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San Francisco's Rent Hits a New Peak of $3,690, Highest in the US (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The median rent for a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco has reached a new peak of $3,690, according to survey data from Zumper, a home and apartment rental app. That's also a rise of nearly 9 percent from the same time last year, the survey found. Not only are those figures high enough to make your bank account cringe, but they're also nearly 30 percent higher than New York City and more than double the prices in Miami. Seattle, home to Amazon and Microsoft, rang in at $1,970 and Washington, DC, hit $2,150.
Oh, and by the way, while San Francisco's prices rose, the median price of one bedroom apartments across the US dropped nearly half a percent during this same time. That means while San Francisco's prices climbed, the country's prices fell. "Though there may be a ton of cash flowing through the city and surrounding areas soon, many of these workers will not immediately invest in a home and may, instead, take their money to both travel and upgrade their rental situation," Zumper wrote in a blog post Thursday.
Oh, and by the way, while San Francisco's prices rose, the median price of one bedroom apartments across the US dropped nearly half a percent during this same time. That means while San Francisco's prices climbed, the country's prices fell. "Though there may be a ton of cash flowing through the city and surrounding areas soon, many of these workers will not immediately invest in a home and may, instead, take their money to both travel and upgrade their rental situation," Zumper wrote in a blog post Thursday.
$3,690 USD? As in three thousand, six hundred and ninety U.S. dollars in *rent*, *per month*?!
This is not a case of free market failure. This is a case of local government putting restrictions on building affordable housing. You got the NIMBY part correct, though.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
If your tech company cannot support remote work in the year 2019, then you're working for the wrong damn tech company.
There's only one way you're going to get prices to revert to semi-reasonable levels in the Bay area; stop feeding that fucking stupidity.
I suspect a bubble or two will pop and rents will be almost normal again. For example, the revenue received by AI companies does not justify the investment money pouring into them compared to other industry returns. Either they will start spewing forth great products soon, or investors will get a clue and pop the bubble. We are overdue for a general market and economy correction anyhow, AI aside.
Table-ized A.I.
Can we get some english editors in here.
You must be new here.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
If you live in California and pay rent you know what I mean. If I seriously have to consider downgrading my standard of living and look for a sublet somewhere and live out of a single room in someone else's house, then things have gone horribly wrong around here.
and thus people are being forced to live in an increasingly dire situation
No one is forcing tech employees to come to SF and compete with each other to push rents into the stratosphere. I'm not denying the role of SF government in the supply/demand disconnect, but rents would not be where they are if people simply refused to pay that much.
I love this little nugget from the article:
>>Add in the fact that there isn't enough housing to go around, and prices have naturally skyrocketed. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development said last year that a family of four earning up to $117,400 qualified as "low income" in the city.
You got to be kidding me!! That town needs to slide into the ocean. That is nuts! SMH
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Remember the guy who ran for NYC mayor on the sole platform of "The rent is too damn high!" Perhaps he should move San Francisco?
There is a difference. While the former can be just an indication of a healthy economy, the latter can be an indication of an imminent housing crisis.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
... the true scarce resource.
Same thing here in Germany. Prices are rising and there seems no end to it. I expect this to get worse with climate change.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Price goes up, demand decreases. All working as it should.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is not a case of free market failure. This is a case of local government putting restrictions on building affordable housing.
Which is a free market failure, isn't it? Seeing as it, among other things, requires low barriers to entry, which doesn't seem to be satisfied here.
Ezekiel 23:20
I live in Dallas, in a $3,500 square foot house that costs less than $2,000 / month.
As far as jobs go, there are a lot of big companies here. A lot of aerospace, technology, financial services ...
I'm not in management, I'm a techie, and earn well into six figures.
Of course, here in Dallas they build based on need. When prices went up for a few years 2014-2018, they built like crazy, which kept prices under control. You don't have local and state government saying nobody is allowed to build any housing.
I work in IT in California and pay $1300 a month on my 4 bedroom house.
California is a big state of which San Francisco is only a small part.
We need to stop making homes an investment, but a place to live.
