San Francisco's Housing Crisis Explained

An anonymous reader writes "We've heard a few brief accounts recently of the housing situation in San Francisco, and how it's leading to protests, gentrification, and bad blood between long-time residents and the newer tech crowd. It's a complicated issue, and none of the reports so far have really done it justice. Now, TechCrunch has posted a ludicrously long article explaining exactly what's going on, from regulations forbidding Google to move people into Mountain View instead, to the political battle to get more housing built, to the compromises that have already been made. It's a long read, but well-researched and interesting. It concludes: 'The crisis we're seeing is the result of decades of choices, and while the tech industry is a sexy, attention-grabbing target, it cannot shoulder blame for this alone. Unless a new direction emerges, this will keep getting worse until the next economic crash, and then it will re-surface again eight years later. Or it will keep spilling over into Oakland, which is a whole other Pandora's box of gentrification issues. The high housing costs aren't healthy for the city, nor are they healthy for the industry. Both thrive on a constant flow of ideas and people.'"

Comments

The bay area used to have affordable housing

[symbolset]

Back in the Ford administration. Or maybe Nixon.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

"Gentrification" = property values skyrocket once you drive the blacks out. Crime goes away when they go away. FACT. The govt's own stats back this up.

Turns out successful intelligent people don't want to live in shitty rundown high crime areas. Shocking. That's gentrification folks.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the other day i was thinking about san fransisco...
hah, no i wasn't.
who thinks about san fransisco?, ever since i found out they really don't make rice-a-roni there i lost interest.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

The fuck? Next you'll be telling me the San Francisco 49ers aren't actually in San Francisco.

OH WAIT!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi's_Stadium

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm into the leather scene. San Francisco used to be our Mecca. You know how Las Vegas is Disneyland for adults (tm) or something like that? Well, San Francisco is Disney Land for gay men. Or was. Quite frankly, it's gotten too fucking creepy for me -- And I have no problem getting fisted by a midget while a tranny shits on my chest! I have friends that put the goatse man to shame. San Fransisco is just fucked up.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[rmdingler]

"I'm into the leather scene."

Leather makes a fine recliner, but in the hot months your napping face still sticks to it.

"San Francisco used to be our Mecca. You know how Las Vegas is Disneyland for adults (tm) or something like that? Well, San Francisco is Disney Land for gay men. Or was."

Best quote ever was Like Disneyland on acid.

"Quite frankly, it's gotten too fucking creepy for me -- And I have no problem getting fisted by a midget while a tranny shits on my chest! I have friends that put the goatse man to shame. San Fransisco is just fucked up."

Fucking creepy is in the eye of the beholder, but no brainer, I too would choose a midget fist if fisting were eminent... but maybe, and I mean just barely maybe, you should stop experimenting with the recommended dosage of those vitamins they've prescribed.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[beelsebob]

s/black/poor/ and you might have a point.

Unfortunately for you, creating ghettos for the benefit of the rich has had a history of being a pretty amazingly bad plan. SF needs to figure out how to deal with this properly and fast (generally, the answer is, build more houses, faster).

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Bullshit.

Poor white people are not nearly as violent as poor black people. Check the stats yourself. Blacks are about 13-14% of the population but they commit 50% of the murders alone (usually they murder other blacks). Other violent crimes like robbery follow the same pattern. It is popular among blacks to celebrate a culture of violence, drugs and gangs. Until that changes the crimes will continue to be associated with their skin color. But that is a choice BLACKS THEMSELVES are making.

Do you ever question your own beliefs? Even your most sacred cherished ones? DId you ever stop for a moment and think that maybe, just maybe, the endless excuses people like you keep making for the blacks and their culture of violence, the limitless passes you give them, just might be perpetuating the problem and actually causing MORE people to suffer including those very same blacks? Ever wonder why things never change? Lack of necessary change can only indicate one thing - that what you are doing is not working. Time to take a different view.

At one time it was not politically correct to advocate heliocentrism either. But it was still a fact.

Black men can start by seriously trying to parent their children instead of leaving them to be raised by single mothers in broken homes in bad neighborhoods. All blacks can start by dropping this victim idea that nothing is ever their fault. None of the successful blacks I met ever thought like that. None of them thought being a thug was cool. None of them thought studying hard in school was "acting white". None of them thought working hard made somebody "uncle tom" either.

If you think that's coincidence then you simply are not intellectually mature enough to be reasoned with in an adult manner.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[PopeRatzo]

Poor white people are not nearly as violent as poor black people.

Tell that to the families of the dead in Overland, Kansas.

You racist shit, what are you too embarrassed to post under your "Third Way" moniker tonight?

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[pete6677]

Where's the mod option for "harsh truth"?

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[beelsebob]

Poor white people are not nearly as violent as poor black people. Check the stats yourself. Blacks are about 13-14% of the population but they commit 50% of the murders alone (usually they murder other blacks).

As much as your racist mindset would like that to support your conclusion. It simply doesn't. Being 13-14% of the population does not imply being an even distribution within the demographics of the population. If all 75% of that 13-14% is poor (not unreasonable), but only 10% of the white people are poor (also not unreasonable), then that would give you pretty much the exact same number of poor people of either race. The result - an unsurprising 50/50 split in crime rates too.

Ever wonder why things never change?

No, because it's clear.
1) They do change. We've gone from blacks, women and gays (amongst many others) being ostracised, to many of them being productive members of society, and people like you being frowned upon. That's great!
2) The change is slow, exactly because of people like you, trying very very hard to make sure that these people get held back as much as you can. Thankfully idiots like you are getting rarer and rarer.

At one time it was not politically correct to advocate heliocentrism either. But it was still a fact.

That's an interesting comparison. You seem to be suggesting that we generally go from poor understanding of the situation, to more enlightened understanding of the situation. That our knowledge of the situation improves. One way that this has improved is that we've realised that the earth is not the centre of the universe, and then even realised that neither is the sun. Another way is that in the past, we thought that blacks, women and gays were somehow inferior, and not just normal human beings who happened to have a different pigmentation, sexual organ, or preference. Thankfully we've advanced past that point now.

Black men can start by seriously trying to parent their children instead of leaving them to be raised by single mothers in broken homes in bad neighbourhoods.

This is almost as laughable as "The poor just need to stop being poor, then they could afford health care."

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of performing useless ad hominems against me because I have no account, why don't you tell that to the widow and unborn child of Nathan Trapuzzano? I bet you don't even know who that is (was). While you're at it ask yourself why you won't see tons of major stories about this like you did about Treyvon Martin.

Ever take a good look at what's happening in Baltimore? No? How about Newark, Camden, Gary, Milwaukee, Chicago, Birmingham, Memphis, or Charlotte, Atlanta, Rochester, Jackson MS, St Louis, Kansas City? All of them extremely dangerous violent places. All of them majority black. Blacks move in, whites move out, city turns to hellhole. You never see the reverse pattern. You never see whites move in, blacks move out, city turns to shit. Why it's as if there is a discernable pattern upheld by the data huh?

Blacks have a culture that glorifies violence. FACT. I am sorry if facts offend you but that does not make me a racist. A racist would not be saddened by this. A racist would not expect them to do better. A racist wouldn't bother expecting better because a racist thinks they cannot possibly do better (this is so basic it is amazing it needs to be explained to you). In fact a REAL racist that wants to really keep blacks down wants them to KEEP DOING WHAT THEY ARE DOING NOW. Most of these black murderers are killing OTHER BLACKS. Most fatherless broken homes are BLACK MEN abandoning BLACK CHILDREN.

But I am somehow racist if I suggest they drop the culture of violence and start keeping their own houses in order. Even though that would be the best thing that could happen FOR BLACKS WHO WOULD ENJOY THE BENEFITS. Yeah. Okay. No I think you are racist because you are so committed to never changing anything. You are the coward because TRUTH OFFENDS YOU.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Numbers much?
  There are 17 Million poor whites, compared to 10 million blacks in poverty. If poverty was the only indicator, the white demographic would be leading the charge, rather than the fact that just 6% of the American population ( Black Males) responsible for 50% of the murders. Can you stop being so reflexively hurt by facts that you can't approach things to find a real solution? Facts > Your feelings. Deal with it. Once you come to terms with the idea that were not all the same, we can start to find real answers to the problems we all face.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[ProfBooty]

Paul Kersey?

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Hispanics are even more poor and larger segment of society, but don't have the violent crime rates. BTW, how is pointing out reality racist or holding them back? What's laughable about males being fathers instead of just sperm donors?

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Mashiki]

Let me make it simpler on you.

Rational choice + Social disorganization = Crime

Interestingly enough, when you break one or two of those two options, you're doing enough to break the classic situation which breeds criminal behavior. Reinforce it however, or do nothing, and it will continue to perpetuate itself.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the point entirely (or are ignorant of statistics). Showing the example of one white murderer doesn't invalidate the claim that whites are less violent overall.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[basecastula]

You coming to the Folsom Street fair In a couple months? It is the wildest thing you will ever see in the city. Everyone is really nice too.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Archangel Michael]

The most racist thing I've ever heard, were the liberals whining about black people's "plight", making excuses for the bad behavior being "cultural". It is clearly the most bigoted viewpoint, and it isn't coming from "Tea Baggers", it is coming from the left. And some of the worst, is coming the black/african left. These people are poverty pimps and race baiters who DO NOT WANT a successful Black (see Ben Carson character assassination).

When success is rewarded with hateful words like "Uncle Tom", and "Race Traitor" you can squarely call it "racism". There is no greater racist than those that DO NOT believe black people can be smart, intelligent and successful.

But, instead of taking a close look at the policies that are designed to hold black people captive (slavery??) inside the invisible cages and to be ruled by their plantation masters (voting 80% DNC), we have people calling the wrong side "racist".

The real Racism are those that insist that black people cannot be successful, without a handout.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the Ford administration. Or maybe Nixon.

Most of the worlds housing problems are caused by uncontrolled hordes of uninvited invaders from 3rd world countries .

you may not like it but that is the facts ..

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[mikael]

It has been well documented. "The Exploding Metropolis" by the editors of Fortune magazine goes beyond a "ludicrously long article" and is an entire book dedicated to the whole subject (there are probably online versons which can be previewed or downloaded):

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.ph...

The unfortunate thing was that whenever incredible amounts of money were spent on providing decent high-rise accommodation for the poor (just as much white as black), the residents would take it upon themselves to crowd in as many relatives as possible into one apartment, use wide hallways as playrooms and storage space and yet others would get bored and decide to go elevator surfing and end up breaking those systems. Some even decided to play games by jumping down the waste disposal chutes in the middle of the night. In the UK and USA, we've ended up having to spectacularly demolish such buildings because of these problems.

The physical energy cost of transporting building materials like concrete upwards means that only the wealthy can afford to live in condominium blocks.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

The poor deserve what they get. After all, it is their choice not to be born to rich parents.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[profplump]

I know. The most important way in which we're not all the same is race -- which has an undisputed scientific basis and causal relationship to observed behavior -- which makes it the logical point of division for social problems.

Or it could be that race is merely a dynamic social construct with no clear or stable definition or inherent relationship to behavior and therefore probably not a particularly useful way to frame most social problems.

If we're going to deal with "facts" you first have to make race a "fact" and not just some arbitrary statistical division rooted in historical prejudices. Race isn't a property we can test for scientifically, it's not an inherently part of a person, and studies have shown that neither self-report nor externally-obsereved race are stable over time -- for example, people who have been imprisoned are more likely to identify themselves as black, as are other observers who are aware the subject has been imprisoned, even if they previously identified as another race.

None of which is to say that our individual and shared conceptions of race are unimportant, or uncorrelated with certain behaviors -- just like religion, social constructs can be very important in our lives and can greatly influence our behavior. But the idea that we can "find real answers" by treating violence as a racial problem is as ridiculous as the idea that we can bring peace to Palestine by treating the conflict as a religious problem.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[CayceeDee]

Blacks move in, whites move out, city turns to hellhole.

Hmmm. Maybe if those white people weren't such racists asses that they react to black people by running away the place would be different.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Rent isn't that bad between the bubbles. We got our current 1 bedroom apartment between Pacific Heights and Japantown, three blocks from an amazing park on the top of a beautiful hill, and with a pool in the courtyard, for $1300 in 2002 (~$1500 now with inflation adjustments). It came down from something like $1700 in 2000. Now it goes for $2500.

I moved my mother here in 2011, right before rents began sky rocketing. I got her a tiny rent controlled studio in Cow Hollow/Marina for $900 (on the free market, not senior housing). Now it goes for $1400.

If you've lived in the city long enough, you've seen the peaks and the troughs. Most of these activists are too young to have been adults during the last bubble, and many will no doubt move on to some other city before rents fall again during the looming bust.

That's not to say things couldn't be better. The NIMBYism is ridiculous here. I just hope I can squeeze into a house or condo during the bust and get to be one of those NIMBYs, with a safe neighborhood, walking distance to every amenity, and picturesque parks :)

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

That's odd. The 2 most racist things i ever heard were lets put these guys into ovens and, hey go over to Canan and kill every living thing.
But since you pulled out a word i haven't heard since the sixties. - uncle tom? Really?
I guess I'll let my slaves move out of my garage after they get back from harvest in my back yard.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

San Fagcisco suffers the same fate as all of California -- a den of idealistic fruits with taxes as their religion, and their unattainable reality of a humanist utopia.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't you tell that to the widow and unborn child of Nathan Trapuzzano? I bet you don't even know who that is (was). While you're at it ask yourself why you won't see tons of major stories about this like you did about Treyvon Martin.

That's because "Little Red" isn't a sympathetic defendant, smiling and joking with the cameras on his "perp walk". There's no controversy for the media to exploit for eyes, just a disgusting crime and a disgusting defendant; whether he really did it or not, the cheerful attitude is inappropriate when a man is dead.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

That's terrible. I have an eight hundred square foot apartment with two decks and sliding glass doors for $500 a month. It's not San Fran, but it's a good city.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[K. S. Kyosuke]

making excuses for the bad behavior being "cultural"

Are you sure the word "excuses" is more applicable in this context than "explanations"? "Excuses" is not nearly the same thing. Especially serious sociological research tends to produce explanations rather then excuses - unless you're a Nazi or a communist getting the results you want.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[TheDarkMaster]

He may be wrong on some points, but he did not say at any time that blacks can not change. And I do not need statistics to conclude that he is right in what he said, I just need to go outside. Here is obvious the culture of violence, young blacks boast about of being gang members, their language is 80% violence and profanity. Poor young whites do the same thing, but is most common to I see blacks doing it. Racism? No, unfortunately this is what I see happening on the streets here, I like it or not.

(And as he said, people can change to better. But they have to want to do this and it is not what is happening with the majority.)

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

You remind me of the Mexicans who came to the US legally at great expense and time and effort because they went through the (convoluted) system. No one despises illegals more than they do. But you never see that on TV. Why? Because they can't be called "racist" since they are Hispanic themselves. Heh you didn't actually think the media was objective and gave you all sides of the story did you?

Black men can start by seriously trying to parent their children instead of leaving them to be raised by single mothers in broken homes in bad neighbourhoods.

This is almost as laughable as "The poor just need to stop being poor, then they could afford health care."

Really? Because I grew up poor. Run-down everything. Kids made fun of me for my hand-me-down clothing. Subsidized school lunch program. Food stamps. Thanksgiving food came from a food bank. We were poor.

My father was there for me. You know to be my father. Because he cared and he took responsibility for his son and because he loves me. Im much better off for it.

So tell me why having a dark skin color means another man can't do the same thing? That sounds awfully racist of you. Care to explain that? Of course you could suddenly stop posting in this thread if the cat's got your tongue.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh.. no. It was Paul Ryan who recently spoke about the "inner city culture" being a problem. Everyone knew what he meant.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

When darkskinned people embrace gang culture because other darkskinned people are doing it because they see themselves as different from lightskinned people and base an entire shared culture around that then in every real material way you do in fact have a "race".

It really doesn't matter if it's a real race from biological factors or a pseudorace from social constructs. The result is the same. The solutions are the same. Anybody else remember Bill Cosby talking about this? Especially after Ennis was murdered?

I think you have good intentions but this concern is only going to sidetrack the discussion down a useless path. Meanwhile urban areas are riddled with horrible crimes and broken homes because of maladaptive behavior that does follow race patterns. Figuring out if race is really a social construct does not change that. Not even if it makes you feel better about your beliefs.

You don't really get it. It is like a man being chased by a large ferocious animal and stopping to wonder if it is a carnivore or merely an omnivore. Either way it's after him and he definately has a problem. That is what you are doing, ignoring the problem to argue about pointless things that won't influence outcome. Understand, anybody that makes you feel guilty for calling a spade a "spade" is manipulating you. Nobody manipulating you has good intentions.

Anyway the crime and decay DOES follow race patterns. That is why there is "white flight". It is why there is no "black flight" of black people moving away from whites at great inconvenience to themselves. Vast majority of white people do not have a culture of violence that makes black people feel like they can no longer raise a family in the city.

It is not that hard to understand. Over time this is getting worse not better because the way we look at it now is false. That is why what we do now isn't working. If it worked things would be getting better, more blacks would rise out of poverty, father their kids, turn away from violence and depravity. That is not what happens in our cities. We tried looking at things your way and it fails. Time to try something else. I don't know what that is but I know it starts with being honest about this, not making excuses because you have been taught to feel guilty or to feel sorry for blacks. That is no favor to them. In fact nothing could be more insulting or patronizing when you really think about it.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[sootman]

>> Black men can start by seriously trying to parent their
>> children instead of leaving them to be raised by single
>> mothers in broken homes in bad neighbourhoods.

> This is almost as laughable as "The poor just need to
> stop being poor, then they could afford health care."

Nothing wrong with most of that sentence -- "Black men can start by seriously trying to parent their children instead of leaving them to be raised by single mothers in broken homes." ("Broken home" in the figurative sense of "separated parents".) And hey, once you have the cost savings of living together, you can move somewhere better, thus taking care of the "in bad neighborhoods" part, too.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Hodr]

Poverty and drug culture (rather than race) are more closely linked to crime.

For an example of this look to Eureka, California. 80% White, less than 2% Black, and one of highest crime (both violent and non-violent) in the entire country.

 

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Being 13-14% of the population does not imply being an even distribution within the demographics of the population. If all 75% of that 13-14% is poor (not unreasonable), but only 10% of the white people are poor (also not unreasonable), then that would give you pretty much the exact same number of poor people of either race. The result - an unsurprising 50/50 split in crime rates too.

