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Is The Tech Industry Driving Families Out of San Francisco? (nytimes.com)
Why does San Francisco now have fewer children per capita than any of America's largest 100 cities? An anonymous reader writes:
A move to the suburbs began in the 1970s, but "The tech boom now reinforces the notion that San Francisco is a place for the young, single and rich," according to the New York Times. "When we imagine having kids, we think of somewhere else," one software engineer tells the paper. The article describes "neighborhoods where employees of Google, Twitter and so many other technology companies live or work" where the sidewalks make it seem "as if life started at 22 and ended somewhere around 40."
Or is San Francisco just part of a larger trend? "California, which has one of the world's 10 largest economies, recently released data showing the lowest birthrate since the Great Depression. And the Los Angeles Times argues California's experience may just be following national trends. The drop "likely stems from the recession, a drop in teenage pregnancies and an increase in people attending college and taking longer to graduate, therefore putting off having children, said Walter Schwarm, a demographer at the Department of Finance."
So is this part of a larger trend -- or something unique about San Francisco? The New York Times also quotes Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, who believes technology workers are putting off families when they move to the Silicon Valley area because they anticipate long working hours. There's also complaints about San Francisco's public school system -- 30% of its children now attend private schools, the highest percentage of any large American city. But according to the article, Peter Thiel believes that San Francisco is just "structurally hostile to families."
Or is San Francisco just part of a larger trend? "California, which has one of the world's 10 largest economies, recently released data showing the lowest birthrate since the Great Depression. And the Los Angeles Times argues California's experience may just be following national trends. The drop "likely stems from the recession, a drop in teenage pregnancies and an increase in people attending college and taking longer to graduate, therefore putting off having children, said Walter Schwarm, a demographer at the Department of Finance."
So is this part of a larger trend -- or something unique about San Francisco? The New York Times also quotes Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, who believes technology workers are putting off families when they move to the Silicon Valley area because they anticipate long working hours. There's also complaints about San Francisco's public school system -- 30% of its children now attend private schools, the highest percentage of any large American city. But according to the article, Peter Thiel believes that San Francisco is just "structurally hostile to families."
They can't admit that we're in the worst economy for young people since the Depression. They can't get jobs that pay enough for food and housing, let alone a wife and kids.
women must work, they should not have children. The rich people don't want women to raise children because they won't need any humans to serve them any more. Machines can do their jobs much better. The only thing those children will do once they are grown up is try to take the money away from the richt. That's why the rich invented feminism. Ever wondered why so many celebrities are feminist SJWs? that's why, they want to keep their money to themselves.
Generally have a very low fertility rate.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
San Francisco does a pretty good job keeping us out. Lousy schools, enough crime to be a real problem (especially since Prop 47), major homeless issues, and a terrible commute to the cites with jobs (2 hours each way = never seeing your kids).
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When you live 24/7 working without having a personal life that's animal farm life or plantation slave life not the the life of a free human.
The Rise of the Creative Class, who believes technology workers are putting off families when they move to the Silicon Valley area because they anticipate long working hours
More like The Decline of the Creative Class, where creativity must be focused on making a buck at all costs, stifling creative exploration of alternatives, right down to individual workers. No more "let's try 3 ways to solve this problem, then take the best one" - now it's "just fix the damn thing - we'll patch it afterwards - or maybe not. The Internet generation is full of people who are willing to put up with being exploited both as workers and as users because TEH INNERTOOBS!"
A whole industry where most of the "work" is trying to copy someone else's ideas to try to steal some of their market share is only fostering creativity in hucksterism, hype, spin, and con artistry.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The rent is too damn high: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa?search_distance=5&postal=94114&availabilityMode=0
Only millionaires can afford to raise a family in San Francisco.
This post is two stories linked together without justification. Families aren't in SF... because young people work long hours? And the public school system sucks? The public school system sucks in nearly every urban area, so pretty sure that is not it. How about SF is one of the most expensive cities for housing per sqft and land per acre? How about housing costs as a % of income leads to people sharing housing with (paying!) roommates?
SF has geographic barriers preventing it from engaging in that evil thing called urban sprawl. And hen idiot voters and politicians overlay further anti-sprawl policies and stupid zoning decisions. Well, sprawl is a major housing price regulator. Without sprawl, your only option to address increasing demand is increasing density, and you can only squeeze more units per sq mi so much.
Im not saying housing costs explain this phenomenon completely. But it's pretty strange that it's completely omitted!
I haven't really wanted to live in San Francisco before, but this article is making a pretty good case for it. Are there other cities, worldwide, which are largely childless? Is there a list? I am willing to learn a new language.
And unfair.
- Betteridge
San Francisco isn't "structurally hostile to families", it's just "hostile". It's full of the mega-wealthy, drug addicts, homeless, sex crazed singles, tech bros, and political extremists. For each of those groups, San Francisco has some attraction, but if you aren't in one of those groups, why would you want to live there?
After all, $6,000/mo rent is all I can afford on my 60hr/w salary.
No, prosperity does not push families out of a place; rather, the government's inherent, violently imposed, greed to skim off the top of that prosperity is what pushes families out.
Your childhood home's property taxes have gone up so much, that you just cannot afford the "rent".
because I live in a well to do part of town with high property values (and therefor taxes). If the public school system sucks in San Francisco with their property values being what they are then something is very, very wrong.
Those zoning decisions are anything but stupid. They're carefully thought out to achieve a certain goal. The question that's being asked in TFS is: is that goal forcing families and lower income people out of San Fransisco? A corollary to that is: is that an accident or on purpose?
