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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."
If you didn't get in in the good old days of, hell, the 90s, buying is not really an option anymore. A house I was looking at sold for $360k. For a 450sq foot house. Just barely bigger than my apartment.
Rents and Housing are absolutely out of control all over LA, not just SFO. I have no idea how anyone affords it on anything less than tech wages unless they're shacking up with 3 people. What's the point of making good money if you're spending it all on rent?
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
There are too many people in California in general and too many people in San Francisco in particular. (Not as bad as LA, but anyway...) If you moved to a place you knew you could never afford to buy housing, which was one of the most highly desirable real estate markets in the world, and then rents spiraled out of control, you have only yourself to blame. I have sympathy for people who are born there as renters and can't afford to leave. I have zero sympathy for people who moved there and then complained that they couldn't make it.
This is a problem faced by the whole wide world, and unless you want to skip socialism and head straight for communism, there's no fairer way to decide who can live there than by who can afford to live there. If you think you have a way to implement a meritocracy in our society, I'm interested, but mostly for the sake of amusement.
Our whole society is founded upon the idea that might makes right, and he who has the gold gets to decide who gets to live where. I'm highly sympathetic to the notion that this is harmful, but it really is our founding principle. If teachers can't afford to live in SF, then maybe people unwilling to home school should start moving their families out, too. Big dirty cities (SF fits this description admirably, if you include environs, needed for "big" though not for "dirty") are no place to raise a family in any case. Maybe SF doesn't need fast food restaurants. Maybe it's not just okay but actually desirable to gentrify some cities, and let the culture in them disperse to other areas that could use some that isn't growing between someone's toes.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's because Prop 13 distorted the market. Without it, and without rent controls, people who don't need the housing would stop hoarding it because they're grandfathered-in to a below-market deal, making it (counter-intuitively) more affordable for everyone else. Reasonable zoning codes that would allow for an increase in density would help too, of course.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
yeah fine. arts people don't have special rights.
but we get driven out, find some shithole that no one else would even think of living in. fix it
up, build a community, then the rich assholes come in, drive us out, and we're left
trying to find another shithole to convert. when you're a 50 yr old artist whose had
an established place for 30 years, thats pretty sad.
the problem is in the bay area is that we ran out of raw material to process. its all
expensive, except west oakland which is still pretty gangbangery, although some
are trying to make it work.
have fun living in your soulless overpriced wasteland
It's really amusing to watch this whole dotcom bubble from the late 90s being replayed almost exactly the same way. VC valuations lead to IPOs that lead to temporary market insanity, and it all comes crashing down when people realize it can't last forever. And just like the first dotcom boom, the products are websites, phone apps and other software.
I guess the thing SF and California in general have going for them is the climate, so it's not like San Francisco is going to become some Rust Belt city when the bottom falls out. But, the reality distortion field around SF, SV and Los Angeles is really powerful. Coming from a place where a Lincoln Town Car was an aspirational vehicle, and seeing 25 year old kid CEOs driving Maseratis and Mercedes is a big shocker.
I do feel for people who have normal jobs or are artsy types in SF. Can you imagine being, say, a cop or a civil servant in the county clerk's office making the statewide civil service wage, and having to compete for housing with someone who's making $250K working for Google or Apple, and just wants to live in hipster land? (That's another interesting phenomenon -- these techies could easily afford a house in SV closer to work, but they choose a multi-hour commute so they can live in a hipster loft.
Sorry, but how democracy works is people have the ability to decide what their city is like. Democracy is more important than markets.
Yes, and the people of SF have apparently decided that forbidding additional development is preferable to lowering prices by increasing supply. So they should either shut up about the cost, or allow development.
When they learn I'm an old school mainframe programmer, their eyes glass over.
When I was a lead video game tester, I shocked the new testers out of high school by informing them that I played video games in the early 1980's (most are surprised to learn that video games existed before the Sony PlayStation), introduced them to a tester who assembled arcade machines for Atari and Midway in the 1980's, and to another tester who tested pen-and-paper games in the 1970's. It's always important to instruct youngster to respect their elders.
Not exactly on topic, but the article, San Francisco's situation, and the conditions over time not just in cities, but states, nations, any identifiable economic area all point to what I consider a flaw in Economic reporting, that, to my amazement, many people fail to grasp.