I'm not the original AC, but just to inject some facts - poverty rates in the US in 2012 show 13% white 35% black. You're going to need to get into the fact that more blacks, even in the middle class, live in poorer areas than their white peers, which has knock on effects for education etc. None of this is simple.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, it's not San Francisco. If I wasn't living here, I'd just buy a house in Southern Alabama, where the going rate for a 2500+sqf house can be had for $10,000 (because the market is still seriously depressed there, at least it was when I visited last Thanksgiving). I pay for the ability to walk everywhere--to the grocery store, to work, to the park, to the movies, to any of a several-hundred-plus restaurants in a mile radius--in a year-round comfortable climate. When you live in San Francisco, especially the northern part of the city, the city is your living room. All most people do at home is watch TV and cook, and you don't need a huge place to do that.

Alternatively, I'd move to Chicago, where you can buy a huge condo in a doorman building for less than $400,000 in many cases. But Chicago is pretty damn cold (and pretty damn hot in the summer), and it's not as walkable as San Francisco.

Or maybe Hong Kong, which is pretty cool. There are lots of nice places to live, but in the U.S. San Francisco is one of the best (I've lived in Florida, D.C., Chicago, New Haven, San Jose, and a few other places).

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[tirefire]

As much as your racist mindset would like that to support your conclusion. It simply doesn't. Being 13-14% of the population does not imply being an even distribution within the demographics of the population. If all 75% of that 13-14% is poor (not unreasonable), but only 10% of the white people are poor (also not unreasonable), then that would give you pretty much the exact same number of poor people of either race. The result - an unsurprising 50/50 split in crime rates too.

I don't think it's poverty that leads to crime (West Virginia is poor and has low crime). Rather, I think that surrendering to poverty leads to crime. Joining a gang, dealing drugs, and expecting to get killed or imprisoned for life by age 30 only seems tolerable if you're convinced that there aren't any better options.

But there are better options. Anyone who can borrow or save a few hundred bucks can buy a greyhound ticket to North Dakota. There is an oil boom going on there, right now, with scads of job openings requiring no prior education or skills, with starting salaries around $50,000/year. That's higher than the median household income in the US. Most companies even have barracks on-site for employees who can't find housing. Also, working a bottom-rung service industry job near the oil fields is still pretty lucrative; I hear Walmart cashiers are making $20 an hour in ND!

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[operagost]

Being poor doesn't give you license to commit crimes, any more than being a spoiled rich brat should.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[operagost]

It's amazing how the left pushes birth control so hard, then absolves certain minorities of the responsibility to use it.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[n1ywb]

THIS! And poverty is pretty closely linked to being DESCENDED FROM SLAVES. Africa had advanced societies before Europeans went in there and fucked everything up and kidnapped half of everybody (sometimes with the African leadership's consent but two wrongs don't make a right). The you got Jim Crow and various other social atrocities. "Hey I know lets stack the socioeconomic deck against the blacks and then blame them for not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps! Heheheh".

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[ganjadude]

how do you know race has anything to do with it? If I lived in an area that was nice, and it turned to shit for whatever reason, im gonna find a better place. Racebaiters are worse than racists these days

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[ganjadude]

crime is bigger in inner cities - FACT

You can take that to mean what you wish. but the facts are simple, inner cities are a problem.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure so why are people saying "gentrification" is a bad thing?

Rich Google employees are less likely to shoot up their neighborhood on a regular basis.

They don't want all these rich people moving in, so what do they want SF to become? Detroit?

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Archangel Michael]

Actually, try changing the things that are "explanations" and you'll start to find that they are also "excuses". Offer up solutions to end the "explanations" and you'll likely get a slew of reasons why it isn't possible, mainly from the very people who profit by keeping the status quo, but have "compassion" for the plight.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[PopeRatzo]

The most crime-ridden location in the US is 80% white. Both violent and non-violent.

And there is black flight. Most definitely.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up, junior. I'll snap you in half like a twig you scrawny little, nigger loving shit.

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Rakarra]

Black men can start by seriously trying to parent their children instead of leaving them to be raised by single mothers in broken homes in bad neighbourhoods.

This is almost as laughable as "The poor just need to stop being poor, then they could afford health care."

.... wait, are you saying these black men just aren't capable of staying in and raising a family?

Re:The bay area used to have affordable housing

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as your racist mindset would like that to support your conclusion. It simply doesn't. Being 13-14% of the population does not imply being an even distribution within the demographics of the population. If all 75% of that 13-14% is poor (not unreasonable), but only 10% of the white people are poor (also not unreasonable), then that would give you pretty much the exact same number of poor people of either race. The result - an unsurprising 50/50 split in crime rates too.

Or you could use real numbers rather than just pulling some out of your ass.

http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/

Location White Black Hispanic Other Total
United States 13% 35% 33% 22% 20%

BS

[Anonymous Coward]

There were regulations in place forbidding people to move into Mountain View, when Google moved to Mountain View. The entire article assumes that Google and its employees should be able to live in or near San Francisco. Clearly the solution is that they need to get the fuck out of San Francisco because they are social poison. Why can't Google be located in Boise or Kansas City or wherever the fuck, anyway?

Re:BS

[Z34107]

There's that rational, open-minded tolerance San Francisco's known for.

Re:BS

[Tablizer]

They Bay Area is one of the few economically active places in the USA, that's why housing is expensive there.

If you want cheap housing, go to an economically dying area, like Detroit; or a place with no regulations such that chemicals leak into your house or explode in your face, like Texas.

Re:BS

[thesupraman]

Jealous much?

Seems to me that the people who have been pissing away their time spending everything they can day to day and not buying any actual property are now pissed that the property values for others who didnt do that are going up, and that they will then have to pay more rent.

Hint - its called investing for the future, and its a damn good idea, no matter how fashionable your triple chocolate mochas and anti establishment tees are.

To you actually know that the capitalism in, well, capitalism actually means? Or would you rather live in some state allocated location, with a state allocated job, eathing your state allocated rations? hmmm?

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should anyone be tolerant of rich assholes who directly participate in mass evictions, whose lives are spent increasing the effectiveness of online advertising?

Re:BS

[cheesybagel]

A couple decades back a blue collar worker could buy a house on 3 years salary. Can you do that today?

Re:BS

[dasunt]

A couple decades back, house prices and lot sizes were a lot smaller.

Re:BS

[dbc]

Well, except that it is very, very hard to start buying real estate in the Bay Area on a junior engineer's salary. In my area, I would not want to live in most of the neighborhoods where you can get something for $800K. Your well-founded admonitions don't align with most peoples' reality.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean oil just flows into people's home in Texas? Man, they must be rich!

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[Z34107]

Because, as TFA points out, the problems San Francisco has are entirely self-inflicted. It's amusing to see karma on such a large scale.

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[zieroh]

A couple decades back, people were living in the exact same houses we're living in today.

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[Morpf]

Of course. It's those tech workers who are driving the housing prices up, and not the greedy house owners... Sure.

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[vancedecker]

Here, drink this tea: http://murderpedia.org/male.J/... It will help you understand why we must show unconditional love to the wealthy, for only they can create jobs.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

They Bay Area is one of the few economically active places in the USA, that's why housing is expensive there.

If you want cheap housing, go to an economically dying area, like Detroit; or a place with no regulations such that chemicals leak into your house or explode in your face, like Texas.

Surely San Bruno would be more to one's liking...

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[Nova Express]

In Texas, yes.

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[Anonymous Coward]

To you actually know that the capitalism in, well, capitalism actually means?

Yeah, its where landowners fight for laws to stop an investor from buying a house, tearing it down and building an apartment complex to make 10 times the profit of selling or renting one house, because it would make their property value go down.

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[viperidaenz]

... or toxic waste from the oil industry?

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[viperidaenz]

I could buy the house I currently own in less than two years. What's your point again?

Re:BS

[The Grim Reefer]

A couple decades back a blue collar worker could buy a house on 3 years salary. Can you do that today?

A couple of decades back people actually saved their money. I remember a time when almost no home had more than one TV (some not even that), Cable was considered a luxury (if available), not a necessity. You made a down payment on a car and kept it for years after it was paid off. Now it's more popular to lease a new car every three years or so. Even though most cars will last for well over 100K miles, if not 200K miles. If you wanted a house, you didn't buy new cloths every season with some designers name plastered on your ass and everything else you owned. You can actually survive without the latest iPhone. But most households have one for each person. That shit adds up fast. You also didn't buy things on credit. If you didn't have the cash, you saved for it. People who rent are probably two years salary in debt these days.

So yes, you can afford a home as a blue collar worker. But it has to be important to you. At least more important than much of the frivolous shit that most of us seem to think is a necessity today. I remember, years ago, refusing to get cable because I thought $5/ month was insane. I'm paying more than 20 times that for satellite now. And cable is even more expensive. I've been wanting to cut it off for years because there's very little worth watching, and I almost never turn on the TV. But my wife and daughter seem to think we must have it.

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[grmoc]

A couple decades back the impact of Prop 13 wasn't yet horribly visible.
Worse, thanks to Prop 13, corporations pay far far less, and thus are less likely to give up property for sale.

Re:BS

[Q-Hack!]

If you can't afford to live in the Bay Area, then don't. You can always find a good place much cheaper if you just expand your scope a bit. So you may have to add 45 minutes to your commute everyday. The idea is to build your wealth over time and not demand instant gratification.

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[Anonymous Coward]

what corporation is going to put property up for sale ?

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[Ost99]

Irrelevant.
What was interest rates back then?
The relevant number is the % of income spent on paying interest on your mortgage.

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[Anonymous Coward]

what is your house ? The closet next to the McDonalds by Frys ?

Unless you make crazy wages or your house is SHItty ... not a chance ...
give us a rough address ...

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

My take is that tax law has fostered an environment where the investment classes are rewarded with tax benefits for tying up property with the intent of maximizing rents. Its a terribly unproductive use of financial resources, but it does allow for a "gentleman" class who is not expected to labor or produce anything for his income.

We even have the gall to assess "payroll tax" for any business creating jobs. Wasn't it enough that the business not only organized a way of not only paying a wage to someone else, then ratting out to the government that they hired Joe Blow, here's his SSN, and how much we paid him so the IRS can go extort their tithes?

The chickens are coming home to roost. We are amassing a tremendous population of "gentlemen" who do not work, others get welfare, we look everywhere outside our own country to get others to build our stuff under the aspect of "world trade" and "globalization", paying for these services with debt instruments.

This is one of those times I am not so dismayed at getting older and knowing my days are numbered. I have a lot of people who appoint themselves over me and are running up a helluva debt in my name, and there is nothing I can do about it. They will even pay armed security forces with money they do not have to enforce their agenda, while the populace ( me included ) do not know how to organize and defend ourselves in a like manner.

As far as I am concerned, the whole world is lusting after the whore of the Synagogue of Satan, worshipping the construct of supposed "wealth", where a small elite "owns" everything ( 'cuz they say so ) are playing and manipulating the rest of us like marionettes on a string for their amusement. They use dollars, not strings, but the effects are similar. The dollars can be created by them and them alone out of nothing, and they can change the rules of the game whenever they feel like it. I am compelled to follow, not make, the rules. .

I am very pessimistic on this. I feel we as a nation have already sold ourselves into debt slavery, but we do not know it yet. The eviction notice has not arrived yet. I feel we are in the last days of the party that was America, and there is going to be one hell of a hangover.

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[JDAustin]

Then move to the east bay. You can find decent family housing with good schools in Castro Valley for under 600k.

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[melchoir55]

Almost all problems experienced by groups of humans are self-inflicted.

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[bhcompy]

Prop 13 is a reaction to government interference in the local markets(see Serrano vs Priest and the fallout from it). All property owners pay based on their date of purchase, which is entirely fair. That said, Prop 13 isn't that big of a problem. Prices are just as bad in New York and they pay exorbitant property taxes.

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[evilviper]

It's an interesting thought... Usually new people move-in, change the demographics, and out-vote the old Luddites. But if the Luddites start-off by demanding building restrictions before others can move-in, then those who would vote against them simply aren't ever allowed to move-in, so they don't ever get a vote.

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[Anonymous Coward]

But my wife and daughter seem to think we must have it.

So you're not really the man of the house. You are pussywhipped in the case of your wife and a people-pleaser in the case of your daughter. Gotcha.

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[Cyberax]

But so were San-Francisco _advantages_. Yes, I read TFA. And simply turning everything over to an invisible middle finger of market will only make it all worse.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Buying a condo is now "directly participating in mass evictions"?

Making available free phone service, free office suites, free web hosting, free photo sharing and financing that with advertising now makes someone an "asshole"?

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[cheesybagel]

If this was true I could have a 100 year mortgage with really low % of income and end up dying and never owning the damned house in the first place.

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[The Grim Reefer]

But my wife and daughter seem to think we must have it.

So you're not really the man of the house. You are pussywhipped in the case of your wife and a people-pleaser in the case of your daughter. Gotcha.

No. I just know what's worth making an issue about and what's not. But at least I'm man enough to not post as an AC.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who lives in Texas, this jives with the fact that unlike the previous California influxes in the '80s and '90s, the types of people moving are not the educated tech people, but indigent hipsters unable to land work in CA, so they flee conditions they made. Instead of well paying tech sector jobs, this wave is more interested in barista work, adding little to nothing to the community other than crime, rising rent and property taxes. The tech industry won't hire the new transplants, because a H-1B can be had with a CCIE for $16,000/year.

Problem is that this is a recipe for disaster. There are only so many short order cook and coffee slinger jobs. The transplants don't want roads (not "eco" enough), nor do they vote for bonds when it comes for basic police or fire protection. However, they will vote for $100,000,000.00 bike paths that are used by nobody. The Texas economy (especially central TX) is OK now, but it can easily collapse at any time, just because big businesses don't want to move here (water issues from all the new golf courses and power issues... both have power plant and water treatment plant expansion blocked by the Cali-"green" brigade.) Combine no new business (due to inattention due to basic infrastructure) with sharply rising real estate prices and a growing indigent population, and this is a perfect recipe for disaster. I'm seeing the gang tags which were gone in the 1990s reappear, and local areas have had general crime rates jump by 40% in a span of two years as per police blotter statistics.

TL;dr... don't move to Texas if you want work. NYC is having a renaissance and is the place to head to with crime at extremely low European city levels, and the businesses may not be "cool", but they do have jobs.

Re:BS

[beelsebob]

That's a bit of a straw man.

The point is that not too long ago, property values were only around 4-4.5 times the value of a normal wage. Now, even on a very high engineer's wage (around 150-200k) in the bay area you're looking at about 6-8 times the value of your wage. On an more average wage, more like 10-15 times.

Prices really have got very out of control.

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[antifoidulus]

Heh, actually SF-like phenomenons are happening pretty much anywhere these tech companies locate. As someone who was born and raised in Pittsburgh and now is living in Tokyo after a stint in Europe, I was just curious to see how condos in Pittsburgh compare to what there is in Tokyo...and I was shocked. I was expecting them to be much, much cheaper but the reality was quite different. Tokyo was more expensive, but not by that much. I was talking with a friend(another ex-Pittsburgher) and he reminded me that both Apple and Google have recently opened relatively large campuses in Pittsburgh. This is what probably sent housing prices sky-high, the owners of these housing complexes knew that a lot of money was going to come streaming in. I cannot imagine this is sitting well with a lot of the poorer residents of the city...

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

You're obviously either someone benefiting from Prop13, or a moron.

Prop13 was a huge overreaction with extremely poor thought about what the results would be.
Prop13 means that neighbors cannot move to another house down the street since then they couldn't afford to pay for the property tax.
It means that owners won't renovate because then property taxes go up.
It means that owners won't install insulation or other improvements, since then they property taxes go up.
It means that rental prices are very high since you cannot purchase a house to live in and pay less, since when you purchase you'd end up paying more in property tax than you would in rent...

  Prop13 really sucks.

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[bhcompy]

You obviously don't understand how property tax valuations are done in this state. Interior modifications do not qualify for a reevaluation of home value, only additions may be reevaluated and those are calculated separate from the existing square footage(so your whole property value does not increase, only the new square footage is evaluated at current value).

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[Z34107]

But if the Luddites start-off by demanding building restrictions before others can move-in

That's apparently not how it's working out, though. Those moving in have money, and it costs $500,000 to build a single 800 square foot unit. Guess who gets the unit?

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[dbc]

I, personally, have no need to move, having gotten in some time back and now have a house that has gone *up* in value over $800K over the past few years. The housing prices are a problem because it makes it difficult to hire people, because the commute from Castro Valley and other points East is... ummm... unpleasant. Your attitude seems rather parochial and insenstitive, and doesn't really move the ball forward in either clarifying the problem or suggesting a solution.

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[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying, relative to pay, homes are about twice as expensive.

Did households have one wage earner or two 'back in the day' you speak of? The answer is one, or maybe one with a career and one with a part-time gig. Now pretty much every household has two full-time salaries coming in.

Back in the day, it was the single guy who had all sorts of disposable income compared to everyone else, because he had nobody else to pay for, whereas the married guy had to pay for himself, his wife, and his kids. Now, a single guy (or girl) needs to earn as much as the couple next door, who have two salaried positions, in order to participate in the housing market.

The housing market is high because there's twice as much money to spend on housing, and as years progressed people have collectively made the choice to spend that extra money on a house. If people had collectively decided to save/invest the wages of the second income, or spend the 'extra' money on other things while collectively deciding to NOT put that extra money into housing, things would look very different today. In most of the country, housing values are to the point where a couple with two full-time jobs are almost always necessary to buy a home. The areas where this is not true is where it is still more likely for the woman to stay home to 'raise the kids' (think of the Bible belt, which includes the cheap housing in Texas that people always point to).

Source: I'm a single guy and I earn about what my married neighbors bring in together. If I didn't, there's no way I could live here. My other options are to get married or bring in roommates. Neither of those appeal to me, so I run a business and hold down a full-time job to make ends meet.

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[Anonymous Coward]

or explode in your face, like Texas.

That was a small, old, family owned, nitrate plant, in a small town, that had been broke into several times. only 9 people worked at that plant. It is hard for small farmers to make a decent living. Taking risks on low cost nitrate fertilizer is one of the ways that can help out.