Remember, the young rich people there need poor and lower middle class people to cook food, clean, fix toilets, etc, etc. They're gonna get those people one way or the other. Abusing them (in the form of 4 hour commutes or tent cities) is one option. Hell, it's the option most cities in second world countries pick. Is America going to go that route?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
when you are too busy running around, smelling your own farts all the time.
Higher quality of life leads to lower birthrates. This is not a particularly new phenomena.
and ended somewhere around 40."
This is not an "as if", this is reality. It's very obvious and simple to observe how quickly you decay after 40. Middle-aged people are the slow, drab, putty-colored background noise of life.
Youth is vibrant, active, fun, alive, colorful, energetic, and just plain better than being old.
We need to focus far more resources and people towards anti-aging.
We don't need another app to hail a cab or tell me when to buy milk.
I need better cells and new mitochondria.
It's also pretty much killed the 'flavor' those people moved there to experience, too. It's a form of colonialism, make no mistake. The sad thing is, once the cultural gutting is complete, these people will just take their money and move on. It's a story as old as time.
I find it bizarre that there are no companies out there seeing this exodus of people who are probably very talented and taking advantage of it elsewhere. Has America become so mutual back scratchy that we must all live beside each other now? What is keeping all these companies in one place? Tax differences? Well then tax them more for crying out loud. They are using American infrastructure on a national level. If it is worth it to the nation to risk some that leave and "courageous" ones that stay *cough*tax cheat*cough* then let us do so.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Not sure San Fran or tech has anything to do with it. I think most men today are simply unwilling to accept "The New Deal", where men are pathetic slaves to their female "partners", have no say in their own lives and have that soulless, "yes dear", thousand yard stare.
I can't accept it. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
I prefer dignity and freedom over feigned affection and rationed sexual favors.
I know that sounds terrible, but hear me out. I live in San Mateo which is about halfway between SF and San Jose (which now has an even larger population than SF!), and the public schools are all terrible. All of our friends that have kids have major problems at the public schools from violence, bad teachers that can't be fired, and disruptive Mexicans that the school district won't remove from the classes or even suspend. Private schools around here start at $25k per student per year. That means, if you have two kids it will cost over $650k in tuition for just K-12 for a mediocre school. With the high taxes and ridiculous housing costs, that's just too much. That is why very few people I know around here have kids. It's just too expensive because of the schools here.
I don't think you can overstate how disruptive it is to have a Mexican in a school class. My wife was a teacher's aide when we first met, and as she said even one can completely disrupt the entire class because you constantly have to explain everything over and over again due to language barriers. Also, the parents refuse to help because they don't want their children learning English. Often they don't have backpacks, any school supplies, are homeless, or even worse, a victim of child abuse. The poor Mexicans often have huge anxiety issues that affect the other kids. We're ruining the education of all of the children because the liberal schools here bring everything down to the level of the worst ones.
There are no realistic options for families in the Bay Area any more for housing. Salaries aren't rising fast enough for skilled people to accommodate the housing crunch, and employees are expected to take the brunt of this situation.
If you were established before the 2000 bubble, or happened to catch the housing dips in 2002 and 2009 (especially for rent controlled areas like SF), you are probably ok provided you don't have to commute too far from your residence or are lucky enough to live near BART or Caltrain. If you didn't get in, you are either a perpetual renter or taking huge risks between the influx of new rich money and foreign all-cash purchases of homes. This also presumes that you're in a good school district. Sure, everyone wants their kids going to a school like Mission San Jose in south Fremont, but many can only afford to live in Hayward where the schools are hit and miss. Waiting lists for child care are at least a year long virtually everywhere within 60 miles of SF/SJ/Oakland and are horrendously expensive. Prop 13 and the special FHA non-conforming mortgage limit of $729K ($300K above every other state in the country for some unknown reason) have held up the distortion of property values. Any attempt at high-density housing is often met with hostility from environmental NIMBYs and hostile existing property owners unwilling to give any room to these efforts by filing complaints and grievances. The intense culture surrounding perpetual property value increases is baffling in one sense considering the supposed social conscience that is supposed to exist in the Bay Area.
The perpetual renter scenario where schools don't count only really benefits non-family entities like singles and couples. For them and the folks who got in early, the Bay Area is indeed a great and livable place, with tons of great live music, museums, art, outdoor activities, and year-round great weather (except for SF in July...). Especially for younger folks trying to establish themselves professionally, there probably is no better place to work in that regard. For the rest who would get in this late in the game who have or want a family, enormous sacrifices in money, time and compromise of personal relationships are the only way to deal with this. After all, people paying $1000/month to live in a tent in someone's back yard is somehow acceptable and even funny when you got in early. For the low-income and disadvantaged, the burdens are extremely intense, and that's without the snowflakes complaining about the homeless in SF because they think they're entitled to perfection because they chose to live in the Mission for the cultural value.
These aren't realistic choices any more for many of us. These are only exaggerated for low-income individuals who have even fewer choices. There is an enormous elephant in the middle of the room, and the haves demure on this point without realizing that there will be a breaking point sooner or later. The Bay Area is truly the land of "Last one in is a rotten egg" and there's no end in sight.
The fucktarded unified school district in SF is driving families out of the city. I live in SF, I am a CTO and certainly a onepercenter. I have a 6 y.o. We are looking to move out of SF to the East Bay because unified school district makes public schools unreachable. Effectively we would have to drive the kid accross the city if we want public school. We pay for a private school instead. It's disgustingly expensive at 30K+ per year and not that good.