There are too many people who are worried about their homes resell value, because of something being built. Like Low cost housing, As well too many people buying multi-family homes and not living there, but only use them for investment purposes.
If not build more, at least fix the driving conditions so people can commute from cheaper areas easier, or California based companies, allows for more work from home options.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Likewise, it’s in the people of San Francisco’s right to keep San Francisco from turning into a concrete jungle. God knows no one is moving there for the weather. San Francisco is “cool” BECAUSE the old architecture has been preserved, BECAUSE there a large immigrant, artist and gay communities. Tech, like all temporarily concentrated and wealthy industries is destroying(or attempting to) the very thing they love, with money. Like many neighborhoods in New York, someday it’ll be a jungle of dated high rise luxury apartments and a few houses and museums in remembrance of the vibrant low income communities that made that area famous enough to attract the attention of the wealthy.
When you say Central America, do you mean e.g. Nicaragua?
or do you mean e.g. Kansas?
Just asking...
NIMBY means there's not a free market; governments are preventing the market from operating.
As the rent goes up, it becomes a lucrative business deal to buy up properties, demolish what's there, and build housing. That's what a free market would lead to, but that's not allowed to happen.
Calling it "the government" just hides the blame. Existing property owners are blocking new construction. And no wonder: the value of their property skyrockets thereby.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Or perhaps the companies can pay a wage to their employees that covers the cost of living for the area they live? If they can't do that, then they don't really deserve to be in business.
This space unintentionally left blank.
but rents would not be where they are if people simply refused to pay that much
That's like saying the sky would be pink if it was pink.
This is why you don't ask a bunch of basement dwelling nerds about economics.
SF has been the realm of the idle rich for _many_decades_. It's not like the poors were able to spend $3k/month a few years ago.
There are many reasons why people like SF. The Chinese are superstitious, SF has awesome Fungsi, that's not going to change. They're not there for the (turd burglary/artsy fartsy reasons) in the first place.
What makes SF and Manhattan so strong for entertainment? People with money being served, same as London and Paris.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"This is how it's _supposed_ to work."
No it's not. How it is supposed to work is that when rental prices start to spike in a community developers see the increasing profit potential of an area and increase development. It's classic supply and demand economics and is literally how all of our major cities formed.
What is happening in San Francisco (and in many parts of California) is that supply isn't being allowed to increase or increase fast enough by local government. The biggest offender is the valley but their problem has become so severe (with a modest single family homes selling for over a million) that it's spilling over and exacerbating already existing problems in places like San Francisco and beyond.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Something is out of whack; there are empty houses in the Rust Belt, yet not enough housing in CA. Whenever an industry fades, we throw entire communities under the bus, to be burned at the Altar of Capitalism. We don't just punish individuals for picking the wrong industry at the wrong time, we punish entire regions. Is there no way to rebalance the Country? Should we "just accept" this silliness?
Table-ized A.I.
How is anyone forced to live there?
If you can afford that rent, you can afford a bus ticket out of there.
And that's EXACTLY what's happening. Folks are leaving both the cities AND the state because it's too expensive to live there. They are heading to places where the cost of living is lower. Places like Texas, Florida and other places where an $800K house isn't a two bedroom shack.
Wait, so people are moving away in droves, and prices continue to rise! That's crazy! It goes against pretty much everything written about supply and demand! Imagine how much apartments will cost when EVERYONE has moved away!
This is the danger of making cities overly attractive AND making it hard or expensive for builders to build. Quality of life is great but not planning for infrastructure and taking the people who currently live in these cities in account (as in how they won't be able to afford to live life if people start/keep moving in on them) is a disaster like this waiting to happen. Just like its happening where I am.
Then, people / companies from expensive cities start taking their money and buying up real estate in cheaper cities, jacking up prices there and messing up the infrastructure in those cities who are not prepared for the population growth... Where I am California is moving here to get away from their "expensive cities" jacking up prices here... locals are tired of it.. Now people who have lived in the cheaper cities can barely afford to rent, let alone get a home in the future. In my opinion the expensive cities are a plague on other cities receiving their refugees. It seems to cause a chain reaction.