Re:BS

[AK Marc]

I also heard that if you sell a CA house, and buy a CA house, you pay taxes on the fist house, plus the difference between the two, so you buy a house for $50,000 (and are paying taxes on $50,000) and sell it for $1,000,000 and buy another one for $1,050,000 and pay taxes on $100,000. But then, I've never lived in CA, so I wouldn't really know or care how it works. It's just funny that so many claim it works one way, then someone else will correct them. For something that's so simple, it seems very complex.

Re:BS

[tlambert]

They Bay Area is one of the few economically active places in the USA, that's why housing is expensive there.

If you want cheap housing, go to an economically dying area, like Detroit; or a place with no regulations such that chemicals leak into your house or explode in your face, like Texas.

Surely San Bruno would be more to one's liking...

Stated like someone who has never lived under an airport noise footprint. There's a reason that you see all the boarded up houses right under the flight path in all the movies... no one actually wants to live there.

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[bhcompy]

You buy a house and your yearly property tax is based off of a calculation typically in the 1-2% of purchase price value. It is limited to 2% increase per year if the market grows.

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[tlambert]

I was talking with a friend(another ex-Pittsburgher) and he reminded me that both Apple and Google have recently opened relatively large campuses in Pittsburgh.

150 employees in an old cookie factory for Google, and 100 employees for Apple retail is hardly "relatively large"...

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[stenvar]

Many blue collar workers earn more than white collar workers; jobs like plumbing, welding, etc. pay very well. And in lots of places around the country, housing and land are cheap.

As a software developer in the Bay Area, you probably live a lot worse than as a welder somewhere in a Midwestern farming town.

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[cyn1c77]

Wow, I am so sick of Californians stroking themselves. There are 49 other states in the country filled with people equivalently valuable to those in Cali. Try to keep that in mind.

They Bay Area is one of the few economically active places in the USA, that's why housing is expensive there.

If you want cheap housing, go to an economically dying area, like Detroit; or a place with no regulations such that chemicals leak into your house or explode in your face, like Texas.

The Bay area is boxed in by water, limiting available space and it has a high-population density. The land is also scenically desirable. So yeah, rent is going to be high.

Other cities in the US and across the world have the same issues, but don't resort to socialist approaches such as rent control or have the same sense of entitlement (for better or worse). They just let capitalism work things out.

Amazingly enough, they are also able to restrain themselves from insulting other states when expressing any displeasure online. Amazing!

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[Ichijo]

All property owners pay based on their date of purchase, which is entirely fair.

I pay five times what my neighbor pays in property tax for the same model simply because my neighbor bought in 1977 and I bought in 2010. Prop 13 is good for older people who have been here a while but not so good for people trying to buy their first home.

I can understand the desire to prevent the government from raising property taxes too quickly, but there's really no good reason to set the annual assessment increase limit below the normal rate of inflation.

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[Anonymous Coward]

There are 49 other states in the country filled with people equivalently valuable to those in Cali.

Bullshit. My company has offices in Austin, RTP, Atlanta, Cleveland, Dayton, Buffalo, Seattle, San Mateo, and San Francisco. We're hiring Java devs at all locations. I have more than twenty good resumes in San Mateo and San Francisco. I've interviewed people in all of the other cities, and they were crap. You can't find a decent developer in those other places, especially in Ohio. They just don't exist. You can't build technical companies in those places. The worst developer I've interviewed in San Mateo was better than the best out of probably six hundred I've interviewed in any city outside of CA. There's a reason companies are forced to move to the Bay Area in order to be successful.

Re:BS

[AK Marc]

So if you bought a house for $500,000 10 years ago, and it's now worth $5,000,000, the taxes will be no more than (0.02 * 500,000 * 1.20) = $12,000, but if you sell your $5,000,000 place to buy another $5,000,000 place, your tax will be no more than 0.02 * 5,000,000 = $100,000. The massive financial disincentive to selling also helps inflate prices, making the problem worse.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Anecdotal. I went to CMU, worked in Pittsburgh for a few years after graduating (late 90s). Moved to the Bay area for ~11 year and then moved back to Pgh to take care of aging family. I can tell you first hand the *average* real estate prices in Pittsburgh/western PA are FAR FAR cheaper than anything in the Bay Area, including Oakland, CA. I'm know there are expensive condos/houses in Pittsburgh (1+ $million) but those are extremely rare. A very decent house (and property, which you won't ever get in the Bay Area) run closer to 100-200k. Anything more than that is extravagant, a historical landmark, or in a uniquely high demand location. The cost of my house in Pgh is equivalent or less than most down payments on houses in the Bay Area (again, anecdotal).

The company I work for in the Bay Area (kept me on as remote employee after I re-located back to pgh) is actively trying to limit new hires in San Francisco and instead build out an office in a city comparable to the expense of Pgh (ie, way cheaper than the Bay Area).

Point being, smart Bay Area (or similarly expensive cities) companies who continue to grow are looking at other, cheaper cities as branch offices (also great for Disaster Recovery). From a US employment perspective, imho, this is far better than outsourcing to India/China.

While tech companies that are doing well can drive up the real estate prices, there are numerous areas in the US that can easily and happily accommodate the influx of high earners while not driving out large segments of the population making less money. Whether or not they can find qualified employees who either already reside in those cheaper areas, or are willing to relocate to them remains to be seen.

YMMV

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[bhcompy]

Well first off, your scenario is wildly outlandish. My grandparents home in Los Angeles County took 35 years to grow 10x in value. Anyways, why the need to sell your house? Why not target the federal government for supporting the home loan interest deduction, which promotes massive financing that props up pricing? Why force people out of their homes because of unreasonable property tax hikes? Home values were growing and property tax values were spiking, which helped promote Prop 13 in the first place. It's not right to force people out of their homes by making them unaffordable through increased taxation via inflation. People have no control over that. No amount of good or bad decision making can influence that.

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[antifoidulus]

Yes, it is quite large, in relative terms. The city of Pittsburgh is only about 30,000 people, meaning the % of the population in those 2 centers alone accounts for roughly 1% of the population. And since almost all those people are outsiders, the demand for real estate has had a sudden, pronounced spike since although the employees at those 2 corporations only represent about 1% of the population, they represent a much larger % of the population looking for housing, since at any given moment most people are staying put. Staying put that is until their landlord does everything in his/her power to boot them so they can rent out to someone who is more profitable.

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[Anonymous Coward]

And the other option is called "renters' hell" where they can't get out of renting - ever.

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[mikael]

Pre proposition-13, another hazard was "market-value adjustment" (MVA) of property taxes. Your neighbor decided to turn a sideyard into a ten storey condo. Initially, neighbors didn't complain, but then they were hit by a massive property tax increase because suddenly their acreage gained the market value of a ten-storey condo. So they protested, and height limits were put on buildings.

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[AK Marc]

People have no control over that.

They vote for the laws and politicians that spend enough to require massive tax increases. Of course, the solution is to move. I did, and it was a great thing. Lower taxes and more services.

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[tlambert]

Yes, it is quite large, in relative terms. The city of Pittsburgh is only about 30,000 people, meaning the % of the population in those 2 centers alone accounts for roughly 1% of the population.

Off by a factor of over 10; as of 2012: population of 306,211. That's 0.08%, not 1%.

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[swillden]

But so were San-Francisco _advantages_. Yes, I read TFA. And simply turning everything over to an invisible middle finger of market will only make it all worse.

Actually, studies comparing areas with rent control to areas without, controlling for other factors, indicate that rent controls cause lower housing supplies and higher rents. The market actually does a pretty good job -- certainly far better than planning commissions achieve.

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[Alomex]

This is unadulterated horseshit.

Median gross rent in Pitt is $674, in SF is $1362. source.

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[LWATCDR]

The simple answer is for the tech companies to move. There are a lot of places that are nice that they could move to.
Texas: Austin, Dallas, and Houston are all thriving areas with a large tech presence.
Florida: Orlando, Melbourne, Tampa Bay area, and Palm Bay all have large tech companies not to mention NASA, UCF, and UF in Gainesville is not far away. In south Florida you have pretty much all of the south east Florida coast including Boca Raton the home of the PC. From Port St. Lucie south you have a lot of reasonable housing and a lot of biotech moving in as well.
North Carolina: The research triangle is pretty nice and home to Red Hat and SAS.
Or go crazy and head up to places like Kalispell MT which a great place to live and if you are into skiing you might like the winters. Not to mention the availability of near by wind power.
Or buy up large areas of Detroit and build or renovate lots of old housing.
Lots of great places to live in the US with low costs of living the fixation of the SF area isn't that healthy for industry. Frankly I fear the over abundance of wealth and venture capital in that one area is why you see lot of odd ball startups that fail while there maybe a group of really smart people in the University of Montana that have a really good idea that can not get funding.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

They Bay Area is one of the few economically active places in the USA, that's why housing is expensive there.

If you want cheap housing, go to an economically dying area, like Detroit; or a place with no regulations such that chemicals leak into your house or explode in your face, like Texas.

Surely San Bruno would be more to one's liking...

Stated like someone who has never lived under an airport noise footprint. There's a reason that you see all the boarded up houses right under the flight path in all the movies... no one actually wants to live there.

Come to Central Florida. We have a significant number of people who moved into the noise footprint of MCO. I guess the previous B-52s were too noisy, but the quieter commercial flights are okay.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Your conclusion about savings is correct but some of the supporting arguments are garbage. TVs are insanely cheap compared to a couple of decades back. That's why people have more of them. A basic 32" can be obtained for less than $200. That's $85 in 1984 dollars. A 32" TV in 1984 was practically unheard of. 25-27" models were ~$500 and could be much higher for brands like Sony.
 
Despite what car ads might lead you to believe, leasing is not all that popular, only ~25-30% of new cars are leased vs. purchased. I don't have any data but in my experience I don't think it is a correct generalization that "people" are buying new designer clothes every season. You may be discounting the fact that places like Marshall's and Kohl's exist. There's a lot of stuff with a designer name on it that can be found quite cheaply.
 
Smartphones, yes.

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[martas]

Eh, living in Pittsburgh currently I promise you there's still a lot of very cheap housing here within a bus ride of Pitt/CMU/Google. Hell, I know PhD students who bought houses/apartments. Sure, if you want to live within a few blocks of those places it can get a bit pricey, but that's true anywhere.

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[martas]

It's kind of funny that you can be walking around here in a normal neighborhood, turn a corner, and suddenly see a house or row of houses that you're sure must cost a million $$ or more. And most of them are so breathtakingly beautiful....

Re:BS

[cheesybagel]

Why not target the federal government for supporting the home loan interest deduction, which promotes massive financing that props up pricing?

This.

Re:BS

[cheesybagel]

If both man and wife are working full time jobs you have to spend more money putting your kids into nannies, possibly have to spend more money on meals, probably have to hire housekeepers part time to clean the house and do minor chores because you do not have the time anymore. With a large family that second salary becomes essentially worthless.

I do agree however that one big reason for the average salary income to have go down in real terms is because there are more people working. With women in the job market it is hardly surprising with twice the workers you get half the wage values per worker.

Re:BS

[cusco]

Texas/Florida - You have rednecks and six inch long cockroaches that fly. Hot and humid and depressingly flat. No.

North Carolina - Hot/humid alternates with cold/humid, in an area overrun with rednecks and completely lacking in decent food (except barbeque). No.

Montana - Constant wind, two meters of snow, more rednecks, jello is considered a salad. No.

Detroit - All of the above disadvantages (except the roaches don't fly), plus you're in Detroit. No fucking way in hell No.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Pittsburgh has undergone enormous change in the last couple of decades. It isn't hard to find people (of a certain age, perhaps) who think of Pittsburgh as a collapsed rust-belt industrial city, with depressed wages. Now I think of it as a booming tech, creative-class college city. I can recall a sweet spot not too long ago in the city's history where the reality was the latter but prices were more in accord with the former. Maybe that era is coming to an end?

Anyway, I can see how someone who grew up in Pittsburgh would be surprised by prices there now. It's somewhat unusual among US metropolises in that way, sort of the converse of Detroit or something.

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[LWATCDR]

Funny how bigotry is so popular when it is the right kind of bigotry.
Rednecks in South Florida? Really? I guess you never have been to Miami Beach or Palm Beach? I often drive by Rolls and other exotic cars. I work in the Palm Beach area and the company has a clean room we use to package our ASICs.
As to Texas? Ever hear of SXSW? Austin is a rather popular place with tech.
North Carolina? I guess you don't know about SAS and Red Hat.

I suggest you learn a bit more before you expose your bigotry and ignorance on such a grand scale.

Re:BS

[cusco]

Lived in the sweltering armpit that is Florida for a decade one year. Never again will I step out of the airport at Miami. Haven't been to Texas in two decades, but nothing that I hear from anyone living in the area makes me think that it has gotten any cooler, any less humid, or that mountains have suddenly appeared in the state. And I really don't care if there is some tiny corner of either of the Carolinas that has managed to acquire a population with an average IQ higher than the ambient room temperature, you're still in a state only slightly less backward than Louisiana or Pakistan.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. It's those tech workers who are driving the housing prices up, and not the greedy house owners... Sure.

Greedy people understand something you apparently don't.

If you charge too much you price yourself out of the market. Then your profits are: $0. $0 doesn't make greedy people happy at all.

But... if a bunch of educated tech workers with decent paying jobs want to move there the greedy charge what those workers will pay. The more tech workers there are and the more money those workers have the higher this figure is. Then your profits are high.

If nobody wanted to live there then pricing yourself out of the market would happen at a much lower price point. Guess who wants to live there? Tech workers.

Guess what happens to ANY limited resource when lots of people with money suddenly want it? That's right. The price goes up. Greed or no.

Re:BS

[LWATCDR]

As opposed to a city where people use the public street as a toilet or attacks people if they work at a tech company?
Florida has a lot of smart people that work at the KSC, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RIM and several bio tech firms are moving form California to Florida. Also are roaches do not fly. Please stay in California because it will soon be like Detroit and the Rust belt when it becomes the crack pot belt. Eventually companies and workers will get tired of the abuse and move. Even Oregon and Washington are good options for them to move.
 

Re:BS

[Ost99]

And that matters why?
The cost of living there is interest + maintenance.

If you had the money already, the cost of living there is the interest you could have gotten on an investment of similar risk + maintenance.

Re:BS

[cusco]

Actually I'm in Seattle rather than California, grew up in redneckland in northern Michigan. Those things you call 'Palmetto bugs'? Those are a species of tropical cockroach. I remember stomping on one, grinding my shoe to make sure it was dead, picking up my foot, and watching it run away. Vile things.

Re:BS

[LWATCDR]

Yes they are tough and yes Summer in Florida is not great unless you are the beach but it is no where near as bad you think. Lots of people seem to like being hot. North Carolina is also not as bad you you claim. The mountain areas are very nice. Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio are all nice places to live depending where you are. Seattle? I actually really like that area but being from South Florida I worry that the would sink into depression if I lived there for any length of time. I do like sunlight. I went to Victoria for my honeymoon and would rather live there than Seattle :)

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Prop 13 covers all real estate, including income property. You can transfer the title to your home to your children or grand children without invoking a property tax re-evaluation; this can go on for generations, there is no limit.

Business property rarely changes hands in the state. What most businesses (and some individuals) do these days is have the property owned by a separate corporation or LLC. A single parcel is owned by one company and selling the company does not invoke a title transfer because the ownership does not change. Some people do not actually sell their house, they sell the LLC. All perfectly legal.

Prop 13 needs to revamped. Howard Jarvis was promoting it as a means to keep seniors from losing their homes and that is what is should be about, not used as a means of tax avoidance.

Re:BS

[siriuskase]

Are the wife and daughter men? He's still the man of the house, he just got outvoted.

Re:BS

[Copid]

My grandparents home in Los Angeles County took 35 years to grow 10x in value.

But it eventually happens, and if you limit tax increases to 2% per year, homeowners get a tax cut in real terms most every year.

Anyways, why the need to sell your house?

Are you saying that people should never move? I can think of a few reasons: To change jobs. The kids have moved out, so you don't need a big place (especially useful as it vacates a big place for new families with kids). You're too old to go up and down stairs. You need cash for retirement so you want to downsize from your suburban home and move into a small one story condo. This system breaks the normal lifecycle of home ownership.

Why not target the federal government for supporting the home loan interest deduction, which promotes massive financing that props up pricing?

Absolutely! Provided it was phased out over a number of years, I'd vote for this in a heartbeat.

Why force people out of their homes because of unreasonable property tax hikes?

You can get past the "forcing people out of their homes" problem in a couple of ways. The first would be to allow people with little to no income (seniors, for example), to have the tax assessed against their home and have it taken out of their estate when they die.

The second would be to move to an income tax and forget about property tax entirely. Property tax causes these sorts of problems by its very nature. Property isn't liquid, so you can't use property to pay taxes on property. Rich people have lots of property, so they pay more (in theory). Old people don't have the income to pay property tax, so we give them a break. Basically, we're fiddling with the property tax to try to make it act like an income tax, but with the nasty side effects of all sorts of terrible market distortions. I don't get why we do it.

Who is really to blame...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Johnny Wurster kid and his damned dad.
And the soil is all screwed up too.

Ok, who got the reference?

Re:Who is really to blame...

[Anonymous Coward]

Goddamned burrow owls.

When will they gentrify the Tenderloin?

[vancedecker]

Why would they even bother with the Mission, when the Tenderloin has been a complete hole, even worse than Mission for years? It's a mystery how that area even exists. Clearly those tenants aren't paying any high rents.

Re:When will they gentrify the Tenderloin?

[Animats]

It's happening. First, take a look at a map of the Tenderloin, from "Areas to Avoid, San Francisco." Twitter HQ is in that area, between 9th and 10th on Market, and the long-standing "mid-Market area" around there is rapidly being rebuilt. In fact, just about everything south of McAlliister has been gentrified, except for parts of 6th St and a small section around 7th and the north side of Market. Rebuilding is underway along the Van Ness corridor too, and has more or less chopped a block off the Tenderloin on the west side. That's the old "Polk Gulch" area, once a gay rent-boy hangout.

So the SF Tenderloin is about half the size it was a few years ago. Progress continues.

Re:When will they gentrify the Tenderloin?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the SF Tenderloin is about half the size it was a few years ago

What do you expect? Vegeterians are hip. You don't need much steak.

Re:When will they gentrify the Tenderloin?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but they do like to pork.

Re:When will they gentrify the Tenderloin?

[Animats]

In 2005, this appeared in SF Weekly, about the gentrification of the Polk St. area of the Tenderloin:

Gay Shame calls the Lower Polk Neighbors Association a "brutal gentrification squad" of wealthy business owners, slumlords and bureaucrats.

