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

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

#291

Post by rsynnott »

dboreham wrote: post #199
enraged_camel wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well...the guy in question is fairly widely disliked in the state (I've met him a few times -- seemed ok but he believes the earth is 4k years old which is .... just weird). He was elected I think because a) many people vote Republican regardless (see Trump) and b) mail in votes had already been counted at the time and this is a state with a high proportion of mail in ballots. I really wouldn't take his actions as an…

4k? The usual fundie lunatic number is 6k. Oh, well, Sumer don't real, I suppose.

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

#292

Post by s0rce »

jorblumesea wrote: post #257
oaijdsfoaijsf wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.).

What about regular people? Is everyone expected to be some high paid unicorn/big 4 engineer? Society is more than just rich techies.

"Regular people" in big populated urban areas can't expect to own a detached home, they can live in condos/apartments like they do in Asian cities, NYC and other densely populated cities.

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

#293

Post by marcell »

Whenever these threads come up, the NIMBY pitch forks come out. I 100% agree that we should build more housing in the Bay Area, but some perspective is helpful. The Bay Area is already one of the most densely populated regions in America:

http://ecpmlangues.u-strasbg.fr/civilization/geography/maps/...

And San Francisco is the 3rd most densely populated city in America, if you look at cities with over 100k people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

So I disagree with the narrative that Bay Area NIMBY-ism is out of control. It's probably similar to anywhere else in America.

There are two unique factors at play here:

(1) Massive growth of high paying jobs in the tech sector, with typical wages for an engineer ranging from $100-200k. This has caused housing to double/triple in cost over the last ten years.

(2) The Bay Area has very unfortunate geography: there is a giant bay in its geographic center, and mountains/oceans all around. This makes traffic and commuting more difficult, and also makes development "outwards" harder.

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

#294

Post by projectramo »

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…

This is actually hopeful since there are so many secondary and tertiary tech cities.

This means: we should all buy houses in the secondary tech hubs that are still affordable so our kids can afford to have families at tech firms when housing becomes unaffordable.

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

#295

Post by amyjess »

groupthink-- wrote: post #261
jerf wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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, app…

if by "brown people" you mean hispanic, that doesn't do much good for OP, who is most likely asian or indian. hispanic kids are even worse than white kids when it comes to making life hell for asian kids.

Still plenty of places in the country where there are large Indian communities.

There are a lot of Indians in Dallas; GP can come here. Or if GP doesn't want to live in a solid red state, there's always Millbourne, PA, which is over 40% Indian.

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

#296

Post by [deleted] »

seangrogg wrote: post #250
Yank33Doodle wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no hard rules, but very few of my non-white friends are OK with Phoenix or most other red states. AZ especially given the papers-please laws employed 'randomly' on brown people. Besides jobs, California offers open minds and much a much friendlier atmosphere for brown people.

Anecdotally, as one of the "brown people" that is okay with Arizona, I've never been hit by "your papers, please". Ironically, I feel that California offers much less in terms of "open minds" - I am strongly liberal on social matters and advocated for homosexual marriage rights in AZ. Here I feel legitimately scared to mention that I have conservative views on business affairs without fear of potentially losing a job…

[deleted]

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

#297

Post by s0rce »

optimuspaul wrote: post #132
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.

100k down is probably out of reach for the vast majority of people.

Seems reasonable, the vast majority of people in cities can live in more affordable higher density housing like apartments, condos and townhouses. Everyone won't be able to afford a house in dense cities, there simply isn't enough space so they become more expensive.

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

#298

Post by dmode »

0x445442 wrote: post #130
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.

Yeah, I wish more would come to Phoenix and drive up our real estate prices more. I left California right before the last housing bubble burst to take advantage of the real estate arbitrage. I'd love to do it again.

I lived in Phoenix for 3 years. Didn't like it at all. Joe Arpaio, crazy governor, 127 degrees heat, bros in Scottsdale. Oh God.

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

#299

Post by toasterlovin »

Yank33Doodle wrote: post #180
tkahnoski wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common complaint in Texas as well. Dallas and Austin growth has been crazy and California companies keep relocating. Great for those of us already with houses, terrible for those who don't and don't want to live in remote suburbia.

Terrible for minorities also.

How is it terrible for minorities?

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

#300

Post by kakarot »

itomato wrote: post #247
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.

D/FW, Austin

:(

Facebook recently opened a datacenter in Fort Worth. [0]

I heard something like 100k people are moving into the DFW metroplex a month? I haven't verified that but the real estate market is definitely crushing right now.

It's only a matter of time.

[0] https://code.facebook.com/posts/1014459531921764/facebook-in...

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