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

Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

761–770 of 1001 posts

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#761

Post by albacur »

hnmullany wrote: post #656
foobarian wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are bars and restaurants and museums in hundreds of cities around the country. What makes the ones in SF so special? Or is it rather a tech gravity hole that was enabled by combination of chance and attractive climate?

The Bay Area has the highest concentration of Michelin stars in the country. The bars have great cocktails, decor and vibe. The SFMoma & DeYoung are first class museums as good as any city outside New York in the US.

I'll give you the Michelin star restaurants, but cheap or mid-range restaurants are disappointing (understandable given the astronomical cost to open and maintain a restaurant here), the bars and nightlife are similar to what you'll find in other cities, and museums in DC, Chicago, and LA blow SF out of the water.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#762

Post by vmception »

AIX2ESXI wrote: post #730
vmception wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in SF I bounced between hostels and luxury hotels and airbnbs in central Europe last year, it was about $600 per month. With the luxury hotels being subsidized by reward points. I pay over 10x more than that for pretty decadent living in SF. Not a complaint, I know what I'm doing. Just perspective. I would highly recommend living abroad indefinitely.

Much appreciated. Looking into now. Need to use my Chase Sapphire rewards more or get an Amex travel card. Only Ukraine is open right now. Thinking about Odessa so that I can study the classical arts in between Sysadmin duties and life.

Croatia is open right now to Americans, which is decent and beautiful.

And from there you can get into Schengen if you aspire for that. Its not an Schengen wide policy so I wont say more. There are a lot of relationships in Europe.

Ukraine is probably cheaper but its up to you.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#763

Post by albacur »

burfog wrote: post #710
hnmullany wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bay Area has the highest concentration of Michelin stars in the country. The bars have great cocktails, decor and vibe. The SFMoma & DeYoung are first class museums as good as any city outside New York in the US.

The SFMoma & DeYoung are not first class museums. They have modern art. New York may beat San Francisco, but it is not particularly good. The winning city, without any doubt, is Washington, D.C. Also beating San Francisco: Houston, TX Huntsville, AL Pearlington, MS Kennedy Space Center, FL Dayton, OH Seattle, WA San Diego, CA Chantilly, VA Ashland, NE Unless you actually go to the same museum again and again, your ow…

I'd also include Los Angeles (Getty and LACMA), Chicago (Art Institute), and Boston (MFA, beating SF by default because it doesn't even really compete in this category).

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#764

Post by throwaway8941 »

dirtyaura wrote: post #724
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great four months a year, but what about the rest of the year? No one can eat outdoors in 20F, or bike to work in the snow and ice. SF does have the advantage of year round biking weather.

Cycling year around in New York should be relatively easy. There is winter cycling culture in much harsher climates https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/feb/12/ice-cycles-no...

I live in a place with -40-45°C (-40-50°F) winters. We've got lots of cyclists even in these conditions.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#765

Post by ginko »

dirtyaura wrote: post #724
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great four months a year, but what about the rest of the year? No one can eat outdoors in 20F, or bike to work in the snow and ice. SF does have the advantage of year round biking weather.

Cycling year around in New York should be relatively easy. There is winter cycling culture in much harsher climates https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/feb/12/ice-cycles-no...

I cycled to work through an entire winter in Trondheim, Norway.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#766

Post by dragonwriter »

burfog wrote: post #710
hnmullany wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bay Area has the highest concentration of Michelin stars in the country. The bars have great cocktails, decor and vibe. The SFMoma & DeYoung are first class museums as good as any city outside New York in the US.

The SFMoma & DeYoung are not first class museums. They have modern art. New York may beat San Francisco, but it is not particularly good. The winning city, without any doubt, is Washington, D.C. Also beating San Francisco: Houston, TX Huntsville, AL Pearlington, MS Kennedy Space Center, FL Dayton, OH Seattle, WA San Diego, CA Chantilly, VA Ashland, NE Unless you actually go to the same museum again and again, your ow…

> The SFMoma & DeYoung are not first class museums. They have modern art.

These two statements aren't even related, and while the first is subjective, the second is misleading in regards DeYoung, which is not focussed on modern art.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#767

Post by _8j50 »

john_moscow wrote: post #299
kirse wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, giving the homeless homes doesn't work. It does though. Cities like Philadelphia and states like Utah solve it this way and both the homeless per capita + the return-to-homeless rate are nationally very low: Together with our many nonprofit partners, the City provides 11,503 emergency, temporary and permanent “beds.” Last year we helped 970 families and individuals from-homeless-to-housed. Our permanen…

From my experience in Europe, providing housing only works together with very low tolerance to substance abuse and disorderly behavior. I can image conservative Utah having very similar attitude. IMO, the SF public sees the right to disturb others as an extension of personal liberties, and hence this solution won't work very well.

No strings attached includes substance abuse and criminal activity. No strings. They get a roof over their head anyways.

I mean you'd think people would be excited about homeless people pooping in their free housing instead of on the sidewalk.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#768

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

rsynnott wrote: post #284
neltnerb wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised that in SF of all places the impact of COVID on AirBNB rentals wasn't even mentioned. I'd expect some people doing that have decided to just rent it like normal housing and actually increase the housing stock. But way too early to tell, I'm still never expecting to move back there.

I was wondering about that too. In Dublin, which has vaguely similar dynamics (inadequate housing supply, very large presence of tech and other industries which have gone all in on remote-for-now if not remote-forever) rental inventory is up by 60%. Which sounds like a lot, until you look at how tiny it is normally, and how much of what’s showing up to rent is very clearly hastily decommissioned Airbnb stock.

And house prices still haven't started coming down...

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#769

Post by red_admiral »

wwweston wrote: post #722
m_ke wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Brooklyn and have seen 2-3 business close a week around me. At this point almost every other storefront is vacant (many of which have been since before the pandemic). My hope is that this will bring down commercial real estate prices down significantly and create an opportunity for a lot more small businesses in a year or so, most of which I assume will be restaurants and other "experience" based shops. The…

> My hope is that this will bring down commercial real estate prices down significantly I'm going to predict that this will not happen. More specifically, that it will be unusual in general for rents or prices anywhere to drop any more than 10%. There's something odd going on and my best guess is that there are (a) accounting/tax practices that provide incentives for vacancy with certain nominal values and (b) real e…

I think the massive pools of capital thing is somewhat true, but this investment strategy works because ultimately there's so much demand for property, which is what's driving the real estate prices.

A permanent drop in demand because more people are working from home could crash the market.

Re: Remote work is reshaping San Francisco, as tech workers flee and rents fall

#770

Post by mrgordon »

artursapek wrote: post #671
mrgordon wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think San Francisco has poor quality food, you clearly haven’t spent much time there (as you admit) or you don’t have very discerning taste. California grows the majority of the country’s produce and most everyone else is getting the same ingredients a few days later. Farm to table is the standard instead of something that starts at $25/plate like in most US cities The city could be more dense in some areas bu…

The majority of the country's produce? I call bullshit.

Well you called bullshit and the number is 56.7% per the article the other user helpfully linked. This is why "California cuisine" has been farm to table for so long and why it is more affordable to eat fresh, tasty, in-season produce there.
Post reply on HN