"They are trying to transform Polk Street from the city's last remaining gathering place for marginalized queers and street culture into a hip destination for wealthy suburbanites," Mary said. "We want a safe place for marginalized people, and Polk Street has historically been that space.

"The neighborhood may soon be known more for green-apple mojitos and stretch Hummers than trannies and tweakers (methamphetamine users)."

That was back in 2005. Gentrification won.

Re:When will they gentrify the Tenderloin?

[StuffMaster]

I read somewhere that an ordinance was passed restricting height and requiring so much single occupancy housing specifically to keep the tenderloin the way it is.

That is, they wanted poor people to still have a place downtown, and this makes everyone else suffer from a very regrettable ghetto blight.

Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to go with 1. Limited resources. There just isn't enough space and more importantly WATER in the area. The water problem isn't just in a drought year like now. It's an on-going concern. 2. Regulations are off the chart. I heard it's $500k just for the paperwork to build in some of these areas. 3. Huge demand, duh. Tech and finance have high salaries, everybody wants to live near work, everybody knows these guys have money so they charge accordingly. Compare and contrast with Oakland and the East Bay in general. You're taking a "million dollar ride" across the bridge or through the tube. Yep, you spend a lot of time commuting but you've got to do what you've got to do. 4. Prop 13. Since there are some limits on taxes, the market accounts for that and charges higher prices accordingly. That explains the whole state being expensive. Since most people must finance their purchase, what was once paid out in taxes is now paid out to bankers in the form of interest. The bankers don't use it to build schools. Some people blame illegal immigrants for poor schools; but the decline began with prop 13, and it's not like there were no illegals before it.

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[mattack2]

There just isn't enough space and more importantly WATER in the area.

We're never going to actually run out of water. Water may very well become very EXPENSIVE, but if we really need to, we obviously can desalinate the oceans.

BTW, the vast vast majority of water is used for crops, and CA farmers have been switching to more thirsty crops over the decades. In an article I read over the weekend that was in the SJ Mercury (but it was from I think a week or two ago, yes I read old papers), an almond takes a gallon of water to grow, a walnut takes 5 gallons.

everybody wants to live near work

Actually, not true, and that's exactly what this article is about. It's about people living in SF, and commuting to Silicon Valley. Jeez, I'm only a couple of miles from work, and I wish I were closer.

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[TheDarkMaster]

...everybody knows these guys have money so they charge accordingly

This is the fundamental root of the whole problem. If the builder has spent $ 1000 to build a house and there is someone who can afford to pay 10000, the builder does not want to receive, say, 2000 by the house (which would be already a 100% profit!). No, he wants to receive the 10000 merely because someone can pay. Pure and simple greed in action.

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[operagost]

Boss: Peon, since you've been such a great performer, we've decided to give you a 10% raise.
Peon: Oh no, Boss! You know 5% is enough to keep me! Keep the extra 5% for yourself!

Your argument is a straw man anyway, because no builder is making 100% profit, much less 900%.

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[TheDarkMaster]

...because no builder is making 100% profit, much less 900%.

Dude, you are unbelievably naive. Go seek treatment as soon as possible.

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[ganjadude]

so I shouldnt be allowed to make what someone is willing to spend?

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[TheDarkMaster]

You humans do have serious problems with extremes. The point is: I are the builder. I spent $1000 to make the house. If I sold for $2000, I will have a generous 100% profit. But, why I need to sell for $10000 just because someone can afford this? And worst of all my friend, maybe the buyer can pay $10000, but why he would do that when he knows that my house would cost at most $2000? Or I as builder end up getting nothing at all, or I end up starting another housing bubble, and you already know what happens when it bursts.

In summary: Having some profit is acceptable. Horever, to want 900% profit as in the example is simply stupid, blind greed.

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[ganjadude]

ok, and if someone pays me 10K, I now have 9K in profit, so I can buy a bigger truck or new tools, and build a bigger house that is costlier than before. I can now grow my business, and hire people to work for me (and putting money in their hands)

Long story short, supply and demand work. If someone wants to pay me XX for something that costs me XX/10 no one should have a problem with that.

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[TheDarkMaster]

False. "supply and demand" only works in economic theory. In our harsh reality you have monopolies, combination of prices between vendors, even plain extortion. The average buyer becomes obligated to purchase for $10000 regardless of whether he can spend this or not, even though the market has only one buyer in a thousand able to pay $10000.

One example? On my country (Brazil), You can get government-subsidized loans with the bank to afford homes costing up to, say, $30000. Most homes here do not cost all that to be built, the majority could be sold at a good profit for let's say $10000. But what happens? Because people can apply for loans of up to 30000, then out of nowhere all the houses now cost at least that (but they actually cost much less than that). The result is that most homes are unoccupied, for those who can not afford them or who do not accept pay them.

(And do not take this as a personal offense... But for me the north-american mentality of "maximum profit at any cost" is a cancer that will wipe out humanity soon or later.)

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[operagost]

Citation needed... for the 100%+ profit claim. Not my mental sanity, which is probably subjective.

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[Copid]

I'm still wondering where you're getting 900% profit from. If there as 900% profit to be made on the dollar, I guarantee you that smart companies like Google and Apple that are sitting on billions of dollars in cash would get into the home building business before the end of the business day. The reality is that once you account for all of the costs involved, different business sectors tend to have fairly similar yields for exactly this reason: if somebody is making outsized profits, everybody pulls their money out of what they're doing and gets into that business.

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[TheDarkMaster]

Is... Just... A... Example! Is really so hard to understand this? And even worse, you do not understand that no one in his right mind would go around telling that he gets a huge profit in any business, because everyone would want to do the same thing and would end his business!

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[Copid]

If you're going to complain about "unreasonable" profits and then back off when people actually ask whether the profits are really that unreasonable, you might want to consider the possibility that the profits aren't all that unreasonable and that your basic complaint is nonsense.

And it's not like building houses is a new high-tech endeavor that only a few companies have figured out how to do. There are *a lot* of people and companies in the home buidling business. They know what it costs and they know what the return is. If the return was far higher than the return on other investments, they'd be borrowing shittons of money and then using it to build houses like crazy. The fact that they're not doing so indicates that the return on that invested capital isn't all that much higher than the return on other investments.

You're complaining about a problem that doesn't exist.

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[TheDarkMaster]

Dude, you are completely unable to understand what others write. Go do something else.

Re:Without reading TFA, but living in the area...

[Copid]

So when you say this:

In summary: Having some profit is acceptable. Horever, to want 900% profit as in the example is simply stupid, blind greed.

We're to understand that you mean that 900% doesn't actually happen, but if it did it would be bad. And while some profit is good, too much profit is bad. But for unspecified values of "some" and "too much." So realistically speaking, are we in a state where "too much" profit is being made? If so, how do we know that? And what amount would be appropriate?

We're talking about a very practical problem here, so some concrete answers would be useful. As far as I can tell, the profit in the home building business is not abnormal, so are we saying that businesses in general are making too much profit? If so, what would be a more appropriate profit margin and how do you decide what that is?

Simple problem, simple solution

[JDG1980]

The only way to fix the Bay Area housing crisis is to build more fucking housing. Anything else is just shifting the pain around. This doesn't even need to mean high-rises; European cities manage population densities far higher than U.S. cities with buildings that are mostly 5 stories or less. But if people want to build skyscrapers, let them build skyscrapers unless there's a sound engineering reason not to.

Fixing the problem requires that the NIMBYs be crushed and that all non-essential regulations be eliminated. Obviously the buildings need to meet safety standards, but in a crisis situation like this, everything other than that should go. No "historical preservation" crap, no ability of "neighborhood activists" to block development, no convoluted environmental impact statements. Let's face it, the Endangered Species Act was passed because people cared about charismatic megafauna, not snail darters or burrowing owls. As things currently stand it's primarily a tool of NIMBYs.

This problem goes back decades. Up until the 1970s we could build like crazy. Empire State Building? Barely more than 1 year from groundbreaking to completion. Hoover Dam? 5 years. In contrast, the Big Dig took 15 fucking years to finish (1991-2006). And these examples are not atypical of the time periods in question. During the 1970s, we gave troublemakers of all stripes the ability to throw sand in the gears of development in a dozen different ways, and they all started to use it. Enough of this crap.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[roman_mir]

Up until the 1970s we could build like craz

... ask yourself a question, why is it that everything in USA was done "up until the 1970s" and then all of a sudden there was a gigantic decline (from building, to meaningful manufacturing jobs, to wage disparity, to ability to afford anything, etc.etc.etc.)?

So what is it that happened in the 70s that changed the USA economy so much? 1971 - Nixon defaults on the gold US dollar. The reason? Inflation that was caused by the Fed, all the massive government that could never be paid for with any amount of taxes (never mind the insane tax rates before that time).

It's the government, my dear, USA government has destroyed USA economy.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Ichijo]

The only way to fix the Bay Area housing crisis is to build more fucking housing.

This map (which shows the allowed building heights in San Francisco, where yellow is 4 stories. And Mountain View has forbidden Google from building more housing.

So as you can see, developers won't build more housing because they aren't being allowed to.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Preach it brotha! We NEED to get back on the gold standard...that's fix damn near everything.

Oh, and one more thing: RON PAUL 2012!!!!

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[KingOfBLASH]

This doesn't even need to mean high-rises; European cities manage population densities far higher than U.S. cities with buildings that are mostly 5 stories or less.

I live in Europe and you might find our way of managing population density a bit, well, shall we say unamerican?

In Amsterdam, the local municipality decides how much rent you're allowed to charge in flats. It goes by a points system. Say a shower will be one point, while a bathtub will be 5. Add up all the points and you determine whether you are in a luxury (free market) apartment or social housing.

If you're luxury housing, you can charge whatever the market will bear, up to a point based on the luxury apartment formula.

If you're social housing, only social housing tenants may live in the apartment. Social housing rents are subsidized and they are VERY low. Like say $400 for an apartment in city center. The social housing buildings are owned by non-profits whose sole purpose is to provide social housing.

Now you might think this is similar to the US, but here's where it gets a little different than the US (and a bit unamerican).

Social housing income thresholds are very high, something like the equivalent of $100k a year in the US. Yup, that's right, social housing is designed not just for the poor but the middle class. You might miss having a bathtub, but you won't mind when you live in the city center and don't have to pay ridiculous rent. Of course, to get in social housing you'll need to apply and wait a few years for a vacancy to open up. You can apply once you're 18, I suggest doing as the dutch do, applying once you go off to University. Then, by the time you look for a job, you'll already have a slot. Or you might find an emergency. For instance, if you were just divorced and living in your ex's house maybe you have a reason for priority.

Of course maybe you don't want to pick the city you live in when you're in college, or you made a bad choice. You still have options. "Luxury" apartment rents are capped based on a certain formula. You can get a much higher rent from a luxury apartment, but you'll never be able to charge above a certain rate. So even though you might pay a lot of rent, you won't pay as much as in America. (My 2 bedroom "luxury apartment" rent in Amsterdam, walking distance to city center, is less than the rent on my 1 bedroom apartment was when I lived in Boston -- and I could only afford to live in a suburb, Malden, almost at the end of the orange line).

And, if you were smart and applied when you were 18, you may be able to rent out your "social housing" apartment, and rent a new apartment in your new city with the money. It's technically illegal, but as any economist will tell you, when you apply artificial constraints to supply or price a booming black market is sure to follow.

And "Living Fraud" is a big crime here and there's actually police who check to see if you're following the laws.

Additionally, because of the artificial constraints on rent you can forget about property values reflecting what you could get without these controls. After all, who will pay $1 million for an apartment when you can rent an apartment for $400 a month?

Still want to import European housing policies to the good old USA? The good news is you won't need to hire new police officers you can just maybe reassign DEA agents when you get a more sensible drug policy.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[noh8rz10]

no, #google# was blocked from building a housing development. They wanted to build 1000 dorm rooms on the edge of campus. Anybody can still build in mountain view or wherever.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[hackingbear]

NIMBY is an unavoidable phenomena in advanced economy. With enforcement of environment protection laws, you can be sure of hazard over development and pollution, like in China for up to now. Then once it became a significant problem, people would rise up and complaint and started creating/enforcing environment laws -- China is now at this stage. Then once there are sufficient laws, some people will then start abusing the laws to protect their own interest, thus NIMBY -- even China now has had quite many large scale protests against building chemical factories in their neighborhoods.

Can people stay the middle way and be rational? No, and will never. The two extremes will have to fight and the pendulum will swing back and forth. That's why the Yin-Yang symbol is not gray colored but spinning black and white. Therefore, there is nothing to worry about. People will fight their way to balance in the long term.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[phantomfive]

This map [imgur.com] (which shows the allowed building heights in San Francisco, where yellow is 4 stories.

I can understand that. San Francisco traffic is bad enough already, imagine if it had a million more people, with a lot of them wanting to drive.

Increasing the building height limit without improving the roads would be a gigantic mess. You can't just raise the limit without planning for how the people will get around. And people in San Francisco don't really want to make it easier to move there.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Rinikusu]

Los Angelean here: I make pretty good money as a software engineer and I have a shower and 350 beautiful square feet. I don't pay a huge amount, comparatively speaking, but that's because I'd rather spend my money servicing my student loans and other debts and making sure my retirement is being taken care of. The "luxury" apartments don't appeal to me all that much.. I mean, they're nice, but not worth spending half or greater my income on it (I mean, what's the point of making a lot of money if you're just spending it right back out on a fucking apartment?) and I certainly don't want roomates to bring the cost down. If I could find a place to buy for around the same that I pay in rent, I'd definitely consider it.

I've looked at moving up to SFO for the tech industry. My friends are making extremely nice paychecks up there, but all of them bemoan the fact that even with those generous paychecks, housing eats up a huge amount of it, especially if you've got kids and the like. So, if you have to make $200k to live like you make $150k in Los Angeles, to live like you make $100k in, I dunno, Denver, it's a very hard decision. The benefit of SFO is that if you become unemployed in the tech industry, currently you don't have to wait very long to get another job. Los Angeles tech is a little different, and living in Denver, I'm sure the employment opportunities are even more limited.

Hey Google X: Why don't you work on building the Google House: Affordable housing for middle class people? Update Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian Automatic with modern building techniques and modern building codes (steel and concrete are still cheap, add some SIPS and maybe ICFs for modern versions), make the whole house "network aware", put a Tesla Charger in the carport, and subsidize the cost of building or buying and just collect the data. I'm sure people would love it. Build a whole subdivision of those in Mountain View with a Google Apartment Complex done the same way, open it up to more than just Google employees, and maybe you'll find it easier to get approval?

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[phantomfive]

That's cool, but the problem in SF is that there's just not enough housing. We can set price controls, but there will still be the problem of not enough housing.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[hibiki_r]

High densities in Europe are reached by going quite a bit higher than the 4 stories you are allowed to go in most of San Francisco. Most of Madrid, for instance, goes to 10-15. 5 story areas are extremely expensive old buildings where any condo goes for well over a million dollars.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, but a small devil's advocate: "urban renewal" programs which replaced houses with hirise apartments often resulted in vertical ghettos. My city saw this coming and put in a 3 story limitation on residential buildings, and very, very few exceptions were granted. The result? The poor live intermingled with the middle class, and even the worst neighborhoods are safe to walk through during the daytime.

That said, it has caused a problem: even luxury apartments can't build tall, and there is demand for people wanting views above the treeline. One creative company got around it by building a 3 "story" apartment building in which the apartments are split-level. While some space is wasted by each apartment having its own stairs, it got the job done. Perhaps there are creative ways SF apartment builders can get around some of their regulations...

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

"Still want to import European housing policies to the good old USA? The good news is you won't need to hire new police officers you can just maybe reassign DEA agents when you get a more sensible drug policy."

Ha, that's how we know you're joking!

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, for fuck's sake, why should there be more construction IMBY? What need is filled by putting new buildings there? Are you going to compensate me for the externality that results from your bullheaded desire to build there as opposed to somewhere where there is less impact?

If the Bay Area is saturated with people (which it pretty much is), then tech companies should do business somewhere else. That way no gigantic skyscrapers have to be built, no neighborhoods have to be wrecked, and no endangered species have to be wiped out.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[KingOfBLASH]

This is a similar reason why I would never live in NYC (and think twice about Boston). Housing just costs too damned much. And worse, if housing costs a lot all the other living expenses cost more. Groceries charge more because they pay higher rent, ditto for any other basic needs..

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Google needs to find a way to move large numbers of people around, something to get the most of of the existing infrastructure.

Oh! Google should get some buses! That'd make the people of San Fransisco happy!

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[NJRoadfan]

For public works projects, it was the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act in 1970. That is where the requirement of environmental impact statements and permitting came from.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[grmoc]

Price controls don't do anything to increase the amount of available housing. It just means that people cannot find housing at all, and that the buildings aren't updated.
Eliminating Prop 13, and making the market more liquid and reasonable would help a bit..

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

get a real job, buy proper housing, if you can't afford it move to a place you can afford. Just because you exist does not mean you get the million dollar view. loser

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Ichijo]

Increasing the building height limit without improving the roads would be a gigantic mess.

Tall buildings don't cause congestion, parking garages do. Solution: allow developers to build as little parking as they feel the market desires.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[bhcompy]

Hey Google X: Why don't you work on building the Google House: Affordable housing for middle class people? Update Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian Automatic with modern building techniques and modern building codes (steel and concrete are still cheap, add some SIPS and maybe ICFs for modern versions), make the whole house "network aware", put a Tesla Charger in the carport, and subsidize the cost of building or buying and just collect the data. I'm sure people would love it. Build a whole subdivision of those in Mountain View with a Google Apartment Complex done the same way, open it up to more than just Google employees, and maybe you'll find it easier to get approval?

It's not the cost of the building that's the problem, it's the cost of land. The same houses that get built and sold in Mountain View are built by the same builder in Tracy and sold for less than half the price.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[phantomfive]

That's a good point

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[theshowmecanuck]

How about locate your fucking company somewhere other than San Francisco? Somewhere that has room to build more houses/apartments/condos and doesn't require a 3 hour commute to work. You know, there are other places. Even in California. Some of them even aren't on a major fault line too! Google's supposed to have so many smart people working there. Why can't they figure out a no brainer solution like this?

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[symbolset]

So instead of walking across their own parking lot Google has to bus them in from the surrounding community. This is the solution to the traffic problem?