...luxury is the best form of birth control (true all over the world and throughout all of history, birth rates decline as luxury increases).
Furthermore...
breeding is extremely dangerous in the modern day. Infidelity is the norm, meaning even marriage exposes you to livelong STDs. Divorce is all the rage too, and it can wipe one out and leave one impoverished for the rest of one's life. On top of all that, raising a child properly costs a fortune, even if the child doesn't have any nest-egg-destroying medical conditions or accidents.
I am very glad that you have kids...you take that risk so that I don't have to.
I lived childless in the inner sunset of SF for 10 years, from 2005 until 2015, and I've never seen such a kid unfriendly city in my life. Try pushing a stroller/pram through neighborhood grocery store aisles, or bringing them on the bus, and you'll get the sneer of your live from the people who feel like your impeding their travels. Do you live in a decent neighborhood? Well, chances are your kid won't go to a school near you. They get entered in to a lottery, and they may have to bused 2 hrs round trip across the city to go to a school in bayview, because they are trying to integrate the bad and good schools. Do you like poop? because your 2 or 3 year old will step and play in human poop as they walk down the sidewalk.
My wife and I aren't dot com millionaires, so for us, the threat of being evicted from our rent controlled apartments was too much to bear if we had a kid. We didn't like the prospect of raising a kid in a 600 sqft 'starter' home for 750k either. That money could be spent on the kids education if we moved to a more affordable place, so we did. We bought a 6 bedroom, 3500 sqft place in Austin for 300k, and had our first of hopefully 2 natural 1 adopted kids. We have a backyard with a tree house in it, there are neighborhood kids playing in the streets every night, and he will have at most a 10 minute commute by foot to the best schools in the city. All of that money we would've paid in to the privilege of an SF condo is now in his college fund. We love the bay area so much but it's not a place for kids at all.
Lol, just because you despise them does not mean they despise you. I have never met, nor even heard of somebody who claims to have met, a heterophobic person. And yet here you are speaking as if being gay is shorthand for "[despising] a man and woman union". I think it would be far more accurate (yet still far from true) to claim that all straight people despise man-man unions, and despise woman-woman unions unless they get to watch.
Not just that, that's the most family hostile city out there. Imagine if you live somewhere: parking is a nightmare anywhere you go within the city. You'd ultimately find parking far enough that you might as well have taken MUNI. But living w/o a car ain't too comfortable either, since one does have to do things like groceries often (or do they deliver home?) So w/ all that congestion, that's one of the least healthy places to live.
If you have money to burn, just move a little out to Daly City or Brisbane, or on the other end, in Marin county or Oakland, and you'd get a lot more bang for buck in terms of living
Technically, the whole state with its earthquake fault lines is "structurally hostile to families."
Do you love your community? Do you care for your fellow humans? Do you believe it's your right to live on the lands your forefathers gained with their blood, sweat and tears? Then ACT! Kill a computer weenie today! A line must be drawn and those weirdos, those unfeeling geeks, those walking turds must be eliminated. The world has been ruined enough by their ilk. We live under surveillance, because of them. Jobs are being lost by the day, because of them. People are denied employment and dignity, because of them. Destroying the machines would achieve very little, but destroying the criminals who made this situation possible is not! Rise in arms, my brothers and sisters! Defend your homes and your livelihood! Kill those vermin, destroy their homes, invade their offices! They cannot fight back because they're cowardly and weak! The government cannot fight us all! IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND BEAUTIFUL, KILL THE COMPUTER NERDS!
Don't worry, a nice juicy bubble poppage will probably fix it all, at least for a few years.
Table-ized A.I.
San Fran is a pretty town but very expensive and not family friendly.
Don't try to project San Fran like it represents the country as a whole. I live in a family friendly town outside New York City with my 4 kids.
Me neighbors all have 2 to 4 kids as well.
This is not news. Why do suburbs even exist? Because people wanted to move out of the city to raise their kids. This has been going on since the 40s, fer chrissakes! What's new is that in the past, people were not *able* to move out of the city because they couldn't afford to buy in the suburbs, or they couldn't afford to commute back to the city for their jobs. Now, the city has become more expensive than the suburbs, while commuting is at least feasible, if not cheap or fun, and more jobs and rentals are in the suburbs. Silicon valley started as a suburb. A distant suburb.
I can definitely tell you the same things could be said about Washington DC. Not only are the housing costs sky high, but even if you want to pretend families living and working in that area are all wealthy enough so that's a non-issue? (And trust me, that would be a poor assumption.) The city itself isn't conducive to having a family at all. You really can't get around easily with an automobile. At best, you're going to have to get REALLY good with tedious parallel parking almost every time you need to go someplace and get used to circling around blocks multiple times, hunting for a space. Most of the time, you're going to have insane traffic gridlock on top of that, ensuring you're late to plenty of doctor's appointments and other things you need to take your kid(s) to. The preferred mode of transit is the Metro system, which is really not workable for a family. It's fine for the couple who has only one kid that's still a baby (though a stroller is going to be a big pain navigating the metro stations and getting it onto and off of crowded metro trains). But if you're like many of us, who have a few kids and/or pre-teens? You're looking at paying full price for each fare for them, and issuing each of them their own metro pass to keep filled with funds. A short trip during "peak" operating hours will set a family of 6 back at least $25 or so, round trip. You could use Uber or a cab, but same problem with it getting expensive quickly.
