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

Post by city41 » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #212

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.

"Forced to leave" is a bit strong, evoking images of someone thrust into debtors prison. What would actually happen is they'd sell their house for 5x the price of the same house in a more reasonable housing market, and 10x what they paid for it, and move to a different location with a nicely multiplied bank account. I'll acknowledge that some stability is good. But it has a cost, and that cost is currently much highe…

Post by davidw » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:58 PM UTC

dmode wrote: post #127

davidw wrote: post #69

I'm surprised no one has mentioned http://www.sfyimby.org/ They're the go-to people if you want to be involved in fixing things.

FYI, California state legislature has passed a number of housing laws this year intended to accelerate housing development and affordable housing. I am hoping this really makes a dent. On the other hand, I don't think real estate would ever be cheap in coastal California as the demand for such real estate extends far beyond the US.

Post by Blackthorn » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:58 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #124

client4 wrote: post #14

Montana, a land of National parks, natural beauty, fast internet, and a low cost of living has a number of high tech jobs open. Full disclosure, I own an internet company here and want more tech savvy people in the area ;) Social Finanace (SoFi) | Helena, MT Oracle | Bozeman, MT OnXMaps | Missoula, MT Zaneray Group | Whitefish, MT Submittable | Missoula, MT Applied Materials | Kalispell, MT

Counterpoint: it is a very conservative state, and one of their elected representatives choke-slammed a Guardian journalist who was trying to ask him questions, and he still got elected.

Post by itomato » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 6:00 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #59

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…

> 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.

Post by ptero » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 6:00 PM UTC

jorblumesea wrote: post #142

cobookman wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly early in my career at a company ( 80-10-10 mortgage on a 1mil home is only 100k down. And the monthly payments split by 2 people (aka a couple) is ~2k / person / month. That's 4k/month all in once you include the tax rebates.

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…