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Rich0]

Yup. I imagine lots of people would love to work for Google but are turned off by the fact that they tend to want people to come into the office, and they put all their offices in the middle of major urban areas. If I have a need to drive into work at all it only takes me 25min in the middle of rush hour, or 15-20min otherwise. I can also afford a modest house.

Sure, working at Google would be more fun, but it just doesn't seem to be worth the hassle.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Cyberax]

It will also displace lots of existing low-to-middle income tenants. Way to go. And it still won't increase supply by that much, though it will slow down the price growth. Read TFA.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[drinkypoo]

So instead of walking across their own parking lot Google has to bus them in from the surrounding community. This is the solution to the traffic problem?

Or, you know, they could build offices in cities with free capacity.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

There's another solution - move Silicon Valley and the money it brings in to another state.
Some states have low property tax, no income tax, and plenty of fresh air.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[stenvar]

Hey Google X: Why don't you work on building the Google House: Affordable housing for middle class people?

There is is lots of affordable housing for middle class people all around the country.

What you want is cheap housing for everybody in expensive neighborhoods, and that's logically impossible.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

crisis situation?

What crisis situation? San Francisco will do just fine. The culture that older generations are trying to hang on to will either move elsewhere and evolve, or fade away. So what? What is the big problem here?

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[stenvar]

High densities and affordability in Europe are also achieved by keeping apartments and condos much smaller than in the US.

http://shrinkthatfootprint.com...

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[countach74]

You do realize that social housing does nothing to solve the housing problem, right? It actually does a worse job of divvying out scarce resources. I can't tell if you are in favor of it or in opposition.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[pete6677]

It's more than just that. The United States post-war economic expansion was coming to an end. The rest of the world was starting to catch up, and the U.S was no longer the center of the universe. The steady decline of the American middle class is more because of this than anything else.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[pete6677]

Streetsblog is an anti-car greenie propaganda site. When they say they want to share the roads, what they really mean is they want the private automobile gone.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[pete6677]

Rent control is the CAUSE of housing shortages. Notice that all American cities with perpetual housing shortages have rent control, and heinous building regulations. What developer in their right mind would build something in this environment? You never hear about Chicago having citywide housing shortages. Why? Because there's no rent control. And rents are a hell of a lot cheaper than "market rent" in cities with a lot of rent controlled apartments.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Fned]

Anybody can still build in mountain view or wherever.

No they can't.

FTFA:

Even more mind-bogglingly, Mountain View is discussing new office development that would bring as many as 42,550 office workers to the city. But the city’s zoning plan only allows for a maximum of 7,000 new homes by 2030.

do you even read, brah?

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Fixing the problem requires that the NIMBYs be crushed and that all non-essential regulations be eliminated.

You realize that SF is in California right? The former is a protected species in the state and the latter are all what Sacramento bureaucrats generate. If you got rid of both, the state would somewhat sane like the rest of the country.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Ichijo]

What would a truly level playing field for transportation look like to you? Would developers be forced, as they usually are today, to build more than the fiscally optimal amount of parking? ("Fiscally optimal" meaning the amount where the marginal cost of building another parking space (MC) equals the marginal revenue from building it (MR).)

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFA:

...

do you even read, brah?

reading the article... do you even slashdot brah?

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[tlambert]

The only way to fix the Bay Area housing crisis is to build more fucking housing.

One of the things that isn't talked about is the amount of empty office and residential apartments in the Bay Area. It's actually worth more money to price them out of the range that people are willing to pay, and then take the "market rent you are not getting", and use it as a tax write-off. It's a common practice in China (Google "ghost cities"), and it's becoming more common in the Bay Area.

If you want to take a little trip on 101 between SF and SJ, it's easy to see a lot of empty buildings, and it's easy to see some of the mega-complexes that are going in in Redwood City and elsewhere, which are probably going to remain mostly empty as a tax write-off to balance out other income.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Google builds offices where their employees want to live. I know, it's an evil corporate plot to give employees what they want, but there you have it!

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the founders like using the taxpayer funded runways and other resources at NASA Ames for the company 767.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[noh8rz10]

so what? there's like 60 different cities in the bay area, and they're all right next to each other. didn't find a place you like in mountain view? go to cupertino. or los altos. or palo alto. or redwood city. it's a fucking region.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

so what? there's like 60 different cities in the bay area, and they're all right next to each other.

WTF Man? You toss around statements like "anybody can still build in Mountain View or wherever" as if it's a fact, you're demonstrably and clearly refuted, and you respond "so what?" sand continue on your merry I-still-know-what-the-fuck-I'm-talking-about way, even though you're just pulling "facts' out of your ass.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not "your backyard", it's someone else's property. And they have no obligation to compensate you because they do something with their property that displeases you.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Alomex]

Just to point out that the Parisian "five story" building will actually be described as 7 using the American count (ground floor+inhabited attic), but otherwise you are spot on. The SF housing crisis is all about height restrictions.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Carter's fault!

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[guises]

I'm not sure you can lay the blame at rent control's feet. After all, you say yourself that it's housing developers declining to build that causes the problem. If you're going to look at just those two data points, the conclusion you might come to is that this public / private thing that America is obsessed with is a fool's game.

Of course, in reality housing is a lot more complicated than that.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The average office worker get 10 square meters of desk space (3x3 meters). Now they need ten times as much space for an apartment (1000 square meters) or house plus backyard (2000 square meters). The only way you can accommodate everyone living in an office block is to have huge suburban sprawls or high-rise housing.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[serviscope_minor]

No "historical preservation" crap,

Then you'll end up with nothing but a grim sea of concrete. Once you have that, why bother living in SF at all?

Seriously though if you just hammer out buildings with no thought to urban planning you are opening yourself for a whole world of pain. The UK did this in the 60s and stuck up vast numbers of housing estates. It solved the problems for a short time, until they turned into ghettos of poverty, crime and depravation.

Let's face it, the Endangered Species Act was passed because people cared about charismatic megafauna, not snail darters or burrowing owls. As things currently stand it's primarily a tool of NIMBYs.

Really, is it?

sound engineering reason not to.

I am an engineer. As an engineer you can not simply ignore externalities. Sure a uilding has to have it's central column in tact and the beams and girders have to be right and the foudations stable enough. But that's not sufficient. You're also creating a building for people to live or work in. If you ignore the externalities, you may end up creating a sink hole, and the building will be torn down in 30 or 40 years, covered in graffiti and with all its windows smashed.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[drinkypoo]

Google builds offices where their employees want to live.

That's not at all interesting or relevant. They build offices where their employees can't afford to live, which is why we're even talking about them at all in this discussion.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[KingOfBLASH]

I see the benefits and the drawbacks of both. The dutch idea is that they want to keep neighborhoods intact. So, gentrification doesn't happen really. I look at the north end in Boston as a great example: none of the ethnic italians (who are mostly all very old at this point) can afford to keep their places so it's becoming a sort of italian themed area (and not an Italian area).

On the other hand, the policies of the government make it VERY hard to find a place to live. Once you have one, you're golden, but getting one can take months. And it's not uncommon to have emergency situations where people are unable to find a place to live.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[swillden]

no, #google# was blocked from building a housing development. They wanted to build 1000 dorm rooms on the edge of campus. Anybody can still build in mountain view or wherever.

Not in quantity.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[AmiMoJo]

You must have missed the bit about much of the cheap, social housing where the rent controls actually kick in being owned by non-profits who exist only to provide social housing. In the UK local government used to fill that role, building a lot of low cost but good quality housing.

Everyone needs housing. You can't really chose to live in a cardboard box under a bridge as an alternative to renting or buying a property. It needs to be a social thing, with a free market on top for people who can afford it.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

As an expat, the housing market in Amsterdam pisses me off to no end. Shitty apartments for ridiculous prices - try finding something less than 1000 euros/month in the city center, it's almost impossible. There exists a housing commission, where you can report your landlord if they charge above a certain rent - I should have done that had I been a bit more ruthless, but I shouldn't have to in the first place.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and 1000 euros for a shitty 1 bedroom apartment, 50 sq meters or ~500 sq ft.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[noh8rz10]

So what? How is this my problem?

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[mrchaotica]

("Fiscally optimal" meaning the amount where the marginal cost of building another parking space (MC) equals the marginal revenue from building it (MR).)

Surely that calculation would include the externalized cost of more competition for on-street parking the developer would be imposing on the neighbors... right?

Yeah, I thought not.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Ichijo]

Any good entrepreneur sees this kind of problem as an opportunity. In Indianapolis on race day, the residents near the track capitalize on the problem by renting out their lawns for parking. They turn the externalized cost into a benefit.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[doom]

The only way to fix the Bay Area housing crisis is to build more fucking housing.

If you read the fucking article, you'd see that the author concludes the Bay Area needs some centralized regional planning and unified tax codes.

But hey, simple problems for simple minds. Back to you're regular scheduled "da guvvamint is da problem" rants.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[doom]

Google builds offices where their employees want to live

It's hard to find people who want to live in Mountain View. [1]

Actually, it is a bit of a puzzle as to why Google can't figure out how to shake down Mountain View and get the zoning variations they want out of them. If they were a football team, they'd be making noises about moving the stadium to Fremont, but *nooo* they've got to come on with that "don't be evil" crap, so Mountain View just walks over them.

[1] Yeah, I know-- I like the Castro St area myself. If Silicon Valley could build some more of those I'd stop bitching about the place.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[doom]

Google needs to find a way to move large numbers of people around, something to get the most of of the existing infrastructure.

Dirigibles! They need to invest in dirigible transit systems, and construct housing in floating geodesic spheres, then they could toe them around to venues with optimal tax policies.

And they could use Moffett Field as it was intended.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[chispito]

No "historical preservation" crap

Good idea! Sacrifice guaranteed indefinite tourism revenue for the momentary economics of tech startups.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[operagost]

Yup, that's right, social housing is designed not just for the poor but the middle class.

It's about time for the Amsterdam to realize that they don't have a middle class. A middle class doesn't need rent-controlled housing.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[mrchaotica]

Your example is irrelevant because:

1. 1. We're talking about a chronic, ongoing issue, not a special-event-one-day-per-year one.
2. 2. If homeowners let people park on their laws every day, it would kill their grass
3. 3. Such a thing can't happen anyway, because dense parts of San Francisco like we're talking about here don't have lawns big enough to park on.
4. 4. Even if such a solution were physically possible, it would certainly violate San Francisco ordinances (zoning code etc.).

More to the point, the fundamental problem here is that street parking (which is what you end up with without forcing the developer to build more via regulation) is a commons, and no private actor (entrepreneur or otherwise) is capable of "fixing the problem."

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[swillden]

Well, if you want reasonable housing prices in the face of climbing demand, then it's your problem. Without new housing in quantity in Mountain View, existing housing in Mountain View will cost more, and the same effect will ripple out to surrounding communities, including SF. The increased number of commuters will also increase traffic on the roads (though not as much as it could, thanks to the Google buses).

If you don't care about housing costs and traffic in the region, then it's not your problem. I don't live in the area, so it's certainly not my problem.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not an economic thing that's stopping the USA from building stuff. The US is still capable of spending lots of money to try to build stuff - look at the F35. That it is not good bang for the buck is not to do with the economy.

Maybe you should compare the US culture of the past and the culture later. Whether it be in schools or important institutions. The culture of selfishness and self-centeredness and cult of Ayn Rand seems to have become really popular...

A lot of these expensive failures (military projects, banks, etc) are successful enough from the perspective of the selfish amoral people getting the money. Go figure.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[painandgreed]

The benefit of SFO is that if you become unemployed in the tech industry, currently you don't have to wait very long to get another job. Los Angeles tech is a little different, and living in Denver, I'm sure the employment opportunities are even more limited.

The benefit of SFO is that there are things to do and you can probably walk or take the bus there unlike LA or Denver. From what I've heard, there are plenty of jobs in Denver and similar fly over states because the people capable of working those jobs don't want to live there. I've seen many friends try and decide if they want to live like a king in Ohio, or struggle with more money in SF, and they choose SF. The times I have seen them go to the less populated states has almost always been to raise kids in a place where there was passable schools and less trouble for them to get into. Of course, most of my friend and I grew up in those BFE states, and we're still bitter and biased.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[mrchaotica]

they put all their offices in the middle of major urban areas

It's not even just that! I'd happily commute to Google's office in the middle of the major urban area I already live in, but (as far as I can tell) their office here does only operations, not development.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Ichijo]

Why can't the neighborhood set up parking meters or parking permits?

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[countach74]

I guess whether it works or not depends on what you define the problem to be. If one is after affordable housing and greater standard of living for everyone, the free market solution is the only viable option. If you specifically want to avoid gentrification, then some sort of intervention may be necessary, but will come, as you've noted, with its own consequences. I personally don't see anything inherently wrong with gentrification, if it's brought on by the free decisions of those in society. If, however, it is spawned by government interventionism, then it is almost certainly not the result of individuals demonstrating such preferences via action and, like all coercive things, should be done away with. However, being as the primary reason for gentrification is government intervention, if it is deemed that gentrification is bad, the most obvious solution would be to stop creating gentrification. :)

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[noh8rz10]

what facts are coming out of my ass? I can't believe I've been downvoted in this thread even though I'm the only one making sense. I've forgotten the point of this whole conversation anyway.

Look. The summary makes a false equivocation. "goog tried to build housing in mtn view and they wouldn't let them, so where are people to go? they have to go to san francisco!". false false false.

the housing crisis in san francisco has nothing to do with the ability to build new projects in mtn view. san francisco is a hip urban city, while mtn view is a suburban community. You can buy houses in mtn view for OM less than it would cost in SF. so compared to availability in SF, there are still plenty of available places on the peninsula or elsewhere in the bay.

what you're effectively saying is, "honda raised the price of an accord by $2k, so now I have to buy a lexus!"

mod me down now, bitches! after I just owned everybody with my logic and oratory.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[noh8rz10]

the availability of housing in mountain view has exactly zero impact on the availability of housing in SF. SF is a hip urban city while Mtn View is a suburban community. If you're priced out of housing in mtn view then you're definitely not moving to SF. If you can afford to live in SF, then you live there because you want to and not because you couldn't find a place in mtn view.

SF does not feel the ripple from mountain view!!!!! stop being illogical!!!!! you're saying that if the price of a honda accord went up $2k it would drive people to buy a lexus.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[nanoflower]

That may be but the OP's point still stands. Cars are the problem and there's really only one easy way for a city to control the amount of cars entering a city. Limit the parking.

I'm not saying it's the right thing to do but it's likely the most effective. If I know that it may take me an hour to find a parking spot then I'm going to look for another solution. Either not going to that area or traveling via cab/bus/subway/bicycle/walking. Basically anything but a car.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[swillden]

Regardless of the number of exclamation points you use, Mountain View and SF housing do affect one another. I know several people who have lived in both areas and who have opted for one over the other based on questions of price and convenience. Said (insane, IMO) prefer to live in SF, but some choose MTV because SF is too expensive. Lowering the cost of housing in MTV further -- and making it more convenient to the Google campus -- would induce some more to leave SF.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[noh8rz10]

once again, no. honda vs. lexus. source: my brain.

the entire bay area is like an inflamed pimple of overpriced housing. SF is the crusty white head on that pimple.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[mrchaotica]

Parking meters still impose a cost on the preexisting residents and are not a wholly entrepreneurial solution since they require cooperation from the city.

Parking permits could work if they are granted in perpetuity to whoever currently resides in the preexisting residences, but a) somebody still has to pay for enforcement, b) I've never heard of a parking permit system that actually worked that way, and c) it is also a government, rather than entrepreneurial, solution.

Besides, why solve the problem in a way that must be managed in perpetuity when you can solve it once and for all by just making the developer build enough parking in the first place?

(By the way, I'd like you to know that I'm not making these arguments because I'm a fan of automobile-centric development -- quite the contrary! Rather, I merely take issue with the idea of letting the developer do whatever is "fiscally optimal" for himself without considering the rest of the community that would be impacted by the result.)

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Ichijo]

Parking meters still impose a cost on the preexisting residents...

Not all pre-existing residents. Just those who choose to use a taxpayer-owned resource to store their personal belongings. As a taxpayer, parking meters make perfect sense to me because they give me a return on my investment.

Even better would be to not waste so much land on streets wide enough for street parking where it isn't needed. There's no reason why the street couldn't be narrowed and the excess land sold to the adjacent property owners. This would also neatly solve the problem of business customers parking in residential neighborhoods without the need for parking meters or enforcement.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Rich0]

Count yourself lucky. Most of them seem to be about ad sales.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[KingOfBLASH]

Well that's an interesting issue (and quite controversial here as well).

One friend of mine works as a dental assistant, and lives in social housing. She takes home maybe 2000 a month after taxes, maybe less, so if she didn't have social housing she couldn't afford to live in Amsterdam, anywhere.

Another friend of mine works at a bank. He now makes quite a bit of money, but keeps his social housing and basically gets to bank an extra few hundred a month due to his social housing status.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Copid]

A lot of people consider both Mountain View and San Francisco as valid places to live. Some people would never live in suburbia and some people would never live in the city, but a lot of people are flexible and see costs and benefits to both. They make their decisions in the fuzzy gray areas based on commute time, living environment preferences, and price. Shifing the price of either will cause some percentage of those people to alter their decisions.

And your Honda/Lexus analogy is spot on in many ways, but it doesn't illustrate what you think it does. Many buyers consider both a Honda and a Lexus when they're buying. They may prefer the Lexus but choose the Honda because it's a better deal overall. A $2K bump in the Honda price is very likely to sell more Lexuses. It's not like we're comparing driving Hondas to riding zebras. The two goods are real substitutes, if not perfect ones.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

That has got to be the stupidest argument I've ever read. Go visit large cities in Europe or even the former communist countries where they built tall buildings with no parking whatsoever except on the street, and see how that idea is working out. People fight over the spots, they take ownership of street spots and will cut your tyre or vandalize your car if you insist on parking in a public spot, sidewalks are occupied by cars and surprisingly, there's still crazy traffic.

Cause every time you don't have the option to just park and go about your business, you keep driving around continuing to contribute to traffic and blockages.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Reziac]

The real reason is probably a lot simpler: Cost.

Before you break ground on a single-family home in Pleasanton CA, you must cough up in excess of $125,000 (yes, 125 grand) in fees and permits.

I expect said fees and permits are even more expensive in San Francisco proper.

[For comparison, in Los Angeles County a home building permit is $38,000. Here in Montana it's from $50 to $2000 depending where you are.]