People / cities do not think about the full consequences of their "I/we want(s)" that lead to this attractiveness. There should be a large infrastructure tax you are required to pay based on the offset of the cost of living from where you come from to where you are moving... When someone tries to move to a cheaper market that tax would go toward that cheaper market to help build infrastructure / housing.
Question remains, how do the cities like SF fix this problem? Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to further promote or allow population growth without making reasonable plans to make more structures for living?
Time to pay up, people.
If you are being unfairly compensated, Maybe it's time to switch places of employment.
We ARE in a seller's market for labor these days. I suggest you take advantage of the market.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"SF is surrounded by water, Dallas is surrounded by shit. Shit is easier to build on."
Building "out" is hardly the only option for growth for a community. San Francisco has plenty of vertical space to build into. ...And before people claim "no" because of earthquakes, tall buildings can be safely built in earth quake zones. Japan and many other countries have a long, safe history of doing so.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
There is nowhere in the city left to build, you have to knock something down to put something else up there.
Every dense city in the world is this way. In most places, this happens routinely. When I was in Seattle, I could consistently see 14 high-rise construction cranes out the break room window. As one building would finish, another would start. There were always 30 or so mid- and high-rises going up, replacing shorter buildings. When I visited London, it was that on steroids: construction cranes as far as the eye could see.
So obviously there's NIMBY type stuff in every city
Yes, but it's extreme in SF. Seattle's mayor was proud that "we're not going to be SF": the city would work to enable new projects, not work to block them. Both very liberal west-coast US cities with similar values, but one wants growth and the other doesn't.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Can we get some english editors in here.
Well, if you want to volunteer, have at it...
I would suggest that you avoid making English and grammar mistakes of your own.... Like capitalization of proper nouns like "English" and proper punctuation when completing an interrogative sentence ("?").
And I'm just a lowly EE who cannot spell very well and didn't like English classes at all..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It's the location that is expensive, not the building materials. I thought that was pretty clear to everyone...
There's a desperate need in some circles to make California sound like a third world country. I think it's a bit of the good-old fashioned penis envy. California is one of the largest economies on the planet, and folks living in a lot of Red States just have never been able to deal with the fact that a state can by and large be democrat and liberal, and actually have an economy of such significance that it outguns most of the Red States combined.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I left the Midwest because - like this week - it will be -30 degrees. F*ck that. I'm in Seattle...
You moved to Seattle for the weather? The last time I was there it was late summer, I had to wear a jacket, the sky was perpetually overcast, and the mountains still had passes closed with 7 feet of snow. Now, eastern Washington had some amazing weather and was actually pretty.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Yes, something is out of whack. The economy is going strong but only at Wall St area and Silicon Valley. Everyone in between is declining. PBS documentary highlighted Dayton OH where population has dropped 50% what it used to be back in the days, manufacturing including NCR have offshored, downtown is modern but ***no traffic***, coroner's office getting overloaded with bodies from drug overdoses, people that are still there making much less and no benefits like they had before.
Yep, same place where Trump said in 2016 "don't sell your home and move" [I'll bring good jobs back] and Hillary completely ignored these areas on her campaign.
Getting back to Silicon Valley, it gets creepy seeing phenomenal wealth at same time increasing "development" of tent cities.
mfwright@batnet.com
Austin always sucked, you've just grown up and can't stand the fucking posers anymore.
They were never cool, you just thought they were, now you see what they've always been ('they can get the same vibe just about anywhere').
Abe Simpson said it best. Everybody 'gets over' being 'hip and withit', realizes it's phony bullshit and always was.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I used to live in Austin, quaint place in the 90's... I didn't like it and moved out as soon as I could... Horrible traffic, weird people, really weird, and already too expensive. I see how some would like it, but it just wasn't for me.
I see the current revitalization of the areas around the river and new convention center as an improvement myself. They really needed to knock down the weird factor a bit and that sure helped. I get that some of the stranger stuff has died out and it's more of a posh swanky kind of weird now, but I like it better this way, given I have money now and can afford the swanky thing if I want.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The Insane Battle To Sabotage a New Apartment Building Explains San Francisco's Housing Crisis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Bad Laws Cause Homeless Crisis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Theres so many more, that was just a quick search of history.
hehe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Imagine, one side of the building has an automated robotic system that, picks up a shipping container housing unit, from a truck waiting below the building & carries it & inserts it into any target slot in the building, or does the opposite, whenever needed!
