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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

#91

Post by scoofy »

apparent wrote: post #88
Schiendelman wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but not forever!!!

Growth has to happen in the long run. We have the same zoning as we did before the people looking for housing were born.

We can have incremental changes, or we can have sudden change. It's going to happen predictably or with a ton of political conflict. The better solution is always to allow a self-reinforcing pressure release on housing. I've long said that everyone should be allow, by right, to expand their housing by 2x the median building unit within a half mile radius, by units, sqft, and height.

Suburban neighborhoods then slowly turn into duplexes over one generation, then row houses over another, then finally start building up after a third generation. Predictable, fair, and sustainable.

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

#92

Post by Infinitesimus »

Volundr wrote: post #90
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 $…

> I can't claim that value without rendering myself homeless.

HELOCs ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_equity_line_of_credit ) exist to solve the problem of cash being locked up in your house. You can take a line of credit using the property as collateral or other purchases.

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

#93

Post by jleyank »

ponector wrote: post #86
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.

They've had several decades to do this and it's not dominating the industry. Might keep at it and make it work. Or, it might be looking to AI to get rid of staff. But essentially all of N America is inaccessible to the tech barons if they want butts in seats.

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

#94

Post by pixl97 »

apparent wrote: post #88
Schiendelman wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When all areas have zoning restrictions you've reversed the problem again removing peoples freedom.

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

#95

Post by pixl97 »

saulpw wrote: post #55
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…

> or you have to control pregnancy and childbirth People are quite naturally controlling their own quantity of offspring, to the dismay of our leaders who insist on perpetual growth. If we limit immigration (not my preferred approach, but here we are), then the population will naturally start to fall, as is happening in other places.

I mean, ya, it kind of works. Your economy will go to shit for the most part.

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

#96

Post by 650REDHAIR »

crooked-v wrote: post #29
650REDHAIR wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t think it’s that simple at all.

I see plenty of vacancies around me.

I think we need to build higher density housing and I also think there is some amount of market manipulation happening.

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

#97

Post by maxverse »

apparent wrote: post #73

> “I thought when I’d make $200k I would be able to basically not worry about money at all,” she said, adding that she and her friends stopped going out to restaurants last year and shifted to potlucks and reality-TV nights. $200k is a lot of money, but I'm glad that when I started making money like that I continued to live my prior life for several years. The savings accumulated during that period has had a huge imp…

I feel like both the point you quote and your response are valid, and not mutually exclusive. It's great that you were able to avoid lifestyle creep and that $200K felt like a lot of money that "had a huge impact on my later financial condition, and enabled me to do many things". And I think Katrine (from the article) feels like that should be a lot of money. I don't see lifestyle creep playing a role in her life. Instead, another person they quote says:

> [Ms. Gan]she saw the strain on friends who were earning below $200,000, for whom rent, utilities and groceries consume nearly everything that comes in.

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

#98

Post by Schiendelman »

apparent wrote: post #88
Schiendelman wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Zoning should always have been unconstitutional, and the court case enabling it proved that.

The Supreme Court upheld it a hundred years ago, in 1926, after batting down previous efforts by the same people to explicitly ban black people from neighborhoods. They realized that since black families couldn't afford houses by themselves (they needed to buy houses with two or three families together), they could get around it with single family zoning. Ever wondered why it isn't called "house" zoning? Because it was segregation.

The appellate court in the case threw out zoning, because it was so obvious that it was about race. The Supreme Court overturned it by ignoring the entire appellate court decision and defining a building itself (apartments) as a nuisance, instead of making the petitioners regulate actual behaviors. Because the behaviors weren't the problem, it was the black people they didn't want.

Sorry - this riles me up. :)

You should absolutely not be able to have a say over how much housing your neighbor builds. Sure, if they make noise, or bad smells, or bright lights, THAT you should be able to regulate. But the outcomes of having a say over how much housing your neighbor can build is the strongest root of a whole host of issues - from CO2 to obesity to high commute times and traffic to municipal budget bloat. It causes sprawl. Increasingly, parts of the left and right are starting to realize we need to overturn it.

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

#99

Post by Schiendelman »

scoofy wrote: post #91
apparent wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but not forever!!! Growth has to happen in the long run. We have the same zoning as we did before the people looking for housing were born . We can have incremental changes, or we can have sudden change. It's going to happen predictably or with a ton of political conflict. The better solution is always to allow a self-reinforcing pressure release on housing. I've long said that everyone should be allow, by right…

If you make it slow, you cause the same issues - and then the neighborhood just says "well if it's FOUR generations that's not too bad, is it?" And because the people who don't get to move in later don't get a say... it gets worse forever.

It's insidious, but as long as you allow people to regulate how much housing their neighbors can produce, it always gets this bad eventually.

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

#100

Post by apparent »

Schiendelman wrote: post #98
apparent wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Zoning should always have been unconstitutional, and the court case enabling it proved that. The Supreme Court upheld it a hundred years ago, in 1926, after batting down previous efforts by the same people to explicitly ban black people from neighborhoods. They realized that since black families couldn't afford houses by themselves (they needed to buy houses with two or three families together), they could get around…

What part of the Constitution is violated by zoning laws?

I have heard of laws that prevent the construction of structures that shade other properties (skyscrapers) or block views of the ocean. If those are apparently legal, why not a law that says you can't build a big apartment complex that would greatly increase traffic, for example?

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