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Copid]

It's not 100% of the problem, but rent control is a major issue. Given a choice between selling or occupying your property and renting it out, rent control gives the owner a very strong disincentive to rent. So even with the same number of units, the split between "owner occupied" and "rental" shifts strongly in favor of owner occupied dwellings.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Copid]

You're describing the "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" problem, though. Major urban areas are hard to get into becuse they're super crowded, and super crowded means a huge number of potential employees and amenities. Plenty of people can get into San Francisco every day. Evidence: San Francisco is chock full of people every day.

Sure, it would be easy for people who live in the exurbs to commute to a Google office in their particular exurb, but there just aren't enough potential Google employees to run a Google office living in a single exurb.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Rich0]

Sure, it would be easy for people who live in the exurbs to commute to a Google office in their particular exurb, but there just aren't enough potential Google employees to run a Google office living in a single exurb.

Hardly. The office I work at has about 7k people working at, in a suburb 20 miles from the major city (which isn't NYC). It used to have over 10k - mostly with STEM majors. Sure, most of them wouldn't work at Google, but the point is that you can find people with advanced skills in suburbs. Quite a few are willing to drive a fair distance to get there as well, but with a LOT less hassle than a commute into a major city.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way to fix the Bay Area housing crisis is to build more fucking housing.

This map (which shows the allowed building heights in San Francisco, where yellow is 4 stories. And Mountain View has forbidden Google from building more housing.

So as you can see, developers won't build more housing because they aren't being allowed to.

I don't think anybody said it was the developers' faults. If the city policies don't allow more housing to be built, the city policies need to change to allow it.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't even need to mean high-rises; European cities manage population densities far higher than U.S. cities with buildings that are mostly 5 stories or less.

I live in Europe and you might find our way of managing population density a bit, well, shall we say unamerican?

In Amsterdam [...]

In Amsterdam, you're not living in one of the high-density cities GP was talking about. Compare Amsterdam's population (811k in 220km^2, according to wikipedia) with London's (8,308k in 1,572km^2, same source). Note that London does not have any kind of rent limiting or any market controls similar to the ones you discuss... the only control applied is that you aren't allowed to build on green-field sites within about 50km of the edge of the city's existing developed area.

Re:Simple problem, simple solution

[Rakarra]

I remember Sierra (the 1980s/90s game company) used to live in Oakhurst, California, in the Sierra Foothills close to Yosemite. Beautiful, remote, probably a fantastic place to work... and they complained often that it was hard to attract quality employees because their location wasn't close to a large city (or a large tech city, at least). In the 90s they gave up and moved headquarters to Bellvue, Washington, though much of their development was still in Oakhurst. That was pretty close to the end.

Set up shop in Morgan Hill or Gilroy

[CQDX]

Many tech workers with kids and who want a house live down there where it's cheaper. Set up office down there (too) and hire the 30+ set. It will take some of the pressure off of their Mountain View facilities. And it was dumb to expand into SF. It was ridiculously expensive already and very hostile to big business, even ones that are liberal and cool.

Banned From Mountain View?

[vancedecker]

They really would be much happier in a Mountain View setting. They can take the old Netscape building. It's more of a suburban area where they will be free to accumulate and show off their employee badges to the other companies. There is even a light rail system right there, already built.

Re:Banned From Mountain View?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, I am happier in Mountain View. I am "free to accumulate", meaning that instead of going broke paying for an overpriced, rundown condo in SF, I can live in a slightly less overpriced, rundown condo in MV and put away at least a little money for retirement. If I forget to take off my employee badge when leaving work, I won't get attacked by angry mobs. And both the weather and the people are actually nicer than in SF.

As a long time SF resident, I haven't regretted my move down to MV.

Gentrification is shorthand for fuck the poor

[Anonymous Coward]

Housing prices are just the most visible sign of the open contempt displayed in San Francisco for people not earning a six figure combined income.

San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[Nova Express]

...of California's high tax, high cost, high regulation, anti-growth, and radical environmental environment. It's a great place to live if you're rich, and virtually impossible to live if you're middle class or poor.

Critics have been noting these problems for at least two decades, and California becoming a single-party Democratic state with outsized input from public employee unions has only accelerated the trend...

Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[zieroh]

It's a great place to live if you're rich, and virtually impossible to live if you're middle class or poor.

Considering that California is the most populous state in the nation, I think you might be exaggerating things just a bit. Clearly, lots of people live here, and not all of them are rich. Me, for instance.

Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[JDAustin]

California is only gaining population due to immigration from outside the US. You need to figure that those immigrants are lower educated, lower income people who are a net-drain on the system (for the first generation, not for the second+).

Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[melchoir55]

There is a huge amount of land in California the middle class can afford: the Central Valley. The air is so bad you are almost guaranteed to experience asthma or allergies, but you can swing it on as low as 30k per year in my opinion. Those kids living in LA, SF, SD who make 30k per year? They basically live in squalor(for America). They value the coolness of those cities so much they are willing to live 4 to a 2-bedroom, or get their own place and live paycheck to paycheck, or live with their folks.

Middle class can't afford San Francisco. A cheap house there is 800k. It isn't a question of sacrificing on a cell phone plan. The values are stratospherically out of reach for middle class earners.

Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[evilviper]

There is a huge amount of land in California the middle class can afford: the Central Valley. The air is so bad you are almost guaranteed to experience asthma or allergies, but you can swing it on as low as 30k per year

That's not the only affordable area, by far. Half the state is desert, starting from just outside the L.A. Basin, and rent is extremely cheap there. The freeways make it possible to commute from bedroom communities there to large cities every day. And the air quality out there is great.

Those kids living in LA, SF, SD who make 30k per year? They basically live in squalor(for America). They value the coolness of those cities so much they are willing to live 4 to a 2-bedroom, or get their own place and live paycheck to paycheck,

People predominantly choose where to live based on family roots, or jobs.

Go out where land is cheap, and there's probably no jobs there. It may suck to spend half your paycheck on rent, but it's infinitely better than getting no paycheck... And there's always the American Dream aspect of it. Everybody thinks if they move to a rich area, they're going to strike it rich, too... Sort of an investment in your future that way. Never mind how few make it, and how many people move away after a few years.

"Roots" are pretty simple... if you've got lots of family in an expensive area, you're not likely to move too far away, even if you're struggling. It's a big scary break to leave all your friends and family, and the only area and culture you've known, behind, all for cheap rent you might not be able to afford on your lower wages, anyhow.

Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[Hangtime]

THE reason California's personal income taxes are so high is that nothing can be collected through property taxes. Property taxes in California are in a perverse way the same as rent control. The property tax pricing has gotten so far out of whack due to Prop 13 formulas that the only way the state can get any revenue is on personal income tax. Of course where people always own home, personal income tax is cyclical so a lot of the boom - bust cycle plays out in California's budgets because the state is levered up on the economy. Economy does well, everything is great. Economy does poorly, whole thing fall down.

Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[Rinikusu]

I could pack up and move to Hemet (fucking) CA if the only consideration was cost of living. But I also don't want to drive 3 hours to get to work and there's certainly no work in Hemet. With modern "corporate" america killing telecommutes (because it makes the managers nervous that you might be fucking off on the internet) but have no qualms about outsourcing that same work to some guy around the globe, who may or may not be fucking off on the internet or even qualified for the job, but he costs a third of what you make, so fuck it) it still means many of our jobs that could easily be done anywhere broadband is available are brought back in house. I could easily do my job pretty much anywhere in the country. I imagine most start-ups could do the same thing. "Oh, but I can't bug the guy next to me!" You obviously haven't discovered Hangouts, then. :) But seriously, if what you need is "face time" then I'll turn on the webcam and you can watch me watch hulu.. I mean code and do the cam "walk by interruption". And I don't even have to put on pants or spend any gas money to do this.

I guess the point is, people move to where the jobs are. That hasn't changed in a couple hundred years.

Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[Rinikusu]

Not to mention, a lot of those "rich areas" were "cheap areas" when those roots were laid down. Which is kinda what the people in SFO are bitching about: "It was cheap and perfectly fine before the .coms showed up. Now everyone wants to live in the cool part of town, and I'm part of the reason it's the cool part of town, but because they make so much money, they can price me out of my own home. So I move, but where? My job is down the street and I can't afford to live in the neighborhood, so where to? Oakland? HA!" And there's plenty of people who would say "tough titties, life's a bitch" to that. It's even worse when you've got someone living on fixed income and suddenly finds themselves having to move at age 80. Can you imagine apartment hunting at that age? I certainly can't.

Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure where you live, but you shouldn't lump the illegals in with the legal immigrants. Most of the legal immigrants I've met, including the poorer ones in the poorer neighborhoods are putting more into the system than they're taking out. The poorer ones just work multiple jobs. The net-drain are from the older generation, long time citizens. I see many of the first gen immigrants with college degrees and decent paying jobs, and come from all over. It's a diverse melting pot here. Maybe you need to move to a better neighborhood.

Many of the wealthy to moderately wealthy want the illegals here. They must or they wouldn't keep paying them under the table to work all those menial jobs. They should be paying them more. Instead, they have the rest of us pay them taxes to support the system. The rich should pay more taxes to subsidize the impoverish immigrants that they underpay. The rest of us working class shouldn't be subsidizing their cheap labor pool.

Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[Temkin]

THE reason California's personal income taxes are so high is that nothing can be collected through property taxes. Property taxes in California are in a perverse way the same as rent control. The property tax pricing has gotten so far out of whack due to Prop 13 formulas that the only way the state can get any revenue is on personal income tax. Of course where people always own home, personal income tax is cyclical so a lot of the boom - bust cycle plays out in California's budgets because the state is levered up on the economy. Economy does well, everything is great. Economy does poorly, whole thing fall down.

Dig a little deeper:

Prop 13 sets municipalities AGAINST housing. Since they can't get their money in property taxes, they take a chunk up front in planning and permit fee's. Last time I checked, many bay area cities are charging upwards of $140k in planning and permit fee's to build a single family home. That means that the barest wreck of a house with a valid occupancy permit is worth $140k. So that jacks up the prices of all houses, and gives them one way to get around prop 13.

The next way is to encourage you to move every few years. If you stay in your house, they never get to reset the property valuation. My parents are paying tax rates that last saw a major adjustment in 1978. I work in tech, making good money, and I can't afford to buy the house across the street from them in the east bay neighborhood I grew up in. So I commute in from a horrible distance, and hope I can make enough coin to move back in closer. When I do, the cities get to reassess the value of the house I sell and the new one I buy. The result of this is the transit problems never get entirely fixed. Most of the bay area freeways were built in the 20 years following WWII. Now days they have simple bypasses and rail extensions that have 20 year planning timeframes, and 10+ year construction times.

On the whole, California has rigged its economy to blow bubbles. That's how the cities and municipalities get by with the wreckage left behind by 40 years of NIMBY, tax and spend on free everything vs. proto-TEA Party types, all with the ability to amend the state constitution with 50% + 1 vote... The rich banker types have it down.... Let the system blow a bubble, cash out & crash, reshuffle, repeat. The people are just pawns.

Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[aralin]

Not quite, it is just that middle class in California makes $100k a year. Look at the average salaries of BART employees for example. More than 2/3 are north of $100k. Family income of $200k a year is solid upper middle class level. You don't start to even think about the term "rich", until you make near to $500k a year per household.

Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Central Valley has the highest unemployment rate in the state. The primary economy for this region is agriculture which never recovered from the 2008 recession and it is in dire straights now because of the drought. Good luck finding a good job out there.

Re:San Francisco is just an extreme example...

[bitingduck]

Plus you'd be living in Hemet...

We are still building like crazy!

[vancedecker]

Aircraft Carriers, Drones, Tanks, Magnetic Rail Guns, Mile Long NSA Data Centers...

The real deal

[Anonymous Coward]

If those San Francisco residents who are "entrenched" had to pay for their taxes like new residents do, they would be paying 1.25% per year property taxes on the current value rather than the basis of when they bought the property.

Since this is a socialist vs capitalist issue, those avowed socialists would have to pay several times as much tax per year for the same property they have had for many years. That would go directly to schools and Medical (medicare).

If we should "tax the rich" why should we exclude the property rich! Be consistent you socialists and communists and traditionalists all voting Democratic. With all its associated deomogogary.

This is a capitalist vs. socialist issue.

The problem is the socialists are being funded by the state and the capitalists to do their work.

It is the front lines of anarchy.

JJ

Re:The real deal

[Anonymous Coward]

... those avowed socialists would have to pay several times as much tax per year for the same property they have had for many years. That would go directly to schools and Medical (medicare).

Property taxes DO NOT go to Medicare, you moron.

Re:The real deal

[Anonymous Coward]

In San Francisco they effectively do, because San Francisco has a city-financed health care system for low income people and seniors.

Re:The real deal

[tlambert]

If those San Francisco residents who are "entrenched" had to pay for their taxes like new residents do, they would be paying 1.25% per year property taxes on the current value rather than the basis of when they bought the property.

That's a great reason to do what rental property owners do, and own a company that owns the property, instead of owning it themselves. Then if they ever want to sell it, they can sell if for a heck of a lot more money by selling the company, rather than selling the property, so the taxes don't go up any more than if you'd bought under prop 13 and never sold.

That's the McDonald's model (McDonald's happily admits to being a real estate company that happens to sell burgers and rents out properties their franchisees). It's also the same model that the Kaiser Family Trust uses.

There is nothing special about San Francisco

[Anonymous Coward]

All of this nonsense is completely unnecessary. Ideas can live anywhere. Why people affix ideas to physical places is beyond me.

Another example. Manhattan. It's like a clown car for idiots.

It's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

The "problem": The law of supply and demand.
The solution: Moving to cheaper areas and the reduction of regulation restricting building areas and types.

SF can never go back to being a smaller, cheaper city, baring a nuclear accident. It's best to account for reality when making your decisions.

tl;dr; government failure

[Anonymous Coward]

captcha: pelosi

It's not technology's problem, rather a wealth prb

[Anonymous Coward]

There's only so much land, but population is always increasing.

"Investing" in real estate is going to bring a return eventually.

When a few people get more and more money, it shouldn't affect anyone else, but it does when they buy up all the land.

The guy who said "Rent is too damn high!" isn't joking. You can have a minimum wage job in the USA and barely be able to afford rent. Yes you can work 40 hours a week and not even be able to afford to buy property!

This is because the insanely wealthy "invest" in real estate and buy up all the land so what is left goes up in price due to an artificial scarcity.

This is just standard economics of supply/demand this is nothing fancy. It isn't talked about a lot.

When people with incredible amounts of money are allowed to buy up more land than one person can feasibly use, it is wrong, but baring huge fines, there's nothing we can do about it.



People certainly shouldn't be raging against the tech giants. Those guys are earning money creating new things. Don't be jealous because some of us can afford to live a middle class life in this new economy. The people who are the problem are the ultra rich behind the scenes that own hundreds of thousands of acres and they're not doing anything with it

Google's mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay I get it, Silicon Valley is so "hip". Serioulsy Google has to ask itself why stay? It makes virtually no sense to continue a battle in which a company has to bend over backwards just to operate. If Google didn't have the billions in the bank, would they really be in SF or even Mt View? No, they would have left like others that made the exodus out of California to save the OPEX. It really doesn't make sense for Google to continue to expand in SF or Mt View. They should just leave the state and move to more friendly locations in which this is not a problem. Hubris will down this company.

Re:Google's mistake

[russotto]

They should just leave the state and move to more friendly locations in which this is not a problem.

Just set up an Omni Consumer Products division and take over Detroit.

Gentrification?

[jgotts]

This isn't gentrification. This is super rich people pushing out very rich people, as compared to everybody else in the country.

If you're paying more than $1,500/month rent to live in a one bedroom apartment anywhere in the US, you're very rich. If you're paying $2,500/month to live in a one bedroom apartment anywhere in the US, you're super rich. The last time any poor people lived in San Francisco was the 1960's.

The rest of the US population not living in San Francisco doesn't have very much sympathy for you, except maybe the unfortunate souls living in Boston or New York.

I use the terms very rich and super rich, but feel free to substitute "less affluent upper middle class" and "more affluent upper middle class," if it makes you feel any better.

Re:Gentrification?

[NJRoadfan]

The rental market is a bit distorted is many areas at the moment due to people not being able to get a mortgage (still). Locally I have seen rents in the $1200-1500 range for a one bedroom here in Northern NJ, no wheres near NYC or a commuter rail line (those go in the $2000 range). That is quite high for this area considering there is no shortage of housing. Looking at the pricing of two-three bedrooms, you might as well buy a house as the mortgage payment will be lower or about the same each month.

Re:Gentrification?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you pay half your take-home salary for that rent, no, it makes you neither very rich nor super rich. It might make you a moron, but that's a different discussion.

Re:Gentrification?

[Rich0]

I'm not sure that getting a mortgage is all that hard. Well, assuming you're not trying to spend more than 1/3rd of your income on debt, and that you're not trying to finance more than 100% of what your home is likely worth. If your housing prices never returned to ~2003 levels after the crash then I could see why a bank wouldn't want to let you borrow 105% of that with a payment that requires 2/3rds of your income.

The last time I refinanced I didn't find the process particularly difficult. Sure, it required paperwork more similar to my experience in 2003 than my experiences in 2006, but nothing over-the-top.

Re:Gentrification?

[linearz69]

Your right, it is not gentrification.

San Francisco has rent control, so people living in the city for years are protected. It has public housing, and there are plenty of very poor people

The people getting kicked out of their homes are the ones being asked to go from $1,500/mo to $2,500/mo. Economic realities are a bitch.

The funny thing is, most people complaining about "gentrification" in San Francisco are people that don't live in the city.

Re:Gentrification?

[afgam28]

A cheap car (like a Toyota Corolla or Honda Fit) costs about $5000+/year to own. If you get rid of that car and live in a place where you don't need one (i.e. San Francisco) you've got about $400 extra per month that you can spend on rent. So you don't have to be rich to spend $1900/month, which is plenty if you want to share a 2 bedroom apartment with someone in SF.

http://consumerreports.org/cro...

It's not for everyone but obviously a lot of people like it enough to do just that.

Re:Gentrification?

[AthanasiusKircher]

If you're paying more than $1,500/month rent to live in a one bedroom apartment anywhere in the US, you're very rich.

