141–150 of 178 posts
This article was originally published on November 8. (I knew I'd read it before; it was probably linked to and discussed here.) https://medium.com/s/story/if-san-francisco-is-so-great-why-...
> There is an apocalyptic amount of people moving into California, and no one blames them for the overcrowding and the shifting culture. But when too many Californians leave California and settle in, say, Portland, they are blamed for ruining the place by way of simply being themselves. Part of this is where the money comes from. Poorer/lower-middle-class people (mostly) move into California, to work these jobs under…
If people moving to your area and investing lots of their own money in the local economy is a bad thing, your local policies, politicians, and probably politics are very useless. People investing money into the local economy should always be a good thing, and if the locals aren't capturing enough of that to mitigate the increase in costs, that's on them for voting in incompetent or evil politicians. Blaming the peopl…
Taking a macro view on it and ignoring individual circumstances, I believe San Francisco is slowly bleeding itself out which may be a net positive for society (and I would apply this to my home NYC as well). I don’t believe it’s a good idea for our society long term to have ALL of the nation’s leading X (technologists, bankers, engineers) in one city or state. As painful as it is to see your community leave, taking a…
We will still have ALL of the nation's leading engineers in one city / area, but no one else will be able to afford to live there. Even non-leading engineers will be forced to move out, and will no longer be able to learn from the leading engineers, lowering national productivity. I don't know why you assume the leading engineers will move. As a "leading engineer", I don't see why I would take a $200-300k/year paycut…
I wouldn't be surprised if some tech companies start creating "moving charters" where a team gets slated to move to another satellite office and engineers interested in that satellite office transfer into that team and then the team is moved after like 1-year.
The SF Bay Area still leads in interesting jobs, but I increasingly see interesting jobs with leading engineers in other cities and that trend will only continue over time. In my company, I can think of four satellite offices that I know has strong engineers with interesting projects in low cost of living cities that I'd consider moving to.
I rarely post here but fuck it. I was born in Redwood City. I went to school briefly at UCB and graduated from UCD. I spent the entirety of my life in this small stretch of land. I immediately started working as an engineer in tech as soon as I graduated but now had to deal with this new reality the author describes. I was involved in the music and art scene in the Bay Area and almost everyone has left. The few that…
What I understood from your post is you don’t want an area full of product managers, data scientists, and software people, but you’re very content in an area that replaces them with Jewish people? I think everything you said is entirely subjective. I would personally rather be surrounded by techies than people of a particular race or religion, as long as these people come from different genders, races, ethnicities, o…
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It depends on the zone. RH-1, which is a bulk of the city west of Divis, is approx 15' (depends on historical building construction) https://sf-planning.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Docum...
I don't know anything about planning that document says 'up to' 15 feet (which is about 4.5 m), not 'approx', and it also says 'based upon average of adjacent buildings', so if the rest are already against the sidewalk then new builds can be as well.
Unfortunately this is the circle of life in high cost living areas. The NYC area has been expensive for a long period of time. SF now has become even more expensive and this phenomenon is newer to the area than NYC. The people I grew up with had the following outcomes: * Got a high paying job and stayed (not many) * Tried to make it here, but ended up moving to NC or FL * Work lower paying jobs dual income and strugg…
NYC isn’t nearly as expensive. I know people who have bought affordable houses in places like New Jersey and have reasonable commutes. That just isn’t possible in the Bay Area.
That's like saying Chicago isn't expensive if you just buy in a different state.
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…
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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 i…
Considering road or housing construction as something you can do once to 'fix' the situation only works if you are able to limit demand. Most metropolitan areas are encouraging of population growth, though. Areas with limited population growth generally can build enough roads and housing to satisfy demand and have a static demand, so there's not a lot of congestion or rapidly rising housing costs.
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For context, the cheapest market price condo for sale in SF I could find today is a micro studio in SoMa (~260 sq ft) for $445k!
Damn! I've got a 2000 sqft condo in Atlanta with 20 foot ceilings that costs less than that. The land is utilized much better here. I'm in an eight story converted factory (each condo is two stories) from the 1800s. If we just had single story homes, prices would be a nightmare. I work for a tech company based in sf making the same wages as my peers in sf do. It's not scary to leave sf for elsewhere.
Every so often one of these articles comes along and someone writes at length about the struggle of living in the bay area. I've been here over 13 years now and these articles are a constant. First, the Bay Area never promised to be anything to anyone. It had its roots in the gold rush and then the military, followed by the semiconductor rush and today the internet. At each iteration, people flooded into the region t…
Having done this, I still think it's a little sad if the Bay Area can't figure out how to make room for a creative culture. There's so many reasons it matters:
* a region that economically squeezes would-be bands or artists starting in a garage or warehouse is also going to squeeze capital-poor garage startups, not to mention supporting everyday labor that may not be making tech industry money
* it's likely that the same kind of open/change-minded/creative culture that feeds artistry feeds entrepreneurship (psychedelics aren't the only thing that can open your mind)
* sometimes people like living in places with vibrant cultural capital
* while it may never have had the creative mass that NY or LA has had, I can't believe the Bay and even a wider region out 101 & 80 doesn't have plenty of creative talent looking for a center