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

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

#221

Post by QML »

kevinburke wrote: post #186
jakelarkin wrote: post #117

Reporters keep trying to find profiles of the housing crisis but this seems disingenuous. A lot of what this woman is doing is a choice; waking up hours before the train, huge house in Stockton vs condo/apartment closer. She makes $80k/year meaning post-tax $4600/month. She could easily afford a nice 1 or 2 bedroom in Pittsburg or Pleasanton for ~$2k a month, and her door-to-door commute would be well under 80 minute…

That's $12000 extra on rent per year, which is a lot to someone making $80k a year.

Take the time to commute (8hrs) into consideration. Is that extra $12000 worth it?

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

#222

Post by spiralpolitik »

rbcgerard wrote: post #148
FireBeyond wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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").

I think the answer is she's making a choice based on her preferences: 1. Live and Work in SF make $80k, and live in small expensive housing 2. Work in SF and make $80k, live in Stockton and get more and pay less for a house, and spend a ton of time commuting 3. Live and Work in Stockton, make way less, live in a place larger than SF but Smaller than #2 and not have to commute She chose #2 - others make different choi…

For (3) you are of course assuming that there is a job in Stockton for her skill set.

There may not be which makes option 3 an non starter.

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

#223

Post by twblalock »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #46
mudil wrote: post #24

Liberals like to talk big about the public transportation, but when it comes time to deliver they follow the unions' script that results in exuberant costs (to build the system and to run it) and extremely poor performance. And as a result the average folks and the poor suffer the most.

I'm not sure if you've ever been to Europe before, where the liberals (and even the conservatives) do public transit right.

Furthermore, unions in Europe are much more powerful than they are in the US. It must not be unions holding the US back if Europe can manage to build better transit with much stronger unions.

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

#224

Post by logfromblammo »

KekDemaga wrote: post #65
Dylan16807 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When zoning aggressively blocks dense housing, I don't think it's the little code details that matter.

You are correct, I was conflating zoning and building codes a bit there. Zoning should take the lions share of blame when it comes to costs.

I didn't really understand zoning until I witnessed a bunch of Southern middle-class white moms agreeing with their middle-class black mom neighbor about how they all hoped that the new construction on the [formerly agricultural] lot next to the subdivision would be restaurants instead of apartment buildings, because the latter attracts "the wrong kind of people".

Then I looked at the zoning map for the municipality, and read the zoning codes.

From outward appearances, it's to keep the poor people away from the rich people. And not just at night when everyone goes home, either. All the time, everywhere. Jobs, schools, commutes, shopping, entertainment. It's the new age of redlining, with a global substitution of bank account sizes for skin colors.

I couldn't tell what degree of intent was there, but on the ground, the zoning board has reinvented the ghetto. The poor folks get to live next to the railroad tracks. Rich folks get to live next to the zone marked as protected wetland/watershed, so that it can never be developed.

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

#225

Post by lisper »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #207
lisper wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then she and other likeminded people should have organized politically and pressured the government to change the zoning laws before it was too late. Everything going on in the SFBA is the direct result of capitalism and democracy in action. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but I don't see any principled way you could object to it. [UPDATE] Let me clarify: I can see how you could object to various aspects of our polit…

I don't buy that. What you are saying, is after her building was bought out and she and her neighbors were then about to be homeless, they should have formed a political organization? Where, exactly? I mean, she went to one town, who knows where the other 5/10/50 people went. That kind of argument comes from a very privileged position of a person who hasn't been gentrified out of their neighborhood. This is a direct…

> after her building was bought out and she and her neighbors were then about to be homeless, they should have formed a political organization?

No. By then it's obviously too late. You have to act before laws are passed that drive your constituency out of town. But there are a lot of places where this has happened and renters have a lot of rights. And, BTW, the city of San Francisco is one of them. I am not a landlord, but I am told that it is nearly impossible to evict someone in SF.

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

#226

Post by dionidium »

anarazel wrote: post #182
lisper wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the thing is that you (Bay Area landowners) are not really bearing the cost of insufficient housing. That's not true. It makes it hard to find good help. (That was intended to be humorously ironic, but there's a serious point behind it: everything in the SFBA is more expensive than it would be if housing were more plentiful.) > you're benefiting through increasing home values Not really. You only benefit from t…

Are you actually complaining that the higher house price wouldn't be good for you, because you'd have to pay tax when selling? I'm still not sure this isn't all sarcastic.

No, this is a very real sentiment. I recently saw some folks on /r/nyc complaining that their relatives had to sell their Brooklyn home for millions of dollars more than they paid for it because they could no longer afford the property taxes. They were presented (un-ironically) as victims of gentrification.

I don't know how to rebut this, because it's such an absurd sentiment on its face.

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

#227

Post by WalterSear »

b4ux1t3 wrote: post #165
WalterSear wrote: post #74

I feel bad for her, but if she's taking an hour and a half to leave the house in the morning, she's >choosing< to get up at 2am.

Is wanting to be fully alert before leaving the house so strange?

Yes, if it takes you an hour and a half.

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

#228

Post by woobar »

KekDemaga wrote: post #98
ghaff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. It's reasonable to point out that even a That said, selling and buying houses (or changing jobs) on an ongoing basis so you're right next to your job doesn't seem like a great strategy either. And likely not a plausible one, at least outside of a city, if you have a partner who also goes into an office.

When choosing between jobs I try to calculate the true hourly wage I'd receive. I include transportation costs, travel time, expected unpaid overtime etc and pick not the highest salary but the highest hourly rate all things considered.

Unfortunately, in most cases the base salary is the only part of compensation that is 'guaranteed'. Overtime requirements could change after a few months, a job with a longer commute might allow work from home, etc. Your 'true rate' is an interesting piece of information to consider during job search, but I do not think it should have this much weight.

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

#230

Post by ucaetano »

d--b wrote: post #118
JustAnotherPat wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Zurich is a city whose main industry is banking. There are a lot of _very_ well paid jobs in Zurich.

Not really.

For the Canton of Zurich (can't find city-specific info), financial services accounts for 21% of GVA, telecommunications accounts for 27%, industry and mining for 14%, entertainment for another 14%.

Zurich is a major tech and manufacturing hub.

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