A decade or so ago, I knew a number of graduate students living in Boston (mostly Cambridge) who were paying well over $1000/month for one-bedroom apartments -- while living on graduate stipends of something like $20k per year. Definitely a few paying $1200 or $1250. (Maybe they made $25k.) A decade later, I assume rents may have risen by a couple hundred dollars in places, so it gets to your range.

Anyhow, these people were NOT "very rich" or even "rich." They were often struggling. BUT - If you were going to school in Boston or Cambridge, your choice was often to rent a place way out of the way and spend hundreds of dollars per month on commuting passes and/or parking, and perhaps spend an hour or more each way getting to school... or you could basically pay just a little more (or even the same) and live in a convenient place with an insane rent. Either way, between housing and commuting expenses, you'd be spending well over 50% of your income.

Of course, the alternative would be to live in some sort of 4-person roommate situation and have more beer money and be able to eat more than rice and beans. Some people did that; others found having their own place to be worth it for various reasons.

I'm not speaking of the San Francisco situation, and I don't know the dynamics there. But there are plenty of people I know who have lived in places like Boston and New York and were shelling out loads of money on rent because on-balance it made sense in their years as a starving artist or graduate student or whatever. Not all people who pay high rents are "very rich" or even "mildly rich." You can call these people "insane" for paying so much for housing compared to the rest of the country -- and perhaps they are -- but that insanity is simply a fact of life in some places.

Re:Gentrification?

[Rinikusu]

Not really. I know a bunch of people who live in $2500/month apartments, that they have to share with 5 other people so they can afford it. Seriously, not even kidding. Girl I was dating paid $400/month to sleep on a couch in the living room with 3 other people, with 4 other people splitting the 2 bedrooms. I have friends in SFO who do similar. Just because the rent's $1500/month or $2500/month, don't assume circumstances...

Re:Gentrification?

[metlin]

Your argument is silly because it completely discounts cost of living.

I live in Boston, and rent is just one portion of your expenditure. Taxes, childcare, private schools, parking, and even your average restaurant bill are all significantly higher. This winter, I paid more to shovel after one storm in Boston than my friends did to have someone shovel all winter in Cleveland.

My salary would get me a middle class living in Boston or SFO, a lower middle class living in NYC, and an affluent upper middle class living in most of the midwest.

Blanket statements that anything about X makes you rich (or super rich) is plain ridiculous. Heck, I'm in NYC as I'm typing this and I'm pretty sure you'd get a shoebox for $1500.

Re:Gentrification?

[basecastula]

Mission pricing actually isn't to bad. $500 a room.

Re:Gentrification?

[argStyopa]

I'll use Thomas Sowell's example: People like to live by water, on a shore.
There is only X shoreline.
There are two ways to apportion that shoreline.
1) money: let people buy and sell it, or
2) you can divide it up, and give a piece to everyone; of course, this results in uselessly small pieces (and you have to forbid transfers or you end up with #1), complications with inheritance (is it heritable? How do you deal with death? Marriage?)

The problem with #1 is that as the resource is finite, the prices will become very, very high.

San Francisco is a wonderful location but is extraordinarily geographically constrained. Which do you want: a dictatorship that controls everything and allocates places to people according to what they think is fair today, or a "free" market where prices skyrocket to their value and prevent any but the super-wealthy from living there?
You can't have both, as I suspect that the inefficiencies of trying to chart a middle course make it the worst possible choice.

Re:Gentrification?

[Alomex]

A cheap car (like a Toyota Corolla or Honda Fit) costs about $5000+/year to own.

I call BS.

I owned a Honda Civic four door sedan for ten years, which I bought new around $13K, sold it for $3K and paid around $1K in insurance a year and $200 in maintenance.

Total cost of ownership a year: $2,200 which is quite a bit lower than your BS figure of $5K a year.

Re:Gentrification?

[nine-times]

If you're paying more than $1,500/month rent to live in a one bedroom apartment anywhere in the US, you're very rich. If you're paying $2,500/month to live in a one bedroom apartment anywhere in the US, you're super rich.

I don't think that's quite fair. In some places, rent is just very high. Some people pay a half of their net income (or more) on rent. So you might meet someone paying $1,500 in rent per month and only making $50k. Or you might have a couple sharing a $2,500k/month one-bedroom, each only making $40k each. Now I'll admit that those people are better off than the truly "poor" who can't make ends meet, but it's hardly "super-rich".

Re:Gentrification?

[operagost]

You forgot about fuel. Even economical cars are expensive now with the Obama-era $3.50/gallon.

Re:Gentrification?

[Alomex]

Your original post had an incorrect number. Your reply is wrong on two counts:

1) Gasoline prices for most of Obama's mandate have been lower than during GWB second term.

2) If you are going to add the price of gas, then you need to include the price of public transportation into your accounting which comes, in most cities to around $1.5-2K a year.

Re:Gentrification?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the 5k price was if one had to borrow at a not-so-good interest rate.

Also, the counterpart to paying for transit isn't just gas. It's gas + parking. YMMV of course depending on area and city, but from my observation, the places where people debate over car vs transit are also places where parking fees are common and a very real expense if one choose the car.

Re:Gentrification?

[operagost]

The national average for gasoline was over $3/gallon for 10 months under Bush.

The national average for gasoline has been over $3/gallon for 3.5 years under Obama.

The dive well below $2 in 2008 was anomalous due to the shrinking economy. Likewise, however, was the anomalous rise over $4 for three months before that crash. The recovery point around $2.61, before the Democrats' crony-enriching "stimulus", was more reflective of the real value. Today's is partially a reflection of Obama's misguided economic policies.

Re:Gentrification?

[Alomex]

Without adjusting for inflation gas prices under Bush second term average $2.7165 and so far under Obama they averaged $3.1728.

First this is a minor difference, second you fail to explain where exactly the president gets to set gasoline prices, which are controlled by worldwide demand.

I see a pattern here. You reach a conclusion and facts be damned.

Re:Gentrification?

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly do not understand regional cost of living. I may be making $180K a year, but I am paying half my monthly net income for housing (3/2 1200" house with hardly any yard built in the 1950s). It costs $4.25 per gallon at the corner station and food costs more here too. In fact, everything cost more in the SF Bay Area because it is tied into the higher cost of living and these costs are not restricted to San Francisco, they exist in most areas of the nine bay area counties. I could probably find a job in Sacramento where my housing costs would be 2/3 a month, but my pay would 2/3 as well.

Good luck getting a decent 1b apartment for anything less than $1500 rent or a 2b for $2000 in Silicon Valley. A luxury style (granite counters, in-unit laundry, newer appliances, wood veneer laminate flooring) 2b apartments start at $2500 and go all the way to $10k for actual wood flooring, professional grade appliances, valet parking, concierge, etc

You want to talk luxury rentals for the very rich, go down to BevHills, where you can rent a 5000" house for $20K a month. Or how about $100K a month for a 10,000" estate.

Next time I am in LA, I think I get a hillside bungalow at the Chataeu for a few weeks. At $2200 a night, should be no problem because I am super rich.

You have no fucking clue what you are talking about.

FRNIST PSOT

[Anonymous Coward]

escape th@em By

As long as the Republicans...

[Anonymous Coward]

continue to shove gentrification down our throats, we're never going to have cheaper housing. New housing is more expensive which is why the Democrats are fighting the good fight against allowing new development. That is the only way to keep rents cheaper. I'm looking for a new place, and everywhere new I've looked in the past seven years has been more expensive. That in turn drives up my rent. That is why stopping development should be the city's number one priority when fighting to keep rents low.

Re:As long as the Republicans...

[Q-Hack!]

blink... blink... wow. there really are people in the world who think like this?

Supply and Demand my friend. If you want rent prices to go down, you need to flood the market with more housing, not less. Only an idiot would think that limiting the increase of available houses while the population is growing would reduce the cost of said houses. But then I notice that you post as AC and I am probably poking a troll.

Re:As long as the Republicans...

[pete6677]

Right, all those San Francisco Republicans... Did you eat paint chips as a kid?

Re:As long as the Republicans...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right; it's Econ 101. Everybody knows when supply goes up, so does price.

Re:As long as the Republicans...

[wickerprints]

It's not quite so simple as supply and demand, however. The problem is that if you flood the market with more housing given the current price levels and demand, prices would take a LONG time to head back down once the demand is met (and that's assuming that the demand is ever met at all). Simply put, there's just so much existing scarcity that even massive amounts of new development would only serve to blunt the increasing trend in housing cost, rather than actually hoping to bring it down.

That's not to say development is not part of the solution--it absolutely, absolutely is--it's just that the current state of affairs is so entirely fucked up, and has been allowed to persist for so long, that what you'll see if you open the floodgates of new development is that in the short term, you get all the negative consequences (gentrification, displacement) while serving only the ultra rich who can afford those new housing units, but none of the long-term, aggregate benefits of lower housing costs that are decades down the line.

Re:As long as the Republicans...

[martas]

Considering all that old housing, I'd say probably.

Re:As long as the Republicans...

[Anonymous Coward]

It really depends on if you operate as a nonprofit and make your company's thing be Affordable housing for regular people. that would really piss in alot of developers cheerios.

Re:As long as the Republicans...

[Anonymous Coward]

And where would you build these houses, apartments, and condos. Remember, that some people want to live in luxury when they succeed, and it is an active earthquake zone? You can't just squeeze them into tiny 800ft apartments and expect $3,000/month rents. But, the landlords are who controls the economy and make out just fine for doing a pretty simple job.

Now, forming their own island off the coast could be a real option... Most of the land is already developed in SF and the surrounding area.

I've solved the SF Housing "Crisis"

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuke it from high orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
In other news, SF still doesn't amount to a small zit on the ass of the wold.

Houston, Dallas, Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

All with very healthy economy and housing prices are still affordable. Everywhere you look there are new construction popping up all over the place. And this boom in Texas should very least last a decade more with newly discovered oil in West Texas. I get the sense living in one of the top 3 cities in Texas is comparable to hustle and bustle of New York city during the early parts of last century.

Re:Houston, Dallas, Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but...you know...it's TEXAS.

The same state who gave the world Presidents Bush, and Creationism in textbooks, and who harbors the biggest patent troll court in the world, and Rand Paul and more gun-toting Republican numbskulls that anyone can count.

Texans will always be Texas' worst enemy.

Re:Houston, Dallas, Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

Not likely. It's density and mixed-uses that gives the appearance of "hustle and bustle". In 1910 Manhattan had 21 people per 5,000 sq ft. Today it's 12. Texas cities are hugely spread out compared to Manhattan. For example, "Downtown Houston" is nearly 3 times the size of just the Lower East Side. Back in 1910 the LES had 70 people per 5,000 sq ft, today it's 16. Downtown Houston has 1.4 residents per 5,000 square feet.

Re:Houston, Dallas, Austin

[LWATCDR]

And California gave us Charles Manson and.... Well San Francisco.

Re:Houston, Dallas, Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush(JR/SR) killed WAY more people.

Re:Houston, Dallas, Austin

[LWATCDR]

California gave us Nixon.

Re:Houston, Dallas, Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, those cities are in Texas, a state that does not a rat's ass about its people. I was amazed when I looked at a graphic chart of heart disease rates in the state and every place was dark grey or black except Austin. Perry actually went out of his way to make sure the state executed a mentally retarded prisoner. Big chemical plant goes boom and the local residents say they don't want any regulation. Hell, the residents say the state needs to stay out of their lives, except for sex and religion of course. And may I also say, the weather sucks.

Re:Houston, Dallas, Austin

[Rakarra]

California gave us Nixon.

And he was pretty good until his personal demons finally made him make a Big Mistake in his re-election. So sad, he would have won either way.

Higher population - more demand for housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Another cause of housing pressure is the increase in the US population. Here is a chart showing the growth of our population.

Wikipedia says, "Compared to other Western countries, in 2011, U.S. fertility rate was lower than that of France (2.02) and the United Kingdom (1.97).[9] However, U.S. population growth is among the highest in industrialized countries,[10] because the differences in fertility rates are less than the differences in immigration levels, which are higher in the U.S."

And a lot of immigrants (entire families, not just the workers) move to the Silicon Valley, because they get jobs there.

blue on blue

[Anonymous Coward]

one group of fucking idtiot libtards versus another. so what?

Explain to me why the city can't just be full?

[holophrastic]

I know absolutely nothing about these things; so I'm actually asking here. Why does the city, I'm not saying every city, but I am saying any city, need to support infinite growth? There's water, there're hills, maybe that's as many people as can fit. Period. You're welcome to live anywhere you like where there's room. I'm sorry, there's no more room here at the inn. Find another.

I've zero interest in my city becoming a huge metropolitan core. I left the one that I was in to find fresh air, less traffic, country driving roads, and farm fresh food. I don't want another 5 million people to move into my city. Quite frankly, if they do, I'll leave, but that's a different issue.

Re:Explain to me why the city can't just be full?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that methodology does not grow the tax base fast enough to pay for the ever expanding fat pet projects.

Re:Explain to me why the city can't just be full?

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to San Francisco:
No Vacancy

Re:Explain to me why the city can't just be full?

[Tablizer]

Last time that happened for a pregnant couple, it started a whole new religion.

Re:Explain to me why the city can't just be full?

[TheSync]

Go to Hong Kong - a city with a geography much like SF. It has a density about 5 times as much as SF in its built areas (often with apartment buildings 3-4 times as high, and a great subway system as well). Hong Kong is planning on adding 20% more density now as well.

crisis?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it's a crisis. For some value of crisis.

As a homeowner in SF, it's no crisis for me. As a lazy homeowner in SF, I didn't bother to read TFA. So my unanswered questions, which perhaps were covered in the article are:

We do know that the Googlers are a small proportion of the current tech boom, yes? So the fact that 'Google has been prevented from moving people into MountainView' is just one small data point on the current landscape. It doesn't explain all that much.

Last I checked, Google/Facefuck/Linked-inn/etc are located on average 38 miles South of SF. There are about 12 municipalities in between. So if Googlers are somehow 'prevented' from living in Mountain View, and balk at SF rents, may I suggest San Mateo? Colma? Hint: if it were me struggling away at a low 6 figures at Google, I would live affordably in the hidden gem called Pacifica, and I'd be able to afford a friggin Tesla to screech into the parking lot just as all my coworkers were exiting their sad white bus. Like a boss.

All right, gotta go get back to counting my rent checks and checking my hoodie for when I go out glasshole-bashing on Valencia later.

Re:crisis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you don't seem to understand, let me explain. Almost all Google, FB, and Apple employees that live in SF do so because (1) they are gay or (2) they have a partner who works in SF or Berkeley. Those are really the only reasons normal people choose to live in a city as filthy and rundown as SF.

As for the other places you mention, Pacifica is very expensive and a difficult commute, Colma has virtually no living residents or residential housing, and a lot of the other communities in between SF and the South Bay are also hugely expensive.

I'm gay, have been in the tech industry for three decades, and lived in and around SF most of that time. I couldn't take the vitriol, intolerance, and political b.s. in SF anymore and left.

Bah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do these people who live there and never upgraded their skills expect to be able to afford the city? If your brain poor and you can't afford it , you must move. That is free enterprise, you have no right to live on a million dollar street just because you exist. That is BS

You are an artist , well are people buying your stuff to afford to live there? No, tough move to a trailer park that over looks a junk yard, that is real life.

Stop crying and shut it.

Re:Bah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes why didn't the evicted 98-year old in the article just teach herself to program and get a job at Facebook?

When they say "it takes all kinds to make a country", they really just mean socially stunted nerds with skills that happen to be useful for pushing advertising in the current tech bubble, right?

Time for some new housing ideas!

[supremebob]

Instead of building a giant floating barge as a sales tool, perhaps Google should have think about building a giant floating apartment buildings out in the Pacific for their employees.

The cost per square foot would probably be lower for their employees than a San Francisco apartment, and they wouldn't have to put up with San Francisco's ridiculous tax laws and building regulations. Besides, the commute to Mountain View by boat would beat taking a bus on the 101!

If I were to start a tech company

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were to start a tech company, it wouldn't be in SF area.

Why there?

I'd put it in Metro Atlanta or even a fly-over state.

And as far as getting talent, well, that's not an issue. See, since I'd be doing something actually new and innovative, no one would have the experience or qualifications - obviously.

First, I'd hire an old fart who's seen quite a bit and who can lead and handle the same old shit you see on every project. Specific technical knowledge is beneath his responsibilities. He's a big picture guy and a mentor.

Then, a bunch of young kids who are "passionate" (read dumb enough to work their asses off).

And if by chance I need someone with a specific skill set, I'd make it worth his while to come out to Buttfuck, USA where I am - and let his/her former employer whine about not being able to get "qualified" people. And nobody would be dealing with this housing horseshit out there.

In WWII there was a guy named Henry Kaiser who solved his problem when there was a shortage of able bodied men. HE solved the problem: the losers whined and complained.

The bitches in San Fransisco should learn from real entrepreneurs.

Re:If I were to start a tech company

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought they took care of the Kaiser in WWI.

The bay area is a big area

[Anonymous Coward]

Just send them to Stockton, that will solve the housing issue.

Why save?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, a couple decades ago you could go to a bank an open an account where the rates were at least competitive with inflation. These days, the typical interest rate is well under 1% with the Fed purposefully keeping inflation above 2% on the belief that inflation is good. Well, inflation isn't good, having inflationary expectations discourages people from saving money. Granted, you don't want long stretches of deflation either, but we're getting exactly what should have been predicted.

What's more, companies don't pay people based upon their value to the company these days, they pay the bare minimum they can get away with in most cases. Sure there are exceptions, but those exceptions have a harder time staying in business.

And no, blue collar workers around here would have a really hard time saving for a house when rent alone is typically aroudn $12k per year.

Re:Why save?

[The Grim Reefer]

Seriously, a couple decades ago you could go to a bank an open an account where the rates were at least competitive with inflation. These days, the typical interest rate is well under 1% with the Fed purposefully keeping inflation above 2% on the belief that inflation is good.

That also keeps mortgage interest rate extremely low. My first mortgage, several decades ago, was 8.5%, which was really good at the time. We moved last year and I think it's under 3.5% now. From 1975 to 1990 the average fixed rate 30 year mortgage barely dipped below 10% and was as high as 18%.

Well, inflation isn't good, having inflationary expectations discourages people from saving money. Granted, you don't want long stretches of deflation either, but we're getting exactly what should have been predicted.

Inflation in the 1970's is part of why the mortgage rates hit almost 20% in the late 70's through the early 80's.

