Slashdot Mirror
In Silicon Valley $37K/Year May Mean Public Housing
flanksteak
sent us this U.S. News and World Report
story
about head-shakingly high Silicon Valley housing prices.
A local homeless shelter administrator is
quoted as saying, "We're serving firemen, cops, and
teachers. We even have the human-resource departments of
some of our biggest companies calling us, asking,'Can you
get this employee into your shelter?'"
Nobody that can't afford even modest shelter is OVER paid. It's more a situation of reverse price gouging. Very few people have skills so 'special' that there is nobody else who can do the job.
Employers regularly join various organizations where they discuss what they will pay their employees, why shouldn't employees discuss what they will charge employers?
On the other hand, I DO have to wonder why some of these people don't move somewhere where the cost of living vs. going wages is SANE.
I don't think this is a bubble. Bubbles usually happen when there is a lot of speculation in business property. This drives up prices for business property; the price increases ripple into down-town apartment and condo prices; and finally single-family housing prices rise. The effect on prices is highest for business property and least for single-family houses in suburbia.
In the valley, the exact opposite is happening. The price increases are driven by an influx of people who have very productive jobs and want houses. Housing prices are rising faster than apartment and condo prices, which in turn are rising faster than business property. It will only burst if lots of people decide to leave. That doesn't seem likely, given the productivity and consequent high wages in the region.
I don't doubt that prices will fluctuate. I doubt that they will go down much, or for long, unless there is a really major economic dislocation that affects the whole world.
I still have complaints, but nearly everyone in every job does. It's just our nature.
As far as the cost of living, there are some people who just don't know how to handle their money. I'm twenty-two years-old and live in/near Oregon's own "silicon valley". My cost of living (including paying off my student-loan) is little above fifty-percent of my total income (after taxes).
I found a good deal on an apartment, but I wasn't picky (hey, it has a phone line and a vending machine down the hall, what else do I need?). I also don't drive, so I save the expense of a car (you can get anywhere easily on light-rail or or bus and keep your sanity without dealing with the growing traffic).
While I may have it reasonably well, I know far too many people who are just letting themselves be walked all over. No, they shouldn't build a union (frankly, if their were a high-tech union those who were doing well and wanted to stay on their own would be seriously hurt by it). They should band together, though, on each individual basis. That is, if a particular company is grinding you into the ground, the employees at that company need to do something about it. They need to combine their power to have leverage. If the Autobots just sit around in fear of rocking the boat, the Decepticons win by default.
And that's why I said it's what we deserve. Not because we lack a union, but because we refuse to unite when confronted with those situations.
If people at Company X are happy, they shouldn't, via a union, be expected to stand up and leverage their combined power for employees of Company Z. However, the employees at Company Z should all grow some balls and do something about their situation, collaboratively.
Where one person is disgruntled, there may be ten, twenty, or fifty. If one of them stands and draws the line, management will shrug and just hire someone else. If ten, twenty, or fifty of them made the same demand, they may very well have some leverage.
---
seumas.com
I've actually seen some people move into their Cubes at Netscape. After all, you have everything you need their, Food, Showers, On Sight Laundry - The works. The number of futons underneath the desks there attested to how many people were sleeping there (Thought, this became less frequent in the year leading up to the AOL buyout)
- Any Day above Ground is a good Day (Michael Rich, 1997)
Are you trying to insult us Mississippians? Eh? Eh? Don't make me get my gun (ok, I don't actually own any guns).
shhh... keep this place a secret! I'd like to keep on buying some good land to enjoy over the years... I'm still starting out and want some for myself. The last thing I need is for property values to skyrocket!
(AMA=="Atlanta Metro Area")
(Last I heard, ~20% of Atlanta's 350,000 residents lived in low-income, so maybe Atlanta isn't that different. I haven't heard income statistics for those residents, though; some of them are probably at or below poverty line.)