I think it's a general theme for cities with lots of high income job offerings, really. They cater to the individual employee or contractor working there, and to the idea that they may have a partner (whether business partner or relationship) with them. Once you get married and have kids? You're no longer their core focus, because after all -- you're committed to a lot of other responsibilities besides your work-life at that point.
In the USA, anyway, society has become family-hostile.
It's too expensive to raise kids. It's too expensive to get them into a college.
Society interferes way too much with how you raise kids.
The future looks damned bleak: Global warming for one obvious one, angst about AI and the transition from the current economy, for another. The pervasive government agitprop about terrorism, perverts, and drugs instills an atmosphere of fear an paranoia in the less enlightened (IOW, most everyone.) Few can afford to buy a home (oh, many can go into incredible debt to stay in a home the bank owns if they so choose, but they won't own that home any time soon, and it will stress most of them financially in a very severe fashion.) Privacy isn't quite dead, but it's (at least) in a coma.
Families have changed configuration: few can stay home with the kids, because earnings are insufficient that way.
Oh, and now we have Dear Leader to worry about.
Have kids? Good grief, I'm not even feeling secure about having pets.
If it weren't for the latest tech bubble keeping them afloat, California would be completely screwed.
California has:
* High state income taxes, and overall it's one of the highest taxed states in the country.
* Over $1.3 TRILLION in government debt, much in underfunded public employee union pension obligations.
* A regulatory and legal climate that stifles growth and drives businesses out of the state to lower tax, lower regulation, lower cost states like Texas.
* Schools that are some of the worst in the nation.
* Some of the worst roads in the nation, despite having some of the highest gas taxes in the nation.
* Widening income inequality, driven by coastal elites enacting policies that make it increasingly difficult for the poor and middle class to earn a living in California.
San Francisco is an extreme example of the case, since their land use regulations are even worse than the rest of California, and their rent control policies make it so hard to evict tenants that building owners choose to let properties remain vacant because it's all but impossible to kick a tenant out if you want to sell the property.
People can't afford to live in San Francisco because the city and state governments have made the decisions that make it impossible for them to live there.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Expensive areas to live in don't leave much of a budget for raising kids
Ladies and Gents..
the reality this situation is.
a. live in california, forget your family life. You wont make an appreciable ammount of $ to save away, support your self, and then your family..
b. live close to work, forget a decent home life, too expensive.
c. live outside, long commutes, higher exposure to fatality due to longer commutes.
e. work from home and the cost of doing business gets transfered to the individual.. The amount of power, heating, food consumption, and "home" distraction are all now deflected to the individual without an adjustment in wage to offset the cost..
whats even more crappy about the situation is, that California is now a transient state, where people cannot afford to stay. And because everything is soo xpensive, no way to save up to get out, or something better..
Whom ever is to blame, thanks for developing this sad state of affairs, and to those whom promote it staying in place..
I think the article is talking about 3 different trends as one.
a) The Western economies are structurally biased against children. The cost of raising a middle class child (all inclusive) is about $3m in NPV terms by the time they stop needing to be fully supported. Society clearly covers some of the educational expenses, employers cover some of the medical expenses but parents absorb a huge burden in lost wages and money spent. What societies of asking of parents is too much of a burden. There needs to be more subsidization if we want to maintain a higher birthrate.
b) In America we have had a government policy for a generation of depressing wages, particularly in areas of the economy that impact the bottom half of males. That's resulted in a huge drop off in family formation for the bottom half of the labor pool. With easy and reliable birth control the birthrate has been declining among this demographic drastically.
c) San Fransisco has high rents a good services for singles and thus disproportionately people without children will want to live there. That's causing immigration of singles in and emigration of family people out.
Obviously all 3 hit San Fransisco but I don't see how San Fransisco can itself address (a) or (b).
SF is a tiny city and there is not enough space for everyone to that wants to live there.
It's sad that not everyone can make enough money to live where they want to live, even if their parents were able to live there. But you don't get to inherit some imaginary right to live in a particular place.
The plebs gotta move to the peninsula, south bay, or east bay..
CAPTCHA: disperse
And then you look at other states that are failing
Other states have:
*Taxes that are devastating on people with lower incomes
*Instead of randomly belaboring a single data point, consider the whole picture, including the nastiness of total local government debt
*A regulatory and legal climate that leads to exposure to pollution and injury risks
*Decades old reports with schools that are some of the worst in the nation being hysteria to justify even worse results
*Huge backlogs of road work necessary across the country, and a refusal to pay for it
*Increasing income inequality
*Huge drug problems in rural areas.
I can drop links on you all day, don't pester California or San Francisco when you live in a glass house yourself.
It isn't suprising. They have taken God out of their lives. The irony is the live in a town named after Saint Francis of Assisi
F*ck you asshole, with something hard and sandpapery.....
If [San Francisco] allowed more new housing to be built, along with improving public transportation to accommodate greater demand, these problems would diminish.
I believe the problem can be summed up succinctly:
Many people in San Francisco don't want any new buildings; they say the existing buildings are part of the charm of SF and they worry about sprawl. Some of them even have the idea that building new stuff causes housing costs to go up due to "gentrification".
Many people in San Francisco don't want the cost of housing to go up; they decry the trends where only wealthy people (many of them young technical workers at hot companies like Google) can live in SF, and they complain that the city would be more interesting with more starving artists, poets, musicians, etc. (And many hate the private bus systems offered by companies like Google.)
