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San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a new peak of $3,690

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101–110 of 195 posts

Re: San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a new peak of $3,690

#101

On one hand, it’s a very high price. On the other hand, no one is entitled to a one bedroom unit in the heart of one of the human epicenters in the world. Many people here have roommates or alternate living arrangements. There are several reasons why the prices have gotten so high (lack of supply, politics, etc). But don’t expect to move your Texas ranch or Midwestern single-family-house lifestyle to SF with no compr…

Roommates and alternative living situations are necessary because our housing policy is to preserve the Texan/Midwestern single-family-house lifestyles of existing homeowners. And not just to preserve them, but to keep sightlines clear of evidence that someone else might be living a different lifestyle nearby.

People are not entitled to 1BRs, but they are even less entitled to streets curated for 1-2 story detached houses at trivial distances from that human epicenter.

Re: San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a new peak of $3,690

#102
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having technological intelligence doesn’t make San Francisco a “human epicenter” (whatever that is). I wouldn’t even call San Francisco a technological epicenter. Even within computer technology, much of the most important technological intelligence in the US is outside San Francisco: in Portland (Intel), Seattle (Microsoft), San Diego (Qualcomm), and maybe San Jose (Cisco). Put differently, what cities would be most…

Agreed, SF has a lot of tech companies, but a lot of them don't do things that ate very valuable for society, many are social networking/advertising.

I think consumer tech is valuable in the sense that our peace-time economy is based on consumption, and San Francisco is great at helping us consume. But when I hear the word epicenter I’m thinking “what’d put us back in the Stone Age if we didn’t have it?”

Re: San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a new peak of $3,690

#103
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all people deserve shelter as a basic human right I hear this a lot and it still makes absolutely no sense. Where will they get the shelter from? What if the builder doesn't want to build a house for that person? Is the plan to force the labor out of them? Every positive right that I have ever seen comes along with an implicit demand that somebody else become a slave.

Outside of the prison system, legal coercive labor isn't really a thing in the US. The people building houses are working because they are paid and they prefer that to the existing social safety net.

Right, but housing as a basic human right is not something that exists in the US, at most it is a high priority. If it was really treated like a basic right our society would be unrecognizably distorted around that one thing. A human right is not something you can let slip on a bad day, and that fact has big implications.

If you are allowed to say, "our budget isn't adding up today so some people will have to stay on the wait list a bit longer," you aren't acting like it's a human right. Human rights are maximum priorities, not just high priorities.

An example of a reasonable human right would be that your own government can't kill you without a fair public trial. If a country ended up in a situation where they had to assassinate a businessman to keep their budget balanced, it would be reasonable to say "forget about the budget, you can't just take one of your own citizens out." However, if you had to loosen up the housing program because your tax revenue came in low that year, doing so would be potentially a reasonable option. "Potentially a reasonable option" is not even remotely on the table for human rights violations, which is why housing can't be a human right.

Re: San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a new peak of $3,690

#104
post #56

Excuse my ignorance. SF doesn't look anywhere like Hong Kong, possibly the most crowed places on earth, and it is not close to Tokyo or Seoul. It has plenty of Spaces, for many coming from Asia, most part of SF is like country side so to speak. What cant there be more housing development on the edge of SF, or taller building with many smaller apartments etc. Underground packing lot? Edit: Ok, is it because it is in a…

From what I've heard it's very difficult to develop new housing in San Francisco due to various regulations. Apparently, you even need to apply for permits to change your windows. Having lived in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, San Francisco does feel like country side.

> Apparently, you even need to apply for permits to change your windows.

Needing a permit to install windows is a thing everywhere. Because if you want a really good way to ruin a house, installing windows wrong is a great way to do it.

Re: San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a new peak of $3,690

#105
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's not bad Growing up in Berlin I was always depressed because of stupid/dumb people who lived around me. I wanted to move into a neighborhood where only smart people lived. This dream came true when I moved to SF. Here prices are so high only most smart people can afford to work and live here. You don't understand value of this kind of economic segregation untill you spend a few week in poor income localities.…

man, this comment depressed the hell out of me.

I'm surprised that people like that exist!

Clarification: people who think they need "smart" neighbours as if they are going to play chess with neighbours 24 x 7

Re: San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a new peak of $3,690

#106
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all people deserve shelter as a basic human right I hear this a lot and it still makes absolutely no sense. Where will they get the shelter from? What if the builder doesn't want to build a house for that person? Is the plan to force the labor out of them? Every positive right that I have ever seen comes along with an implicit demand that somebody else become a slave.

What will you do when it happens to you? That you have no place to live? Because it will.

I have no place to live in San Francisco. So do about 7 billion other people. Somehow they get along, by having a place to live on the rest of the planet. So if I won't be able to afford place in San Francisco - which is, unfortunately, my current situation, unfortunately not because I want to live there but because I want to have income so high I could throw out almost $4K for just one bedroom - I would live in a cheaper place. Which is, fortunately, called "the rest of the planet Earth" and is quite large.

Re: San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a new peak of $3,690

#107
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about whether any specific person deserves to live in a specific place. There is a cost to society in effectively pricing out half of the population from an entire city. Is the benefit of mitigating that worth the cost? For what it's worth, I think that it probably is.

What is that cost? There's an enclave in my city where I can't afford to live, and I live in a neighborhood where others can't afford to live. Now in my case, the people who are shut out of my neighborhood arguably have less access to things like good schools, so in principle I'm uncomfortable with exclusionary zoning and economic segregation. But I don't know if that's the case in SF. Are the elementary schools in S…

You have to drive several hours in extreme traffic to reach a substantially different housing market, which obviously involves air pollution, climate change, energy cost, road infrastructure, parking space, collisions, and a substantial portion of your life and productive capacity. The same situation in San Francisco plays out in its suburbs, only worse, since a meaningful growth in housing capacity would be an even bigger change for them.

There's a great deal of city-by-city, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, unit-by-unit variation, but the crisis is that even the floor is so high.

Re: San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a new peak of $3,690

#108
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

man, this comment depressed the hell out of me.

I'm surprised that people like that exist! Clarification: people who think they need "smart" neighbours as if they are going to play chess with neighbours 24 x 7

Sorry smartness is not only about "playing chess" and I failed to clarify by what I mean smart.

It's about seeing your benefit and the group's benefit at the same time.

Many people are incapable of this. They only act either in their own best benefit or benefit of none.

Having lived and worked at many places, those who don't see how they or their group can benefit from something are simply incapable of bringing anything to the table.

They fail to weight in risk Vs reward as a result they slow down important decisions, and become liability on you. They act helpless. And these people are not "smart" for me.

And it's very depressing to live around such pessimistic people.

Re: San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a new peak of $3,690

#110
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, police (and firefighters) make six figures because they have powerful unions who finance the campaigns of the very people who decide their salaries. Ironic that the people charged with protecting our communities are the ones destroying them.

I am very curious as to what they are going to do for revenue when the self driving cars take over and prevent the millions of dollars in fines drives acquire each year.

I wonder how self-driving cars would change parking situation. SF profits a lot from parking tickets - about $300m/year - and the situation with parking is usually abysmal, which in turn enhances that income. But if you can just have you car drive somewhere by itself to remote parking and then have it come back when needed... that changes the whole equation.
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