(& imagine, the building itself (of any size) is also build from standard design parts, just like LEGO!)
I saw that movie! The part where it all fell over was cool. And of course it would - someone would save 50 cents per bolt and falsify the records to meet code, and be long gone when it mattered.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I don't see a problem. There are other places to live. I don't have urban problems because I refuse to live in a city. I planned my career to avoid them.
If you're smart enough to succeed, you're smart enough to succeed elsewhere. You cannot have affordable housing in many cities. Understand what you cannot have then focus on what you can accomplish.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Here's the official map of SF zoning (PDF) (linked from here). You see the deepest of dark red on that map? That's labeled as a 500 ft height limit, which is a bit short for a new tower, but not completely unreasonable. See the entire rest of the island except for those handful of plots? Those are places where the zoning commission has decided that building to a reasonable height is forbidden.
The free market puts the poors where they belong, at the far end of BART.
Nobody in their right mind builds new slums. You build new high end and existing inventory tinkles down. As always, sucks to be poor, sucks worse to be poor and be waiting for someone else to do something about it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
And they can keep their significant economy.
What good is making more money than red states when 1 bedroom apartments costs $3,690? That is more than 3 times the cost of apartments in San Antonio. And no, your minimum wage is not 3 times higher than minimum wages in San Antonio.
This is a definitive failure on free market, NOT because of the restriction as you think, but because there is NO REASON whatsoever for the free market to invest in cheap condo for poor folk at a small ROI when they can have a huge ROI with expansive condo. And this is where the free market will always fail.
If you ask a developer whether he'd like to build cheap housing with a 20% ROI or expensive housing with a 30% ROI, his answer will be both. If both are clearly profitable businesses, then there's no reason in the world why developers shouldn't do both... except that there is: Artificial restrictions on the number of building permits.
The "market failure" you cite arises only because the city restricts the amount of building that can be done. Obviously, if the government says you can build only one building, you're going to build the most lucrative one you can. But without that restriction, the free market will build housing for all price points down to a floor that is dictated by natural limits (scarcity of land and cost of building higher). But clearly those natural limits are not creating the ultra-high cost in SFO, because other cities (e.g. NYC) are similarly constrained by the amount of available land, and have similar building costs, and yet have much lower rents.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The median rent for a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco has reached a new peak of $3,690
San Francisco needs to immediately implement a rent control ordinance to stop the rent prices from shooting up so much.
You need to stop arguing like a child throwing a tantrum. It's just not appropriate.
U must b knew hear.
Yup, both you and the parent are right. It IS out of whack. But in the US, we've collectively decided that we're a dog-eat-dog country, and we don't let the government intervene to help people (or even regions). It sucks, but wealth concentration is inevitable if you let capitalism go unchecked for long enough.
I think it's a terrible system (or lack of a system), so I vote to change it, and I'm going to continue to vote to change the system until I eventually leave the country for somewhere more civilized.
I don't respond to AC's.
And they can keep their significant economy.
What good is making more money than red states when 1 bedroom apartments costs $3,690? That is more than 3 times the cost of apartments in San Antonio. And no, your minimum wage is not 3 times higher than minimum wages in San Antonio.
Minimum wage is not enough to pay for a home in the most desirable part of any City. Typically only the most well off live in the most expensive areas. Plenty of Californians CAN afford their mortgage and rent with money left to spare, because the wages are higher (and/or they live out of the most expensive areas).
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The free market puts the poors where they belong, at the far end of BART.
Nobody in their right mind builds new slums. You build new high end and existing inventory tinkles down. As always, sucks to be poor, sucks worse to be poor and be waiting for someone else to do something about it.
I think you meant "trickles down"... but I like "tinkles down" more as it is more accurate- the rich piss on the poor.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The last time I was there it was late summer, I had to wear a jacket, the sky was perpetually overcast, and the mountains still had passes closed with 7 feet of snow.
