Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber shakes up real estate market with massive lease in Oakland

bizjournals.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 128 posts

Re: Uber shakes up real estate market with massive lease in Oakland

#21

Post by mc32 »

iribe wrote: post #7
kqr2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of controlling rents, wouldn't it be better to adopt a housing policy which increases supply for everyone? For example, the office space is projected to house 3000 employees in 2 years. Why not plan on building about 3000 housing units in that same time frame?

Because that would decrease housing prices. What will happen is homeowners will talk about the need to keep Oakland's character, which is codeword for stopping development of housing to increase home values.

And the renters (like me) will complain that the city (well, the permitting process they approve) is only promoting units for the financially relatively better off and is not subsidizing enough low rent units. So they scuttle low income housing to spite middle income housing.

Re: Uber shakes up real estate market with massive lease in Oakland

#22

Post by jfb »

rdl wrote: post #19
jfb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, you can take the ferry over. That's a sweet commute.

The broken internal-to-SF and internal-to-Oakland transit systems make that a bit complex, I think. I guess if you biked?

I used to bike to the Ferry building from the Mission and then onto the office across the street from the Sears building. It was much better than taking the coach down to the Peninsula, that's for damn sure.

Re: Uber shakes up real estate market with massive lease in Oakland

#23

Post by rdl »

jfb wrote: post #22
rdl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The broken internal-to-SF and internal-to-Oakland transit systems make that a bit complex, I think. I guess if you biked?

I used to bike to the Ferry building from the Mission and then onto the office across the street from the Sears building. It was much better than taking the coach down to the Peninsula, that's for damn sure.

Why wouldn't you just take BART?

Re: Uber shakes up real estate market with massive lease in Oakland

#24

Post by rdl »

pikeymick wrote: post #18

I saw teo people shot not far from here, the windows of Obama's campaign HQ smashed in with hammers down the street, and a homeless man crap on the steps of city hall in broad daylight. Welcome to Oakland Uber.

The alternatives for similar real estate in SF would be near Twitter/Mid-Market (which is worse than Downtown Oakland IMO; probably on par with the shitty areas of San Pablo near 30th-35th St, but better than particularly bad parts of West Oakland or East Oakland, true), or Bayview/HP (also on par or worse). We're not talking about Pacific Heights or the Oakland Hills here :)

Oakland downtown/uptown has property crime and some violent crime but it's not particularly bad compared to other areas. Most crime in both SF and Oakland (as it is anywhere) is poor people hurting other poor people.

Re: Uber shakes up real estate market with massive lease in Oakland

#25

Post by ggreer »

rdl wrote: post #17
rorski wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who used to do the "reverse commute" from SF to Oakland for a couple years, I'd add that it's pretty attractive for SF residents who like a slightly less crazy pace as well. I mean, you can actually go places for lunch and get in, and not pay $14 for a sandwich. And going the opposite direction of traffic (or taking the opposite BART) sure beats sitting on the 101. But most people I worked with were defini…

I live in Oakland (10m walk from the new Uber office, but 3m from a 580 onramp), and my office is basically at AT&T Park. The commute has gotten markedly worse over the past 15 months. :( And it's not even a particularly bad east bay to sf commute; I know people who drive from Moraga. Last year, my 95th percentile commute at 10am was 35 minutes door to door, and the median was about 25-30. This year, the 95th is more…

Just curious, but how does someone get away with stealing a laptop during rush hour? I've lived in Oakland for about 6 months and I haven't seen anything like the crime you describe. Your description of congestion is spot-on, though.

Re: Uber shakes up real estate market with massive lease in Oakland

#26

Post by jfb »

rdl wrote: post #23
jfb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to bike to the Ferry building from the Mission and then onto the office across the street from the Sears building. It was much better than taking the coach down to the Peninsula, that's for damn sure.

Why wouldn't you just take BART?

The scenery from the ferry is a hell of a lot nicer than the inside of a BART car?

Re: Uber shakes up real estate market with massive lease in Oakland

#28

Post by rdl »

ggreer wrote: post #25
rdl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Oakland (10m walk from the new Uber office, but 3m from a 580 onramp), and my office is basically at AT&T Park. The commute has gotten markedly worse over the past 15 months. :( And it's not even a particularly bad east bay to sf commute; I know people who drive from Moraga. Last year, my 95th percentile commute at 10am was 35 minutes door to door, and the median was about 25-30. This year, the 95th is more…

Just curious, but how does someone get away with stealing a laptop during rush hour? I've lived in Oakland for about 6 months and I haven't seen anything like the crime you describe. Your description of congestion is spot-on, though.

Away from the station. On the sketchy block of Harrison between Grand and the Whole Foods. In the first incident, someone came running at me at full speed holding a laptop bag across his chest; I thought for about 300ms as he ran toward me about putting him on the ground because I thought he was running at me to attack me, but I moved to the side behind a pole and he kept running, then a (very very slow) security guard ran after him, and then some sad looking middle aged guy as well. Second time was someone running across a street and then disappearing down 23rd. Easy to identify people with laptops from a distance, with probably 75% accuracy.

I'm convinced 4-7pm Fridays is a great time to steal laptops from commuters; they're tired, it's relatively low traffic, OPD's response times are...not impressive, etc. It's really a 5-10 block area behind the stupid Auto Row and some sketchy semi-SRO housing in the area which is a problem. (Pro tip for cities: auto dealers are horrible for foot traffic.)

Re: Uber shakes up real estate market with massive lease in Oakland

#30

Post by ChuckFrank »

pikeymick wrote: post #18

I saw teo people shot not far from here, the windows of Obama's campaign HQ smashed in with hammers down the street, and a homeless man crap on the steps of city hall in broad daylight. Welcome to Oakland Uber.

No difference from just around the corner of the Twitter building.

This isn't a homeless man crapping problem, it's an insufficient bathroom infrastructure problem, and yes most mid to large size American cities have it. Which is exacerbated by laxative type drugs. 'Hello Alcohol, Hello Heroin, I'm talking to you two.'

Post reply on HN