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Some Root For a Tech Comeuppance In San Francisco
HughPickens.com writes: David Streitfeld writes in the NYT that cities do not usually cheer the downfall or even the diminishment of the hometown industry, but the relationship between San Francisco and the tech community has grown increasingly tense as the consequences for people who do not make their living from technology become increasingly unpleasant. "It's practically a ubiquitous sentiment here: People would like a little of the air to come out of the tech economy," says Aaron Peskin. "They're like people in a heat wave waiting for the monsoon." Signs of distress are plentiful. The Fraternite Notre Dame's soup kitchen was facing eviction after a rent increase of nearly 60 percent. Two eviction-defense groups were evicted in favor of a start-up that intended to lease the space to other start-ups. The real estate site Redfin published a widely read blog post that said the number of teachers in San Francisco who could afford a house was exactly zero. "All the renters I know are living in fear," says Derrick Tynan-Connolly. "If your landlord dies, if your landlord sells the building, if you get evicted under the Ellis Act" — a controversial law that allows landlords to reclaim a building by taking it off the rental market — "and you have to move, you're gone. There's no way you can afford to stay in San Francisco."
No one has a "right" to live anywhere. Ridiculous.
The real problem is that San Francisco adamantly refuses to build more housing to meet demand. Sorry, but that's the way the market works. If you don't increase the supply to meet the demand, the price is going to go up as the demand does. Instead, though, they insist that they want to keep it "the way it is", not build new apartment buildings that might relieve some of the excess demand for housing, and the corresponding infrastructure to go with it. That leaves them only with hoping that the demand goes down, which is idiotic.
I hope it does go down though - I hope the tech industry increasingly decides to just say "F**k San Francisco" and moves elsewhere, where there's more land, cheaper cost of living (because at this point almost anywhere is cheaper), and less insane/stubborn neighbors. San Francisco has its upsides, sure, but none that are worth enough to make me want to live there unless you're offering me 4-5 times as much as I make elsewhere. Let San Francisco's economy tank, because that's what they clearly would prefer to actually dealing with the boom that most cities would bend over backwards for half of.
People who have made their lives in San Francisco, especially in the arts, have a right to stay where they are
And that sentiment, right there, is what's wrong with this country. A whiny sense of entitlement that makes claim to something scarce simply because they want it. This is especially amusing (or would be, if these people didn't vote) in its predictableness, coming from the usual lefty/artist/aging-or-rebooted-hippie sector. Ask those same breathless progressives if they think that, say, the people in a Kentucky coal mining town have a "right" to things staying exactly as they are.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is a problem faced by the whole wide world ... TL;DR: If what is going on with SF rents is wrong, then our whole society is wrong, and you can't fix SF without fixing everything else, too. They can enact local laws, but as long as the state works against them, it's always only masturbatory.
Exactly. Property value has ALWAYS increased near population centers. It has ever been so, and will continue to be.
This has nothing to do with San Francisco specifically. It has happened and continues to happen in every city and every town through all of history.
A central district will have the primary draw where everyone wants to be. A central business district, a big employer, the marketplace, whatever. There are places where people want to be for economic or social opportunities. Location, location, location.
Tools like rent control can "help" for a short time -- in that they make it a little easier for some individuals -- but they cannot stop the reason behind it. Consider the long view. Either demand for the services will drive everyone's wages (and costs) up, or the inability to have workers drive the property values back down as the region enters a decline.
As people are priced out of the market there will be fewer good teachers, meaning worse schools, meaning less draw to the area as it falls to decline. Alternatively, the people will demand quality teachers and increase wages to get them. Fewer service people mean stores and marketplaces can't keep people employed, so either the store workers will leave the area for a better life balance, meaning less draw to the area as it falls to decline, or the demand for shops will mean higher costs so they can pay higher wages.
No matter their wealth, the kings and castles rely on the services of the townsfolk. Either they all grow together or the kingdom declines.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
So, unless you're a mortgage-free homeowner, whoever holds the title on your property has the right (no quotes) to force you into indigency on a whim?
Pretty much, yeah. Don't like it? Buy. Can't afford to buy? Move. Really that simple.
Well, that'll do wonders for a stable society.
Artificial attempts to drive down the price of scarce goods have quite a colorful history. Summary: They always have exactly the opposite effect intended, effectively making those goods unavailable at any price except on the black market at 10-100x their "natural" price.
We're talking past each other; let me try again. No one is saying, "you may not live in SF". Anyone can live in SF, as long as you can pay for it. The problem is that SF housing costs more than many can afford. There's no human right to $500/month rents in SF. You may believe that it's good policy, and that's a different question. I suspect that SF has a long history of pretending that economics don't apply to its housing, based on the little I've read about it.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
I certainly have moved away from places I liked and where my friends lived because the area got too expensive and I couldn't afford it anymore. It's basic, responsible financial decision making. I have no tolerance for people who whine and complain about it.
Strawman. No one made it illegal to be a teacher (or fireman or whatever), and no one made anyone take that job either. If it's too expensive to live in SF as a teacher or fireman, then teachers and firemen start to disappear. If they are important, then their local salaries will get raised until they stop disappearing. That's how economics works.
Now clearly this causes lots of undesirable dislocations. But the fundamental problem here, as far as I can tell, is that SF's government appears to have discouraged building new housing, and been depending on mechanisms like rent controls which have KNOWN serious problems. You can pretend economics doesn't matter, but it does, and it causes lots of easily predictable effects. The SF city government appears to have let a problem fester, with (again) predictable consequences. It is entirely appropriate to be sympathetic to the many people harmed by the SF government's bad policies. Yes, they need help, and I think they SHOULD get help. But part of that help needs to be acknowledging that ignoring economics doesn't work.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
San Francisco is a poorly run city, but that's the business of San Franciscans. There will always be poorly run cities (and other organizations, public or private) in the world. You can't "fix" that.A far better solution is to let cities and states make local choices and force them to live with the consequences of their choices. That way, San Francisco can fail, Fremont can prosper, and people can vote with their feet. If you try to "fix our whole society", you just risk such problems become national and taking away any ability of people to get away from bad government.
What annoys me is the massive state and federal subsidies that flow into San Francisco, to help the poverty and social problems that its misguided policies create, to help it cope with its dysfunctional transportation issues, and to subsidize both its corporations and residents merely for living there. Stop pouring money into SF from the outside, SF prices will drop, and some degree of sanity will be restored.
reduce the kinds of societal tensions that can really be disruptive and destructive to people's lives
All sorts of disruptive and destructive things are tolerated every day; hundreds of H1-Bs displace citizens from their livelyhoods, small midwest communities are expected to absorb Syrian immigrants into their schools and hospitals without complaint, property owners in border states live in fear of smugglers unimpeded handcuffed border patrol... Funny how we only indulge this "societal tension" language when it's comfy SF gentry being disrupted. In all other cases it's `racism' and/or `intolerance.'
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!