The strength of any economy is reported as good, bad, improving, failing, the "world's best", the "world's worst" ... whatever rank you care to put on it ... based solely on the inflated value of the whole. City A is twice as prosperous as City B if the rents, wages, and prices are all twice City B's. No matter that an hour's wages buys the same square foot of land, the same block of cheese, the same latte, the same month of cable TV in both cities. City A is clearly "better" based on the Economic Data. If City A happens to be the most expensive city on the planet to work and live then it's defined as the wealthiest city on the planet, the most successful economy, the "place to be". Except as far as the day to day goes, it's just another, ordinary city.
[Somewhat more on topic] And then we get the issues regarding the transition from a City B economy to a City A economy ... there are people on fixed incomes or working in fields where the high wages aren't sustainable, who get stuck in the old economy when their fellow citizens are part of the new economy. They need each other ... someone has to build the homes, make the cheese, pour the latte ... but they can't afford each other. Similarly, if a visitor from City A comes to City B for a vacation, they seemingly have twice as much money to spend. But not at home, where twice as much buys just enough.
The economic realities are constantly shifting and the solution for SF residents of today is the same as it's always been ... wages and rents must go up, and some people must move to a City B (or even a City C) economy.
This is not really new ... time to roll the ubiquitous "is this news?" Slashdot comment. (Just kidding).
the rich assholes come in, drive us out, and we're left trying to find another shithole to convert.
Did you buy into the underdeveloped area when prices were low? Did your peers cash out as soon as the area became more desirable? If the hipster art community which made a crappy area into a desirable one owns the buildings, how are they driven out?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
To get their money out of China and out of reach of the Chinese government. Sounds odd since the ROI isn't great for an empty house but if you view it through the lens of park it abroad or lose it then it makes more sense.
One problem with advocating for various "rights" is that recognizing "rights" doesn't guarantee a fair or equitable outcome. As long as the conversation remains rooted in trying to declare various "rights" for everyone, you will probably end up with a system in which no completely fair or equitable outcome can be achieved.
By way of example: 20 years ago I moved out of the southern California area to another part of the country so that I could afford to buy a house in a neighborhood in which I could raise a family. I ended up buying a lot in a very quiet, fairly secluded area, then had a house built. I started a family, and life in our quiet secluded neighborhood was good until about 5 years ago when my backyard neighbor sold his house to an individual who turned it into a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic. We asked how a business could be introduced to a residential neighborhood, and we were told he had the right to do so because it was a "group home," and the people he was treating had a right to live someplace. Ok, we shrugged and got on with our lives, although the noise from this property was much greater than when a family lived there. Then he bought another house that adjoined both our property and his original property, and added on to his business. Again, he "had the right" because he was helping people who needed help. When he bought the third house (that bordered our property) we decided to move. Not because of the "drug and alcohol" aspect, but because our neighborhood was no longer a neighborhood - we had upwards of 45 people a day driving in and out of our small street, 3 shifts of workers a day, all strangers. We were becoming surrounded by a very profitable business that acts nothing like a "home", which filled our small neighborhood with strangers.
We had "rights", but the people who were being treated also had "rights" and the guy running the business had "rights". All well intended, I'm sure, but the outcome was not fair or equitable, at least as far as we are concerned. Our relocation was traumatic because it wasn't anything we had been prepared for and came at a very inconvenient time for our children's schooling. Balancing various needs resulted in a year-long split between two halves of my family living quite some distance apart, and has seriously hosed-up my completing an advanced degree, but we are now in what we believe to be a much better living situation.
San Francisco and other communities that become overwhelmed by unbalanced economic forces will probably not solve their problems by focusing on "rights." The problems also won't be solved by pointing the finger at people of different political persuasions, either. The solutions will not come quickly, and individuals will need to make decisions for themselves with respect to how long they want to fight versus get on with their lives. And the outcomes won't be "fair and equitable" to everyone. That's life.
Seattle is determined "not to be San Francisco", as the mayor said. Amazon is building 3 new skyscrapers downtown - rumor is approval for these was blocked until 3 new skyscrapers for housing could also be approved. Rents are high here, but not crazy-SF-high. Fully using the land is the difference, just as you point out. Forcing new housing to be built alongside new office space is also a good idea (not really fighting the free market, just making the timing work out well for everyone). Preventing new housing from being built is a particular level of crazy.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.