What's more, companies don't pay people based upon their value to the company these days, they pay the bare minimum they can get away with in most cases. Sure there are exceptions, but those exceptions have a harder time staying in business.

That's always been the case. The difference is that there is no loyalty to anything anymore. Employees have no loyalty to the company they work for and will leave to go somewhere else for ten cents a day more. And employers will replace you for the dumbest of reasons. Replacing pensions with 401K's looked great on paper. But the unintended consequences weren't so great.

And no, blue collar workers around here would have a really hard time saving for a house when rent alone is typically aroudn $12k per year.

I don't know where you live. But that's pretty cheap from what I've seen rent wise.It could certainly be done on a blue collar salary. The bigger problem is, is that most blue collar jobs are disappearing.

Re:Why save?

[Rakarra]

Replacing pensions with 401K's looked great on paper. But the unintended consequences weren't so great.

I think pensions were always, always a mistake. Being tied to a single employer, whether you like them or not, because your post-working life relies on them? Sure, it can be great to love your job, but it means far less worker freedom, and it hasn't worked out for any large company that used pensions either. What it ends up being is the company is saddled with lots of debt (pensions) that bleed it little by little. It's not a deadly cut, but it does mean that younger companies without that debt have a big advantage.

A pension is kicking the can down the road; forcing future generations to pay for what you should be paying now. You pay less now, but you have to pay more later. Except that when the 'later' finally comes, somehow companies, towns, even states find ways to invalidate the pension, usually through bankruptcy. I'm not saying 401ks have a pristine record, but they were no where near the disaster that pensions have been.

So no, I don't think it would be great to tie someone's retirement to the health of their current company. I think it's a stupid idea to tie health care with employers as well, for many reasons.

Incomplete history

[Anonymous Coward]

The inflation of the 1970s was international, not purely a result of US policy. I believe it started in the late 60s in other places and the Bretton Woods system was being torn apart.

I'm not sure there has ever been a currency policy that's been maintainable without change indefinitely.

Regulation, not the land

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't even the cost of the land. It is the government regulation. If you could buy a whole block of 1 million dollar houses, tear them down and build a 5 story condo complex on the square block you would make a killing in SV. Only 1 town is letting that happen and that is San Jose and only near the light rail. Every stop has a massive apartment complex going up. All the other town regulate any new housing to make it almost impossible to make more units available.

San Francisco's Housing Crisis Explained

[Anonymous Coward]

Supply and demand.

I heard it's mostly gay

[Anonymous Coward]

So 1 good thing results They won't make more people & overpopulate.

(That is, unless someone can show me a guy getting pregant conception to delivery occurring (that is a guy, not a hermaphrodite mutant for lack of a better expression here)),

APK

P.S.=> F'off for anyone thinking "they die of AIDS fast too" (yes, you're out there - if I thought of it jokingly, others will too) - they're just people who can't help how they are that way (no, not gay here either for any trolls that may disappoint))... apk

f@uck high housing costs

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in SF 45 years ago and the housing was as expensive as any in the nation. This isn't anything new. The complainers are those who always complain. The spoiled. The rotten. The communist. The maladapted. The perpetual victim. IOW, teh democrats.

Free bread and circus ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Making available free phone service, free office suites, free web hosting, free photo sharing and financing that with advertising now makes someone an "asshole"?

And the emperor passes out free bread and offers free circuses. All you have to do in return is to let the emperor have his way in all things.

Pre-prop 13 was its own gentrification ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Prop13 means that neighbors cannot move to another house down the street since then they couldn't afford to pay for the property tax.

And without prop 13 owners were being forced out of their existing homes because they couldn't afford the ever increasing property taxes. Pre-prop 13 California tax policies were their own gentrification forcing out those of more modest or fixed incomes from regions of increasing property values.

It was very much like what is happening in SF, whether it is rent or taxes that cannot be paid hardly matters to the person being forced to move.

Well yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they know they can always get jobs as the rich white people's maids, lawncare, poolboys, etc.

When was the last time you saw a black man or woman in any of those positions, at least in California?

Lot easier being a Mexican Illegal here than a Black person born and raised.

The real estate builders are at fault

[Anonymous Coward]

When we crashed they were suppose to jump in and build like crazy while property was cheap and everyone needed a job.
But instead rich people own those corp and are not going to hurt their own home price by drive prices down by building inventory.

this is what all you statists wanted right?

[Anonymous Coward]

you wanted local governments to be able to dictate every single thing about what you can do on private property. this is why you have no housing.

SF doesn't want to become flippin' Hong Kong

[Anonymous Coward]

What the TechCrunch article leaves out, as well as most of the posters is a lot of people like myself who live in SF don't want to keep building housing supply because we think it will change the city for the worse. I like SF sort of the way it is. I like the Bay, I like hiking in the surrounding hills, the cold-ass beaches, I like all of that.

I moved here over ten years ago, rented for 5 years, met my wife, saved our money bought a small 900 sq/ft house with a rent-controlled apartment, and now have a pair of small children to boot. Despite what the article claims I'm not against all the new construction because of a master plan to run up the price of my place, no I'm against it because I don't want to end up living in fucking Hong Kong, or Manhattan, or Mexico City or any other placeholder for a city that's all tall buildings, shitty air, and a suck-the-life-out-of me vibe.

Here's an idea, let the supply and demand thing work on it's own. SF becomes to expensive for every hipster in the world who wants to move here, so they are 'forced' to gentrify Oakland...or Austin, or Pittsburgh. The 'tech' wealth is spread out. If your idea and implementation is awesome you will get funded no matter where you set up shop.

And why should SF want too keep building for future residents to saddle the infrastructure? I know why Ed Lee and gang do, for the direct and indirect money they will receive from the developers for the rest of their lives (see Willie Brown and Lennar developments...)

Just find another city in Texas to ruin with over-development, leave this place alone.

Temporary problem

[Animats]

After the first dot-com boom collapsed, about half the twentysomethings in SF left. After this one collapses, that will probably happen again. Face it, most of the useful things in "social" have been done.

You a unionized California State employee?

[Anonymous Coward]

Prop13 was passed because the majority of Californians had become both disgusted and fearful of the state government's appetite for cash; Senior citizens who did nothing more than live in the same modest homes they'd had for DECADES were getting tax bills that went up and up and up and they were being driven out of their homes. The state REFUSED to control its spending (the politicians are experts at buying votes of people who do not pay taxes with tax dollars of people who DO) so people who paid-off their homes (supposedly OWNING those homes) had to sell them to pay the tax bills. It was fundamentally WRONG to have some little old widow in house she and her late husband bought for $30K being told to hand over more money per month in taxes than she used to pay in payments or hand the house over to the state. This was particularly evil because it was a greedy grab of the property of some of the most vulnerable people - individuals who were frequently just eeking by on social security checks.... meanwhile the "Progressives" who supported this stuff always somehow just managed to avoid applying ANY painful taxes onto the millionaires and billionaires in SanFran, SiliconValley, Hollywood, etc. who were their political allies. Ever notice that there's a "cozy" relationship between billionaires and the political left???? The rich guys always SAY "we should pay more" (which they are perfectly free to do) while they lobby for policies that raise taxes on the middle class.... and the progressives always SAY "tax the rich", but they always implement taxes on the middle class.

After Prop13 passed (it STILL allows the state to keep raising taxes in exchange for no increse in services) the state had to reduce the RATE at which spending was rising (the spending STILL spiralled up, just not as quickly) and so all the state's unionized workers took on the cause of eliminating it for a very simple reason: Their over-inflated pensions are not fully and properly funded and the workers have no intention of paying their fair share.... they want the taxpayers to effectively jack-up their compensation by pouring more cash into their pensions. The biggest campaign contributors in CA are the state employee unions and they are relentless in their complaints about Prop13. If Prop13 is ever repealed, taxes in CA will LEAP higher and we'll go back to the mean-old-days of kicking old people onto the curb so union bosses can have happier lives.

Isn't prop 13 irrelevant to buyers?

[perpenso]

All property owners pay based on their date of purchase, which is entirely fair.

I pay five times what my neighbor pays in property tax for the same model simply because my neighbor bought in 1977 and I bought in 2010. Prop 13 is good for older people who have been here a while but not so good for people trying to buy their first home.

How is it not so good for buyers? It seems buyers would be paying taxes based on a current assessment with or without prop 13? In other words prop 13 seems irrelevant to that initial assessment and tax rate, that it only affects increases not the initial rate.

Re:Isn't prop 13 irrelevant to buyers?

[Ichijo]

Because the property tax for current owners doesn't keep pace with inflation, California had to create and increase other taxes (for example, the Mello-Roos property tax) to make up the difference.

Re:Isn't prop 13 irrelevant to buyers?

[JesseMcDonald]

How is it not so good for buyers? It seems buyers would be paying taxes based on a current assessment with or without prop 13? In other words prop 13 seems irrelevant to that initial assessment and tax rate, that it only affects increases not the initial rate.

It's bad if you consider that the tax burden is distributed unevenly. New buyers pay a larger fraction of the tax, yet receive the same share of city services as long-time owners of similar properties. The rate has to be set higher to make up for the shortfall from the undervalued properties. Let's say the city needs 5% of the current market value of all the properties to meet its budget. If half those properties are undervalued by 50% for tax purposes, the tax rate has to be set at 6.7% instead of 5%, which means new buyers are paying a third more than they would if all the property taxes were based on current market value.

Don't need to go to midwest, just outside city

[Anonymous Coward]

As a software developer in the Bay Area, you probably live a lot worse than as a welder somewhere in a Midwestern farming town.

My grandfather and father were welders. They lived quite comfortably about 40 miles outside of New York City. My brother inspects pipelines and lives quite comfortably about 40 miles outside of San Francisco. You don't have to go to the midwest to find affordable living. You can stay surprisingly close to the "cultural centers". My siblings and I did not lack visits to NYC's museums and other educational offerings, and occasionally attended various plays and performances.

The rental companies are also fixing their prices

[Manatra]

A lot of it also has to do with the fact that the major rental companies don't compete on pricing because they all use the same third party software and algorithms to determine how much rental units should cost. Conveniently, this lets them avoid charges of price fixing/collusion. This article has more information: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11...

More BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew up in a house my father bought for 15K. It had three stories+attic+basement, on nearly an acre of land IN a nice small city. We had a bunch of trees on the property, several must've been over 60ft tall. Many of today's houses are little and jammed together on properties not much bigger than the houses themselves and for FAR more money (yeah, even after adjusting properly for inflation (the cost of printing money))

The only reason the political class is getting away with this shrinking of "the American dream" is that younger Americans are being deceived about the past. Compare the cars of the sixties (sedans, muscle cars, station wagons, etc) to the cars of today or a van of the 70s or 80s to a modern "spacious" SUV, etc. The modern versions are almost always smaller, wimpier, and more-expensive... and NO you do not have to miniturize a car as part of adding a GPS system and a better stereo. People today are groped and xrayed and scrutinized in other ways when they board planes (and we GIVE the TSA the "right" to rifle-through our luggage) when we fly, but no previous generations tolerated any of that and the planes were NOT falling out of the skies. We pay more per kilowatt-hour of energy now than people used to pay (inflation adjusted of course) while being urged to consume less, more per acre-foot of water while being urged to consume less, more per gallon of gas (which is often lower-octane) and the typical residential lot size seems to be similarly shrinking. Even our perceptions of thingle like "fast" are being scaled-back. When Americans used to talk about "high speed" things like "the sound barrier" and rockets and jets came to mind.... but now the politicians are offering "high speed rail" as an alternative to cars and planes but by "high speed" they frequently mean "about as fast as a speeding car"

TYSE

[Anonymous Coward]

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Totally misses the point

[Errol backfiring]

It sure looks like someone is trying to explain a housing crisis without even looking at how money is put into existence.

Crisis explained in a short phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

Rich leftist pigs VS poor leftists pigs.

Hopefully a magnitude 9 earthquake will be along soon to resolve the problem...

Re:Crisis explained in a short phrase

[Errol backfiring]

That "fracking" takes too long. Would you settle for a tropical cyclone? The more equal pigs are working on it as you speak.

Wrong.

[TheDarkMaster]

Wrong. Everything goes down if the builders can continue asking millions for homes that were built using only a tenth of what they are asking. It will not do anything doubling or tripling the number of homes if no one can afford them.

The Wrong Place

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously tech and tech workers have a high value to society and the nation. Considering that San Francisco is a disaster waiting to happen we need to move tech firms out of the region completely. Frankly I question the wisdom of people or firms who locate over a fault zone with such a glowing history of natural disasters.
                They are not the only area making such mistakes. Miami Florida is simply a disaster waiting to happen. At better than two million in population and almost at sea level there is now way to evacuate the area and it is prone to hurricanes. We are good at surviving most hurricanes in Florida but a strong class five storm could almost erase Miami from the face of the Earth. Such an event would involve so much financial loss that it would collapse the economy of the US and probably take down several other national economies as well. And the time scale for being struct with that kind of storm is shorter even than the likely earthquake event in San Francisco. We are not wisely handling our emergency postures at all.

Wake up, gramps

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of decades back you could:
-save money since you made a living wage (I was making $13/hr in 1988 --as an IBM service rep. I was one of the guys with a 25 lb brown briefcase full of tools and a Portable Terminal)

- buy two full-sized brown paper bags full of groceries (and I mean beef, chicken, fresh veg, etc).

- do without cable tv since OTA (over the air) was available. AND taxes paid for the cable to be laid, which became a monopoly, which then sought to remove OTA.

and other things; VCRs were still available, so was BlockBuster, Circuit City, CompUSA.

better than I expected(

[doom]

To summarize where the article goes: the Bay Area needs regional planning and unified tax policies.

A respectable opinion at least, and better than I expected.

Like most such things, the author downplays esthetics and fashion-- why is New Urbanism winning? Demographics! Now me, I would say New Urbanism is winning because it's (1) it's right (2) it did a nerdy-to-sexy transistion.

This is the first I've seen of the Vida project, and that architech needs to be shot: "Everyone loves the wavy look of bay windows, I'll make the windows wavy in the *vertical* direction! I'm creative!"

No wonder no one wants to see any new construction.

One of the big reasons no one is excited about seeing big housing construction projects is that no one believes they're going to get it right: nearly everything in the US built since WWII is horrible.

More houses?

[Anonymous Coward]

is it possible to build more houses in San Francisco? I thought San Francisco, Oakland and the surrounding suburbs are pretty much built-up except for the parks and seashore. Just wondering.

Nice :)

[zakariabenatti3]

Tutorials iOS http://www.tutorials-ios.com/

Why is this hard

[Anonymous Coward]

Supply and demand people. Prices are high because demand outpaces supply. You have two choices: build enough housing to satisfy demand, thus lowering everyone's property values, or let the market sort it out.

What if.....?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if I told you that companies are paying their employees exactly what they are worth? If they weren't, said employees would leave for better opportunities where their value would be recognized and compensated. The fact that employees stay and do not pursue other opportunities indicates they believe they are being compensated fairly for the value they offer.

fort lee 2 bedroom prices

[onepoint]

In fort lee I rented my second floor apartment for 1400 and that was a simple 2 bedroom for 1400.00. I'm guessing but if I still owned it I would be mid 2300 to 2800's

Living in San Francisco Bay Area

[bbsalem]

The article linked to by the OP is informative and well researched, but it is driving an agenda to complicate what is really very simple, something every commentator on the home purchase and rental market gets right away, that prices are simply being driven up by demand in a restricted market. The article tries to explain why the market is tight through a complex argument that is designed to exonerate the failings of judgement and greed that drives it. It misses the notion that the problem is nothing new, that it existed back in 1970 before Prop. 13 and rent control and when most of the factors were exactly what they are today: politicians are seduced by the tax revenue from business and so they encourage development with little or no regard to the side effects. To split hairs about demographic preferences that young techies who work in Social Media companies vs. those of electrical engineers who make hardware down in Santa Clara doesn't account for the inflated prices that began to rise in 1970 and which were kept up by the tax burdin placed on buyers of existing homes after Proposition 13 passed in 1978. The cities are locked into overassessing property values both by the tax burden and the demand, and have been long before there was incleased demand for housing in San Francisco.

The argument does not explain how sale prices down on the Peninsula have resumed their insane appreciation as 1 br 1 bath cottages go for more than $1 million in Menlo Pakr and Palo Alto and rent increases follow suit. Clearly economic expansion in Silicon Valley continues and the forces that drive it do not care about ridiculous side effects.

Also, look at a map. See how much flat ground there is to build on. This is not L.A. and although the article, obviously written from a pro-business point of view neglects to say that height limits have a practical benefit in a seismically active region where fire and getting to upper stories of multistory buildings is a serious risk. That is what the recent Mission Bay fire in apartments under construction in San Francisco taught, and it stretched the resources of SFFD to contain. In the event of a M = 7.5 quake on the San Andreas or Hayward fault the risk of fire is still very great. More buildings and people were lost in 1906 due to fire than the quake itself and San Francisco is about as vulnerable to that kind of destruction today. There are more than 1000 buildings in S.F. and that many in Oakland that will sustain major damage from the expected large quakes on nearby faults. If you think that the Loma Prieta Quake on 1989 is as bad as it gets, think again.

I'll bet the real estate agents who sell over-priced properties to people with cash, and most of these are investors, not people who intend to live in those properties, do not tell them of the risks from quakes, the fires they are capable of starting, wild land fires, and landslides in steep slopes. The venture capitalists don't care either, and the politicians who booster the business investment don't care either. I will smile at all them ironically when it all literally comes crashing down or when they have to leave because the congestion on the freeways has become so great that it is beginning to cut into productivity like it did in 1999. Then again, if we really do live in a fool's paradise and especially with regard to the world economic situation, a crash like 2008 is coming and that will rain on their parade. Maybe Rick Perry should have seduced all those companies away, and Texas would have been taught the downside of development.

Let's not forget

[Anonymous Coward]

There may be a job and housing "boom" in Texas but certainly isn't any water boom. As the population increases the water gets used up quicker. I'd rather live in the north where fresh water is plentiful than in the southwest (such as Texas) and have to wonder when there will be bathing restrictions in addition to lawn watering restrictions. I have relatives that live in the Austin area and for the past five years they've wondered where all their water reserves have gone. Boating and other water restrictions due to low water, etc. are the norm anymore. Their house is on well water and have had to re-drill their well twice in the past five years because of lowering water tables. You can have the "sunny" weather. I'd rather have water to drink and bathe in and have to deal with cold and snow than worry about my water supply. Thank you very much.