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San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

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Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#441

Post by aet »

mpyne wrote: post #367
aet wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds nice, but 1 hour is a major commute in my book.

It is, but my commute in DC is at least 45 minutes and normally 55 (by Metrorail), and many have far longer, so it's really not that bad in the context of living in a major metropolitan area.

When I lived in DC I commuted from Huntington to Foggy Bottom. That was roughly 40 mins, with 30 min on the train and 5 minutes on each side for getting to the train station and then from the train station to work. However, I could have rented in Foggy Bottom, 500sq/ft for $1600/mo and reduced my commute to a 5 minute walk. I guess if your willing to live in a box or a box in a basement you can reduce your commute most places.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#442

Post by gtirloni »

munificent wrote: post #415
enraged_camel wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>In my experience it's rarely worth appealing to logic when discussing home ownership. It's just such an emotional subject that rational debate is often hard to come by. This is probably the most intelligent thing I have read in this thread so far. You are absolutely right. Sometimes I forget that purchases - especially big purchases - are emotional decisions, and people jump through all sorts of crazy mental loops…

Funny, I always considered my emotions to be a feature, not a bug. Life would be pretty boring if nothing ever gave me joy, sadness, relief, anger, gratitude, anxiety, laughter, sorrow, or peace.

Read again, nobody said emotions are bad in all situations. Thus your use of "if nothing ever" doesn't apply here.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#444

Post by area51org »

Say it with me: San Francisco is NOT the same as the Bay Area. No, most of us wouldn't be able to afford a decent home in SF proper. But SF is just one city in a large metro area, with plenty of places you would and could want to own a home. Those of you who are 20-something: the day is coming, sooner than you'd imagine, when you're going to want to raise kids. And unless you've knocked the ball out of the park and are worth $20 million, you're not going to want to raise your kids in SF anyway.

if nobody who hasn't already made it can afford to live there what happens then?

You can afford it. It's an expensive area for sure, but there is much more to the Bay Area than "Silicon Valley" (whatever that means nowdays) and SF. I see this attitude a lot among recent "immigrants": this myopic view, apparently based on experience in other, very different metro areas, that there is One Big City and a few "suburbs." Things aren't like that here, and the reason you feel so frustrated is that you don't (yet) understand the place you live.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#445

Post by lzco »

ahoyhere wrote: post #338
enraged_camel wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I'd love the city I'm sure, but after glancing around I've come to the conclusion that home ownership is unthinkable to anyone who hasn't had a cash-out event. I've never understood this crazy, if not outright insane obsession with home ownership. Why does everyone want to tie significant amounts of their lifetime earnings into physical property that historically has had very low appreciation in value? It's like pe…

Some of us value permanence. I own my house, and I have zero intention of ever selling it. It's mine, mine, mine, mine. There is an incredible feeling in owning a home that you love and plan to spend your life in. We get to plan the changes we'll make over the next decade. We can plant a tree and watch it grow. We can truly unpack our stuff AND our lives… which it's hard to ever do when you rent; most people I know m…

Well said!

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#446

Post by snowwrestler »

enraged_camel wrote: post #230
gknoy wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who recently (this past year) went from being a renter to a homeowner, and had previously been a home owner for several years, it's not all rational... but here are some of the reasons. I don't have to worry about the rent going up every year / six-months. If I plan to own the house for multiple years, a large chunk of my money goes to equity: I'm banking away value for later that you will get back when yo…

>>If I plan to own the house for multiple years, a large chunk of my money goes to equity: I'm banking away value for later that you will get back when you sell the house. (Assuming the market doesn't go pear-shape: a big assumption.) In contrast, money you spend on rent is a pure cost, and irrevocably lost. This logic is fundamentally flawed. Contrary to the popular conventional wisdom (repeated by our Baby Boomer p…

The article consistently fails to take into account inflation. For example, they don't want to bet on 2%/year appreciation--even though the long-term inflation rate is 3%.

They also cite the "myth" that costs go down over time as the principal is paid. In fact the real reason home ownership costs go down over time is that your income is subject to inflation but a fixed-rate mortgage payment is not. Having a fixed-rate mortgage is like getting a 3% cut in your rent every year.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#447

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

geebee wrote: post #333
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are many stable renter neighborhoods with great schools. You forgot "...in other parts of the country." The "great" schools in the Bay Area are pretty much exclusively in places with $1m+ house prices, and with few places to rent for a reasonable amount. Also consider that the bubble primarily affected the distant 'burbs. House prices in San Francisco, and close in to the city, didn't really drop appreciably a…

Schools actually aren't bad in SF, they're uneven. Take a look at greatschools.net and filter by public school. SF has an unusually large number of schools rated "10" - keep in mind, anything over 7 is good by California standards (not exactly a great standard, but that is the basis for comparison to the wealthy burbs). This is based on adjusted API (test) scores, which don't tell the whole story about a school, of c…

>Schools actually aren't bad in SF, they're uneven.

but

>In SF, school assignment is by lottery rather than by residence

Makes that irrelevant to me. Not just because I can't "buy" a good school, but because I can't deterministically choose a school. I wouldn't live in SF with kids that I intended to send to school for that reason alone.

