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San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

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Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#151

Post by nostrademons »

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #127
bogomipz wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really - "This is the most thriving technical community in the entire world"? I'm calling BS. Have you been to New York City recently? Rents for a 1 bedroom are nowhere near that. Lets talk about that community - there are meetups? Wow. You can go to a meetup on any night of the week in New York or Austin. Besides that explain "the community"? Oh you go out and drink craft beers after work? You can do that anywhere.…

I don't agree with the amount of vitriol in your comment, but I agree with the overall sentiment. I feel like tech workers in San Francisco are fully bought-in to the "this is the best and only place to be if you're in tech" idea. So much so that they can't quite see that the grass is just as green on the other side, so to speak. You have to be fully bought-in to it, there's no other way you would be able to justify…

I'm curious if you've lived in the Bay Area for any length of time.

I used to live in Boston (which at the time was the #2 tech scene in the country, but has probably been eclipsed by Seattle/NYC/Austin by now). There were startups and meetups and hacker spaces as well, including a number of famous ones.

The Bay Area is a huge difference in degree. The difference is that you had to find the "tech scene" in Boston, while in Silicon Valley, tech is the scene. If you go out for coffee, nearly everybody in the coffeeshop will be working on some tech startup. If you sit down at a restaurant, there's a good chance that the table next to you will have a group of engineers from some large tech company, or an investor being pitched by an entrepreneur, or a group of friends planning a startup. If you go to a random party - even ones thrown by non-techies - half the people there will work in tech.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#152

Post by Shebanator »

ferenstein wrote: post #97

if anyone is interested in solving the problem, im putting together a campaign for major housing reform through the ballot measure. email me greg@gregferenstein dot com

you should probably mention what state/city/whatever your ballot measure is intended for...

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#153

Post by epicureanideal »

akgerber wrote: post #95
sliverstorm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So consider a nice, quaint neighborhood. Person A lives there. Person B wants to live there too, because it is so nice. Ok, let's say we double supply. All the houses are now either twice as high, or half as big, or maybe the trees were cut down and the bushes ripped out to make room. There's twice as many people & everything therein. Is it still the same nice neighborhood?

Very dense neighborhoods can still be quaint with trees and bushes. This census tract is around twice as dense as San Francisco: https://goo.gl/maps/d2rQ7wc6Tc12

Thanks for that link for a visual comparison. It actually looks cleaner, too! And perfectly pleasant to live in.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#154

Post by dionidium »

maxsilver wrote: post #81
dionidium wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They go into higher-density buildings, just like everybody else. That, or nothing changes and they get priced out. Those are the options.

Except higher-density buildings still equally price people out. There's no such thing as new urban apartments/condos that are cheaper than the houses they replaced. A 500k house never gets torn down to become 3 400k condos. It becomes 3 600-800+k condos. We should build more, because we need it. But "build more" can't be the only tool to lower prices, because simple observation shows us that it doesn't work.

simple observation shows us that it doesn't work

Quite the contrary. A pretty simple reductio proof demonstrates that more housing lowers prices. All you need is to imagine a market in which there is one more apartment available than there are people to rent it.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#155

Post by ak4g »

bogomipz wrote: post #89
Gratsby wrote: post #54

I pay about that for rent - it's the most I've ever paid for housing by a long shot, and it regularly freaks me out. I just can't get used to it. The thing that gets me is that I'm barely paying the property taxes on the place I rent. The landlord isn't gouging me. It's just the way it is here. Housing is so expensive because everyone wants to be here, and for good reason. This is the most thriving technical communit…

Really - "This is the most thriving technical community in the entire world"? I'm calling BS. Have you been to New York City recently? Rents for a 1 bedroom are nowhere near that. Lets talk about that community - there are meetups? Wow. You can go to a meetup on any night of the week in New York or Austin. Besides that explain "the community"? Oh you go out and drink craft beers after work? You can do that anywhere.…

I lived in NYC and frequented it's tech scene for about a year, ending mid-2013. Unless it's more-or-less quintupled in the last three years, there's no comparison.

