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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

#521

Post by EpicEng »

whack wrote: post #108
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…

In which of the above 3 categories would you put the Google/Facebook/Apple employees making 200-300k+ per year? I can't speak towards family living, but as a single person willing to live with roommates, you can find pretty nice places in the heart of Silicon Valley for ~$1000/month. Now add in compensation-packages well over 6 figures, brand-name companies for your resume, networking locally with other great enginee…

>I can't speak towards family living, but as a single person willing to live with roommates, you can find pretty nice places in the heart of Silicon Valley for ~$1000/month

That would fall squarely in the 'living in relative squalor' category. making 200-300K and living with roomates in a small place? Pretty atypical for most of the world, and completely discounts most people over ~25 years old.

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

#522

Post by linkregister »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #430
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…

Maybe think about LA? You can make that salary and own a home easily. And the Armenian community there is great!

Los Angeles? Isn’t Los Angeles even worse for housing:income:commute?

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

#523

Post by Bartweiss »

ghaff wrote: post #374
Bartweiss wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely true. Even other nominally 'expensive' cities can attract away Bay Area expats if they're less comprehensively pricy. NYC has the same problem as SF: it's hell to get in and out, and no one is building new units with easy access to the city center. (LA likewise.) But Boston, DC, Houston, and other very big cities are way more forgiving to people willing to commute 20-50 minutes in return for some decently-…

And in the case of Boston many/most of the tech jobs still aren’t in the city itself although that’s shifted a fair bit. That’s a big difference between cities. In the Bay Area it’s hard to get away from very high prices. 45 to 60 minutes out of Boston in many directions and you’re into relatively reasonably priced housing.

Yep, exactly. Boston's financial tech is deep downtown (Harborside), but other big-name firms like Athena have set up shop in the outskirts and even run shuttles out from the city center. I suppose part of the reason is the number of colleges out past the densest part of the city, and the rest is the difficulty of building urban offices compared to expanding out into the cheaper Cambridge/Somerville/Watertown market.

It's definitely cheaper than SF now, but even more interesting is that it doesn't look to be set for a price spike; there's plenty of land to develop further, and for all the stupid housing laws there's not too much NIMBYism.

(Now if only the existing land wasn't so horrific to build on...)

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

#524

Post by linkregister »

lisper wrote: post #444
damnyou wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are democratically elected governments and Soviet-style planning mutually exclusive? Democratically elected governments do all sorts of horrible and unjust things. For modern examples see Erdogan and Duterte. The land itself is privately owned, sure, but undeveloped land is not very useful.

> undeveloped land is not very useful I love hiking in redwood forests. I love peace and quiet. I love not having to deal with traffic. So I think undeveloped land is very useful.

Nobody has recommended this straw man of a proposal. This is an example of an argument made in bad faith.

The topic is development of single-story housing into apartments. The Bay Area is rife with short houses around transit terminals.

You would have less traffic in the Valley if there were more apartments, so employees could bike and walk to work. They now commute from neighboring cities.

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

#525

Post by grzm »

Mz wrote: post #519
jamiek88 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Well, how can I say that better? How would you inquire if someone is interested in doing something more with the information and willing to discuss it with you? You know, without sounding like a leech imposing on their time with your half baked idea. I have run multiple websites for years, but I can't figure out how to develop them more effectively. I had a Fortune 500 job. I have a Certificate in GIS. Etc. But, I ca…

For another anecdotal perspective, I don't read your initial inquiry or its response as particularly problematic. I can understand why you might feel disappointed or frustrated. I don't read their short response as defensive, but rather as a more genuine expression that they're not interested in doing much more than what they've already done, rather than them not taking you seriously. One might misread your opening question in a negative way (Have you considered…? read as Why haven't you considered…?), but I don't think 'client4 did. I think you expressed yourself clearly and offhand I can't think of any way I would have written it differently.

When someone doesn't feel the same passion that I do about a particular issue or topic, I can get frustrated, too. I have to consciously remind myself that people prioritize things differently. I'd love to be able to infect people with the same level of commitment I feel, but there's no sure-fire way of doing that in my experience. Edit to add: I do think there are ways to become more effective (e.g., Dale Carnegie's methods), and they take practice. I know that's little consolation when things don't seem to be going your way.

This is a long way of saying I think this is only an example of mismatched levels of interest in action, no fault on any side.

As an aside, I really appreciate your self-reflection!

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

#526

Post by fineline »

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…

Bingo. I do wonder why people insist on seeing house price inflation as being solely caused by rising value of houses - due to increasing demand, constrained supply ... kitchen renos? - without acknowledging the role of the falling value of money - increased supply via deregulated debt creation, artificially low interest rates and QE.

The capital gain on housing then becomes a self-reinforcing loop as capital seeks yield in a low interest rate environment, and investment flows towards these unproductive assets instead of creating productive capacity. Regular buy-to-inhabit buyers are dragged along in the cycle as long as they can obtain sufficient credit.

In a system like ours (the world's that is - I'm not American) where money is created when banks write loans, debt increases more quickly than the money supply (because debt has interest, money doesn't, and in a housing boom relatively little new real value is being created). So the debt can never all be repayed, and at some point there must be a financial crisis.

Unless this time is different?

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

#527

Post by sampo »

s0rce wrote: post #292
jorblumesea wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> they can live in condos/apartments

How much do those cost in the Bay Area?

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

#528

Post by linkregister »

lisper wrote: post #356
CyberDildonics wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are nice, cheap places all over NorCal, but the expensive part is where the jobs are. Fort Bragg and Redding are absolutely gorgeous but they do not have a dense tech job market.

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

#529

Post by CyberDildonics »

deadmetheny wrote: post #426
CyberDildonics wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those places have trade-offs, just like anywhere else. For example, the Midwest is a very nice place to live, but the winters here are absolutely awful and we also tend to have at least a month in the summer where it's also extremely hot. The job market for tech is decent, but it's not nearly as lucrative as the coastal markets, although the low cost of living does make up for that to a degree. These things matter a…

I'm not sure what part of that contradicts what I said. The OP said there are too many people and no places to live. That's not the same as "the weather isn't as nice in the cheaper places, I'm painted in to a corner"

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

#530

Post by CyberDildonics »

lisper wrote: post #356
CyberDildonics wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If lots of people wanted to live in these supposed cheap, nice places they'd all be moving there instead of norcal.

There are over 300 million people in the US. What is this generalization supposed to mean? Try to look past extrapolating the 20 mile radius you live in to the entire country.

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