That must have been quite a while ago - last ice-age maybe? Mid-late summer is near perfect in Seattle, and there would be absolutely no snow in the passes at that time of year. I live here, and I don't like (more accurately, hate) the weather for 9 months of the year. But those three summer months are spectacular.
I typed what I meant.
The poors are 'on fire', they should be grateful they get pissed on
The point remains, nobody in their right mind will purpose build a slum. Slums are the luxury housing of 1910, and that works.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You REALLY need to grow up. Also, it's apparent you know little about this. The house may cost $2 million, and the materials and labor only cost $400k, but that doesn't mean the the remainder was profit for the developer. There is a huge LAND COST in this area. Empty lots zoned for a single family home with a permit to build can cost $1m plus, just for an empty lot. The LANDOWNERS are raking in the money here, not the housing developers. Many developers are only modestly profitable, whereas many homeowners in outlying areas bought their home for 200k (in 2019 $) decades ago and sell it now for $1.4m. They are selling the LOT for $1.4m; the house sometimes has zero value and will be demolished and reconstructed.
Once you have 'clients' you will never go back to 'job'.
You might understand, once you get your first job.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If you don't have anything to point to, fuck off and die having lost the argument. The system works.
For values of "works" exceeding $3500/month for one bedroom.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Is that why California ranks almost dead-bottom for education and bottom for poverty level?
As much as I hate Cali: educational results can usually be explained by demographics, and Cali is no exception. This is especially true of states with a sizable ESL population: you're never going to get the same statistical educational outcomes from native English speakers and those who enter the educational system not speaking English.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Wasn't Google working on building a giant floating barge with office space in San Francisco's harbor in order to get around these insane housing prices? What ever happened to that idea?
regular people are moving away. The influx is from the ultra-rich and the ultra-poor. This is why you have $4000 apartments on a street filled with human poop.
Wait, so people are moving away in droves, and prices continue to rise! That's crazy!
As Yogi Bera once said "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded!".
Nobody builds new slums. When it's time to doze, they aren't going to build crackhouses. Duh.
Poors get whatever is leftover, sucks to be you, living in clearlake.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Supply and demand. A lot of people want to live here. If you come to California, you will understand.
The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Decatur, Alabama is $599. If you go there, you will understand. As with everything in life, you get what you pay for.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem is that new high-rise apartments are expensive to build and have high operating costs. You aren’t going to be able to build a building for less than $700/Square Foot (SF), which will work out to $3.50/SF in rent, plus you have about $1.5/SF of operating expenses for a total of $5/SF at the lower end. You also have land costs, but they can factor out with enough stories.
So, 6-700SF gets you to $3,690. If you want the cost cut in half you need to either reduce unit size, or dramatically reduce construction cost. The typical approach there is the wood-framed 6-story building, which can be built for around $300/SF, but your land cost in San Francisco basically washes out with the cost savings.
Build more land...
Yep, that's the thing with clients. They sometimes make you wait. But the hourly rate makes up for it.
You've been here for the last two years. Basically non-stop idiocy. Get a McJob.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Prices are rising and there seems no end to it. I expect this to get worse with climate change.
If the Earth is getting warming it would mean a lot of Northern areas that are currently more undesirable to live in would have a better climate.
What that means is vastly more livable land areas than the relatively tiny amount of coast lost fo rising oceans.
If you really think the world is warming the smart move is to buy real estate somewhere overly cold now and reap the benefits later.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Property values fall, venues and stores are sold or just left to rot.
And then the new generation of counter-culture types moves in to places the landlords will give away just to keep them from being squatted and destroyed and they setup their little hand-to-mouth businesses. And with a little luck and perhaps the right confluence of trends, a new quirky little alt-neighborhood will be born again and begin drawing in 20-somethings.