Take both of the above together, and the people of San Francisco are never going to be happy. Not allowing more building capacity means prices will go up, prices going up means that artists and poets can't afford to live in the city. Protesting against the "Google Buses" does nothing to help any problems and just annoys people.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Because homosexuals don't reproduce?
you are, of course, deliberately obfuscating legal immigrants who come and join the local community, and illegal and fraudulent H1B visa holders who are expatriating the fraction of income that you think is being spent on goods and services.
People who own homes are making a fortune out of this boom.
The only story here is that people who are stupid enough to rent deserve to be displaced when their landlords strike it rich.
Right, because choosing to pay obscene rents over exorbitant is matter of choice rather than ability. Feel free to front thousands of San Franciscans half a mil each so they will no longer be "stupid."
It has been shown that older tech workers adapt and handle new systems better than younger tech workers. They have had to learn how to integrate diverse systems and how to manage less than optimal solutions. This happens with experience. Experience that younger workers don't have. If you want the best workers, it is counterproductive to drive those people away.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Also, San Francisco is NOT silicon valley. It is slowly becoming a bedroom community for silicon valley though, totally bizarre.
Vancouver BC for example is the only school district in British Columbia having a declining rate of school enrollment. Yes it does have to do with the city being completely unaffordable for average people, especially with kids; so they move away. But Vancouver while it chirps about having a great tech sector, it isn't anything like San Fran's and not even as good as other places in Canada. Mainly because they can't attract young workers easily due to the extreme cost of living.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Let's start with the biggest turd in the punchbowl:
Your own link states that is lumping all obligations together, from "state, cities, counties, school districts, community colleges, special districts, agencies and other authorities" and then pretends that is debt owned by the state. Lets get real here - you take the debt owed from every gas station, almond farm, movie studio, and defense contractor, I'd bet a signed, autographed copy of Atlas Wanked that it's going to be a much, much higher figure than $1.3 trillion. ZOMG?? How can California possibly afford capitalism!!!!!
1) Civilization costs money and requires basic services
2) Government provides better services for a fraction of the cost compared to capitalism
You mean you want companies to be free to exploit employees, customers, shareholders, and resources without any measure of restraint.
By Randian design. Step 1: slash public school funding (thanks Reagan!) Step 2: complain that public schools are failing (because you gut their funding, fool) an need to be replaced with privatized charter schools that are worse than the public schools they replaced.
Low taxes have high costs, as does the capitalist belief that public roads should all be built on the public tax dollar, but mass transit needs to be self-funding.
Like when Jerry Brown spent years opposing a real minimum wage increase before finally caving in, when he opposed state single payer (that passed the legislature twice under Arnie), and let college students go on taking it up the ass on tuition. You're finally talking sense!
The best part is that fags are self-correcting. They won't have offspring and will eventually die off as a result.
People living in SF are fantastically rich compared to the rest of the country because the salaries are outrageous. And the salaries are outrageous because the supply of the talent they want is low. Jobs are NOT the problem in SF.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Mexico has a LANGUAGE and culture, which are different from the United States. There are some benefits to uniformity. In the inner city, black people and my white suburb self, both speak the same language, both can appreciate George W. Bush jokes, and the eloquent speeches of Obama, both know the basics of black white relations in the United States, both know the basics of football, and basketball, bitch about the Kardashians, and know what DWB is. Try doing that with a Mexican straight from Mexico.
You seem to have a pretty good handle on whats wrong with your local schools. Have you run for school board to fix this?
1) Washington has some good suburbs.
2) SUVs are great if you have enough people to keep them full. A single parking spot, and toll will accomodate 8 people. The problem is that most people drive an SUV with only one person in it.
You have to be careful not to step on human feces in certain places.
In SF do not lean against a wall until you look first. In multiple visits I have seen homeless people actually shitting against the side of buildings.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's true, there are more small dogs in this city than there are actual human children. It's rather disgusting to see the way that people treat their pets - as if they're actual human babies.
What is really baffling though, is the insane leftist politics that pervades this place. These people are absolutely unhinged in their views - I'm considered to be the insane one for believing that building more housing will not raise prices!
There is great potential here to build tens of thousands of more homes without having to build towers. For example, many of the main streets like Geary west of Van Ness are lined with single-story shops and parking lots which could easily be redeveloped into buildings with a few stories of homes above ground-floor shops, and these streets already have the benefit of being major routes for public transit. Unfortunately though, it can take a decade or longer to get developments approved here as anyone and everyone can lodge an objection to a proposal and it has to be taken seriously no matter how trivial or frivolous it may be!
People like myself who make good money can afford to pay a lot of rent. Believe me, I would much prefer to not have to spend so much of my income on rent, but with a lack of housing I have an ability to pay more than others and so those people are going to lose out. If there were more "luxury" new apartments, I doubt that the rents on them would be as insane as they are today (I have friends who pay $5,500/mo for a new 2bed, 1.5ba apartment) and I would prefer to live in such a place as opposed to the 100+ year-old building I am in now, which would leave it free for someone who can't afford to spend as much as I can.
Do you like poop?
I'm pretty sure families love poop since kids generate so much of it that must be cleaned and/or examined by parents. It doesn't seem like a little extra would be an issue.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Government provides better services for a fraction of the cost compared to capitalism
You are utterly insane and I do NOT want to subscribe to your newsletter.
That statement is so breathtakingly ignorant it boggles the mind. But not too much because believing that titanic lie is why California is the way it is, and is becoming moreso.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lol, just because you despise them does not mean they despise you. I have never met, nor even heard of somebody who claims to have met, a heterophobic person. And yet here you are speaking as if being gay is shorthand for "[despising] a man and woman union". I think it would be far more accurate (yet still far from true) to claim that all straight people despise man-man unions, and despise woman-woman unions unless they get to watch.
