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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.
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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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?
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.
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?
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
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.
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.