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

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

#181

Post by nostrademons »

closeparen wrote: post #177
nostrademons wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But if housing costs more then so does everything else" That's not really true. Restaurants are more expensive in the Bay Area. Fresh produce is not, if you know where to shop - actually, when I go basically anywhere else in the world, one of the things I miss is the ability to fill a whole shopping bag with 10-15 lbs. of vegetables for The point about tax rates is true for rentals. You can do the math yourself on w…

A dollar of savings is not the same, because your savings needs are proportional to housing costs. Whether it is to make a down payment, pay rent while laid off, or maintain your lifestyle in retirement, you need a much larger savings balance to buy the same capability. Even if it’s a kid’s college fund, as an upper middle income worker in a flyover state you will probably qualify for financial aid; even with the sam…

There's nothing stopping you from moving to a lower cost-of-living area when you need to dip into savings. If you save up a million dollars in the Bay Area, you always have the option of moving to Chicago and buying 4 houses, if you're willing to put up with the cold. The reverse does not necessarily hold: if you save up $100K in Chicago and then need to come up with a down payment for a home in the Bay Area, you're screwed.

For that matter, the higher home prices also come back to you if you choose to move elsewhere (as long as Bay Area real estate doesn't crash). A number of the homes I've been looking at are on the market because the kids are grown, the owners are retired, and now they want to take their $1.3-$2.4M and move to Nevada/Florida/Arizona or some other low-COL area.

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

#182

Post by landryraccoon »

askafriend wrote: post #166
learc83 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price for a studio isn't going to be far behind a 1 bedroom, and rooms in houses aren't really an option for for people who aren't single in most cases. Even if you wanted to cram multiple people into one 12x12 room, most cheap rooms for rent are explicit about 1 person only. Look at median household income, San Francisco is effectively off limits to most people.

Point taken. We definitely have a problem but I really don’t see any solution anytime soon. Even if we committed to building a ton of new supply tomorrow, it’d still take years to get approved and actually physically built. I’ll push back a little on your point back alternatives not being too far behind the price of a 1 bedroom though. I know several people with units <$1800. Some converted rooms go for <$1500.

> Even if we committed to building a ton of new supply tomorrow, it’d still take years to get approved and actually physically built.

Would you argue we shouldn't do anything about climate change because that will take years of approval and political decisions before anything gets done?

I mean, yeah, it would be better to start ten years ago than today, but starting today must be better than never right?

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

#183

Post by landryraccoon »

whatshisface wrote: post #81
yingw787 wrote: post #34

I think high rent prices are bad for a number of reasons: Less flexibility in starting a company: You can't choose to bootstrap unless you do it as a side hustle at a megacorp, and it's hard to not compete with a megacorp because it does everything. You have to take VC funding and follow VC rules to some degree, and it may not be a direction you wish to follow. This is a feedback loop. Oligopsony employment condition…

> 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.

This is totally irrelevant for San Francisco. Even if you're a libertarian (or maybe especially if you're a libertarian) you should support building housing in the bay area.

Nobody's asking for government funds to build housing in SF. Developers are lining up to build housing funded entirely out of their own pockets. People who are pro-housing generally just want to government to stop preventing people from building more high density housing on property they already own.

So, if you're arguing some sort of taxes and government regulation are bad thing, you should be in favor of drastically more housing in SF.

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

#184

Post by askafriend »

landryraccoon wrote: post #182
askafriend wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point taken. We definitely have a problem but I really don’t see any solution anytime soon. Even if we committed to building a ton of new supply tomorrow, it’d still take years to get approved and actually physically built. I’ll push back a little on your point back alternatives not being too far behind the price of a 1 bedroom though. I know several people with units <$1800. Some converted rooms go for <$1500.

> Even if we committed to building a ton of new supply tomorrow, it’d still take years to get approved and actually physically built. Would you argue we shouldn't do anything about climate change because that will take years of approval and political decisions before anything gets done? I mean, yeah, it would be better to start ten years ago than today, but starting today must be better than never right?

That’s not my viewpoint at all. I think we SHOULD build as much supply as possible.

However I’m not holding my breath nor am I optimistic about the short-medium term reality.

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

#185

Post by 420codebro »

closeparen wrote: post #101
askafriend wrote: post #2

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 h…

Type harder, we still don't care.

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

#186

Post by ndnxhs »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #169
ndnxhs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The service workers move somewhere else where they can afford to live. The ones that remain can demand a higher price for their work

Is that happening? Are service workers in SF paid a living wage? Or are people like fast food workers being paid minimum wage and commuting 2 hours?

That is their choice. The market will only correct if people make rational choices.

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

#187

Post by closeparen »

nostrademons wrote: post #181
closeparen wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dollar of savings is not the same, because your savings needs are proportional to housing costs. Whether it is to make a down payment, pay rent while laid off, or maintain your lifestyle in retirement, you need a much larger savings balance to buy the same capability. Even if it’s a kid’s college fund, as an upper middle income worker in a flyover state you will probably qualify for financial aid; even with the sam…

There's nothing stopping you from moving to a lower cost-of-living area when you need to dip into savings. If you save up a million dollars in the Bay Area, you always have the option of moving to Chicago and buying 4 houses, if you're willing to put up with the cold. The reverse does not necessarily hold: if you save up $100K in Chicago and then need to come up with a down payment for a home in the Bay Area, you're…

Besides the life you and your family have built.

If saving $30k in Chicago lets you sustain your lifestyle for 12 months of unemployment, and saving $30k in San Francisco gives you the option to leave everyone you know and move 2200 miles to Chicago for 12 months of unemployment, those dollars of savings are not at all the same in terms of the protection they offer.

Living in the Bay Area can be a good deal, but to figure out whether that's the case, you need to set savings targets in terms of equivalent capabilities. Different people can place higher and lower value on location stability, but in any case the value is not $0; moving trucks and realtors are not free.

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

#188

Post by rightbyte »

puranjay wrote: post #57
jdavis703 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t. For example in nearby Atherton the cops have made makeshift sleeping quarters in the police station because they cannot afford to live in the city they work. Many of the homeless in tents or RVs have jobs in the city, the sole reason they’re homeless is because there are no homes affordable on a low-wage job.

Why aren't these people out in the streets protesting this? It seems so wrong

It takes a while before you relize it's wrong and unsubstainable. And then it's too late becouse you have been a waitress or what ever for 3 years and when you move out there are plenty of people willing to take your place before they realize it and so on. Big city hype.

And there are some real natives with rent control housing.

I lived in Palo Alto for half a year before I even though about how the grocery store clerks could affor living there (which they don't). You also notice the lack of children after a while.

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

#189

Post by 52-6F-62 »

ndnxhs wrote: post #186
52-6F-62 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that happening? Are service workers in SF paid a living wage? Or are people like fast food workers being paid minimum wage and commuting 2 hours?

That is their choice. The market will only correct if people make rational choices.

For a lot of people, it isn't a choice. That's where the problem sneaks in.

The market you believe in doesn't exist in a vacuum. The world is far more complex than that.

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

#190

Post by aidenn0 »

whatshisface wrote: post #103
aidenn0 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While I see your argument, I think your bar for "basic right" is perhaps a little too high:

Life: people die every day in the US. In some cases, the government even kills them!

Liberty: We put people in jail

Speech: Incitement to riot; slander

Press: Libel; national security

Religion: If your religion includes e.g. human sacrifice you certainly won't be free to practice it.

And so forth.

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