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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

#81

Post by Schiendelman »

xnx wrote: post #80
Schiendelman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This take is actively destructive. We need to let people CHOOSE to live WHERE they want to live - and let people who buy land CHOOSE to build housing for demand they perceive. That's it. That's the problem and the solution. It should be unconstitutional to limit housing production arbitrarily.

How do we "CHOOSE" who gets to live in the most desirable areas?

By letting people build upward. This is self solving, except for our arbitrary limits on how much housing a land owner is allowed to build.

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

#82

Post by lokar »

jerlam wrote: post #43
lokar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bring it up with some people. To do this you need to either accept: - the area becomes an enclave for the wealthy with a high unhoused population, where most youth have to move away. People say they don't want this, I’m not sure they are being honest. - the government regulates internal migration. You need a permit to move from the Midwest to California.

> the area becomes an enclave for the wealthy with a high unhoused population, where most youth have to move away. Yeah, that's already happened. SF is the US city with the least amount of children, where schools have to close due to declining enrollment.

Yep. And on some level, if that’s what these people want, fine. I disagree, but I don’t live there. I do live in CA, and I’m happy the state is pushing back, and this is not a purely local issue.

What really bothers me is the dishonesty. If this is what you want, then own it. Argue for it. Don’t pretend to care about other people.

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

#83

Post by Balgair »

Prop 13 y'all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13

Any discussion of the cost of housing in CA has to include this. Want to know why the property market there is so distorted?

It's Prop 13.

TLDR: Property taxes only increase 2%/yr (sorta, its complicated) and reset upon sale of the property. So current owners are highly incentivized to stay in place and not move. Supply is held down, so prices rise.

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

#84

Post by gruntled-worker »

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…

I agree with everything you wrote. I'd like to add the pyramid angle.

Fancy mansions have always been overpriced. For property prices to grow faster than inflation, the pyramid needed to grow its bottom. Supply restrictionism was the ticket. Eventually, every shack was priced mansion-like. This required extracting ever larger fractions of the incomes of renters. Some renters wisened up and bought homes (when they still could). Changing sides, they beefed up the scheme's political backing.

No one cares if mansions are expensive, but basic housing should be extremely cheap. This sounds like a handout but isn't. It's what an unadulterated market would provide. It's what the pre-1970 market used to provide.

That's not to say that markets should be left alone. It's to say that the way this particular market was "regulated" was fundamentally corrupt. We could call it negative regulation.

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

#85

Post by scoofy »

crooked-v wrote: post #60
orangecat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If it was just self-interest from those homeowners, they would welcome densification because that would make land values skyrocket. You can see some of that already in areas under the recent round of city zoning changes, where housing prices shot up significantly in potentially upzonable areas the second the new law was passed, even with zero actual practical changes so far. To me it feels much more like just a signi…

>If it was just self-interest from those homeowners, they would welcome densification because that would make land values skyrocket.

They get this anyway, it's just unrealized capital gains.

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

#86

Post by ponector »

jleyank wrote: post #74

Remote work or satellite offices would permit working where housing was more affordable and it would encourage 2 professional families. It would also encourage families as spare resources might be available for munchkins. But this seems to be the opposite of what the money wants. Edit: and nobody talks about climate or commuting costs.

Remote work from South America or from satellite office in Bangalore. That is exactly what the money wants.

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

#87

Post by apparent »

bombcar wrote: post #44
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…

If SF wants to be New York of the East, let them be so. Everyone else can move literally anywhere else in the country, which is big.

Agree, but I think you mean NYC of the West, not East.

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

#88

Post by apparent »

Schiendelman wrote: post #81
xnx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we "CHOOSE" who gets to live in the most desirable areas?

By letting people build upward. This is self solving, except for our arbitrary limits on how much housing a land owner is allowed to build.

Should people also be allowed to move into neighborhoods that are zoned as suburban (not so much in SF as in nearby areas), and have them remain that way?

I get the libertarian impulse to let people do what they want with their property, but it seems like part of that freedom should be the right to move into areas where there are zoning restrictions.

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

#89

Post by d4ng »

Balgair wrote: post #83

Prop 13 y'all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 Any discussion of the cost of housing in CA has to include this. Want to know why the property market there is so distorted? It's Prop 13. TLDR: Property taxes only increase 2%/yr (sorta, its complicated) and reset upon sale of the property. So current owners are highly incentivized to stay in place and not move. Supply is held down, so prices…

Maybe trade volume is held down, but why would supply be held down? Surely if someone sells, they buy/rent elsewhere in quick succession?

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

#90

Post by Volundr »

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…

> We've conflated having a home with a financial asset.

And it's a really, really shitty one. My house has roughly doubled in value since I bought it, but in practice that's useless to me. I can't claim that value without rendering myself homeless. If anything it reduces my mobility by making it harder to move, since I really need to coordinate the sale of my current home with buying the new one to help absorb that $500k or whatever price tag.

My if house prices dropped by 50% or more drops my net worth on paper, but it doesn't actually change anything. I still have a place to live + my savings, investments, etc.

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