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If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

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Re: If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

#71

Post by njarboe »

beamatronic wrote: post #18
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #15

>Several months ago, she had made the difficult decision to move back onto a small corner of her parents beach-town property, after her urban East Bay house became waterlogged during the rainstorms of 2016. We had to move her out over a weekend, after the mold took half the furniture and gave her roommate pneumonia in both lungs. I touched swollen blisters of stagnant rainwater pulsing on her walls. After emailing th…

I don’t get this part. I’ve been led to believe tenants have all the power over landlords.

Of course the housing crisis has many factors contributing to it. This is a major one. If a place has a majority of renters, has a prevailing political culture of socialism and activism, and the rents start going up fast, you likely end up with an erosion of property rights with rent control and other restrictions on landlords. Tyranny of the majority. If landlords are seen by the local culture as bad people this quickly this becomes true. Only assholes and faceless corporations looking for maximum ROI are going to buck the social stigma and be an evil landlord.

Oakland used to at least let small landowners who lived at a multiple unit building they owed not to be under the strong tenet laws. Last election cycle a proposition changed that. Now a landowner can't refuse to renew a month-to-month rental contract that is a standard after a year lease. These small landlords were the last refuge for people in many cases. You actually had a relationship with the owner and they would often keep rents way below market because they liked you, enjoyed living next to you, didn't need the extra cash as they bought the property many years ago, and didn't want to try and find somebody else to move in.

It is too bad that being a landlord has become so onerous in the Bay area. The state passed a law that forces cities to allow small 600sqft mother-in-law units to be built on properties, if the lot is not too small. This could really help with the housing crisis. As the rents in Oakland have doubled over the last 4 years or so, myself and other people I know were thinking about investing the 150-200k that it takes in the high cost Bay Area to build one of these units or convert a large house into a duplex/triplex. People are not much less interested in doing so now that this new law has passed. Oh well. Maybe cash out and go elsewhere? Who would have thought that Carl's juniors $6 burger would have to be discontinued so soon due to the fact that they would have to charge more than six bucks for it. Now it would be called the $19 burger.

Re: If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

#72

Post by eweise »

austincheney wrote: post #29
geebee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any stats on the wealth distribution of people leaving California? This really is a situation where more demographic information would be helpful, since an average wouldn't tell you as much. Do the wealthy Californians tend to be old, retirees? Young with kids? Are half the Californians leaving well off, with other half largely penniless? Your assertion that "when Californians leave, they leave wealthy" m…

California is bleeding something like 60,000 people each year just to Texas. The Californians moving to north Texas metros do not appear poor relative to neighboring Texans enjoying superior standards of living with deprecated wages compared to California. When I bought my Texas house about a decade ago the average house price in my metro was about $200,000 and now I think it is about $250,000. These average houses a…

California property taxes about are about 1.5%, not 6.5%

Re: If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

#73

Post by nailer »

beamatronic wrote: post #17
sampo wrote: post #2

> It’s not my fault she’s gone, that all 12 of them are gone. Normal. People move all the time. Nothing I could have done. Except allow building more homes. Vote for politicians who'd have allowed building more homes. My guess is, the author has voted against her own interests. Which one is more important, keeping the "charm" of houses and neighborhoods where you cannot afford to live anyway, or keeping those 12 your…

The one word that keeps popping up in all these types of articles is: >> rent There is one thing that you can do, which takes away this word’s power >> buy If you are a young person here, buy something. Anything. Hold onto it for life.

It's hard to work in places that have affordable housing. Nearly everyone I know who has a mortgage (I know very few people who own) had their parents pay their deposit.

Re: If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

#74

Post by ummonk »

ctime wrote: post #56

This article is really spot on. It feels like we're in a big speculative mess in Bay Area. The home-price-to-income ratio in SJ is about 20x [1] Anything over 3x used to be considered "risky". Let's say in Costal Areas it was be allowed to double, then you have 6x. That's good, not great, but ok. And that's about what pricy DC and NY cost. SJ is 20x. How is this possibly sustainable? Not even going to get into the du…

It works in the short run because a lot of people who own homes here bought them back when they were much cheaper, and are now sitting on piles of equity. The market price is driven by the high end of income, who are the people who actually bid for the limited supply of housing on the market.

Re: If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

#75

Post by true_tuna »

graeme wrote: post #65
xefer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also possible that there is such a pent-up demand for housing in San Francisco that no amount of building could realistically do enough to make things truly affordable.

"There's so much crime that no amount of crime reduction will eliminate it" "There's so much corruption that no amount of anti-corruption drives will eliminate it" "There's so much alcoholism that no amount of alcoholism reduction will eliminate alcoholism"

That was my knee-jerk reaction too, but if you read the comment carefully you’ll see “truly affordable”. That’s the key. If we keep doing what we’re doing now, affordability gets worse. If we build at a fevered pace we might be able to keep up with migration and keep prices where they are. Building enough to bring prices down in the Bay Area enough to make it truly affordable is probably not feasible. It’ll take a combination of rapid building and another crash to do that. Or the complete destruction of the tech industry. But it’s unlikely we’ll convince people to allow even a little bit more building, let alone the lots more we’d need to stop the rising prices.

