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Evicted in San Francisco

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Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#181

Post by chaostheory »

jonknee wrote: post #165
chaostheory wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The Bay Area as a whole has pretty good public transit. 2. There are plenty of cheap single room rentals outside of SF. 3. She wasn't living on public property. It's private.

Sure. It's just the knee jerk reaction that the person not paying rent is the one "screwing someone over" and not the landlord who has collected illegal rent for years and gets to skip out on the responsibilities that entails.

I'm pretty sure that was the best he could at the time. If it was possible, he probably would have evicted her sooner. It's also not like she's completely helpless or didn't know about the home being for sale, and there are plenty of cheap rooms near public transit for rent in the Bay Area.

At the end of the day, it's private property. She's not entitled to live there if the owner doesn't want her to.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#182

Post by NoPiece »

hapless wrote: post #174
geebee wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes up every now and then. I'm really not sure there is as much NIMBYism in SF relative to other cities as many people believe. By the way, by "not really sure", I mean not really sure. I just view it as more of an open question than many people here on HN do. Here's where I'm coming from - SF is small, old, and largely built. It's in the middle of a very large metropolitan area, but it includes many of the ol…

SF has a very low density. It's less dense than LA. If you want to compare it to NYC, it's less dense than the NYC suburbs in NJ and Queens. Rebuilding at higher densities is definitely practical, they just choose not to do so.

San Francisco is twice is dense as Los Angeles. 17,620/sq mi vs 8,225/sq mi. New York is the only city of a s similar size or larger that is more dense than Sn Francisco. San Francisco is more dense than Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_francisco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_angeles

The Bay Area as a whole is less dense than the LA Metropolitan area.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#183

Post by johnvschmitt »

jonknee wrote: post #150
johnvschmitt wrote: post #120

People just don't understand inflation/math: "...$1.4 million; it’s a good time to sell, considering he bought the place for $627,000 in 2002." Wow! Sounds huge right? Well, 12 years to double? That means it's a ~6% yearly increase. That's LOWER than medial bills, college education, & almost exactly what you'd get from any stock index (S&P 500) for that time period.

If you don't count the rent during that time... It housed her illegal apartment as well as two other families. Her $500 rent alone would be $72,000. I'm sure the other units (non rent-control) were fetching quite a bit more.

Correct!

But, more fun math:

Stocks don't have maintenance costs like houses/rental units. The property tax alone per year on a ~$500k place is ~$8k. (You'd need to get $700/month in rent JUST to cover property tax.) (The next buyer, at 1.4M valuation, would need to charge ~$2k/month JUST to cover the prop tax, nothing else!)

Add in ~$2k/year in regular maintenance, + ~$30k of maintenance every ~5-10 years (roofs, flooring, bathroom fixtures, appliances all die someday), and renting not so profitable. Reliable capital appreciation is the bigger, pure profit here.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#184

Post by rohin »

johnvschmitt wrote: post #120

People just don't understand inflation/math: "...$1.4 million; it’s a good time to sell, considering he bought the place for $627,000 in 2002." Wow! Sounds huge right? Well, 12 years to double? That means it's a ~6% yearly increase. That's LOWER than medial bills, college education, & almost exactly what you'd get from any stock index (S&P 500) for that time period.

You made a mistake in your calculation because you ignored leverage. Most people buy a house using some combination of equity and debt (usually 20% / 80%).

You need to calculate the return based on the equity invested. Assuming they paid 20% down that's $125K. The house appreciated $773K over the initial purchase price. That's a 6x return on equity, not a 2x.

But thanks for the lecture about how other people don't understand inflation / math.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#185

Post by spikels »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #170
hack_edu wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Build baby, build.

Build where? SF is hemmed in by hills and ocean. Housing is mostly low rise, but dense and very much in the style of Tokyo given similar issues (earthquakes). Then you have a bunch of beautiful Victorians to tear down before you can build some dense high rise housing. SF is quite dense already, not like the exclusive suburbs to the south.

In a normal place this is accomplished by increasing building height, increasing the building's footprint and reducing the unit size. No additional land needs to be used and higher density increases efficiency of services such as mass transit as well reducing environmental impact.

Unfortunately SF has some of the most restrictive zoning rules anywhere and, as described in the article, construction usually involves evicting tenants paying well below market rent. Given the highly litigious and politicized environment it is much more likely to get worse than better.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#186

Post by kenrikm »

steven777400 wrote: post #10

We don't have a strong enough social welfare net (or enough resources there-in) to care for folks that need care; but, we're not comfortable letting them starve on the streets either. The result? Essentially innocent people, like the property owner, get "stuck" with "it's your problem now" where various agencies give contradictory mandates, backed with fines. How was property owner supposed to respond when told he mu…

How can you say that we don't have a strong enough welfare net with the amount of funding California dumps into it? "34% Of the nation’s welfare recipients live in California but only 12% of the U.S. population resides here". http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/Jul/28/welfare-capital-o...

