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A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

nytimes.com

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Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#81

Post by lisper »

ucaetano wrote: post #52

San Francisco has more than twice the area of Manhattan, with half the population. The San Francisco Bay Area CSA has about the same population as Switzerland, with 2/3 of the area of Switzerland. Both have similar GDPs. If someone wanted to live in Germany, and commute to work in Zurich, with Swiss salaries and German cost-of-living, their commute would be about 1h15min. The housing and infrastructure problems in th…

> The housing and infrastructure problems in the SFBA are purely political, and self-inflicted.

That's true, but the implication that these decisions are inarguably stupid ("self-inflicted") is unfair. It's a conscious and IMHO defensible choice by the people who already live here: we would prefer to deal with the problems caused by insufficient housing than by the problems caused by overly dense population.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#82

Post by ojbyrne »

FireBeyond wrote: post #71
nxsynonym wrote: post #2

While the rising cost of housing is an easy target, why not put the pressure on the companies that are driving the influx of workers and out of control cost of living? If tech companies are drawing people into cities and forcing out those who keep the city itself operating, why not have them subsidize and improve public transportation? Lower income housing? Encourage more remote work or move their headquarters out of…

On the other hand, I feel that she's over-compensating a little. No-one's saying the $1600/month that she was paying for a 1br in Alameda is "cheap" in any way... But at $81K salary, her $1000/mo rent is only just touching 20% of her take home, which is in the "very comfortable" range (for reference, most property management companies want you to be "not exceeding 35% of take home income").

Minor note, because my thoughts were along similar lines - she was evicted from her $1600/month apt, and presumably would pay significantly more for it now.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#83

Post by deckar01 »

I paid about 30% of my salary in 2014 for a SRO [0] in San Francisco with a 10 minute commute. I decided that the quality of living was not worth the potential future earnings for staying in the bay area. In Tulsa I pay about 14% of my salary to rent a large apartment with a 4 minute commute.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#84

Post by JustAnotherPat »

ucaetano wrote: post #52

San Francisco has more than twice the area of Manhattan, with half the population. The San Francisco Bay Area CSA has about the same population as Switzerland, with 2/3 of the area of Switzerland. Both have similar GDPs. If someone wanted to live in Germany, and commute to work in Zurich, with Swiss salaries and German cost-of-living, their commute would be about 1h15min. The housing and infrastructure problems in th…

It's basically impossible to get a job in Zurich though. In San Fransisco, a coding bootcamp grad can get 140K out the door. This is how capitalism works. We take the bad with the good. Politics reflect the will of the people and the people in San Fransisco on both sides of the aisle want to make as much money as they can, any way they can.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#85

Post by icebraining »

wang_li wrote: post #45
nxsynonym wrote: post #2

While the rising cost of housing is an easy target, why not put the pressure on the companies that are driving the influx of workers and out of control cost of living? If tech companies are drawing people into cities and forcing out those who keep the city itself operating, why not have them subsidize and improve public transportation? Lower income housing? Encourage more remote work or move their headquarters out of…

Just yesterday I was commenting here on this very situation, but she has already moved her home out of the city in search of less expensive rent. She really should find a job out of the city as well. If the highly paid workers in the city want to buy coffee or sandwiches or whatever, they can pay prices that reflect the true cost of living in the city and not some indirect subsidized price.

She really should find a job out of the city as well. If the highly paid workers in the city want to buy coffee or sandwiches or whatever

...she's a public health adviser for the United States Department of Health and Human Services. I'm pretty sure she's not selling sandwiches.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#86

Post by beambot »

lisper wrote: post #81
ucaetano wrote: post #52

San Francisco has more than twice the area of Manhattan, with half the population. The San Francisco Bay Area CSA has about the same population as Switzerland, with 2/3 of the area of Switzerland. Both have similar GDPs. If someone wanted to live in Germany, and commute to work in Zurich, with Swiss salaries and German cost-of-living, their commute would be about 1h15min. The housing and infrastructure problems in th…

> The housing and infrastructure problems in the SFBA are purely political, and self-inflicted. That's true, but the implication that these decisions are inarguably stupid ("self-inflicted") is unfair. It's a conscious and IMHO defensible choice by the people who already live here: we would prefer to deal with the problems caused by insufficient housing than by the problems caused by overly dense population.

> we would prefer [...]

Pretty sure you're not speaking for me and most of my SFBA friends...

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#87

Post by jakelarkin »

santaclaus wrote: post #48

If a municipality decides to open 100 seats of office space, they should be required to zone and approve 100 beds for said workers to sleep in. Otherwise you have the situation where towns like Brisbane can build office complexes for the tax revenue and entirely pass the buck to their neighbors for the cost of housing the new workers.

This is a major major part of problem and one of the simpler legislative solutions. The extreme example is Cupertino and Palo Alto which have approved 10000s of office desks but resist building any meaningful housing whatsoever. Peninsula towns also need incentives/mandates to upzone around Caltrain. SF also does a huge desks to beds imbalance in approvals.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#88

Post by tepe1 »

ghomrassen wrote: post #62

What's to stop San Francisco from creating a lot more high-density housing? Doesn't that solve many issues with housing supply? Looking at wikipedia, the density is crazy low even compared to other major cities in the US.

The thing stopping San Francisco from increasing density is democracy. The people of San Francisco do not want more density. They don't want more traffic and traffic fumes. They don't want more vehicles fighting over limited public spots. They don't want buses. They don't want throngs of young people who often don't share their liberal values wandering around the city at all hours of the night. They don't want huge apartment complexes or luxury residential towers. They don't want to be Manhattan or Paris or even Boston.

The people of San Francisco think the city is mostly perfect just the way it is. This is why all proposals to radically increase density (by lifting height restrictions, say) always get democratically voted down.

If people are really serious about increasing the density in San Francisco (or anywhere in California, for that matter) the first step, ironically enough, would be to get rid of the people who actually live there.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#89

Post by overcast »

Makes me appreciate what I have in Rochester. 5 minute commute if I don't hit the lights correctly. Drive home for lunch in silence, take a nap. Cost of living where I have more money than I know what to do with. The grind a lot of you put up with chasing money, is paid for with your life, literally.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#90

Post by peterjlee »

>Ms. James pays $1,000 a month in rent for her three-bedroom house, compared with $1,600 for the one-bedroom apartment she had in Alameda.

She was forced out of her original apartment but unless she had a new situation that required her to have more bedrooms with a lower budget, some part of this extremity was her choice. I think NYT should've chosen a better example if the point they were trying to get across is "tech boom forcing workers out".

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