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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?

#101

Post by bradleyjg »

throwaway3451 wrote: post #76
davidw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create them routinely. On HN, users should have an identity that others can relate to.

What sensitive information is disclosed in this comment?

One off identities are a limited community resource. If they are used too routinely this becomes a de facto anonymous message board. We know what fully anonymous message boards look like and they aren't pretty. That commons should be saved for situations that call for it and not be wasted for trivial reasons like worrying about one's collection of fake internet popularity points.

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

#102

Post by edoo »

CPLX wrote: post #54
edoo wrote: post #50

A lot of people only see gross salary and forget the only thing that matters is how much money you net at the end of the year. For most in the middle class if you compare the cost of living index to a less desirable place to live, even with the much reduced wages, it makes fiscal sense leave.

> only thing that matters is how much money you net at the end of the year No it doesn't. Other things matter too. I gladly give up spectacular amounts of money to live in New York City because I have no interest in living anywhere else. Glancing around it appears I am not alone.

True, I would qualify that with 'fiscally speaking', or also 'given regions you would be willing to live'.

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

#103

Post by eli_gottlieb »

rsync wrote: post #80
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.

"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. Obv…

>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.

On the one hand, I really don't like San Fran and don't want to move there. On the other hand, well, NYC is eight million people.

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

#104

Post by egypturnash »

None of my artist friends who were born in SF can afford to live there any more. My techie friends are starting to move out because it's getting less affordable for even them, or because the only people left of their circles are other techies.

Seattle's going the same way, rapidly. I hope nobody who works for Amazon or Microsoft decides to follow me when I leave this town for the place I grew up, because tech money sure does not trickle down very far and I would like to be able to pay my freakin' rent without whimpering every time I do.

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

#105

Post by throwaway3451 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #101
throwaway3451 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 se…

Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create them routinely. On HN, users should have an identity that others can relate to. What sensitive information is disclosed in this comment? One off identities are a limited community resource. If they are used too routinely this becomes a de facto anonymous message board. We know what fully anonymous message boards look like and they aren't pre…

Fair, maybe I shouldn't do this. FWIW, it's actually rather the opposite - I'm not concerned about my points collection. I have no collection, and almost never comment or participate in these things. I just prefer not having a persistent "identity" for this sort of thing, but acknowledge that most people with that preference offer more noise than signal. Perhaps I should just go back to "never."

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

#107

Post by davidw »

pmoriarty wrote: post #99
davidw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I seriously considered moving to Portland, until I read articles like this one[1] which predicted that Portland would basically be destroyed in a major earthquake. [1] - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...

Yeah - that and the obvious: for some people, the climate is awful. I grew up on that side of the mountains and... I hate it.

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

#108

Post by tasubotadas »

egypturnash wrote: post #104

None of my artist friends who were born in SF can afford to live there any more. My techie friends are starting to move out because it's getting less affordable for even them, or because the only people left of their circles are other techies. Seattle's going the same way, rapidly. I hope nobody who works for Amazon or Microsoft decides to follow me when I leave this town for the place I grew up, because tech money s…

Well, that's how the cookie crumbles. If you can't afford the place where you currently live, you move somewhere else.

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

#109

Post by mathattack »

simook wrote: post #61
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…

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…

Every city changes. That’s the nature of time.

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

#110

Post by karmakaze »

toast0 wrote: post #62
karmakaze wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's too late for that. Adding more reasonable priced homes just means that companies currently looking outside the valley can now continue to grow there so there will continuously be a shortage and thus high pricing and wages. It's going to take a significant bubble burst to reset it.

This is like adding road capacity. If you want cheap and plentiful housing or free flowing traffic at all hours, you're going to have to build ahead of demand. If you're building to satisfy demand, you're not likely to get ahead of demand, but you may be able to build to keep up, so it doesn't get worse, or so it gets worse slower. For San Francisco, the rate of new unit construction was always too little, but in the…

And like adding road capacity, improvements can increase demand and make conditions worse, so getting ahead means speeding up until other limiting factors come into play.

In transportation, this well-established response is known in various contexts as the Downs-Thomson Paradox, The Pigou-Knight-Downs Paradox or the Lewis-Mogridge Position: a new road may provide motorists with some level of respite from congestion in the short term, but almost all of the benefit from the road will be lost due to increased demand in the longer term.[0]

[0] https://www.citymetric.com/transport/does-building-more-road...

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