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90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

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Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#111

Post by eecsninja »

abritinthebay wrote: post #86
eecsninja wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in the Bay Area. Spent several years at a FAANG company. About 2/3 of the time, I lived with my parents. The remainder was with housemates. In my early 30s, I decided that I couldn't continue living with parents, while there wasn't any place in the BA that I cared to pay money to live in. Now I live in NYC, same salary, but finally have my own place that's not shared with others. I live in a 30th floor stud…

Average rent in NYC - $3,375 Average rent in SF - $3,558 I don't know your situation but NYC is basically in the same boat (just with a better rail system).

That's a coarse comparison. Most housing in the bay area is multi-room units. Even the relatively new apartments in North San Jose are mostly 2 bedrooms. If you're single and want your own place, there's very few studios and 1 bedroom apartments to go around.

For a more precise comparison, see: https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/new-yor...

As of this writing, rent for a one bedroom apartment is 30% more in SF than in NYC.

My rent is $2640. I know people in Pacifica, Palo Alto, and Mountain View paying anywhere from $2700 to $3200 for a 1 bedroom.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#112

Post by beamatronic »

spyspy wrote: post #16

The sad fact is that long as people are willing to put up with this nothing is going to change. The crazy rents and terrible commutes sound insane to anyone living elsewhere but people are continuously more than happy to continue doing them to work at companies that haven't been priced out yet either. It's not an issue of social mobility either, since people living in the bay area are some of the most socially mobile…

Isn’t there a saying in economics: “That which cannot continue, will stop.”

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#113

Post by sampo »

timr wrote: post #64
sampo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it'll only stop when everyone says enough is enough and leaves Or, alternatively, when enough people start voting in politicians who would allow building lots of new homes in central locations. Manhattan has 3.9× the density of San Francisco. At Manhattan density, the City of San Francisco could house 2.5 million more people.

This is such a tiresome argument. Even if you could suddenly build all of the housing required to reduce prices on a short timescale, you'd have to solve the infrastructural problems that come with it (roads and transit), and convince developers to build into a massive loss (i.e. I am a developer, and you expect me to build and finance at today's costs, and pay for it with tomorrow's lower rents). Construction is a s…

> Even if you could suddenly build all of the housing required to reduce prices on a short timescale, you'd have to solve the infrastructural problems that come with it

The value of new multi-story units along good commute in the most expensive housing market in the world would be so high that some taxation of that profit would be more than enough to fund building the required commuter rail or subway lines and also new schools. At least in an ideal world.

This is how Tokyo has funded new commuter rail lines. The increase of the land value in the new to-be-build neighborhood covers the cost of serving the neighborhood with a rail line:

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2011/10/why-tokyos-pr...

But I am not sure whether California has the will and skill to tax those profits, and to direct that money for those purposes.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#114

Post by ilamont »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #24

This is increasingly common in the Boston area as well. Cambridge/MIT is a massive biotech hub, meanwhile we have huge companies with many large offices in the downtown or in surrounding suburbs. Many workers live in RI, NH, or Central Mass, and getting to work for 9 am consistently will involve leaving at 730 for many, many workers due to congestion, construction, and the god-awful mess that is Boston infrastructure…

What I find amazing is companies insisting on being located near Kendall or the Seaport District (and paying massive amounts of money for the privilege) to be "innovative."

Why aren't more companies in New England going to where the commercial real estate and housing are cheaper?

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#115

Post by randomdata »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #96
jasode wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then maybe everyone creating textual output for a living wouldn't have to transport their physical body to an office. Remote work hasn't taken off on a large scale because massively successful multi-billion dollar companies like Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/SpaceX were not built with remote workers . You get (relatively) minor companies touting it such as Automattic and Basecamp. Those smaller businesses haven't ach…

Isn't that the same for any new/fringe idea though? Working non-remotely has been the status-quo since before it was possible to work remotely. More curiously, I'd like to see if remote work was responsible for preventing a company from reaching milestones like being a multi-billion dollar company.

> Working non-remotely has been the status-quo since before it was possible to work remotely.

As a farmer, I like to think of it as the original working remotely career. Especially in history where your entire land-base and home were one in the same. Working in an office away from home is the 'new fangled' way to work.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#117

Post by eloff »

If you're doing this, your almost certainly choosing a suboptimal career path. I think most of the times you could optimize your job and location and come out ahead economically.

That's not the only consideration, but it's tough to imagine the 90 minute commute winning on quality of life factors.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#118

Post by abritinthebay »

justherefortart wrote: post #93
fokinsean wrote: post #8

I recently had an opportunity to move out to the Bay Area with my current job (I am currently at a satellite office). The commute time combined with CoL and a few other factors made the decision easy to not go. I currently have a 3 minute commute and I would honestly lose my mind if I had to commute 90 mins one way. I have also been seeing a general rise of articles mentioning how many people are leaving, how insane…

I lived in the city (SF) and outside the city. My commute to the Embarcardero wasn't too bad when I lived in Pacifica. Just drive over the hill to Colma, park and take BART. I'd read on the way into the city and walk to work. Probably the best commute I've ever had except working from home. Pacifica felt like a small town separated from it all. But I lived in the Manor area. Living down in Linda Mar (anything past Sh…

Hello former neighbor! I used to live on the Bluffs right in the Manor area. I agree with everything you said - but the commute sucked if you didn't have a car or shared a car with a spouse who didn't work in the same area as you.

Why? Because the transit out there is terrible. It's served by one single SamTrans bus line that takes 45 minutes to get from Pacifica to Daly City BART (a 5ish minute drive).

If it wasn't for that I'd probably still be living there. It's just impossible without a car - something that cannot be said for most of the Bay.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#119

Post by kolpa »

nathan_long wrote: post #62
GuiA wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article interviews a restaurant manager and a construction site superintendent. Non tech workers are significantly more affected than tech workers, because they cannot afford to live closer to their place of employment, and do not have access to the perks (work from home, shuttles, etc.) that tech workers have.

Yes, I feel sorry for people whose jobs actually require them to go somewhere, and who are stuck in traffic behind a thousand nerds whose jobs arbitrarily demand a commute, and who have to compete with those highly-paid nerds to buy a house.

> whose jobs actually require them to go somewhere

This jobs exist where they are because the "nerds" work there. They could choose not to work at those nerd-service jobs (forcing nerds to buy there food closer to home) or form a union to demand higher pay, or organize and build housing there.

Also, "nerd" is unhelpful trash talking.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#120

Post by rubicon33 »

nathan_long wrote: post #45
blktiger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are companies out there that are fully remote (like my current employer https://www.sonatype.com/ ). Though I suppose many of them don't like to hire fresh graduates so you could be in a bit of a chicken/egg problem.

I've been a fully remote developer for 4 1/2 years. My employer has no physical office. I live in a pleasant medium-sized town, I bought a house for less than a Bay-area toolshed, and I can commute myself downstairs to make a sandwich. If every worker were remote, can you even imagine how hard you'd have to work to justify a physical office to the CFO and potential hires?

I've been remote for 5 years. I know about all the benefits, but I'm always curious how others are dealing with the drawbacks. I've written about it a few times here on HN:

- Social isolation

How do you ensure that your social brain is exercised? If I don't make a conscious & deliberate point of it, I can go an entire day without leaving the house, sometimes multiple days.

Working from home can mean 8 solid hours of programming, but that can be difficult to sustain even if you have the environment for it. Natural social breaks are missing in this environment, it's just you and the code.

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