But then they too will age a bit, some will move away, but some will stick around, rehabbing a house or two. Word will get around about the great coffee, interesting food, cool bar, fun bands, and folks will take some interest. Apartment rents will tick up. The houses will get flipped and rehabbed. The long-time industrial business nobody paid attention to will close or have a fire, necessitating it be torn down. A brand new building will be built, attracting a corporate tenant on the ground floor and with "condos" on the top 3 floors. The area will start to feel slightly less quirky and counter-culturery, still drawing in people who want to drink in the bars, but some of the "old timers" will move away.
More new corporate-tenant buildings will be built, and the vibe starts to slip away, held on only by a handful of businesses, probably bars with stages. But then the music scene shifts, the bars close, and before you know it the vibe is gone. Nobody goes there anymore.
Property values fall, venues and stores are sold or just left to rot....
This cycle goes on over and over. There is no permanent trendy area. The boomers kind of made it last longer because of two historical accidents, the demographic bulge and white flight. The demographic bulge gave them numbers and the power of trend and agenda setting. White flight gave them inexpensive urban real estate that hadn't been turned into a ghetto shithole that they could turn into a bohemian wonderland. I'll even throw in punk/alternative music, too, which kind of gave these neighborhoods a cultural lingua franca -- the shit bar for drunks became cool when it began playing live music.
Now most of the bohemian areas have been fully gentrified and the follow-on generations are lacking the numbers and the obvious urban real estate for them to turn into their own version of bohemian paradise. Music and alternative culture are badly fractured, which doesn't help, because nobody wants to go to the same clubs to hear the same music.
If you're smart enough to succeed, you're smart enough to succeed elsewhere.
I don't think that's in doubt. Highly educated people generally can succeed anywhere. The question is, do you want to succeed in the middle of nowhere? Personally, I don't. I like great universities and great museums and great restaurants. All of those things are generally concentrated in and near large cities or metro areas.
I don't respond to AC's.
Silly rabbits, you can't afford to live in a real city.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Is that why California ranks almost dead-bottom for education and bottom for poverty level?
As much as I hate Cali: educational results can usually be explained by demographics, and Cali is no exception. This is especially true of states with a sizable ESL population: you're never going to get the same statistical educational outcomes from native English speakers and those who enter the educational system not speaking English.
Clearly the solution to this is to expand that ESL population via open borders.
No. California out-migration is second-lowest in the nation. Only Texas is lower, which is why that comparison works, but doens't mean anything.
https://medium.com/ca-rising/the-great-migration-myth-bda59595dfa2
I left the Midwest because - like this week - it will be -30 degrees. F*ck that. I'm in Seattle...
You moved to Seattle for the weather? The last time I was there it was late summer, I had to wear a jacket, the sky was perpetually overcast, and the mountains still had passes closed with 7 feet of snow. Now, eastern Washington had some amazing weather and was actually pretty.
No, that was smoke from the massive forest fires. I even uploaded pics - the sun was this hazy orange ball and you couldn't see three blocks away.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Not for the last two years they haven't been.
The forests are burning.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The only poors in SF for the last 50 years have been homeless and 'Hunters Point'. Haight Ashbury was a LONG time ago, and it ended very badly. Hunters Point is gone and good riddance.
Retail workers live at the end of BART, their commute isn't my problem. Market rates for unskilled work in SF will creep up, it's already crept up, just enough to cover rent in Benicia. All as it should work. Even Oakland is becoming a decent neighborhood.
SF isn't even a 'nice place to visit'. The twits can have it, but fuck their complaints. Fuck their claim that 'the gays' made it a good place to live. That's just bullshit, only true for other gays.
SF is just like any other 'high rent douchebaggery'. Manhattan west. Great for finding $300 pre distressed blue jeans, not much use for anything else. This has been true for decades.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I pay $980 for my house which includes property taxes and home owner's insurance without the 36 mile commute.
Yes. That is why proper high-rise buildings have footings that go down to bedrock.
A couple of people poked fun at my stray dollar sign.
Yours was the funniest, imho.
Likewise, it’s in the people of San Francisco’s right to keep San Francisco from turning into a concrete jungle. God knows no one is moving there for the weather. San Francisco is “cool” BECAUSE the old architecture has been preserved, BECAUSE there a large immigrant, artist and gay communities. Tech, like all temporarily concentrated and wealthy industries is destroying(or attempting to) the very thing they love, with money. Like many neighborhoods in New York, someday it’ll be a jungle of dated high rise luxury apartments and a few houses and museums in remembrance of the vibrant low income communities that made that area famous enough to attract the attention of the wealthy.
