121–130 of 185 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point is that they do try. It just doesn't get results. What would you have them do? Pick up, move, and crash the regional economy? EDIT: If you look, you'll find that it comes up quite often. It's far from just one letter.
um, they don't actually try, and nothing you've found disproves that. But one letter was sent!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point is that they do try. It just doesn't get results. What would you have them do? Pick up, move, and crash the regional economy? EDIT: If you look, you'll find that it comes up quite often. It's far from just one letter.
um, they don't actually try, and nothing you've found disproves that. But one letter was sent!
http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2012/07/13/google-housin...
http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2010/02/16/google-pressures-cit...
http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2008/06/18/google-hotel-falls-t...
And that's just one website. There's lots out there. It hasn't happened, but not because Google hasn't tried. What do you expect them to do?
Loading extremely slowly for me. Google cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6m1opf... After reading the article, this quote really jumped out at me: "I was going along, being a good citizen," Todd, now 52 years old, says. "I was a volunteer firefighter, I coached football and baseball, I was saving my money, doing everything you're supposed to do, being a single father, raising my daughter by…
To add to that in United States even if an employee is laid-off they are given severance package and on top of that they can apply for unemployement benefit and the government happily gives them a pay to survive on for about 6 months. Considering all of this I feel a salary man is in a good position and can find another job in 6 months.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Ellis Act is kind of fucked up, dude. It's _not_ standard in every other part of the country. It pegs the buyout price of a unit by law, and hasn't been increased in quite a while. Compare to how it works in Brooklyn: If your landlord wants to evict you without cause, they must purchase your lease from you at a price which you can negotiate. It's much more difficult (and can be costlier) to evict you _for_ cause…
So what happens when the company that owns the property goes bankrupt because, say, it can't raise rents? Does the state step in and buy the property so everyone can live there? If the company goes bankrupt then the building is probably put up for sale, and could get sold to a developer rather than another landlord right? Seems like a fairly straightforward end-run around the law. You go bankrupt in your building and…
The building becomes foreclosed and bank-owned, or is sold to a new landlord.
Most landlords can raise rent. Less than 2.8% of units are controlled, though 48.6% of units are stabilized. Only 31.9% of units in this city are not regulated - and landlords tend to do pretty well here. Occasionally you'll read about a shitty one that ruins their tenants' apartments to try and force them out instead of buying their leases, but that doesn't happen very much anymore -- and when it does, the city stomps on their necks.
Rent control is almost entirely phased out. When one becomes vacant, it becomes rent stabilized - or is removed from the program entirely.
Rent stabilization is much more common, and has some limitations: the amount the landlord _may_ increase the rent is limited per year; if a unit becomes vacant, the landlord may raise the rent by a larger percentage; if the landlord renovates / improves the unit, they may raise the rent by a number based on the cost of renovation. Renovation typically only happens during vacancy.
A unit becomes deregulated once rent becomes higher than $2,500 and either 1) becomes vacant or 2) the adjusted household income of the tenant is over $200,000/yr for two consecutive years.
Stabilization entitles the tenant, in good standing, to lease renewal (in other words, landlord can't kick you out unless you break the terms of the lease).
Some landlords voluntarily put units under stabilization, in return for a break on their property taxes.
> If the company goes bankrupt then the building is probably put up for sale, and could get sold to a developer rather than another landlord right?
Yes. However, the developer would then gain the responsibilities of being a landlord and could not evict tenants that are in good standing. The stabilized/controlled status of each unit stays with the unit, and is not determined by who owns the building. Units exit the program based on vacancy, legally raised rent level, and tenant income. New units enter into the program when landlords decide to get property tax breaks when they build new properties.
> Seems like a fairly straightforward end-run around the law. You go bankrupt in your building and I'll buy it at auction for some price, and the reverse.
Why, when you could just sell the building to another landlord/capital investment firm for 120% of what you bought it for two years ago? ;) A lot less risky, considering you don't need to go through bankruptcy court and the whole several-years-in-jail-for-fraud thing.
It's a pretty good system. Sometimes it screws the landlords. But it almost never screws the tenants.
Which is kind of the opposite of the Ellis Act, it seems: it gives landlords carte blanche to screw the bejesus out of their tenants as soon as the market winds blow their way.
Don't get me wrong: we definitely have a housing crisis here as well. Some neighborhoods have seen (because units have vacancies often - some people move every freaking year in this city) rent increases from 600sq ft @ $800/mo to 600sq ft @ $2100/mo in a matter of five years.