The first python meetup I went to in SF (back in 2013) had 300 spots and a waitlist that I doubt got cleared. The NYC meetups I went to managed maybe 80 RSVPs and a couple dozen who actually showed up.

Once you get to anything more specialized than a programming language meetup, it's basically non-existent anywhere else in the country, but the bay area will still manage an active user group.

I really wish this weren't the case, and I really resisted moving here. I had every expectation I'd hate it and the city has more than lived down to expectations (easily higher rent and worse crime than NYC - or least the tech enclaves of NYC where I spent my time - by healthy margins). It is absurd and frankly unjustifiable how densely tech is concentrated here. But that it is so isn't really debatable.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#156

Post by dionidium »

TylerH wrote: post #113
dionidium wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, of course, but this sentiment amounts to little more than stomping your feet and wishing the world were different. As long as there is high demand, you can either build more or expect higher prices and more sprawl. I get that people don't like those choices, but that's what's on the table.

Or you can do neither. It's not like the false dichotomy you're presenting is true.

My position is exactly that the dichotomy isn't a false one.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#157

Post by ghaff »

mcguire wrote: post #85
guyzero wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously that was 11 years ago. Yes, a lot of things changed in 11 years.

That's my point. 11 years may seem like a long time to you, but it's really not. I've seen quite a few people here wanting high-rise residential buildings in San Francisco to alleviate the high rents there. A skyscraper is at least 40 floors, according to wikipedia and one rule of thumb I've seen puts the construction time for them at 1 month per floor, from ground breaking to completion. That's about 4 years in cons…

Yep. The government and people of San Francisco and Silicon Valley could wake up tomorrow, all with the simultaneous revelation that OMG we need to build a massive amount of new housing and all the associated transportation and other infrastructure needed to support it. And you might start seeing the initial fruits in a decade.

Meanwhile, in the real world, if attitudes and policies were to start shifting, 15 to 20 years is probably a more realistic planning horizon.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#158

Post by davidw »

eikenberry wrote: post #74
simook wrote: post #2

Portland resident here. What this article doesn't cover, is now locals are victim of gentrification. Rent prices are almost 2x, out of state buyers are throwing all cash offers on houses, and overall housing supply is low... I'm sure the commercial market is just as bad. Interesting times.

We're still recovering from the housing bubble bursting. When that happened a ton of developers went out of business and building came to a stand still. The market demand eventually caught up with the overbuilding from during the bubble and have passed it creating a shortage again while the developers get to building. It should level off again in a few years as long as the city doesn't make zoning mistakes.

The problem is that it's all very uneven. A lot of people would love to live in the bay area, or Portland, but not so many people want to live in Lakeview, Oregon. But building more housing in the Bay Area is very difficult due to NIMBY rules and regulations.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#159

Post by mrgordon »

nostrademons wrote: post #143
zzz157 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you also have a significantly higher probability of getting shot when you live in Oakland. So there's always that.

Depends which part of Oakland. Some parts of Oakland (eg. Rockridge, Temescal) are significantly nicer than SF. They aren't exactly cheap, but your safety : price ratio is significantly better than in say, the Mission.

They may appear nicer but when I read Yelp reviews in Rockridge and Temescal they occasionally mention the bars on the windows or robberies taking place which I've never seen in San Francisco. Not trying to say the average person will encounter problems but I do think even those areas have more crime than you'd think.

As someone who lived in Oakland and now has rent control in the Mission, I would say that my safety : price ratio is significantly higher here in SF after a relatively small period of time.

Re: San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee from $4,500 Rents

#160

Post by vinay427 »

sfotoatx wrote: post #130

Lots of naysayers on HN, but I left SF last year and moved to Austin. I have zero regrets. In SF, my 1 bedroom, 650 square foot apartment in SOMA went from $2,600 to $3,200 over 3 years. In Austin, my salary went down $10k to $120k/yr. My 2 bedroom, 1,100 square foot apartment is $1,150/mo. The tech scene here isn't as vibrant as SF, but there's still plenty of great meet ups. All in all, yes there are some things I…

Also no state income tax in TX, I believe.
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