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In Costly Bay Area, Even Six-Figure Salaries Are Considered 'Low Income' (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: In the high-priced Bay Area, even some households that bring in six figures a year can now be considered "low income." That's according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which recently released its 2017 income limits -- a threshold that determines who can qualify for affordable and subsidized housing programs such as Section 8 vouchers. San Francisco and San Mateo counties have the highest limits in the Bay Area -- and among the highest such numbers in the country. A family of four with an income of $105,350 per year is considered "low income." A $65,800 annual income is considered "very low" for a family the same size, and $39,500 is "extremely low." The median income for those areas is $115,300. Other Bay Area counties are not far behind. In Alameda and Contra Costa counties, $80,400 for a family of four is considered low income, while in Santa Clara County, $84,750 is the low-income threshold for a family of four.
Look, 100k/4 = 25k = low salary. Not unusual at all. Similarly if you have 10 children, but only make 200k, your freakin' POOR.
The basic problem is our culture tries to measures wealth by income rather than net worth.
You can not compare the salary of a young, healthy, single orphan with a married couples supporting two sets of sick parents and multiple kids.
We need to reset our definition of wealth to be based on cash, stocks, mutual funds and real estate in the bank. This means the IRS should ignore your salary and base your taxes on what you own. Ignore the stuff in your IRA and give a set amount to ignore (just as we don't take the first 10k of income for a single person). Start it at 1% and gradually raise it to a max of 5% if you have more than a couple million in the bank.
If we did this, we could get rid of most of the complexity of the tax code, because it is all based on not overcharging the poor, which this system does automatically.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If there is an offer to purchase the complex, then perhaps they are aiming to empty it out to some threshold (50%?) in order to evict the remaining tenants and renovate or demolish the building. You might be able to make an inquiry to see if anything has passed through planning, you might be looking at yet another mixed use upscale apartment-retail center like Santana Row, Rivermark, Homewood, Meridian at Midtown, etc.
I suspect a lot are condos being snatched up by foreign investors, yet are unoccupied. Which does smell of a bubble. My hope is that it's foreign investors that get soaked this time and not Bay Area locals.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Or you know, people were born and raised and schooled and have all their family and friends and careers in a place and just would like to not be forced out of it. Like the 30 million or so people, 10% of Americans, who were born in California where the average income may be 20% higher but the average home price is 200% higher. Those tens of millions of people should all just move so far away it may as well be another country -- just like all the poor in the UK should all move to Russia where they can afford to live, right? Population sizes, areas, and distances there are all comparable to California vs midwest.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
For the same reason as the SanFranciscans on high wages are subsidizing Tennessee's shitty economy. Remember - CA is a net contributor to the US economy, it takes out less from the tax pool than it puts in.
Why treat all people in CA as a single unit? Every state has some rich people paying lots of tax, and many more poor people taking more in services than they pay in tax. CA is a magnet for rich people, and its high costs kick out the poor.
If the fact that a group of people pays more in taxes makes them better, then rich people are the best group of people and poor people are the worst. Is that really an argument you wish to make?