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Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

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Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#61

Post by _8j50 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #46
_8j50 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, give the homeless homes and don't complain about homeless shelters in your upscale neighborhood. Reform police, there are major american cities with protests and minimal violence. You complain about symptoms with no regard for the root cause.

I guess I’m not sure who you’re telling this to. Most people don’t have the time or energy to lead city reforms on their own. Their choices are to stay or leave, and it seems an increasing number of people are picking leave.

Well to do people who can afford to leave also complain about homeless shelters in their neighborhood. I wasn't suggesting leading a reform but attacking the root cause by changing your opinion and the opinions of others.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#62

Post by blisterpeanuts »

_8j50 wrote: post #36
Shivetya wrote: post #19

Somehow completely ignoring the issue with how the homeless have made many areas of the city uninviting. The pandemic is being exploited by both business and politicians alike to mask underlying issues in hopes of getting a free pass. The old don't look behind the curtain. Protest violence isn't helping any city; and the lie about Federal agents causing it was silences with continued violence long after they left; an…

Ok, give the homeless homes and don't complain about homeless shelters in your upscale neighborhood. Reform police, there are major american cities with protests and minimal violence. You complain about symptoms with no regard for the root cause.

Unfortunately, giving the homeless homes doesn't work. For the economically disadvantaged, of course providing free or low cost housing is helpful and welcome.

But for the majority, who have mental illness and/or substance abuse issues, a shelter or home often makes little difference.

Witness for example the experiment in Manhattan to provide some homeless men with hotel rooms. They literally go downstairs to poop in the street, harass or attack passersby, and trash the hotel. There's not a one-size-fits-all solution to homelessness.

What we really need is restoration of residential mental care facilities that were largely torn down in the 1970s in favor of mainstreaming the mentally ill.

We also need some kind of analog to the old rooming house districts where men down on their luck could get a bed and a hot meal for a dollar or so.

What we don't need is the status quo which is ripping apart the social fabric of our society.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#63

Post by _8j50 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #56
_8j50 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, give the homeless homes and don't complain about homeless shelters in your upscale neighborhood. Reform police, there are major american cities with protests and minimal violence. You complain about symptoms with no regard for the root cause.

No one can fix the root causes. But everyone can move to somewhere functional.

These are not impossible problems. They are fixable and we need to agree on the root cause before we can talk about solutions.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#64

Post by dencodev »

Shivetya wrote: post #19

Somehow completely ignoring the issue with how the homeless have made many areas of the city uninviting. The pandemic is being exploited by both business and politicians alike to mask underlying issues in hopes of getting a free pass. The old don't look behind the curtain. Protest violence isn't helping any city; and the lie about Federal agents causing it was silences with continued violence long after they left; an…

Blaming violence on protestors comes across as super racist these days.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#65

Post by lostmyoldone »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #18

It’s odd they don’t mention the sky high taxes in California as a driving force for the exodus and the fact the Gavin Newsom wants to raise them even more to cover Covid shortages. There’s only so much you can squeeze out of people before they’ll pack up an go.

San Fransisco has one of the highest, and in some cases - highest - housing and rental prices in the US.

If taxes are as high as you claim, it would be more rational to argue that the high prices are indirectly caused by that tax, rather than prices being held down by taxes.

Several causes seems more likely for a change in inventory, or pricing.

An extremely high cost of housing and the consequently smaller than average living spaces, which people are spending more time in due to covid has probably led some people to re-evaluate their priorities. It has in less heated markets.

Increased possibilities of remote work even in tech companies traditionally against it, and as tech drives SF, this is going to affect a majority of people living there.

Expectations of recession due to one of 1) covid 2) some of the giants getting pushback from an administration that is fickle at best 3) new competition from non US companies in driving markets, eg TikTok 4) ... and more.

There are plenty of somewhat plausible reasons to get out of the highest priced housing market in the US, especially if you can't handle a significant downturn in prices.

You could argue taxes too, if the market prices were average, or below average, but in the current situation any economic sensitivity is caused by an overheated housing market, nothing else can even touch the force of a market as hot as the SF one.

However, if a market with 1/4 the inventory of NY increase its inventory, even when it's with about 100%, one really can't tell anything. It's the hottest of the hot markets that's cooled down a little, and it doesn't really tell anything yet, except that the market has changed somehow.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#66

Post by ghaff »

lucidguppy wrote: post #55
ghaff wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, in the US, people had been net migrating out of many cities--including today's "elite" cities--until around the late 90s for about the previous 40-50 years. The current idea that young people all want to live in cities is relatively recent. When I graduated from grad school in the mid-80s, essentially no one from my class who went to work in the Boston area actually lived in the city.

I wonder when the country will realize that the rush hour traffic of the nation is a drag on the economy and should be addressed as serious as any emergency. We need livable towns and cities with good schools where anybody can move anywhere.

Working remotely where practical seems like one fix.

I'm in a very livable town. It's just not walkable given the acres of land with just a few houses around me.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#67

Post by 627467 »

ghaff wrote: post #58
627467 wrote: post #54

For now my gut will just consider this trend to be of slowing down in urbanization (of large metropolis) trend rather than a reversal or collapse of large (quasi-)city-states. If anything, this will improve the live of those who can't move out of big cities. And cities will hopefully have some breathing room to make different kind of decisions now that some of the citizens have left.

>If anything, this will improve the live of those who can't move out of big cities. Maybe. Will that still be true if transit systems and city services generally are in disarray and many of your nice restaurants, cafes, and bars shuttered?

1. While i can understand why certain levels of transit services required a certain baseline of usage I really don't think the scale of the exodus is sufficient to warrant mass disruption of existing transit lines (maybe disrupt the development of new ones is more likely?)

2. I always prefered large cities but I wouldn't say it was mostly due to restaurants, bars and cafes. These I can find anywhere and are cheap to setup. Large city facilities and institutions like museums, theatres, government offices, sports venues, these are just some of the impossible to replace and important things that large cities still and will always have.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#68

Post by BurningFrog »

bamboozled wrote: post #40

Have others noticed this kind of "revolt against cities" attitude lately too? I do wonder if people consider the huge advantages city living can provide? I'm reading constantly that current dream is buying a plot of land in the middle no where, signing up for StarLink and growing watermelons while trying to work a full time engineering job. The thing is though, this is all just a temporary thing, even if this pandemi…

This is a revolt against San Francisco in particular though.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#69

Post by opencl »

kbos87 wrote: post #24

It seems very tough to draw any conclusions on this just yet. The media has clearly latched onto a storyline of a mass exodus from American cities, but the reality is probably much more complex. It seems plausible that SF already had such low inventory numbers that any change would look huge on a chart like this, though that doesn’t appear to be the case in the other highly competitive markets seen here. I’d love to…

The report is from Zillow, it's easy enough to see the current inventory number. I just searched and it's at 1,849 in the city limits.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#70

Post by blisterpeanuts »

danhak wrote: post #31
bluedevil2k wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the income tax is by far the highest, currently at 13.3% compared to 2nd place Hawaii’s 11%. Sales tax averages to 8.5%, good for 9th highest in the country.

> And the income tax is by far the highest, currently at 13.3% If you’re earning over $1,000,000 per year, yes. SF median income is below 100K.

SF also charges a city income tax of 1.5% (flat rate).
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