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

#381

Post by nerfhammer » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

AndrewBissell wrote: post #367

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.

The runup in real estate prices is fundamentally driven by the huge amounts of money printing by the Fed earlier this decade. The Bay Area has just been the canary in the coal mine on this because the strong job growth and self-injurious housing policies caused the price pressures to show up earlier than elsewhere, but it will become an undeniably nationwide phenomenon soon enough. High real estate prices & rents are…

Why do you need this indirect theory when much simpler numbers like the disparity between increase of population and lack of increase in housing units are available?

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

#382

Post by cobookman » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

slezakattack wrote: post #334

aantix wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where did you get 3k a month for housing?? Remember, this is an 80-10-10 loan which means you have two loans. I have a 80-10-10 loan for a roughly $900k house and the first mortgage is $3400/mth (30 year fixed at 4.15%) and the second loan is $600/mth (same but around 6% interest). $4000/mth just for the mortgages, property tax is about 12k for the year, which means you pay $5000/mth on housing. For reference, this i…

After interest deductions on mortgage & property taxes a 1 mil home is ~4000$/month in `rent`. Yes you'd be paying more than 4k but you'd also be taking home more money as well.

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

#383

Post by chimeracoder » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #262

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.

LGBT people, too. I'm a trans lesbian, born and still live in Texas. When I move out of state, it's going to be a state with trans-inclusive protections at the state level. Spending this entire year worrying about Dan Patrick shoving transphobic legislation down our throats was emotionally harrowing, and I don't want to go through it again. I hope to be out of the state by the time the 2019 session begins. And Patric…

> I utterly despise hipsters, I'm a very proud neoliberal globalist Jew, and I'm an establishment Democrat that despises the Bernie wing), so that's making it hard to find a place that's exactly like what I want. I'm looking for a conservative, sprawling suburb that isn't riddled with hipsters and is located in a blue state. I also insist on a place where AC is universal, and for food-related reasons, I want to live somewhere there's a lot of Asian people.

You're describing Westchester or Long Island, down to a T.

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

#384

Post by WalterSear » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

projectramo wrote: post #364

WalterSear wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving cars are going to be rewriting the commute paradigm. It's important to factor that in.

This is a good point. Note only will that time become productive time, but it might reduce traffic on the roads and reduce congestion.

The real estate to purchase right now is vacation homes 8 hours drive from the metropolitan areas.

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

#385

Post by tezzer » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

WalterSear wrote: post #341

projectramo wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Self-driving cars are going to be rewriting the commute paradigm. It's important to factor that in.

So I still won't be able to see my kids awake because of a 1.5 hour commute each way, but I'll be able to read the newspaper on the way to work? No thanks.

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

#386

Post by 5706906c06c » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

srathi wrote: post #105

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…

I'm in the exact same situation, minus the BART part. Not sure how long can I wait to buy a house. Also, If your commute is 30 min, then you are probably living around Fremont. Is the rent for 900sqft that high over there? This is touching SF territory.

San Bruno, pretty much SF territory. My family owned and lived in Fremont, and my brother's commute often hovered around 60+ minutes on BART.

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

#387

Post by alexanderstears » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

cnorgate wrote: post #277

alexanderstears wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 I'm making 80% of the SFBA wages and I live in the rust belt. I had a 1 bedroom, 800 sq. ft apartment a block away from work for I've talked to a few recruiters in the Bay Area but the crime and cost of living are highly unfavorable. As far as I can tell, the only reason one would go out there is to do something state-of-the-art. I don't know why people would do anything else there unless they were already wealthy…

Where in the Rust belt? I agree, much more affordable. Interested in which city you chose, and what your experience has been...?

I've jumped between a few cities actually. I'll call out the things I wish I would have known:

* winter isn't that bad if you have a heated garage at work and at least an insulated garage (if unheated) at home

* winter is that bad if you park outside

* the downtowns of most major rust belt cities are shockingly cosmopolitan with brunch joints, breweries, and art galleries

* the art scenes are shockingly good because the costs are pretty low

* the airfare can be kind of expensive

* the spring and fall are very, very nice

* the cities are generally managed poorly but the first / second ring suburbs (esp. the wealthier / more conservative ones) are really, really nice places to live

I think Paul Graham made this point, but it's good to live in areas that used to be rich. St. Paul MN, Columbus OH, and Erie PA fit the bill - the old mansions and old town neighborhoods can be really really nice and shockingly affordable if you're used to coast prices. There's less ethnic food generally available but there is pretty authentic stuff in the immigrant neighborhoods and the prices are authentic too.

The biggest 'quality of life' thing is the ease of getting around the low storage costs. In California, it seemed like people could really only have one or two hobbies - in the midwest it's not uncommon for folks to more than half of these items: kayaks, bicycles, motorcycles, boats, fishing rods, tents, cameras, skis/snowboards, hammocks, golf clubs etc. Having winter makes it easier to get outdoors during the warm months, and if you have kids, the schools in the richer areas tend to be very good.

The downsides are the roads can be pretty bad (esp. in Illinois and Michigan), winter can be brutal, the salt can make car ownership expensive, car ownership is critical unless you make it otherwise, and it can be tough to find intellectual engagement.

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

#388

Post by lisper » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 6:51 PM UTC

deepsun wrote: post #311

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…

If you drive 30 minutes any direction from San Francisco, you will see plenty of vast empty fields covered with wild grasses. I don't argue that we should cover all the land available with houses, I like wild grass, but I just point out that if we really hadn't enough space -- we would have settled it already. I've never heard the now popular "Earth is overpopulated" rant from anyone who lives outside major metro. Go…

> I like wild grass

And that is the problem. You're not the only one. Yes, if we turned the San Francisco Bay area into a clone of Manhattan or Hong Kong or Tokyo we could accommodate a lot more people. But a lot of people would not consider that a good outcome. People who like that kind of lifestyle can have it in any of the dozens of dense cities on the planet.

The SFBay area is desirable precisely because it is not (yet) dense. People move here because they like yards and redwood trees and vineyards and hiking trails. Manifestly there are more people who want these things than there is space to accommodate all of them. That is the problem.

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

#389

Post by aabajian » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 6:51 PM UTC

I place blame on the location of the tech hubs in the Bay Area. Not one mega-company, save Tesla, has setup shop in East Bay. There is affordable housing across the water, and new construction as well. Facebook has mitigated this somewhat buy purchasing Sun Microsystem's campus right next to the bridge.

Also, note that SF isn't the fastest growing housing market anymore, it's Seattle (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-no...). Seattle didn't feel as much housing-pressure with Microsoft due to the remote location of its campus in Redmond/Bellevue. That's changing with Amazon; the sales giant is located in prime real estate, just like the tech companies on the peninsula.

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

#390

Post by marcell » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 6:52 PM UTC

beatpanda wrote: post #313

marcell wrote: post #293

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: htt…

NIMBYs in San Francisco scream bloody murder and call it "violence" when developers want to build on empty parking lots. I am not exaggerating. The idea that "geography" is the limiting factor here is willful ignorance.

Geography definitely impacts it.

There is substantially cheaper housing in the East Bay, compared to SF/Peninsula. However there's no good way to get from the East Bay to where the jobs are: you are limited by one of three bridges, all of which have terrible traffic.

Imagine if we filled up the entire SF Bay with concrete, and demolished all the mountains surrounding the Bay Area. I'll bet you would see improved traffic and more even prices between East/West bay.