Nashville is the place to be.
Re: In Silicon Valley Suburbs, Calls to Limit the Soaring Rents
#23Every time one of these articles appears it seems like the comments always mention prop 13, rent control, NIMBY and environmental regulations, and a difficult permitting process as the underlying reasons for the high rents in sf. It seems pretty obvious that if the market had its way the whole area would look like Tokyo. Why can't we move beyond this and say "OK keep your 100 year old row houses and vineyards", lets…
I work remotely in SF. I live here because I like not owning a car, walking and biking most places, and non-tech things to do. I'm just lucky I can afford it. The solution is to build more good US cities that aren't car centric. I'm not aware of any. Build a from scratch city with a target of at least 250k residents on the California coast and I'll move.
I don't know how many people think similarly, but there's still a lot of non-tech people in SF.
Re: In Silicon Valley Suburbs, Calls to Limit the Soaring Rents
#24Every time one of these articles appears it seems like the comments always mention prop 13, rent control, NIMBY and environmental regulations, and a difficult permitting process as the underlying reasons for the high rents in sf. It seems pretty obvious that if the market had its way the whole area would look like Tokyo. Why can't we move beyond this and say "OK keep your 100 year old row houses and vineyards", lets…
What's wrong with making San Francisco more like Tokyo? Do you know how much economic productivity is lost because zoning regulations prevent further densification that is otherwise desired?
Re: In Silicon Valley Suburbs, Calls to Limit the Soaring Rents
#25Supply and demand explains all.
When more people want something than there are available, prices increase - until the price increases enough to ration the available supply to the highest bidders.
For those calling for rent control, they are advocating a different method of rationing the available apartments... leaving multiple interested people for one apartment. Why is the non-price way of rationing better than rationing based on who is willing to pay the most? Some people still won't be able to live where they want to live, it just won't be because they can't afford to.
Re: In Silicon Valley Suburbs, Calls to Limit the Soaring Rents
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did the housing situation improve after rent control was ended?
If by "improve" you mean "allow for skyrocketing rents and push the poor and most of the middle class further away from the city," yes, it did. I'm currently moving from Somerville, which adjoins Cambridge and is often called "where everybody moved when the rich people pushed them out of Cambridge" to Malden (some distance away by bus or car) because the rental situation has continued to deteriorate for everyone exce…
Absent actually owning property, does anyone have a right to live in any particular place?
Re: In Silicon Valley Suburbs, Calls to Limit the Soaring Rents
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did the housing situation improve after rent control was ended?
If by "improve" you mean "allow for skyrocketing rents and push the poor and most of the middle class further away from the city," yes, it did. I'm currently moving from Somerville, which adjoins Cambridge and is often called "where everybody moved when the rich people pushed them out of Cambridge" to Malden (some distance away by bus or car) because the rental situation has continued to deteriorate for everyone exce…
Well admittedly, the Boston area also has some of the country's most baroque zoning, permitting, and general NIMBYism laws -- just like the Bay Area. So it's horrendously hard to just build more housing, even though basically none of Cambridge outside Kendall Square's industrial area has elevations higher than three or four stories.
Re: In Silicon Valley Suburbs, Calls to Limit the Soaring Rents
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did the housing situation improve after rent control was ended?
If by "improve" you mean "allow for skyrocketing rents and push the poor and most of the middle class further away from the city," yes, it did. I'm currently moving from Somerville, which adjoins Cambridge and is often called "where everybody moved when the rich people pushed them out of Cambridge" to Malden (some distance away by bus or car) because the rental situation has continued to deteriorate for everyone exce…
It also kicked off (pedantically read as "shortly preceded") a building boom in East Cambridge, which was a depressing and sometimes dangerous place when I graduated (1 year before rent control ended) and is now largely transformed, with lots more commercial and significant residential construction/renovation.
There hasn't been much high-density apartment building construction (North Point and one in Central Sq are the only two I can think of), so naturally a place where demand increases faster than supply sees rising prices in a free market.
Re: In Silicon Valley Suburbs, Calls to Limit the Soaring Rents
#29Every time one of these articles appears it seems like the comments always mention prop 13, rent control, NIMBY and environmental regulations, and a difficult permitting process as the underlying reasons for the high rents in sf. It seems pretty obvious that if the market had its way the whole area would look like Tokyo. Why can't we move beyond this and say "OK keep your 100 year old row houses and vineyards", lets…
There's something to be said for being in close proximity with a lot of other people working in the same profession. I came from working in tech for 8 years before moving to Silicon Valley and it's a world of difference. In other words, Country Music will always exist outside of Nashville, but if you make Country music, Nashville is the place to be.
People don't move to Nashville or Hollywood to be near colleagues; they move there to "make it big". I'm sure the same is true of most who ingress into SV. At least programmers can move to pretty much any big city and find a job paying upper middle-class wages (and can do pretty good living anywhere with decent Internet working remotely)
Re: In Silicon Valley Suburbs, Calls to Limit the Soaring Rents
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't that be nice? If SF is unreasonable, we'll just take our ball and play elsewhere. :) But how to make it happen? There is an awful lot of resistance to hiring remote staff. I checked the latest "Who's Hiring?" post here at HN and of the top 10 postings, only 2 were open to hiring remotely.
yea I agree that remote is a big part of the solution. Despite all the talk about how easy it is to "work from anywhere" remote still has a lot of pain points. Where I work we can do it one day a week but it sucks when people are dialing in to a meeting. Remote Desktop and ssh aren't really that great. I'm thinking we need fiber to the curb and VR fueled telepresence that is able to convey nuance and emotion when int…
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