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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

#591

Post by linkregister »

lisper wrote: post #542
linkregister wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You would have less traffic in the Valley if there were more apartments, so employees could bike and walk to work. This assumes that all of the houses vacated by currently commuting employees moving into apartments near transit (and thus becoming non-commuters) would be replaced by people who don't commute. But that's extremely unlikely to be the case. Furthermore, all of the people living near transit would still…

Most would use the transit option, especially since the proximity to transit would be included in the price.

Other potential nudges would be to waive parking requirements for such development, thus denying parking places for the residents.

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

#592

Post by nradov »

lisper wrote: post #388
deepsun wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

Parking lots for the nearby hiking trails are already overflowing on weekends and holidays. Squeezing in more people has a very direct negative impact on quality of life.

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

#593

Post by twobyfour »

TuringNYC wrote: post #229
twobyfour wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the low-paid hourly employees who make food, mop floors, and stand behind cash registers?

I sympathize with those in such positions who have family roots and dont wish to move out of the region. But the "good" think about such jobs are geographic freedom.

And in the meantime, where are SF businesses going to find people to DO those jobs, if everyone's priced out of the region?

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

#594

Post by cdkee »

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 26, and I just bought a 2 bed 1 bath 850 sqft condo in Santa Clara for 570k.

My payments are insane, basically 4k a month. I'm able to get by because my wife works too so we aren't entirely living hand to mouth.

Since I bought in June, an identical condo in the same complex sold for around 600k.

It really burns when you consider that even in Sacramento you could probably get a full sized single-family home for what I paid...just at the cost of being further away from work.

I've been living in the Bay Area since I was 7, and I've almost been priced out of it. Does not feel good.

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

#595

Post by [deleted] »

dahdum wrote: post #348
tmh79 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is a lot you're leaving out here or misunderstand. The reason that there is a housing crises int he SFBA is that all of the cities in the SFBA have produced an order of magnitude more office space than housing in the past 10 or so years. Look at communities like Cupertino, building the apple space ship for 14k people, but adding virtually no housing to the city. Lather/rinse/repeat for Palo Alto, MPK, MTV, etc…

Each city is doing that intentionally of course, because it's in their best interest. If they allowed housing to develop they'd have to expand their school, police, fire, garbage and other departments.

[deleted]

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

#596

Post by MystK »

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 was born and lived in the Silicon Valley all my life. I think you're over-exaggerating the issue.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1052-Montgomery-Ave-San-B...

Here's a 1200 SQFT 4 bedroom home in San Bruno for only 700k.

The fact is that you are looking at homes over your budget, especially if you haven't saved a sizable down payment. Yes it's worse than other areas, but there are a lot of opportunities for people here.

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

#597

Post by Atheros »

city41 wrote: post #241
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Forced to leave" is a bit strong, evoking images of someone thrust into debtors prison. What would actually happen is they'd sell their house for 5x the price of the same house in a more reasonable housing market, and 10x what they paid for it, and move to a different location with a nicely multiplied bank account. I'll acknowledge that some stability is good. But it has a cost, and that cost is currently much highe…

But what if they don't want to leave? Many of these people have lived here their whole lives. If they must leave due to the market, I'd argue that's being forced out. Even if they do make a tidy profit. Anecdotal, but I've heard this is happening in Hawaii now with vacation home prices skyrocketing, causing natives to get stuck with property taxes they can no longer afford.

It's sad. But it's also for the greater good. Capitalism automatically makes the most efficient use of land through the use of property taxes. It's also the only reason we have cities at all- all development necessarily displaced people living in lower density structures.

Cities change. It's inevitable. If you can't make use of the resources your city or town provides and someone else can then you are forced out. That's a good thing for society overall and it benefits you too.

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

#598

Post by cobookman »

FireBeyond wrote: post #443
StreamBright wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He's not even talking about a 2K mortgage. He's talking about a 2K/PERSON/mo, and him and his partner paying somewhere north of $4K to 5K a month in payments, PMI etc.

No Pmi needed. And it’s 4-4.5k total all in.

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

#599

Post by alphonsegaston »

linkregister wrote: post #522
alphonsegaston wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Commutes are on par with San Francisco, but housing and income aren’t as bad yet. Wait another 5 years and they might be at parity with the Bay area. But the bay could even be further off the rails by then.

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

#600

Post by cobookman »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #442
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.

Remember to include property taxes, roughly $800-month for a 1mil home.

That was with property tax. Unless trump gets his way, property tax is deductible from income tax.
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