So I guess the term "breeder" is a sign of respect? I never knew, I thought it was a pejorative.
breeder
noun
Yes, there are more straights out there (just in sheer numbers) that hate gays than gays hating straights. But a person's sexual orientation is neither a prerequisite nor an excuse for being an asshat.
welcome to idiocracy.
It's very common for people working in the global economy (in this case, the tech portion) to want to live in urban areas. Silicon Valley is a great place to raise a family, the ultimate string of bedroom communities flanked by other bedroom communities. But people ages 25-35 really want to live in urban areas, and besides Seattle, San Francisco is the only place on the US west coast that has that combination of high density and high paying jobs to lure them there. The dating scene in Silicon Valley is sad at best which pushes a lot of singles in to the city.
I don't feel like posting a second time in this thread so I'll say it here, as someone who hasn't started a family yet, I love the city, but once we have children and they're big enough to need their own space, we're going to have to move out of the city. We both have really fantastic jobs, but can only afford a 1 bedroom here, a two or even three bedroom apartment would bankrupt us. Adding a 30 minute commute each way moves us from a 1 bedroom apartment to a 3 or even 4 bedroom house with some semblance of a backyard. I just got back from a ski trip with six other couples, those who still lived in the city and had one child (under 2 years) were looking to move out, the rest already had children and had moved out of the city, or had already fled the city to find housing where they could comfortably raise a family. We're not talking about junior level developers, these were all people in their early to mid 30s, comfortably midway through their careers with household incomes in the $250,000 to $300,000 range. We all want to live here, but we can't find space in good neighborhoods, and we're all looking at ways to keep them out of the SF public school system. SF is on par with 2017 Manhattan prices, but on par with 1977 Manhattan crime and schools. San Francisco is a great place to live, but an awful one to raise a family in.
moox. for a new generation.
Another FAILED liberal city. Enjoy Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Philly, LA, Seattle, and all the other VIOLENT and unwelcoming paradises they've created. And they want to tell the rest of the country how to govern.
I started out my career in Silicon Valley. Beginning around the late 70's, housing costs have skyrocketed. San Francisco is one of the most-expensive places to live in the Bay Area and has been for a very long time.
It's an issue of supply and demand. There is a very short supply of housing (nearly all land has been built on) and the demand due to jobs is very high.
I chose to move out of the Bay Area and move about 120 miles East, while still working in tech. My company saw the high cost of living and decided to build new plants elsewhere where the cost of housing (and living) wasn't so high.
I greatly-improved my standard of living by moving out of the Bay Area.
You can't really blame "tech jobs" for increasing the cost of living. There just isn't enough land to build on. It's already been "built out" so that increases the demand for housing, driving the cost up.
Also, San Francisco is a very bad place to raise children. There is no place for them to safely play. The schools are shit and the general population is rather snotty. The traffic is awful and the drivers are rude and impatient.
I don't know why an adult would want to live there, let alone one with a family.
We both have really fantastic jobs, but can only afford a 1 bedroom here, a two or even three bedroom apartment would bankrupt us.
This is exactly the problem. Property prices are way too high so people can't get enough living space to raise a family. This is due in a great degree to zoning restrictions and the lack of vertical residential all across California. Because of the zoning restrictions people have to move out into the suburbs instead.
Absolutely. That's why all the gays died out long ago.
Yup, this is what happened to Boulder back in the late 90s... Families were replaced by DINKs.. Double Income-No Kids.
Personally, I ponder... why have children in this economy? The median-cost for raising a child has risen well-over the ~ $150K to $245K --personally, I don't agree at all with those numbers, but healthcare and rents are becoming outrageously expensive.
Why not adopt in a climate like this? Oh yeah, because it's insanely difficult to. All I can think about are the children that are going to receive a sub-standard education and, most likely, substandard nutritional input.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
cause they're gay...
And if that's the case, I can see where the number of pregnancies per 1000 couples would be very, very close to zero. And without pregnancies, you aren't going to have births, and without births you aren't going to have babies that grow into school-age children.
In a few years, just image the tax savings.
But what are the advantages of living in a place like SF? It's ok for tourists but to live there and deal with the trash and dirt every day, the horrendous traffic, the awful mass transit, the high prices, etc...
Maybe everyone is turning gay there. Or simply Democrats are making it to expensive for adults to raise kids in California.
Here's how the cycle goes:
1) Gay man comes to San Francisco.
2) Gay man gets job as manager in Silicon Valley.
3) Gay man with no dependents has excess cash.
4) Gay man invests in real estate.
5) San Francisco is owned by gay men.
6) Gay men rent to other gay men.
7) Unit by unit, families replaced by gay men.
Note, the men don't have to be gay. They can just be greedy fucks, or women, or lesbians, or Indians, or Chinese.
What matters is they have come to San Francisco to gut it of value, then go back home, where the money goes farther.
They won't come back, but we're left with the mess.
End result: every bedroom on the San Francisco peninsula can be used to generate at least $1000/month, and if you're a family that rents and your parental units can't generate an extra $1000/month to pay for their children's rooms, tough luck, go to Fresno.
I'm currently 250 miles from San Francisco, with 30 years of experience as a UNIX systems administrator and nobody to work for. Over the past fifteen years I've heard of the same thing happening to literally DOZENS of other families, just in casual conversation - all my friends have all moved away to someplace where they can afford to raise their families, so I don't have any friends left, either.
