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Housing in the Bay Area

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#121

Post by jevinskie »

akanet wrote: post #14

People should actually call in! Over at the SFBARF, we have a thread of people reporting on how long it took to call their representatives: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sfbarentersfed/7G4Kr... . I managed to talk to someone at both of my representatives' offices within a minute, without any sort of delay. It's very easy, please do call in if you support this measure! Also, when you do call in, post here af…

Thank you for this post. I am now very encouraged to contact my state legislators. I might even muster up the courage to call my federal representatives!

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#122

Post by abalone »

pj_mukh wrote: post #116
abalone wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is the bill has weaker requirements (as little as 5%) on affordable housing than alternatives. Think of cities and negotiating with developers over affordability, and this is a more developer-friendly offer.

I think that is meant to be left to local requirements. Municipality could jack it up to 20% AFAIK.

That's the key question. The article I cited details many limitations on local governments that would seem to limit their ability to demand affordable housing.[1]

Bottom line, this bill is massively supported by developers, so take that as a gauge of how much power it gives municipalities.

[1] http://48hills.org/2016/05/22/a-terrible-housing-bill-looms-...

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#123

Post by bazqux2 »

superuser2 wrote: post #78
carapace wrote: post #65

I'm in favor of how "building in the Bay Area is approved by discretion", I call it having some power over what gets built. "Democracy" y'know? I'm from SF. I grew up here. I'm also a computer nerd. To me, the tech "industry" has been ruining the city I love since the Dot-Com boom. To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. The saddest part is, this city kin…

>Y'all "young gods" will just have to figure out some other place to hatch the singularity. Move away. Tech employees are hated everywhere . Portland, Seattle, etc. want us gone just as much as everyone else. Why is your hatred special?

My first day in SF after coming from London for a tech job I accidentally walked into a protest. I asked one of the protestors who they were protesting and he told me it was foreign tech people. So for fun I pretended to be a banker. Apparently bankers are ok.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#124

Post by iamleppert »

blantonl wrote: post #60
iamleppert wrote: post #57

I'm currently renting out my upstairs walk-in closet. I live in Potrero, near 26th & Rhode Island. The closet is pretty big and can easily fit a double bed and dresser. $900 + utilities, but we might be able to work something out. edit: this is a serious post

This boggles this mind. And is unsustainable.

How is it unsustainable? I have a room for rent, that's more than a lot of people.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#126

Post by BinaryIdiot »

carapace wrote: post #65

I'm in favor of how "building in the Bay Area is approved by discretion", I call it having some power over what gets built. "Democracy" y'know? I'm from SF. I grew up here. I'm also a computer nerd. To me, the tech "industry" has been ruining the city I love since the Dot-Com boom. To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. The saddest part is, this city kin…

Sounds like you want to live in the past. Unfortunately this is not how life works. The more you try to keep something from happening that is inevitable the less effective your attempts will become until you lose.

NYC experienced this yesterday. SF is experiencing this today. Many cities will be experiencing this tomorrow. As population density grows this same scenario will repeat everywhere over the next century. There is no escaping it.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#127

Post by alwaysdoit »

carapace wrote: post #65

I'm in favor of how "building in the Bay Area is approved by discretion", I call it having some power over what gets built. "Democracy" y'know? I'm from SF. I grew up here. I'm also a computer nerd. To me, the tech "industry" has been ruining the city I love since the Dot-Com boom. To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. The saddest part is, this city kin…

You do have some power over what gets built. It's called the zoning process, which allows us to decide ahead of time which types of things we will allow or not, so that people can plan and proceed accordingly. It's why we have laws that people can read, rather than just bringing everything before a jury to decide after it happens whether or not it was illegal.

Deciding what housing can be built should not be like a game of Scattergories, where we all just argue about whether or not something is okay after the fact.

Because the way it stands, only projects with high rate of return will be built--ie luxury housing. A 10% rate of return on investment might be okay for a project that takes one year, but if it drags on to 4 years, that's barely beating inflation. Time is money, and our process makes our housing more expensive.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#128

Post by la6470 »

The fact is that the valley is not the only place with high real estate prices . Hosing prices are high in places like Hong Kong or New York or for that matter even Mumbai in India. And those places have much more apartments than the valley has ! High real estate price in the valley is not an exception it is just a reflection of what happens when people from all over migrate to one place for a livelihood.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#129

Post by c_c_c »

nostrebored wrote: post #93
s3r3nity wrote: post #38

This is one of the top factors preventing me from moving back to the Bay Area. It's good to know there's at least SOME serious attempt at a solution (even if folks around here are mostly pessimistic.) It still surprises me that an industry that's all about connecting the world through the internet and allowing anyone to work with anyone else on anything says "yeah but you need to work in this small area of the countr…

Somehow the city with the highest average salary/cost of living usually goes unmentioned... Seattle has two huge tech companies, a lot of mid sized tech companies, and a growing startup scene... and it's not that far away from the bay.

Seattle isn't in the top ten on any list in either of these categories. Doesn't mean it isn't great there but that's not what your saying.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#130

Post by HillaryBriss »

beering wrote: post #88
carapace wrote: post #65

I'm in favor of how "building in the Bay Area is approved by discretion", I call it having some power over what gets built. "Democracy" y'know? I'm from SF. I grew up here. I'm also a computer nerd. To me, the tech "industry" has been ruining the city I love since the Dot-Com boom. To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. The saddest part is, this city kin…

> To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. This is xenophobia in another skin. There are a lot of people who don't want brown people coming into the country and changing the "feel" of their home too. Anyways, as long as we severely restrict housing, techies will continue to outbid the locals on what remains. Passing this legislation might give the weirdo-f…

Xenophobia is defined (by one source) as "intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries."

Maybe comparing this commenter to "a lot of people who don't want brown people" is ham fisted and inaccurate.

The commenter seems more interested in the culture, the freakiness or weirdness, of the people who come in, and not so much which country they came from. I do not see where the commenter mentioned race or skin color.

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