331–340 of 622 posts
The city officials are asleep at the wheel. Blame it on remote work and pandemic as much as you want, but the reality is that the city was in decline even before that. It is too expensive to live in the city. It is too expensive to commute to the city. It is too expensive to feed yourself in the city. Crime is rampant. Drug use and filth is everywhere. Most importantly city has been hostile to tech and business owner…
Part of this is tying property taxes to real property values (yes I know SF's hands are bound by CA law and prop 13 in particular). These days I live in NZ here rates (the local name for our property tax equivalent) are determined by relative property values. Effectively the City decides it needs to raise $N this year - your property tax will be the fraction of this determined by the value of your land divided by the…
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Drug use is absolutely associated with erratic behavior including violence. I am pro-decriminalization but we need to be honest about the effects of chronic drug usage, especially methamphetamine.
> especially methamphetamine. Why especially Meth and not Heroin or other opioids?
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> It doesn't have to. Housing can be affordable while going up in nominal terms. For how long? If housing is a good investment, eventually the cost of housing will outpace the ability of new entrants to the market to afford it. If you're already "in the market", you might be OK. But if you're not, even the down payment may be completely out of reach.
> For how long? Infinitely. Wages go up in nominal terms, too. What matters is the real housing price hovering around zero. (Slightly above, localized, is also fine if balanced by migration.)
Still waiting for Vancouver real estate to follow suit but feels weird that in Vancouver its' socially acceptable for people without homes single out a certain ethnic group every cycle. Used to Japanese in the 1980s, Hong Kongers in 90s, Taiwanese in 00s and Chinese in 10s. This type of scapegoating doesn't seem prevalent in other real estate markets like California, their money is correct on high wage disparity betw…
> In both markets there is surprising silence on REITs and corporations buying up residential living spaces and flipping it. Wouldn't be surprised if those special interest groups also own/influence local media as well. I imagine that they're all financing YIMBY organizations, whose aims would do nothing but increase the value of their holdings.
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What crimes will drug users commit if drugs are legally available like alcohol?
Evidence from Portland, which decriminalized all drugs via Measure 101, the answer is, "Whatever crimes are necessary to enable people to afford their drug of choice." Not all drugs are equal. You can't drink your way into effectively schizophrenia, but you can get there in no time with the currently available super-potent variety of meth. Some drugs completely wreck your ability to live in a way compatible with hold…
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We as an industry are still sailing through the air thinking things are fine with WFH, but in reality the engines have stalled and we're gliding. What I mean by that is that the industry has all the benefits of in-person work, having social connections, having gotten jobs through networking, and of knowing the ins and outs of a domain from pre-covid standards. As time goes on, I think the working population will have…
Totally agree. The pendulum is gonna swing back, it's just a matter of time. Yes there will be more remote-first companies but we will see how that pans out over 5 or so years. There is a hell of a lot more to running a tech company than just writing code. Code writing can easily be done from home but there is a lot of other roles where it isn't as easy. Plus, are people really gonna just hunker down in isolation? Ar…
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I know people miss SF as it was before the boom, but can it actually readjust to substantially less tax revenue with the city government + responsibilities it has now? From what I read about Detroit, once businesses started shrinking or leaving the tax base shrank. The city was unable to cut down on services and spending, so it raised taxes on everyone remaining and the squeeze of more tax and worse QoL made people l…
> but can it actually readjust to substantially less tax revenue with the city government + responsibilities it has now That's the question isn't it? San Francisco has by far the highest per-capita city budget in the country. It spends more on homeless services in a year than most cities of similar size spend on everything . The city is simply addicted to spending money, and looking at the deterioration of street con…
Trivia note: there are certain words that only appear in headlines. Like "brace" to mean "prepare." (Although I think that one might occasionally show up in normal text.) What else? "eye" as a verb. ("Supervisors eye relaxing building codes")
brace for impact
you need to brace before squatting
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OH NO A WHOLE MONTH!! Inventory of listed homes remains extremely low. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ACTLISCOUCA Median days on market still near all-time lows SF: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEDDAYONMAR41860 Cal: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEDDAYONMARCA USA: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEDDAYONMARUS
> inventory of listed homes remains extremely low Those are statewide statistics. Oakland is seeing a ~20% increase in days on market and 5% decrease in price from last year [1]. Population and income shocks hit poor neighborhoods first [2]. [1] https://www.redfin.com/city/13654/CA/Oakland/housing-market [2] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.23...
Oakland has a Median HH Income of $80k - which is 20% higher than the US median HH income, and above median for California.
Oakland as a whole is definitely not poor.