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."

Comments

Deliberately missing the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Deliberately missing the forest for the trees

[ShanghaiBill]

Is the economy worse in SF than it is in NYC or Chicago?

No. The problem is exactly the opposite. The economy is booming, driving up demand for housing, and thus prices. A couple living in SF may spend half their income to rent a studio apt. There is no way to afford a place big enough to raise a kid, especially if they want to drop down to one income. So they hop on BART and head out to the suburbs.

The real problem is the stagnation of the housing supply. 95% of all building permits in SF were denied last year, and very few builders even bothered to apply. People that own property in the city see new construction as a threat to their sky high property values, and even renters tend to be knee-jerk anti-growth BANANAs. The people that want to live in SF but can't afford to, don't get a vote.

As a tech worker with kids...

[slk]

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).

Re:As a tech worker with kids...

[CAIMLAS]

It's all of that, yes. But it's also:

* cost of living/price of housing per foot
* food costs are insane
* the culture is hostile to child rearing (even eg. Facebook offer bereavement leave and adoption assistance... but no on-premises childcare? That's standard for many large companies throughout the country.)
* the tax rate is obscene
* the tech work culture is extremely ageist, and anyone over 30 is going to encounter it
* the SF area IT culture actively encourages career instability (which is problematic if you'd ever like to buy a house).

You can make half as much in another locale and have twice the quality of living, if not more, in many other metro areas in the US, working in IT... if you're going to the bay area, you're likely in it to make a mark and a name, not to raise a family.

SF won't address the root of the problem

[steveha]

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.