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In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

nytimes.com

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Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#151

Post by robocat »

mbgerring wrote: post #71
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because you either need to forcibly remove people, which involves an army of stormtroopers kidnapping people off the street and killing innocent people in the process, or you have to control pregnancy and childbirth I don't think this is true at all. Birthrates are already declining. All you have to do is give proper sex ed and easy access to birth control and populations will shrink on their own. You don't even ha…

Neither the global birthrate, nor the U.S. population, are currently declining. The U.S. population may decline this year following the Trump administration’s massive increase in violent, capricious removal of immigrants regardless of legal status or criminal record. Birthrates naturally declining is probably a good thing, but it happens too slowly to make a dent in housing prices without additional interventions.

> dent in house prices

Already dented in Italy and Japan:

https://impatria.com/en/magazine/1-euro-houses-italy-foreign...

https://www.akiyajapan.com/japan/cheap-houses

We're propping up house prices in New Zealand by adding 50% immigrants (I think is fantastic - we're now at 30% population born overseas). Stop-gap solution but it is working at present.

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#152

Post by Volundr »

pandaman wrote: post #140
Volundr wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using it to mean someone who doesn't have a place to live. Like say someone who just sold their house and didn't go and use that money to buy a different house. Yes, that's very different than the person asking for change on the street corner, but I thought it was pretty clear from context which I'd be.

Many people rent without ever owning a house, we don't call them "homeless" normally. Even if you owned a house they still allow you to rent. You can even rent while owning a house or several.

I'm sorry my pun bothered you so.

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#153

Post by invalidptr »

archagon wrote: post #112
jrowen wrote: post #34

Comparison is the thief of joy. I know plenty of people who live in SF on much lower salaries. Acting like you need AI bucks to survive is out of touch with the reality of the common man. A household that earns nearly 400k talking about "I'm not completely hopeless" is shameful. Take some lessons from people who earn a lot less and are more happy.

Seriously. I live in SF with a combined household income that's far less than that and have a pretty lavish lifestyle, eating out every day and whatnot. What are these people spending their money on? > But she said she saw the strain on friends who were earning below $200,000, for whom rent, utilities and groceries consume nearly everything that comes in. Let's assume $4000/m rent, $200/m utilities, eating out for $3…

Taxes and health insurance are the big ones you're missing

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#154

Post by rsynnott »

Volundr wrote: post #90
TSiege wrote: post #2

Everyone I know is griping about the cost of living. There is no easy answer, but the only viable solution is building a lot more dense housing and public transit for said urbanism. Housing being this expensive is a choice. The economy and our society would be much healthier if we decided making sure there was ample housing in high demand areas. We've conflated having a home with a financial asset. We can't have plen…

> We've conflated having a home with a financial asset. And it's a really, really shitty one. My house has roughly doubled in value since I bought it, but in practice that's useless to me. I can't claim that value without rendering myself homeless. If anything it reduces my mobility by making it harder to move, since I really need to coordinate the sale of my current home with buying the new one to help absorb that $…

Yeah, I think people miss this. Generally, the only way to benefit from growth in value of your home is to either downsize or to _die_.

(Also, of course, depending on timescale, doubling may not be that impressive. If you'd put your money in a broad index fund about five years ago, it would also have doubled.)

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#155

Post by rsynnott »

everdrive wrote: post #11
TSiege wrote: post #2

Everyone I know is griping about the cost of living. There is no easy answer, but the only viable solution is building a lot more dense housing and public transit for said urbanism. Housing being this expensive is a choice. The economy and our society would be much healthier if we decided making sure there was ample housing in high demand areas. We've conflated having a home with a financial asset. We can't have plen…

>There is no easy answer, but the only viable solution is building a lot more dense housing and public transit for said urbanism What about fewer people with the same amount of housing stock? I'm not even arguing that this is the better solution, but I don't even see people entertain it for the purposes of arguing against it.

... What would the mechanism to achieve fewer people be? The Logan's Run approach?

Governments have mechanisms to make there be more housing, if they want to use them. Only extremely scary governments have mechanisms to make there be _fewer people_.

(Also it doesn't really work; cities which do depopulate tend not to do well, as the depopulation tends to be biased towards the working-age population.)

