Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by oaijdsfoaijsf » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #213

jorblumesea wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus, 2k / person a month is insane. This is what people are talking about. This is not acceptable or normal. I pay $900 / person a month for a large house in Seattle that's a 15 minute commute from downtown. Even with the bay's high salaries you're not doing very well. Throw in bills and other expenses and you're looking at ~40% of your monthly income, assuming a salary of 130k. That's ~50k per person, per year, in…

It's also hyperbole. It's closer to ~5K per month for a $1M mortgage with insurance and taxes in the bay today. By the rule of thirds, that's $60K/yr meaning $180K+/yr salary is necessary. This is for suburban living in a remodeled 70's ranch home, not in an urban area.

But a $180k gross income is not particularly unusual in the Bay. I mean, that's still in junior engineer territory at one of the BigCos (Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.).

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

#232

Post by jostmey » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #206

jostmey wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion: - Seattle has more diverse industry. I toured the bio-science companies down at the harbor and was really impressed. Seattle is more than just "tech". - SF is way too restrictive with allowing new housing to be built. I did not perceive the problem to be as bad in Seattle. - In SF, a lot of the streets reeked of weed--It's like when someone cranks up their music too loud forcing everyone to listen to it.…

> In SF, a lot of the streets reeked of weed What? Where did you live? I never once had that problem. It's not like the entirety of SF smells like weed 24/7, I think that's a pretty absurd strike to give a city (especially since it's legalized in WA).

It was around 2013 and I stayed at the Holiday Inn civic center. I explored around on foot. I remember wanting to get the fresh ocean air in my room (because of the funky odor in my room) and deciding to close my windows because all I smelled outside was weed (though lots of places smelled of weeed)

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

#233

Post by Gargoyle » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #143

davidw wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> California's housing crisis has repercussions all up and down the west coast. You're looking at it the wrong way. It's not that the situation in California has wider repercussions, it's that there is a wider problem whose symptoms happen to manifest themselves earliest in California because it's one of the nicer places to live: there are simply too many people and not enough space for them all to live in the nice p…

This is what people tell themselves in order to make their suffering tolerable. But the best places to live even just in California are amazingly underpopulated.

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

#234

Post by jerf » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

5706906c06c wrote: post #49

38, two kids and a wife. Have been living in a 900SQ/FT apt, I don't know how much longer I can take this before rage quitting and relocating somewhere else (don't know where). The sad part, as a ethnic-minority, I have just found our community for my kids, etc. It would be really tragic if I have to tear my kids away from that. Don't get me wrong, my daily 30 minute commute on BART isn't the worst. The worst part is…

"The sad part, as a ethnic-minority, I have just found our community for my kids, etc. It would be really tragic if I have to tear my kids away from that."

Contrary to apparently-popular belief (based on some other comments in this thread), the Bay Area is not the only place in the United States with ethnic-minority communities/enclaves, or the only region in the entire United States where "brown people" are not, apparently, shot on sight. Otherwise, how could there be articles about how "white" is on the verge of becoming a minority?

(I won't deny that the Bay Area is very, very liberal, but you're really in a filter bubble if you think it's the only one, or even remotely close to describable that way.)

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

#235

Post by PatientTrades » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

San Diego has the same problem. Impossible to find decent housing. Studios going for +600K, 3 bedroom homes going for 1M. More and more of us are living 1-2 hours away from work just to live comfortably. Eventually this will reach a breaking point, and the housing market will crash like 2008. House flippers basically playing hot potato with these inflated prices.

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

#236

Post by howcool » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

Another aspect that isn't mentioned here is this. Over the past 7 or 8 years Bay area companies have had to keep gradually increasing their employee's salaries to accommodate for the rising real estate profits, which has caused competing companies to have to do the same and so on.

We've finally hit a point where companies are now realizing it isn't profitable to continue paying employees higher salaries and are letting folks go, and those folks are moving to more affordable areas in the country.

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

#237

Post by Mz » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

client4 wrote: post #107

Mz wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered doing something more organized than a random comment on HN? I would very much like to see real solutions to some of the problems the US is experiencing wrt concentration of "good" jobs in a few places and them going utterly to hell because of it. I keep kicking around ideas and starting various small websites that often go nowhere. But, I think the internet is a potential means to start giving pus…

I operate casually.

Sigh. I am really really bad at this. I ask a question. The reply is often defensive. Conversation fails to happen, often coming to a screeching halt.

I am not trying to dump a project in your lap. I really appreciated your comment. It makes me want to do something with the info.

Before my life was derailed, I was studying to become an urban planner, but was really more interested in regional planning. I have a sincere interest in trying to find real solutions that are lightweight and use existing resources. I am also a recent California escapee.

If you are interested in seeing something more done with this info at some point, please drop me a line. I don't know where to go with it at this point in time, but having a contact on the ground that could feed me info to help jump start something might be useful.

Thank you for making the comment and answering questions here.

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

#238

Post by 0xbear » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC

latencyloser wrote: post #169

davidw wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Seattle is quickly becoming 'bay area'-ish from what I can tell. Housing is certainly becoming difficult at incredible rates. Here in Bellevue, a colleague of mine bought a house for ~400k, it's now worth well over ~500k only a year later. Many houses in that area also sell for at least 700k+ assuming you can even get an offer in before a cash buyer grabs it. Don't even get me started on the traffic. I run as many of…

400k in Bellevue buys you a dilapidated shack at the outskirts. For anything decent you’re talking $1m and up.

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

#239

Post by LeifCarrotson » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #176

city41 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side to that is without prop 13, families like this would quickly find they can no longer afford to pay the taxes on their house and are forced to leave. Which is also not a great situation.

That's why the Dems have been courting "split-roll" for a long time, to prevent the corporate abuses of Prop 13 - which can bee pretty powerful, but keep the homeowner version. Here's how a corporate Prop13 exploit goes: first identify land you want to own that's owned by another corporation. Make a private agreement to buy the property. Over time, replace board of directors of property-owning corp with folks from bu…

This happens all the time with private LLCs and S-corps that do nothing but own boats, planes, equipment, or other stuff where sales or use tax is supposed to be paid on transfers.

You don't sell the boat, you sell the LLC that happens to own the boat. And when buying a business entity or business interest, you don't pay sales tax. The boat was always owned by the same LLC, it never changed hands - it was the business that changed hands.

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

#240

Post by davidw » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #143

davidw wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> California's housing crisis has repercussions all up and down the west coast. You're looking at it the wrong way. It's not that the situation in California has wider repercussions, it's that there is a wider problem whose symptoms happen to manifest themselves earliest in California because it's one of the nicer places to live: there are simply too many people and not enough space for them all to live in the nice p…

> there are simply too many people and not enough space for them all to live in the nice places.

Tokyo added more housing than the entire state of California:

https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-...

And as someone who lived in Europe for a while, I think we've had the technology to house a fair number of people in desirable area for several hundred years. It's the political will that's lacking.