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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

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> ...vast majority of the electorate that's socially liberal and financially conservative...

There isn't a vast majority on controversial social issues or they wouldn't be so controversial.

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

#482

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.).

No, that's not junior engineer territory, even at the BigCos.

That's what all the college grads I knew at Google 2016-2017 were making, probably closer to $200k unless they started trimming the RSU grants because of $GOOG appreciation.

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

#483
post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that the Fed is still dreaming about having low inflation while the number one expense most people will have experiences rampant inflation.

It's impossible to control skyrocketing house prices in booming tech areas with anything other than a massive amount of new housing developments. Even if everything you can buy suddenly got 10% cheaper, the houses in those areas would immediately increase back to the old level because the prices is driven by a high demand relative to supply.

Makes sense. To me it just seems they act as if inflation was low but in reality they are creating huge asset inflation with the low interest policy.

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

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that the Fed is still dreaming about having low inflation while the number one expense most people will have experiences rampant inflation.

Isn't it very localized?

Based on this it's nationwide: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA

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

#485
post #388

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> 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 no…

> People move here because they like yards and redwood trees and vineyards and hiking trail no, they want jobs. you can get outdoors anywhere in the US, but only a few places in the US actually have a super vibrant economy. and NOTHING precludes turning SF into a stack of 120-story high-density towers apartments for all family types and leaving the redwoods and grassy fields alone. nothing but the unwillingness to go…

Going to be fun getting around those 120 story towers given the rest of San Francisco’s infrastructure including mass transit. There’s always the cable car I guess. But it shouldn’t take more than a few decades to expand that further as well.

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

#486
post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because Prop 13 applies to commercial real estate as well because corporations are people too.

Wow. That makes sense. That explains why so many seemingly infrequently visited businesses still have storefronts in Berkeley. I always wonder how they stay in business. I thought perhaps commercial rent control.

Moes owns its building. Black Oak Books didn’t.

If Prop 13 wreaks havoc on housing, it’s much worse on commercial RE where it literally it spawns a class of rent seekers.

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

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrible for minorities also.

How is it terrible for minorities?

I'm also wondering about this. Texas is a majority-minority state.

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

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

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name one person who was fired for "conservative views on business affairs", please?

James Damore

That seems like more of a social issue than "business affairs" to me. But I don't really know what seangrogg is referring to with that phrase.

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

#489
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 since…

> More organized than a random comment on HN... You mentioned you are bad at this, just a little unsolicited help - I am not the guy you responded to but even initially got my back up reading that. I was thinking jeez this guy puts his hand out to help, agrees to meet one other local dev, comments how he knows half of them and basically gets accused of laziness / slacktivism! It’s clear you didn’t mean that now, tone…

[deleted]

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

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hardly insane for a house in a large metropolitan area! That's actually pretty reasonable, and lots of apartments in SF are 50% to 100% more in rent. If you look at current, or anything within maybe 5 years, house prices in Seattle I doubt you'll find much if anything within a 15 minute commute to downtown Seattle for a 900/month mortgage.

Other than NYC that's close to 50% more than what you can expect in any large American city. That is not reasonable in any sense of the word. 4k / month mortgage is around a $1 mil home value.

Is a 50% variation in housing costs between large American cities not reasonable in any sense of the word?

The per-capita GDP variation between large American cities is larger than that, and there's no good reason to expect housing to cost the same in very different cities.

Some cities having housing cost at least 50% more (or double) the national average seems like something that would be the case in pretty much any country in any period of history.

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