If I want to work in the Bay Area, I have no choice but to sleep in my car. I can't afford two homes.
Currently I'm on welfare and going back to school.
I am fairly confident that I represent a huge underclass of similar people, all living over 100 miles away from Silicon Valley - driven out, never to return.
But am one time I used to work for AMPEX.
Why does San Francisco now have fewer children per capita than any of America's largest 100 cities?
BECAUSE THEY'RE MOSTLY FAGS AND LEZBOS!!! DUHHH
I think it's a general theme for cities with lots of high income job offerings, really. They cater to the individual employee or contractor working there, and to the idea that they may have a partner (whether business partner or relationship) with them. Once you get married and have kids? You're no longer their core focus, because after all -- you're committed to a lot of other responsibilities besides your work-life at that point.
This is true, but it's not just workers finding family time commitments.
-- It's the fact that most parents would prefer to have a playroom for the kids and a yard or something, rather than a one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartment at a rent rate you can barely afford.
-- It's the fact that most parents find that children completely change their social lives in ways that make cities less essential -- if you're meeting up with friends for a drink or catching some entertainment at a city venue multiple nights per week, city life is great. If most of your nights change to "at home with the kids again" or "playdate at friends' house with their kids again," then being in the center of a city for the nightlife and proximity to such venues becomes less important than having a yard or an extra room (see point above). Hence prioritizing of housing expenses away from "desirable location for adult activities" and more toward "what helps my life most now."
-- EVERYthing is generally more expensive in the city, because other people who work there also generally need the income. That means if you have kids and you need babysitting or daycare or whatever, look at paying 2-3 times (or more) what you'd pay for equivalent care outside a city. Same thing for lots of other kids stuff. (And your budget is already taking a major hit with kids to begin with.)
Etc., etc.
It's thus no mystery that middle-class (and upper middle class) folks mostly flee to the suburbs when they have kids.
San Francisco may be worse in terms of expectations for "work-life balance" than many other cities, but the basic dynamics of "family living is cheaper and easier outside big city centers" is pretty much the case everywhere. Sure, some people decide to "make it work" because they love city life and still see it as a priority. Others just have a big enough income that the skyrocketing costs of having kids doesn't impact them in terms of finding a larger living space, etc.
Piece of advice for people really looking for settling down, but will miss "city life" -- look for a job in a mid-size or smaller city. Lots of smaller cities have their own character, so it can be hard to find what you want. Yes, it won't be like "the big city" and yes the job opportunities won't be as numerous (or as lucrative), but the decreased cost of living will likely already solve the latter issue. And you might at least be able to have some place for the kids to play AND be close to work AND not have to plan over an hour of commute each way to enjoy a decent "night out."
California/Silicon Valley government has made it simultaneously illegal for folks of ordinary means to access new housing (NIMBY) and to support themselves (for example it's against regulations to cook food at home and sell it to neighbors). At the same time, tech corporations pay very little taxes as for some insane (likely lobbyist-driven) risen, Prop 13 that was intended to help grandma applies to commercial real estate.
So we have a handful of tech corporations and thousands of young single employees in tiny studios living among crumbling infrastructure and Democratic party officials wondering why they lost on national arena.
I've not yet once had the urge to have kids.
I love hedonism and kids are antithetical to that. Kids are a financial burden. Kids are time consuming. Kids are nothing I want anything to do with...
I never see parents and think, "that looks fun." I do see drugs and sex and quite often say "yes, please."
People need to stop over analyzing it. People don't want kids because they don't need them they're happy enough as is. We aren't the idiot generations before us who thought, or were brainwashed into thinking, marriage and kids were the end all be all of happiness. We don't need em for the "farm" anymore either.
Finally, life is difficult. Why would I want to selfishly bring another creature into the world so it can needlessly suffer?
If you require dedicated parking for every single business you need to attend, then no city worth living is going to be conductive to having a family. My feeling is exactly the opposite. I used to live (with my small family) in a city in UK where parking was hell, but buses were OK and cycling was good. Now I've moved to a city in Canada, where every shitty convenience store has a huge parking space. You can see very few people walking and even fewer people cycling. The city is lifeless, even for Christmas they didn't bother to decorate the centre a bit. But hey, everyone can park their pick up track, what more do people want, right?
In other words, there isn't a particularly high proportion of gay people in SF.
And there isn't a particularly high proportion of gambling in Vegas.
Sure.
You have to be careful not to step on human feces in certain places.
In SF do not lean against a wall until you look first. In multiple visits I have seen homeless people actually shitting against the side of buildings.
These are not homeless. They are residents shitting on either municipal or tech companies property as a form of protest.
LOL I see more straight people bragging about their DINK lifestyle and mocking "breeders" for being tied down with an expensive kid or two, than I see homosexual people using the term.
I grew up in SF, but left in the 1970s. Worked there (with 2-3 hr commute) some time later, for a short time. But not in recent years.
The gridlock ... was in DC for some business, getting out of meetings at about 4:30 PM. Hotel was about a mile away on one of the major streets. Took a while to get across the main street so I could proceed, but then I far outsped the traffic without even trying hard. Once I passed a car, it *might* catch up to me at the next signal, but not after that. Except for the taxis screaming around the side streets of course. Nearly as bad on another trip to some meetings in Georgetown. Frankly, outside of downtown and the Mission St. corridor, SF usually isn't as bad as what I saw in DC. And the DC Metro, with all its faults, is crowded all day not just at commute times - it's the only relatively reliable way to get around for trips that are more than convenient walking distance.
