Slashdot Mirror
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.
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).
ERROR: Null
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.
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 get so tired of this shit getting pulled out. Prop 13 was passed over 40 years ago. If the state can't figure out how to live within it's means in 40 years the problem ain't not letting it raise taxes enough to force retirees out of houses they've lived in their entire lives.
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.
Expensive areas to live in don't leave much of a budget for raising kids
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