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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."
Part of SF's budget problems can be traced to Prop 13, which limits the increase of property tax when property values increase. So even though property values are through the roof, that doesn't mean much extra revenue.
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.
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.
I've been to San Francisco many times (live 75 miles away) and Chicago only once. So I can't compare them. But what I see going to SF is that it is not a place to raise kids. There is no place for them to play. It mostly completely urbanized - where do you want them to play in the elevator for their tenement? Or give them some money so they can go get stabbed on the awful bus system on their way to an actual park (where they encounter homeless folks shooting up). If you have kids, you want to give them a better environment than SF. I would imagine at least some other highly concentrated cities have problems like these.
stop immigration which is stealing our jobs.
This is the Lump of Labor Fallacy. Immigrants increase the supply of labor, but they also increase the demand for goods and services, and generally do so disproportionately thus reducing unemployment. This is not just economic theory. When Poland joined the EU, nearly every country threw up barriers to Polish laborers. The exceptions were Britain and Sweden. Can you guess which two countries had the greatest reduction in unemployment over the next few years?
If you walk down a street in San Francisco, you will see more brown faces than white, and hear chatter in several languages. It has one of the highest immigrant populations of any major city in America, and one of the lowest unemployment rates.
The notion that immigration causes unemployment is one of those things that is "simple, obvious, and wrong". It is a real shame that the Democrats didn't stand up to Trump on this issue (and many others) and speak the truth. Instead, they just tried to go "stupid-lite" and lost, because you can't out-stupid the Donald.
Belgium didn't put up borders for the Polish workers either
Wrong. Belgium kept barriers in place as long as the EU allowed ... and suffered the negative consequences that you describe for exactly the opposite reasons than you think.
some guy who looked straight out of the village people walked right up to me and said "You're sexy." Sorry -- I consider that a hostile proposition
I consider it a compliment. You sound very insecure.