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Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

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Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#341

Post by WalterSear »

projectramo wrote: post #294
latencyloser wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seattle is quickly becoming 'bay area'-ish from what I can tell. Housing is certainly becoming difficult at incredible rates. Here in Bellevue, a colleague of mine bought a house for ~400k, it's now worth well over ~500k only a year later. Many houses in that area also sell for at least 700k+ assuming you can even get an offer in before a cash buyer grabs it. Don't even get me started on the traffic. I run as many of…

This is actually hopeful since there are so many secondary and tertiary tech cities. This means: we should all buy houses in the secondary tech hubs that are still affordable so our kids can afford to have families at tech firms when housing becomes unaffordable.

Self-driving cars are going to be rewriting the commute paradigm. It's important to factor that in.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#343

Post by 5706906c06c »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #155
5706906c06c wrote: post #49

38, two kids and a wife. Have been living in a 900SQ/FT apt, I don't know how much longer I can take this before rage quitting and relocating somewhere else (don't know where). The sad part, as a ethnic-minority, I have just found our community for my kids, etc. It would be really tragic if I have to tear my kids away from that. Don't get me wrong, my daily 30 minute commute on BART isn't the worst. The worst part is…

>The sad part, as a ethnic-minority, I have just found our community for my kids, etc. Can you expand on what this means? Have you faced a lot of racism in SF?

Oh no, I look like a white guy, I'm Armenian, which is a tiny community with literally one little school off of Brotherhood way. I wasn't one to care about that, but I have to tell you, whenever I take my kids to the birthday parties or some PTA event, I sort of feel at home. It's odd because up until now, I didn't care about any of that, but I suppose my mortality is helping me prioritize on what matters in life. It's a mental and very much, an emotional struggle having to compromise.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#344

Post by duderific »

city41 wrote: post #241
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Forced to leave" is a bit strong, evoking images of someone thrust into debtors prison. What would actually happen is they'd sell their house for 5x the price of the same house in a more reasonable housing market, and 10x what they paid for it, and move to a different location with a nicely multiplied bank account. I'll acknowledge that some stability is good. But it has a cost, and that cost is currently much highe…

But what if they don't want to leave? Many of these people have lived here their whole lives. If they must leave due to the market, I'd argue that's being forced out. Even if they do make a tidy profit. Anecdotal, but I've heard this is happening in Hawaii now with vacation home prices skyrocketing, causing natives to get stuck with property taxes they can no longer afford.

That's weird - I was just in Kauai, and every third house has a "for sale" sign on it, which would indicate a strong buyer's market - i.e. downward pressure on home prices. Probably folks who bought with the intention to rent out to vacationers, but there is a glut of vacation rentals due to AirBNB.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#345

Post by epistasis »

aswanson wrote: post #333
nimbius wrote: post #16

Most of the bay area employees are divided into 3 categories from anecdotal experience: young rockstars that are willing to live in relative squalor for a chance to prove themselves, vested and moneyed elites (CEO's, presidents, VC funded overlords) who are so out of touch with the average employee its best they not show up to the office that frequently, and H1B visa recipients that endure the soul-crushing San Jose…

Why didnt a similar issue arise with housing during the first SV gold rush (Intel, Fairchild, etc)?

They were building housing back then. Lots of suburban housing. Now that the flat land has been built, current owners don't want anything to change and obstruct any new development from roads to housing to public transit.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#346

Post by WalterSear »

Gargoyle wrote: post #233
lisper wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California's housing crisis has repercussions all up and down the west coast. You're looking at it the wrong way. It's not that the situation in California has wider repercussions, it's that there is a wider problem whose symptoms happen to manifest themselves earliest in California because it's one of the nicer places to live: there are simply too many people and not enough space for them all to live in the nice p…

This is what people tell themselves in order to make their suffering tolerable. But the best places to live even just in California are amazingly underpopulated.

They aren't good places to live, because they are too far from the jobs that can pay for them.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#347

Post by yalph »

I still dont understand why people here and Reddit claim that Bay area housing is more expensive than New York. In manhattan you get a frigging hole for a million bucks. Is it may be because it is a new phenomenon in the west coast and people are shocked?

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#348

Post by dahdum »

tmh79 wrote: post #324
marcell wrote: post #293

Whenever these threads come up, the NIMBY pitch forks come out. I 100% agree that we should build more housing in the Bay Area, but some perspective is helpful. The Bay Area is already one of the most densely populated regions in America: http://ecpmlangues.u-strasbg.fr/civilization/geography/maps/... And San Francisco is the 3rd most densely populated city in America, if you look at cities with over 100k people: htt…

there is a lot you're leaving out here or misunderstand. The reason that there is a housing crises int he SFBA is that all of the cities in the SFBA have produced an order of magnitude more office space than housing in the past 10 or so years. Look at communities like Cupertino, building the apple space ship for 14k people, but adding virtually no housing to the city. Lather/rinse/repeat for Palo Alto, MPK, MTV, etc…

Each city is doing that intentionally of course, because it's in their best interest.

If they allowed housing to develop they'd have to expand their school, police, fire, garbage and other departments.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#349

Post by WalterSear »

oaijdsfoaijsf wrote: post #231
bduerst wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also hyperbole. It's closer to ~5K per month for a $1M mortgage with insurance and taxes in the bay today. By the rule of thirds, that's $60K/yr meaning $180K+/yr salary is necessary. This is for suburban living in a remodeled 70's ranch home, not in an urban area.

But a $180k gross income is not particularly unusual in the Bay. I mean, that's still in junior engineer territory at one of the BigCos (Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.).

No, that's not junior engineer territory, even at the BigCos.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#350

Post by jorblumesea »

ptero wrote: post #249
jorblumesea wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus, 2k / person a month is insane. This is what people are talking about. This is not acceptable or normal. I pay $900 / person a month for a large house in Seattle that's a 15 minute commute from downtown. Even with the bay's high salaries you're not doing very well. Throw in bills and other expenses and you're looking at ~40% of your monthly income, assuming a salary of 130k. That's ~50k per person, per year, in…

It is not that insane. IMO it is not sustainable (which is why I think I would not buy into SF real estate even if I worked there), but SF salaries are often significantly higher than elsewhere, so renting is a perfectly viable option. Assuming 40% tax bracket, a 30k salary difference gives you 1500/month extra after taxes that you can spend on your apartment. If you consider a couple with in demand tech skills they…

I don't think everyone is paid as highly as everyone claims. Sure, top engineers make enough to make it work but many only get marginal pay increases. I really don't think it balances out for most.
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