Re: If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

#76

Post by throwaway3451 »

davidw wrote: post #66
simook wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As exciting as this is to see. It's hard for me to watch Portland change into a different city. I think the hardest aspect right now is the amount of trash that is being thrown aside in the roads, parks, and greenways. I was born and raised in this area and it's been tough for me to witness this beautiful city being treated that way. If you want to help clean up Portland, I strongly recommend volunteering with the SO…

I definitely hope we can keep Oregon 'green'! > I hope Portland will continue to be a beautiful city for my children to enjoy. To bring it back to housing, Portland might be a place your children can enjoy because they could actually afford to live there, unlike much of the bay area.

"To bring it back to housing" ellides the important point GP made. They even acknowledged the excitement and advantages of growth, but pointed out some of the cost as well. If you want to advocate, don't blind yourself to those of us sensitive to the literal trash, noise, and other side-effects of growth.

With wealth comes illth - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illth

Your personal utility function may make you less sensitive to this particular illth, but it's a consideration nonetheless.

EDIT - I see you edited in a first sentence to acknowledge. Thanks - I'll let this comment stand because I think it's an important point, but appreciate your attempt to balance. Growth is good, but sustainable clean humane growth should be the real ideal - I'm not convinced modern urban design is really up to that.

Re: If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

#77

Post by randomacct3847 »

I think this experience is very different for gay men (speaking as one living in SF). Because gay men are more likely to not want kids (and probably still less likely to be married at a certain age), there is less a need to be able to afford a 3 bedroom home and in my experience there is no late 20/early 30 exodus from SF that I see with some of my straight friends. Then there’s the extra benefit of SF and other major urban centers like NYC and LA in just having a large LGBT population, which many “second tier” cities that are cheaper do not have and would be a major downside to moving out.

Re: If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

#78

Post by georgewfraser »

There’s a lot of discussion in this thread of restrictions on building, but an equally big problem in San Francisco is constructions costs. Even if all limits on building were liberalized tomorrow, housing would still be extremely expensive because of the high cost of construction. There are many causes, including the accumulation of well-meaning environmental regulations over the last 10 years. The Terner center at Berkeley put together a great focus group with developers and contractors where they discuss these causes:

https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/San_Francisco_Cons...

Re: If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

#79

Post by jdavis703 »

austincheney wrote: post #29
geebee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any stats on the wealth distribution of people leaving California? This really is a situation where more demographic information would be helpful, since an average wouldn't tell you as much. Do the wealthy Californians tend to be old, retirees? Young with kids? Are half the Californians leaving well off, with other half largely penniless? Your assertion that "when Californians leave, they leave wealthy" m…

California is bleeding something like 60,000 people each year just to Texas. The Californians moving to north Texas metros do not appear poor relative to neighboring Texans enjoying superior standards of living with deprecated wages compared to California. When I bought my Texas house about a decade ago the average house price in my metro was about $200,000 and now I think it is about $250,000. These average houses a…

> property taxes are about equal to CA property taxes at about 6.5% per year.

Property tax in CA is capped at 1% of assessed value per year.

Re: If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

#80

Post by rsync »

xefer wrote: post #59
aphextron wrote: post #30

After recently getting back from Portland, it couldn't be more painfully obvious that the entire problem comes down to housing. They are building new (affordable!) apartments there like nothing I've ever seen. You literally can't walk two or three blocks without seeing a construction crane. And the local culture reflects that. So many business that simply could not exist in SF were thriving due to the cheap labor and…

It’s also possible that there is such a pent-up demand for housing in San Francisco that no amount of building could realistically do enough to make things truly affordable.

"It’s also possible that there is such a pent-up demand for housing in San Francisco that no amount of building could realistically do enough to make things truly affordable."

I am an SFBA (Marin) resident with a fairly large financial and personal interest in the health and welfare of the city of San Francisco - so this is something I think a lot about.

I think your point is interesting and should be considered.

Obviously it isn't literally true - clearly there would be a point at which enough housing could be built in San Francisco to hit any arbitrary affordability number.

However, it's worth considering that any politically and physically feasible[1] amount of development might not satisfy the latent demand, nationwide, for a house in San Francisco. It is not inconceivable that there are literally 2 million people in the US that would like to immediately move to SF if housing prices were in line with, say, Minneapolis or Denver.

I also think there might be a corollary to this with regard to homelessness in the state of California. I have read with great interest about the successful "house the homeless" projects that have been implemented in places like Salt Lake City which appear to suggest that you can solve a cities homelessness problem by building enough units to house that population. But what if there are (essentially, not literally) an unlimited number of people willing to be homeless in California ? What if the Salt Lake program really only works because it gets cold and snowy there and, really, there are only so many people willing to be homeless there and you can, in fact, house them all ?

If either of those are the case, I don't know what a good solution looks like.

[1] Including the time dimension ...

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