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Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

mercurynews.com

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Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#51

Post by dsfyu404ed »

robbrit wrote: post #31
nimbius wrote: post #16

Most of the bay area employees are divided into 3 categories from anecdotal experience: young rockstars that are willing to live in relative squalor for a chance to prove themselves, vested and moneyed elites (CEO's, presidents, VC funded overlords) who are so out of touch with the average employee its best they not show up to the office that frequently, and H1B visa recipients that endure the soul-crushing San Jose…

A fourth category: people who have lived here for a long time, and were able to buy property back before it became unaffordable. These are typically the managers or senior employees. It makes me wonder that as the young rockstars and H1B recipients age, where will they go? They certainly can't afford to buy a house. I imagine as time goes on, companies in the Bay Area will be awash with young junior talent but will s…

They'll go to cities like Denver and Austin and promptly get to work turning them into the only thing they know, SV.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#52

Post by adamc »

msluyter wrote: post #9

Austin resident here. My wife and I have been talking to renovators and have heard several times that projects simply take longer these days because many workers now must live farther out from the city core than they used to. I wouldn't be surprised the same thing happens here -- to a lesser degree perhaps, as we have more geographical space to expand into -- with avg commute time being the primary constraint on grow…

Austin has managed growth poorly, which has resulted in traffic nightmares. But the cost of housing has also been going up to a degree that may push people away. (Closing in on retirement in my current job and although I will likely continue programming, I am thinking about moving somewhere else.)

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#53

Post by theDoug »

acangiano wrote: post #27

Why aren't tech companies buying or building massive apartment complexes, making them appealing with a few amenities, and renting them out for cheap to their employees? I know building development in San Francisco proper is limited, but in the general bay area or South is not. Now you have a very attractive package: a relatively big salary and somewhat affordable housing. Talent would be much more willing to relocate…

Many seem very keen to, but most housing initiatives brought before at least the Mountain View and Sunnyvale councils (in my experience) face hard opposition from individual homeowners.

And that's how you keep the market up for $2.4 million homes that would go for $300k elsewhere http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/12/now-this-is-ridiculous...

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#54

Post by robbrit »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #33
robbrit wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fourth category: people who have lived here for a long time, and were able to buy property back before it became unaffordable. These are typically the managers or senior employees. It makes me wonder that as the young rockstars and H1B recipients age, where will they go? They certainly can't afford to buy a house. I imagine as time goes on, companies in the Bay Area will be awash with young junior talent but will s…

> It makes me wonder that as the young rockstars and H1B recipients age, where will they go? They certainly can't afford to buy a house. I imagine as time goes on, companies in the Bay Area will be awash with young junior talent but will struggle to attract more senior folks. They leave for more affordable cities or head back home to be close to family when they decide to have kids. EDIT: May I offer up Tampa as a ye…

Exactly. That is what I am doing after 3 years in the Bay Area.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#55

Post by microcolonel »

prostoalex wrote: post #22
microcolonel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking it might be worthwhile to engineer a scalable, high-traffic city(maybe city's the wrong word, it could be sprawling and fast, instead of dense and slow) from the ground up, somewhere there isn't one already. You don't need to build the transit immediately, you just need to have the restraint to reserve the space for a time when you will want it. Other useful constraints aside from transit reservations, m…

Or just copy Singapore.

Singapore does some of these things, sure, but not everything is great about the way they end up doing it. Sprawl is impossible in Singapore, but usable sprawl is a special strength of the United States. I think that if you tried to do Singapore again, you'd be missing out on an opportunity for people to live in houses (which most people greatly prefer to apartments) and mixed-use low-rises (the hallmark of a beautiful, lively city) still without missing out on sub-half-hour commutes.

Singapore also has the problem of being tyrannical in basically every way except the economic, I figure it should be legal to walk around nude in your own house, and also legal to chew gum.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#56

Post by taftster »

taxicabjesus wrote: post #24

I've been thinking that apartment cooperatives might be a way to break "investors'" stranglehold on housing. The last landlord I had was a decent fellow - the property was well maintained and he fixed problems promptly. But my rent certainly went to pay his mortgage on the property, and I now have nothing to show for the $thousands I paid him. One time he was showing off the little 8-unit complex to someone he wanted…

> "But my rent certainly went to pay his mortgage on the property"

Um, yeah. That's the way it works for property investors. Find a property, borrow money to purchase, rent out property to cover mortgage costs. This happens at low scale (individuals) and high scale (property investment companies, REIs, etc.).

> "I now have nothing to show for the $thousands I paid him"

Presumably, you had a job at the time, for which you decided it was an equitable trade to have the job and not buy a property to live. You made a choice, and the outcome from that choice is what you have to show.

You do the math on the rent/buy decision. In places like New York, San Francisco, etc. it's very common to come out on the side of renter instead of buyer. If you're in the mid-west, you are probably buying. But don't say you didn't have nothing to show for the rent.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#57

Post by abritinthebay »

polskibus wrote: post #50
jorblumesea wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a fair amount of people "grandfathered" into the region. Bought back in the 90s/early 2000s in closer in cities or neighborhoods. They have it pretty good, but at the expense of everyone else.

Could you explain that bit more? How is that at the expense of everyone else, did they achieve their wealth illegally?

Read up on Prop 13 a bit. That’ll explain it.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#58

Post by adekok »

tfha wrote: post #13
msluyter wrote: post #9

Austin resident here. My wife and I have been talking to renovators and have heard several times that projects simply take longer these days because many workers now must live farther out from the city core than they used to. I wouldn't be surprised the same thing happens here -- to a lesser degree perhaps, as we have more geographical space to expand into -- with avg commute time being the primary constraint on grow…

Yeah. It's not so much about distance, it's about time. Better infrastructure for moving people in and out of the city enables a larger city, and a more populated one.

Note that "better infrastructure" != "more highways", as traffic grows to saturate the available roads.

If you want better infrastructure, invest in light rail.

http://www.iwillride.org/what-200-people-look-like-driving-c...

I spent ~10 years living in Europe. While there was still a lot of traffic, huge numbers of people took rail. To me, the cities were much more livable than the average NA city.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#59

Post by davidw »

robbrit wrote: post #31
nimbius wrote: post #16

Most of the bay area employees are divided into 3 categories from anecdotal experience: young rockstars that are willing to live in relative squalor for a chance to prove themselves, vested and moneyed elites (CEO's, presidents, VC funded overlords) who are so out of touch with the average employee its best they not show up to the office that frequently, and H1B visa recipients that endure the soul-crushing San Jose…

A fourth category: people who have lived here for a long time, and were able to buy property back before it became unaffordable. These are typically the managers or senior employees. It makes me wonder that as the young rockstars and H1B recipients age, where will they go? They certainly can't afford to buy a house. I imagine as time goes on, companies in the Bay Area will be awash with young junior talent but will s…

> where will they go

Other tech hubs. Portland, Seattle - even little Bend has plenty of people from California who are attracted by the (for them) low housing prices. They, in turn, put pressure on housing prices for 'ordinary' people here.

California's housing crisis has repercussions all up and down the west coast.

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