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In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

nytimes.com

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Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#21

Post by bwhiting2356 »

everdrive wrote: post #11
TSiege wrote: post #2

Everyone I know is griping about the cost of living. There is no easy answer, but the only viable solution is building a lot more dense housing and public transit for said urbanism. Housing being this expensive is a choice. The economy and our society would be much healthier if we decided making sure there was ample housing in high demand areas. We've conflated having a home with a financial asset. We can't have plen…

>There is no easy answer, but the only viable solution is building a lot more dense housing and public transit for said urbanism What about fewer people with the same amount of housing stock? I'm not even arguing that this is the better solution, but I don't even see people entertain it for the purposes of arguing against it.

If you prefer to live in a low density exurb, you have many options for affordable housing, there's just a lack of good paying jobs and services in those areas.

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#22

Post by 650REDHAIR »

mycall wrote: post #4

Is that really true? https://www.craigslist.org/search/subarea/sfc?cat=apa&max_pr...

Of those some immediate standouts are:

Scam listings.

One that is >$2k a WEEK.

A bunch of listings not actually in SF.

Anecdotally; A friend of a friend just moved into an awful building on Ellis and is paying $1650/month for a small studio. 1br in my building are renting for $3,300+ and I'm not in a particularly desirable neighborhood, a new building, or a rent-controlled building.

So yeah, it feels really true.

Not really sure how rents are skyrocketing when every 3rd person I know in tech has been laid off in the last year.

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#23

Post by orangecat »

rich_sasha wrote: post #18

I suppose a big change over the past 50 years is that we really boosted jobs that must be done in big cities. Wanna earn a lot of money? Take on a lot of debt and become a lawyer/accountant/etc. But we didn't create more cities. There's more people competing for the same small amount of commutable real estate, and the winners are the top earners. I'm not sure how you fix it. The organic fix ought to be that businesse…

Maybe there's space for some government regulation?

The problem is largely due to government regulations that prevent people from building housing.

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#24

Post by gruntled-worker »

GenseeAI wrote: post #9

As an AI startup founder, my impression is that $180k in the Bay Area mostly gets you new grads or relatively junior talent these days. However, remote work has fundamentally changed the equation. Expanding hiring beyond the Bay Area, or even internationally (for example, hiring remotely from Canada), can dramatically broaden the talent pool while significantly reducing costs.

There's strange kinship and signaling in proximity. It's similar to college degrees. Working in SF - either in person or locally remote - puts people in a separate bin.

It's not just signaling. Once people move away the kinship factor fades, even when you already know them well past the signaling stage.

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#25

Post by Makeitmakesense »

everdrive wrote: post #11
TSiege wrote: post #2

Everyone I know is griping about the cost of living. There is no easy answer, but the only viable solution is building a lot more dense housing and public transit for said urbanism. Housing being this expensive is a choice. The economy and our society would be much healthier if we decided making sure there was ample housing in high demand areas. We've conflated having a home with a financial asset. We can't have plen…

>There is no easy answer, but the only viable solution is building a lot more dense housing and public transit for said urbanism What about fewer people with the same amount of housing stock? I'm not even arguing that this is the better solution, but I don't even see people entertain it for the purposes of arguing against it.

People don't bring it up because it requires doing things most understand to not be options. 1 - how would you stop people from moving to SF if they choose 2 - it stops dynamism for the city. You are here because you were already here is the only requisite.

The prices going up is the market creating the incentive for less people to not move to SF and old guard to stay. You already have that. You are not going to bring down prices while limiting people without legislation that goes into dangerous territory of limiting who can live in one of Americas most dynamic cities.

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#26

Post by KylerAce »

joinjune wrote: post #19
mbgerring wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't even see people entertain it for the purposes of arguing against it. Luckily, we have several recent real-life examples demonstrating why “fewer people” is not a viable solution: Because you either need to forcibly remove people, which involves an army of stormtroopers kidnapping people off the street and killing innocent people in the process, or you have to control pregnancy and childbirth, involving a le…

Short term you might be right. Long term we have seen that western "education" results in declines in birthrates. Demographics are destiny.

Birthrates go down in the east too whenever incomes increase (and sometimes without income increasing)

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#27

Post by wilkommen »

rich_sasha wrote: post #18

I suppose a big change over the past 50 years is that we really boosted jobs that must be done in big cities. Wanna earn a lot of money? Take on a lot of debt and become a lawyer/accountant/etc. But we didn't create more cities. There's more people competing for the same small amount of commutable real estate, and the winners are the top earners. I'm not sure how you fix it. The organic fix ought to be that businesse…

The root cause of the dynamic you're highlighting here is wealth inequality. The more unequal the distribution of wealth in a society, the more concentrated wealth becomes geographically, because as wealth inequality grows, society begins to reorganize into a system which serves ever more lopsidedly to the needs of the wealth holders. The wealth holders, being few, and being social creatures like the rest of us, tend to congregate in fewer and fewer geographical areas. They have the money, so anyone who wants money must live near them to get some. So rents skyrocket in the geographical areas surrounding the wealth holders, which they ironically benefit from, as it creates a smaller amount of land that they need to buy in order to own all the economically significant land in the country, which only intensifies the cost-of-living crisis. Housing regulation cannot fix this, not only because housing regulators can become captured by the wealthy, but also because the root cause of the phenomenon is not addressable by housing policy.

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#28

Post by orangecat »

crooked-v wrote: post #12
TSiege wrote: post #2

Everyone I know is griping about the cost of living. There is no easy answer, but the only viable solution is building a lot more dense housing and public transit for said urbanism. Housing being this expensive is a choice. The economy and our society would be much healthier if we decided making sure there was ample housing in high demand areas. We've conflated having a home with a financial asset. We can't have plen…

SF in particular is wild. There are so many people who oppose any and all new housing because "it isn't affordable", as if just not constructing anything, ever, will let anyone afford anything.

Yeah, it's a surprisingly resilient alliance of NIMBY homeowners who understand supply and demand, and "anti-gentification" types who don't.

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#29

Post by crooked-v »

650REDHAIR wrote: post #22
mycall wrote: post #4

Is that really true? https://www.craigslist.org/search/subarea/sfc?cat=apa&max_pr...

Of those some immediate standouts are: Scam listings. One that is >$2k a WEEK. A bunch of listings not actually in SF. Anecdotally; A friend of a friend just moved into an awful building on Ellis and is paying $1650/month for a small studio. 1br in my building are renting for $3,300+ and I'm not in a particularly desirable neighborhood, a new building, or a rent-controlled building. So yeah, it feels really true. Not…

> Not really sure how rents are skyrocketing when every 3rd person I know in tech has been laid off in the last year.

Simple: the amount of available housing really is just that low.

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