>which drives wealthy people nuts

And worse than irrelevant: It's not just the wealthy people, but the people who value the ability to walk to school, which I do. Aside from not wasting gas, it gives kids an early sense of independence to be able to get to school on their own power.

Which brings up a related point: I feel it's safer here (Colorado) than in San Francisco, or in any of the points in the Bay Area with less than $1M houses. And I'm not saying that because of race: I think that the income disparity drives more people to anger. Everyone is just more mellow here.

And California's "10" or not, I went to at least one 10 when I lived there (grew up there and lived there until about 8 years ago). The "good" schools I referred to were 10s. But I'm pretty sure the schools in Colorado are just better, based on what I know about the top schools here, including interactions with my own kids and their friends, as well as other metrics.

That said, I've come to believe that most schools are broken (or at least irrelevant [1]), but that's a completely orthogonal point.

[1] http://is.gd/edu_irr

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#448

Post by crusso »

king_jester wrote: post #439
crusso wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use words like "destruction" inappropriately, I think. Ironically, things like wage controls, rent controls, and welfare have locked these very people into a cycle of poverty out of which they have trouble escaping. Continuing communities that are perpetually in blight is not the an obvious good. Allowing the system to change naturally with healthy commerce would seem to be an improvement. One would hope that gov…

> Ironically, things like wage controls, rent controls, and welfare have locked these very people into a cycle of poverty out of which they have trouble escaping. Uh what? Things like rent control and welfare allow people to have shelter and eat when they otherwise wouldn't be able to. Systemic poverty occurs not because there is a welfare program, but rather because of classism, racism, and capitalism. That's not hy…

Systemic poverty occurs not because there is a welfare program

rather because of classism, racism, and capitalism

Yeah, we completely and totally disagree. Racism is obviously wrong, but you'd have to show why other minority groups (korean, japanese, chinese) don't have the same poverty rates as blacks and hispanics before attributing poverty to racism.

Capitalism has been the greatest economic system for humanity to break out of poverty in history. Feel free to point me to another economic system that has worked better at taking a diverse melting pot like the USA and allowing anyone to achieve the highest economic and political levels in society -- hand-waving theoretical economic systems are not admissible as evidence.

Classism tends to happen when layers of a society calcify because the framework reduces mobility. Free market capitalism allows people to start businesses and achieve the ultimate in economic mobility, shattering the classes.

Apart from all that, welfare and assistance is taken by force from others in society. I'm okay with caring for those who are truly unable to work, but most of the dollars going to such programs today go to fraud or other unnecessary use of that money.

this kind of attitude is a direct endorsement of systemic racism and classism

As usual, your political persuasion tries to throw out the race card. That tactic offends me mostly because the irony is that your political philosophy causes more stifling economic stagnation than any other. That stagnation is the cause of distinguishable classes and just reinforces economic distinctions between races that reinforces racial stereotypes, encouraging racism.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#449

Post by rhizome »

fibbery wrote: post #336
rhizome wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a city built on young entrepreneurs coming there and doing new stuff Not true. There was a huge housing crash 20 years ago, and large swaths of the city were extremely affordable until about the mid/late-90s. It's only in the last 10 or so years that the city has acquired the perceptions you describe, and certainly post-9/11. You may be talking about, what, gold miners and prostitutes? I don't think that relates…

"There was a huge housing crash 20 years ago, and large swaths of the city were extremely affordable" IIRC that was caused by the 1989 earthquake - all the transplants got scared and moved and rent got affordable as a result.

Nah. Though it's possible some people vacated for that reason, it's more a misconception. Plus, carpetbaggers are always in and out of the city, earthquake or no.

There was a recession from 90-92 and a nationwide housing bust around that time due to some tax changes under Reagan that fed overbuilding in the late 80s.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#450

Post by arh68 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #119

Whatever large numbers of talented people get into seems to have a Clump Phase and a Chump Phase. Clump Phase comes out of highly intelligent peoples' natural desire to be around each other (clumping) even at economic cost. This goes back to the medieval universities, but now is seen in technology companies where people would rather be a average fish in a huge pond than be the big fish elsewhere. Now you have a lot o…

And the spearfishers will maintain SV is still in 'clump' phase as long as plausible to attract more chumps, right? So as someone who's interested in finding his own clump, I've got to filter out the suits from the shirts myself. This seems non-trivial, and frustrating..
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