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#156

Post by rsynnott »

apparent wrote: post #119
maxverse wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like both the point you quote and your response are valid, and not mutually exclusive. It's great that you were able to avoid lifestyle creep and that $200K felt like a lot of money that "had a huge impact on my later financial condition, and enabled me to do many things". And I think Katrine (from the article) feels like that should be a lot of money. I don't see lifestyle creep playing a role in her life. In…

I don't understand how rent, utilities, and groceries consume nearly everything that comes in unless you're vastly overspending in one category. If she's paying $60k in taxes then she's got $140k left. That's over $10k/mo. How can someone spend that much without lifestyle creep? I understand that one could feel pinched at that salary, when including saving for down payment, future kids, and retirement. But that's dif…

So, per the article, it is apparently difficult to find a one bed apartment for under 5k a month. Assuming that's true, half her take-home salary going on rent would get her a lot of the way there!

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#157

Post by rsynnott »

rich_sasha wrote: post #18

I suppose a big change over the past 50 years is that we really boosted jobs that must be done in big cities. Wanna earn a lot of money? Take on a lot of debt and become a lawyer/accountant/etc. But we didn't create more cities. There's more people competing for the same small amount of commutable real estate, and the winners are the top earners. I'm not sure how you fix it. The organic fix ought to be that businesse…

London's a bit different due to its sheer _scale_, and the degree to which it's already built up. San Francisco's a much smaller city, and in theory has a simpler problem. But it's not dealing with it.

I'm from Dublin, which has a housing and cost of living problem, and is on a more similar scale to San Francisco. The first time I visited SF, in 2018, it was kind of Dublin levels of expensive; that is, far too expensive, but not shockingly different to home. It has now really surged ahead. Now, there are lots of reasons for that, no doubt, but one stat stands out to me. Last year, 14,000 units of housing were built in Dublin. This, everyone acknowledges, is not enough... In 2024, 1,600 units of housing were built in SF. That seems catastrophic.

At the very least, it's hard to understand why areas south of San Francisco on the BART haven't really been developed; it seems pretty sparse once you get out of the city. But even in the city proper, space usage seems terribly inefficient; lots of semi-derelict industrial stuff and parking lots and so on.

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#158

Post by xnx »

joinjune wrote: post #19
mbgerring wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't even see people entertain it for the purposes of arguing against it. Luckily, we have several recent real-life examples demonstrating why “fewer people” is not a viable solution: Because you either need to forcibly remove people, which involves an army of stormtroopers kidnapping people off the street and killing innocent people in the process, or you have to control pregnancy and childbirth, involving a le…

Short term you might be right. Long term we have seen that western "education" results in declines in birthrates. Demographics are destiny.

""education""?

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#159

Post by xnx »

rvz wrote: post #70
TSiege wrote: post #2

Everyone I know is griping about the cost of living. There is no easy answer, but the only viable solution is building a lot more dense housing and public transit for said urbanism. Housing being this expensive is a choice. The economy and our society would be much healthier if we decided making sure there was ample housing in high demand areas. We've conflated having a home with a financial asset. We can't have plen…

> We've conflated having a home with a financial asset. This conflation is a coping mechanism by home owners, especially the ones in SF (which the entire city from SF to San Jose) is sitting on a fault line. The main problem is that building is being blocked by several other homeowners who are petrified of the value of their homes falling. No wonder young people are beginning to look to this policy in China [0] - "Ho…

China is a weird example because they massively overbuilt housing.

Re: In San Francisco, even $180k tech salaries are no longer enough

#160

Post by [deleted] »

scoofy wrote: post #101
Schiendelman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make it slow, you cause the same issues - and then the neighborhood just says "well if it's FOUR generations that's not too bad, is it?" And because the people who don't get to move in later don't get a say... it gets worse forever. It's insidious, but as long as you allow people to regulate how much housing their neighbors can produce, it always gets this bad eventually.

It’s self reinforcing. When demand is highest, building will be highest, and median unit size will increase more rapidly, allowing more building, allowing more units. The pace is limited, but the URBAN output increases exponentially, which is exactly what we want.

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