If SFers choose to do this (ignoring issues of market freedom to build more units) they they should stop whining at the price increases. "Only a few specials a year may enter" is a brutally silly policy.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
California is 18th for poverty rate. Beating Oregon, Texas and every Southern state and most of the Southwest.
For education, California is ranked 26th. Making it pretty typical of the US as a whole.
Well, clearly that's California's solution. And heck, they might be better off for it in 50 years. But I won't be living there in the meantime.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Some European countries seemed to have found a decent balance. Too much either direction seems the real problem. Goldilocks.
Which deity told you that? I wanna talk to her.
Table-ized A.I.
The question is, do you want to succeed in the middle of nowhere? Personally, I don't. I like great universities and great museums and great restaurants. All of those things are generally concentrated in and near large cities or metro areas.
Same. Besides, some parts of the country are not capable of supporting certain industries. For instance, reliable internet is not available in many rural areas. It would be hard to find certain jobs in the first place.
Social mobility is a big promise of the American Dream. For some that's the Great Plains and for others it's the Big Apple. I wouldn't mind moving to Manhattan - allegedly a recruiter promises me I could get a job tomorrow if I made the move up there. However, by the time I could afford to move to Manhattan, I'll have saved up enough money to make a great down payment on a house down South.
Of course, I really want to move somewhere the laws are a little bit *cough* greener.
Humans poop in the streets in NYC, SLC, Miami, Detroit, and every city. What's your point?
Is there no way to rebalance the Country?
Occasionally a region is hit hard by a decline in the industry that supported them (coal mining, automobile manufacturing, etc.), but despite the headlines, those are rare events and are solved by people moving away and finding work elsewhere. And sometimes the region recovers by finding another industry (e.g. Pittsburgh after the steel mills closed). Life goes on.
It takes 4-5 years just to get through the building approval process after you own the land. That's if you actually meet all the restrictive criteria and the neighbors aren't trying too hard to prevent you from building. If you're trying to finance your construction, because of all the delays and the uncertainty involved in each step, that takes an average of four years to get done. Don't even talk about financing purchasing raw land, as you'll be paying interest for years before any hope of a return.
In most other places, it takes maybe 30-60 days to accomplish all of the above, even in other locations many consider slower than they need to be.
So while there is an increased understanding in the bay area what the results of their terrible policies are and some efforts to remediate them, they are a long ways away from not effectively blocking (by discouraging them from even trying, for the most part) an actual expansion of places to live.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
In Seattle, for example, you can apparently get by on $256/SF for a fancy new 40 story condo tower. That's not even in a low-regulatory environment.
Rent costs are primarily supply/demand driven. In the bay area, locals (via their governments) have been severely limiting the supply for a long time, otherwise the higher rents would drive increasing construction until they stabilized at a point closer to the rest of the country (or even State).
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
I'm playing devil's advocate here, so don't jump down my throat.
I've never heard a compelling argument against gentrification. People are displaced, the neighborhood changes... this is what happens when you allow property to be rented.
And it's such a big country, do we really need to pack more and more people into the same places?
Well, to be fair, San Francisco's median income is also double that of San Antonio's, and with the left over, they can still buy a few places in San Antonio on top of their place in San Francisco.
How long is your commute?
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
I know $3500 a month sounds like a horrifying amount to you, but keep in mind the median there takes home over $7000 a month, after taxes.
I fit pretty squarely into the slightly-above-median bracket for SF incomes, living in Seattle paying not much less than their peak in rent.
I'm still shoveling a G or more a month to my family in the midwest, living their high life with their low cost of living, and while people may poop somewhere in the streets around here, the air isn't inundated with the smell of chicken shit, I'm not playing the will-I-get-killed-by-a-tornado-this-year lottery, and oh right- my house doesn't look like what would be a condemned building here. So there's that.
