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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

#351

Post by 5706906c06c »

conanbatt wrote: post #182
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…

That amount of money should suffice to mortgage a house if you can..people with less income buy houses in the area. However..remember that buying a house does not save you rent. You become an owner, so either you pay rent to the owner, or you stiff him, which happens to be you.

Definitely aware of the trade offs, doing the means test indicates I should own, I digress. There is an emotional component, which is the kids. I grew up moving from one continent to another with no sense of security. I don't want the same for my kids, they deserve stability in their lives, and I've convinced myself that as a provider I need to make that happen for them.

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

#352

Post by ryanjl »

r00fus wrote: post #216
epistasis wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local city governments have made it impossible to build large amounts of housing. The entrenched interests of current land owners do not want lots of housing in their city. From their point of view, it's only hassle. More people on the roads, things changing, etc. Also it stops their property values from rising so quickly.

Well there you nailed it on the head. There's a valid reason the NIMBYs don't want more housing: US city governments are traditionally very very poor at housing planning and companies use that as an excuse to avoid taking into account all the externalities. I mean, you increase housing but don't increase retail units or parks in the same area, thereby creating a cultural/food desert. Even if you do, if you don't incr…

It's the other way in California: compared to elsewhere, excessive amounts of retail and non-residential development because of prop 13. Local governments are very dependent on sales tax since the aggregate property tax rate can't support local services, and retail throws off that sales tax revenue.

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

#353

Post by Chaebixi »

aantix wrote: post #168
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 but the average salaried offer appears to be 140K? 140K, 40% for taxes, leaves with 84K, 3K a month for housing (assuming you don't want to shack up with some rando Craigslist'er), leaves 48K. Another 20K for food and booze, and you're left with 28K.

You also have to factor in the astronomical rent. How are you supposed to save that 100k when so much is going to rent?

I know a non-tech dual-earner couple who managed to save a down payment like that in the Bay Area, but they were living rent-free in a house owned by one of their parents well into their 30s.

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

#354

Post by anarazel »

StreamBright wrote: post #223
top256 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what were the multiple reasons?

- lack of affordable housing with a garden where my kid can play - traffic - airport traffic is flying above residential areas, so even when you find something affordable you have to check - affordable creche for my kid - SFO is one of the worst airports to arrive from abroad

> - SFO is one of the worst airports to arrive from abroad

Interesting - I find it a lot better than a number of other large US airports. While the immigration queues aren't great they're better than JFK, EWR, IAD, LAX, DFW, ORD and much better than YYZ. And you usually can just hurry past a lot of the other flyers, to get at the front of the queue. And departing the security queues are less bad than a lot of other airports too.

These days I've global entry, making this less painful...

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

#355

Post by 5706906c06c »

3pt14159 wrote: post #98
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…

What's the plan though? Like, tuck away the money to buy a place somewhere else? Or are you waiting for a housing correction?

Option A, save to buy elsewhere. Option B, housing market correction, though unclear if that'll happen, so probably A. Option C, continue renting, save for kids college and retirement if I can't make it happen in the next 3-5 years, and realizing I'm being aggressively pessimistic.

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

#356

Post by lisper »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #202
lisper wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That could not be further from the truth. There are lots of cheap places to live in the US that are still very nice, you just don't want to live there.

> There are lots of cheap places to live in the US that are still very nice

For example?

> you just don't want to live there.

Obviously, it's not just me. If lots of people wanted to live in these supposed cheap, nice places they'd all be moving there instead of norcal.

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

#357

Post by 0x445442 »

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…

Yeah, I'm also one of those "brown people". Based on affordable housing and acceptance of diversity of thought, it's much friendlier in Arizona than California.

As far as the political views you highlighted, my guess is you're part of the vast majority of the electorate that's socially liberal and financially conservative.

Question is, can that vast majority ever organize?

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

#359

Post by baddox »

StreamBright wrote: post #152
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.

You kidding right? 100k down? 2K mortgage? These are insane numbers that very few people can afford even in the tech community.

Nearly all software engineers in San Francisco will be able to afford $2k a month, even if it's tight. They'll be doing close to that anyway in rent. I'm not arguing it's not insane rent/mortgage in absolute terms, but relative to software engineer salaries, it's doable.

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

#360

Post by jtmcmc »

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…

This is talking about all jobs not tech jobs - there are any number of people that live in the bay area that don't work in tech. This is much more about them than tech workers...
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