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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."
As an east coaster who tries to minimize the amount of time I am near the west coast of the US, I can say: THIS!
During my business trips to San Francisco I think there were more gay people than straight people. I constantly got propositioned by gay men every day there. It was very annoying.
And rights aside, gay men can not make a baby. They can adopt one but that doesn't increase the population of children.
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?
Housing prices in the bay area are insanely high, due to the hostility of the local governments to new construction and rental conversion. The supply is absurdly restricted.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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
Bay Area property tax revenue has been going up quite well.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Bay-Area-property-tax-assessments-on-a-roll-834918
Don't forget that under prop 13 the property tax on a unit is reassessed based on the sale price when it exchanges hands or a newly built unit is sold. With the current housing boom/bubble going on that means quite a large increase in tax revenue.
There's really no excuse for the city of SF to have budget problems except for the greed of its own politicians. In San Francisco there are homeless everywhere. Just like 20 years ago. You have to be careful not to step on human feces in certain places. Yet the city's budget states that $241 million dollars was spent on its homeless problem in 2016. Nearly a quarter of a billion dollars! San Francisco employees 30,000 city workers in a city with 837,000 people. In 1970 the number of city workers was 15,000 serving a population of 714,000. The current ratio is outrageous, especially to people living in the city who wonder what's the result of having all these employees when the streets are filled with trash. The argument as to why SF city worker compensation is so high is that today's city employees are trained in specializations. That's a fair argument. Yet why does the city need twice as many employees for a population that's only 15% greater than it was over 45 years ago? When modern technology has brought more automation in that time and not less? Half of SF's budget goes to its employees.
My question for you is - why should the rest of California's home owners have to pay with the repeal of prop 13 because San Francisco decided(through its residents who keep voting for this type of government) to run its own socialism experiment?
A mixture of both, I think. When techies lower the bar for what 'shelter' means, and live 8 people to one 2 bedroom apartment each paying $2k a month, it makes it that much more difficult for a family of 3 to get a place of their own. We were paying 2300/month for a 1 bedroom, which is really great because of 10 years of rent control but not great when you need the kid to have their own room. After we left they renovated the place, turned the living room in to two bedrooms and split the bedroom in to 2 for a total of 4 bedrooms, and rented it out for $6500/month A 700 sqft 4 bedroom apartment. We can't compete with that willingness to live so tightly packed.
I've been to San Francisco many, many times over the last 30 years and I've never understood why so many people want to live there. It's crowded, noisy, and expensive.
If I had to guess why so many people want to live there I'd have to say it's because they've been told that "everyone wants to live there" - that it's the cool place to be.
As far as I'm concerned it's one of the most expensive and impractical places to live that I've ever seen (and I've traveled the US extensively).
Yes, the weather is generally nice, but there are quite a few places with nice weather. Yes they have a good nightlife and culture, but so do lots of other places.
FFS, San Francisco is not the center of the universe. If you feel some dire need to live in a place with a reputation for being trendy and popular, be prepared to pay out the ass for it.
Most of the people living in craptastic little studio apartments in San Francisco are paying double what my house payment is, sometimes triple. I hope that whatever you're getting for that money is worth it.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
That's kind of the point of freedom of movement, isn't it? As more people want to move into a place, the place gets more crowded and prices rise. When people want to move out of a place, home prices go down. When San Francisco is incredibly attractive, the prices skyrocket to balance things out.
I don't live in San Francisco, but my employer is based there, so I visit it a few times a year. Having been raised in Europe, if anything, I find it not crowded enough: It'd be a far more enjoyable city if it had less single family homes, and if the concept of an office building without dedicating its first floor to stores was borderline insane.
If it wasn't for the price, I'd move to San Francisco in a nanosecond. But I'd much rather get the same salary in a place where a four bedroom house is $200K instead of 2 Million. But that's the price of living in a cultural center vs the middle of nowhere.
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.
Those people don't actually work in SF. Instead that is their bedroom community, and they commute an hour to work sound near San Jose. The reason Google has buses up there is because so many of their special snowflake workers live up there. Never mind that they're stepping over homeless people sleeping on their steps, they just can't even start to imagine living somewhere else. At least in Manhattan it has a lot of jobs for people who live there and commute there, but in San Francisco they commute to other cities to work.