It's different, but I've been on both sides of the comparison. I'll keep the west coast, thanks. I may pay a shit-ton of money to live, but what I have left over is still more than the median take-home income of anyone in the south, and I live better for that.
You're not wrong, you just missed the obvious connection between the government and the people who are the real estate market, in that they're not different people. Is that pure capitalism? Of course not. But then again- that's the fucking problem with capitalism.
So I guess you are not really worried about your carbon footprint as long as you can live somewhere cheap and still make high wages.
What about the carbon footprint of your landlord as they jet around on your fucking stupidly high rent?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
In sane places, you keep rent down to 1/4 of your income. But then, in sane places people don't shit in the streets.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The part you keep missing is my left over is more than their 1/4th.
And I've lived in a lot of cities, including Killeen, TX. People shit in the streets in every city. It does happen more in bigger ones though.
You come across as someone who hasn't been places.
Sorry- their 3/4th
Those who disagree are often called socialists.
and nowadays, labeling someone with the S word can be pretty bad. There was a story about a professor who wrote a book titled "Social Action" or something like that and many students refused to read it because it involves socialism. So does that mean there are people who will not learn social studies or social skills because it may lead to ***gasp*** socialism?
mfwright@batnet.com
When I worked in Silly Valley I kept my rent down to 1/4th my income. The commute was a bitch, but I saved a lot. Then I realized I didn't need to live in such a stupid place, and moved on while not making meaningfully less.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I raise your left wing social science site and see you the California Legislative Analyst Office which claims a loss of 2.5 % of its population in the last 15 years, and growing.
https://lao.ca.gov/laoecontax/article/detail/265
As a matter of fact on line the only source I can find for your contention is the site you mention. Every other source agress California has a negative population growth, even with undocumented counted.
It can happen- there are good salaries to be had in most places... But you have to recognize that the median isn't a lie... High salaries are much easier to be had in Silicon Valley, even if the cost is higher. 6 figure job markets are limited in the cheaper parts of the country.
Also, I'm sure that's not the only appeal to San Francisco. I've been there. It's pretty cool. I like Seattle better, but may I just like dense cities, and you don't....
Either way, the population density of San Francisco makes it hard to deny that people *want to be there*
I left the Midwest because - like this week - it will be -30 degrees. F*ck that. I'm in Seattle...
You moved to Seattle for the weather? The last time I was there it was late summer, I had to wear a jacket, the sky was perpetually overcast, and the mountains still had passes closed with 7 feet of snow. Now, eastern Washington had some amazing weather and was actually pretty.
I moved for the weather. Forget 100+ weather in the summer, -30 wind chill in the winter, and tornados between of the great plains states. Seattle may require a jacket in late summer, but that's pretty much all it requires all winter too. The passes are relatively a long way away and at altitudes that have no bearing on the rest of the Puget Sound sea level area. I also prefer the soothing overcast to the oppressive, blinding sun. Meanwhile, eastern Washington will get you some of that seven feet of snow that is falling on the passes all winter long, and I don't think it's pretty at all. Much rather have the trees, mountains and ocean than blasted plains.
Fair enough; I would add 25% to the $/SF cost for excluding the parking area, and another 30% for the construction cost delta with San Francisco, but it is still lower than what I would have expected even giving something for escalation.
What the hell are you complaining about? That's ridiculously cheap. No wonder you guys have such a low minimum wage.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
It is not as simple as that. In most cases it is not the price of a location per se, but rather permissions to construct a building at the location. Plus an archaic architecture. Nowadays the technology allows constructing multilevel buildings which do not take public place from a community, but rather add it. I mean a building on pillars where couple of first from the ground layers are public space.
Haha that's funny.
On a more serious note, Texas is 800 miles North to South, so you can live where it stays warm or in a cooler climate. Texans live on the coast, and 600 miles from the coast.
The Texas panhandle to Brownsville is as far as Death Valley to Oregon, with nearly as much difference in weather.
That reminds me of when we were kids and my brother got in a huge argument with our cousins. My brother, from Denver, knew for certain the mountains are in the West. My cousins, from New Mexico, knew darn well the mountains are East.