Of course, the smart tenants in those neighborhoods haven't moved, and are only paying $900/mo.
Either way, landlords interested in purchasing a building know how much each lease is for. They know the stabilization status of a unit. And many of them purchased the buildings they own decades ago for less than 10% of the current market price. It's not like they get surprised by the regulation status on the units they own.
When I recently visited the Bay Area for the first time, I spoke with a worker who was helping with the catering of one of the events I attended. I sat with him while he was on break, and getting a bite to eat. When I asked him about himself, the conversation quickly arrived at this topic of gentrification. This sense of powerlessness is exactly how he felt, but there was also resentment toward new inhabitants making enough to afford the high cost of living.
Tech companies and workers are not the only (nor the main) cause of this issue, yet they're likely receiving a higher fraction of the blame. Whether this resentment is justified or not, it doesn't seem to be getting better with time. The cold but logical advice to "just move somewhere more affordable." isn't an acceptable solution to many of those who were or will be displaced.
I don't want to move to the Bay Area and exacerbate the problem, but there are clearly some great benefits of basing a startup there. So it's a difficult choice. Hopefully VR or another technology will make remote work a better solution than relocation in the future. Also, a better way to quickly and affordably retrain and enter a new profession must be made available to displaced workers so automation can replace low-wage service industry jobs faster.
Some carry iPods and smartphones, others come in suits.
Am I wrong to assume that somebody that can afford a smartphone and accompanying plans (which are not that cheap) and other gadgets like iPod, which probably means they own a computer and a broadband internet connection too - usually aren't so poor that they would literally starve without a soup kitchen?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Ellis Act is kind of fucked up, dude. It's _not_ standard in every other part of the country. It pegs the buyout price of a unit by law, and hasn't been increased in quite a while. Compare to how it works in Brooklyn: If your landlord wants to evict you without cause, they must purchase your lease from you at a price which you can negotiate. It's much more difficult (and can be costlier) to evict you _for_ cause…
I don't think the Ellis Act allows you to break a lease. It just allows the owner to not have to conform to certain aspects of the rent control law. In most places that aren't rent controlled the leasee doesn't have the option for perpetual renewal in the contract. If the leasee meets all of the stipulations of the contract then he is entitled to live there until his lease expires. The landlord is obligated to perfor…
It's often used to evict tenants who live in units that are regulated.
SF requires a compensation of $5,153 to $18,000 per tenant evicted.
NYC requires that tenants not be evicted unless they have violated provisions of their lease. If the landlord wants a tenant to move out, they can _buy_ the tenant out, at a price the tenant agrees to. If they want to stop being a landlord, they have to sell the building to someone who is willing to be a landlord. This effectively prevents tenants from being screwed with their pants down by their landlords.
Occasionally an asshole landlord will go through one of their buildings while the tenants are away and, say, rip up all the floors. As a nasty way to try and get their tenants to move out so they can renovate and flip the building.
But those guys typically end up in jail.
The reason it tends to work out fine in other places, is because other places are sane about allowing developers to build new units. SF ... not so much.
Everyone always says to look for pain points when creating your startup, this is a great example. Maybe it's overlooked because it's not internet/software related ;)
I was the person who wrote that super-long take on the San Francisco housing crisis in spring on TechCrunch. http://www.techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ I'll just say this. It's four issues compounded. 1) Growth controls enacted in the 1960s and 1970s: Beginning in the late 1960s, the California Supreme Court started making a series of anti-development rulings: for example, one decision ruled that cities didn't…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also, note that "Prop G" is more or less the opposite of legislative Legislative = law making. Prop G is more or less exactly legislative. > it's a ballot initiative, direct democracy. Yes, its a ballot initiative, which is a direct form of citizen exercise of legislative power (expressly, along with the power of referendum, reserved by the people in the otherwise-general assignment of legislative power to the Stat…
I think I did okay understanding how the other poster was using the word, they were talking about a government assembly making laws, not about law making in general (why would anybody bother saying "law making communism" vs "communism"?).
If you are using "communism" in the usual sense anti-Communist speakers due -- referring to government structure typical of authoritarian regimes that have espouse Communism as an ideology -- then distinguishing "government-assembly-directed communism" vs. "communism" still doesn't make sense, as all such "communism" is, necessarily, directed by a government assembly.
So I don't think "legislative communism" makes much sense in any case.