The people who proclaim the death of the 'burbs are, I think, anti-family in general. The 'burbs will stick around, especially those that have some kind of decent transit connection (usually rail) to the job centers, as places for families. Have already seen that in several places in California. It's just that they've moved way beyond anyplace in the central Bay Area.
But the Bay Area is just over the top, with far too many jobs for the potential housing given natural, transportation, and cultural conditions. SF is dense, and the older parts of Oakland and Berkeley not bad, but the rest of the area isn't and won't ever be. The warehousing and (to the limited extent any still exist) factories long ago moved to the Central Valley where land is still relatively cheap, though the freeway connections are pretty much ridiculous for reliable trucking. Drive-til-you-qualify has forced considerable change on Valley towns that are within a couple of hours' of the Bay Area, and there are fairly successful commuter trains from Stockton to Santa Clara/San Jose (2+ hour ride) and Sacramento to Oakland (2 hours+another hour to San Jose) - standing room at times. So things are spreading out; just not within the formal confines of the Bay Area, and not with reasonable commutes.
San Francisco is driving families out of San Francisco.
Regarding new buildings, of housing or biz. ..and, I'm saving the best/worst for last. Earthquakes. Some of the worst damage and fires in the 1989 earthquake, was in real estate created by filling in part of the bay--such land fill tends to "liquefy." Liquefying land likes to damage buildings on it, or they sink and droop, and it also ruptures natural gas lines. This caused some of the worst fires in the 1989 quake. It also damaged the water supply--fire hydrants were dry in a lot of areas.
Someone above wrote " the only place to build is up." Of course that is not 100% fact, but it is an issue or possibility (building up).
One possibility is filing in more of the San Francisco Bay to create more land. A lot of that has already been done, the populace and governments are now in a very strong mood to not do any more of that. And see below for another downside.
There are finite parcels of land in SF. But a large part of it is one story buildings, or parcels where taller building could go up.
This runs into other issues: crowding, pre-existing older narrow streets and traffic crowding of more people going to more housing and businesses up in the air, supplying utilities-electricity, water, natural gas sewage.
In Pasadena, CA, circa 1980 a couple of 10 story buildings went up in a neighborhood of one story buildings, even residential housing. Due to a lack of firm implementation of upgrades (aka doing it right), when the city increased the water pressure in the neighborhood to service the new buildings, it blew out plumbing in some local houses.
Up to a point/height, modern skyscrapers do better than many older buildings in earthquakes. (You really would be better off in a decent one story stucco house). But during severe quakes, well, you don't want to be on the 20th floor being flung like a rag doll as building sways quickly back and forth*. Or on the ground outside where falling glass from skyscrapers injured and maybe killed someone in the 1989 quake. (Going by memory, one woman had a hand amputated by falling glass, and I vaguely think I remember someone was killed by falling glass).
And a much stronger quake will almost certainly occur in the future.
Anyway, anyone building anything is SF, or NY, or Hong Kong, financially cannot build to meet the needs of middle class wage earners.
*I admit to exaggerating. There is earthquake anti-sway technology for skyscrapers. It makes the walk down 20 stories more enjoyable as fewer people will be getting 'seasick.'
95% of all building permits in SF were denied last year
I'm not disagreeing with the theme of your post, but a question about the building permits: does that mean that 95% of applicants didn't build, or that 95% of applicants needed some kind of zoning relief or design review, and some fraction of that 95% did in fact build after a process that was more thorough, more expensive, more challenging, and more inclusive of the opinion of abutters? I'm not arguing good or bad, just curious about the facts. Where I live, most building permits are initially denied, but most of the applicants eventually build their structure anyway, albeit with closer oversight than they would have had they been able to build "by right."
Support a few technologists in Washington.
All of my friends from Elementary through High School have left the state in the last 5 years. My parent's, who are now retiring, are also planning to leave the state. Most of them have moved to Oregon, and a few to other states like Colorado and Arizona. It's not the cost of living as they all owned their own homes prior to leaving, it's the terrible schools, traffic, and increase in violence. They want their kids to grow up with the same safety and outdoor life they grew up with themselves. Personally, I moved to Northern Illinois almost 10 years ago for the same reason and have zero desire to ever move back. I'm always depressed when I visit California now, every place I used to go to as a kid has been torn down and replaced with condos or apartments. The last time I visited my Elementary School a kid tried to murder a teach with a butcher knife. That was in Santa Clara, CA, the "heart" of Silicon Valley.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
So, move and add 3 hours of commuting to the day, at the end of which I still have to find parking, or make it 4.5 hours on the bus. Great Idea
We both have really fantastic jobs, but ...
The jobs aren't that fantastic if it doesn't pay you enough to live where and how you want.
I mentioned cities just next door. Oakland would be rough thanks to the McArthur Maze and the way some 8 lanes change into 3, but from Daly City or Brisbane, there are 3 ways of getting into the city - 280, 101 and El Camino Real/San Jose St
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
I was born in SF (1967). My parents were poor, and we lived in an crappy apartment building on Geary, about 2 blocks from Ocean Beach; there is no way we could have afforded to live there today.
SF is one of the most gay cities in the US, and gays mostly don't have kids.
Housing and land-use policies make housing unnaturally expensive. A lot of unfortunate things follow from that.
Increasing your household size by 50 or 100%, by having a kid or two, is a lot less practical in such places.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.