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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.
Generally have a very low fertility rate.
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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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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 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.
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?
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?
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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.
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
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.
Expensive areas to live in don't leave much of a budget for raising kids
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).
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.