Honestly if there were not so many social programs in SF the homeless population would be much lower as they would relocate to other less expensive areas and maybe actually be able to afford a place to live. The current social system in SF mixed with the crazy rent prices actually encourages homelessness.

Even I can't afford to live in SF on "developer" pay, so guess what? I don't I live in SF, I moved south where I could find an apartment at a semi-sane price (still extreme, I could make payments on two Teslas for what I pay in rent).

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#187

Post by nilkn »

bronson wrote: post #123
Crito wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets say that I was once struck very hard in the head by a frisbee, and the moral center of my brain now causes me to believe myself entitled to live in Malibu. Wanting something is not the same as deserving something.

If you'd previously been living in Malibu for decades you might actually have a case.

Not if you never actually owned any of your housing in Malibu. This is why the notion of purchasing and owning property exists in the first place.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#188

Post by joesmo »

fishtoaster wrote: post #28
pyrrhotech wrote: post #13

Another whine story. I do feel sorry for those people that legitimately deserve it. You know, women in the middle east who are beaten or stoned to death for not wearing berkas, or orphans in Africa dealing with genocidal warlords. But this lady could live perfectly fine on her social security if she would move to somewhere she could afford. Living in San Francisco is something a whole lot of people want to do. That's…

It sounds like she moved there when it was cheap. Is it reasonable to expect her to leave her friends, contacts, etc that she's built up over decades because the city is changing? Housing isn't widgets: it's not easy to move to a cheaper type if your current type gets expensive. There isn't an easy answer to this sort of problem, but to imply that she should simply "move somewhere else" is simplistic in the extreme.…

Is it reasonable to expect her to move out when she can't afford it? I can't think of anything more reasonable. Housing isn't guaranteed. This isn't simplistic. It's how the housing market works. It might not be fair, but that doesn't make it wrong. Plenty of us have had to face a move because of cost. It's not easy, but we don't whine about it, we accept the consequences and we deal with life.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#189

Post by johnvschmitt »

rohin wrote: post #184
johnvschmitt wrote: post #120

People just don't understand inflation/math: "...$1.4 million; it’s a good time to sell, considering he bought the place for $627,000 in 2002." Wow! Sounds huge right? Well, 12 years to double? That means it's a ~6% yearly increase. That's LOWER than medial bills, college education, & almost exactly what you'd get from any stock index (S&P 500) for that time period.

You made a mistake in your calculation because you ignored leverage. Most people buy a house using some combination of equity and debt (usually 20% / 80%). You need to calculate the return based on the equity invested. Assuming they paid 20% down that's $125K. The house appreciated $773K over the initial purchase price. That's a 6x return on equity, not a 2x. But thanks for the lecture about how other people don't un…

You are correct, of course.

My point was more about how journalists too often spout "PRICES DOUBLED!" to get attention like blood in the water, including here. And, in too many cases, it's over a time period that's 10+ years, so it's not really doubling, but 6%/year.

And, yes, leverage can profit, but it can bite hard too. Plenty of people bought at $500k with $100k down, then saw the value drop to $300k, meaning they lost 200+100 = $300k if they had to sell.

All fun math, with, yes, GROSS simplifications here.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#190

Post by jack-r-abbit »

pyoung wrote: post #153
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, according to the article there is a long standing "don't ask, don't tell" policy. But it does say that when they are reported, the city takes serious action. And it sounds like it was a health hazard the way she was living. The owner seemed to be caught in the middle of two incompatible laws: 1) You can't have that person living there. 2) You can't make that person leave.

My guess is that the owners were well aware of the situation when they purchased the property. The owners stated that they were warned by "pretty much everyone" not to purchase the property, and the fact that the property came with someone living in it should be a pretty big red flag. For those that have been around SF long enough, it's easy enough to recognize when someone is playing the 'sf housing regulatory lotte…

I don't think the owners are saints... but they get way more sympathy than that rotten tenant. We don't know what they thought the end game would be. It sounds like to me that they were willing to keep the tenant but then started to see she was a nightmare. I have no doubt they knew the unit was illegal. But once it got to the point that they were required to take action to do something to fix the situation... they were promptly met with incompatible laws that would not allow them to do what they were ordered to do. Also... $500 a month is not really "bank" in the context of this $1.4M house that was purchased by two families (that lived in it for 10 years). And they gave her over 2 years worth of rent back in a relocation settlement.
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