Someone mentioned $160-200K houses in Atlanta. That's actually Alpharetta, 20+ miles north of Atlanta. Anything inside the Perimeter seem to start at $250, unless there's crime/pollution in the neighborhood, or otherwise detractable situation. Apartments (again, North side), seem to be $900-1200/mo. for a 2BR/2BA.
This is partially conjecture. Y'all Atlanta slashdotters let me know where I'm in leftfield...
The real-estate prices in Atlanta are slightly deceptive, because you cannot live in AMA without a car. Period. I can gripe all day about Atlanta's rapid transit, but to sum up, it's useless. Two and a half train lines, and a spaghetti bus system, all of which extend from downtown outward in spoke fashion. Sounds nice, but the Road is what lines the pockets of the state DOT family, who have no interest in building expensive transit when they can build roads and let the citizens figure out how to get from A to B, while paying taxes on the cars/gas/maint. (the answer is SLOWLY).
From the SV description I see, The main difference is that Atlanta growth is unchecked to the North, East, and West sides, whereas SV has land-use restrictions in place. Still, I consider $90-110K as a minimum for a house. They are running from South and center, like it were a natural boundary.
However, Northside growth is starting to shut down for several reasons...(1) grass roots movement. OK, these folks wouldn't know grass if they tripped in their yard, but you've got a sizeable enough contingent of new residents to put political pressure on the native developers, who are drooling over the possible real-estate fortunes....Example: In the last round of elections, a northern county receiving a lot of this growth elected a "land management" Board of Commisioners to replace the "land development" BoC. So, the lame ducks proceed to rubber-stamp everything they get their hands on. (2) Traffic! For the above reasons, it sucks so bad, we're smogging up every day. That 47 (or 57 ?)mile average daily commute is probably at an average of 20 mph or less, given traffic conditions.
So if construction outward slows down, and moving inward is unpractical, and more companies locate in the north end, we could see property prices crank up a couple of notches. We won't be SV East, but we may have similar effects...
I don't know if I'd live that far away from work, but I did used to commute. I used to work in Overland Park, KS and had a SO in Buckner, MO 55 miles away on I435. I also developed a good relationship with my lawyer who helped me keep my driving record clean, despite getting 5 nasty speeding tickets in one year. That was an expensive girlfriend, but it sure felt worth it at the time. I seem to be repeating history as I keep getting into these long distance relationships...
Auto-Workers wouldn't put up with this, they would have the UAW Union going to bat for them in a heart-beat. And you can be absolutely certain that government employees wouldn't accept this kind of predicament.
I'm not suggesting that Unions are the absolute answer to everything, because they inevitably become corrupt (can you say NEA?). However, they do serve their purpose, and it would be better than making low-wages, working double-hours, and living in low-income housing.
It is confusing sometimes, when you see people who have three children and work at McDonalds, but have a fairly nice apartment, cell phone and a nice late-model car. Meanwhile, a lot of us are struggling to pay our ISP each month (and our connection is a vital part of our employment!).
And for what it's worth, a lot of places are having this problem. Portland and Seattle are horrible. In fact, a house gutted by fire (the roof, two walls, and the entire interior) was just sold for almost a quarter of a million dollars! I also know people who are paying $600/mo for a studio-apartment that is the size of three or four small cubicles, and they feel they have a bargain.
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seumas.com
I'm sick of the hidden racist agenda found in anti-immigrant policies. Do you realize how expensive things like vegetables would be without immigrant labor? Companies hire immigrants either legally or illegally because it's cheaper. This country was founded by immigrants and immigration should not stop. Unless you are a descendant of a actual Native American you have absolutely no reason to complain whatsoever.
The Information Revolution will be fought on the command line.
I recently was terminated from MSN Hotmail... I only made 43.5k working from them, and could hardly afford a 1 bedroom junior apartment (with smaller square footage then most shitty slum-quality studios)...
The sad truth behind this article is that without roommates, living in the bay can virtually be impossible.
I remember my boss yelling at me when requesting 43.5... he wanted to pay me 38k or 33.5k... I mean fuck, I could hardly even afford living with a roommate paying half the bills when we shared a 1 bedroom apartment. (one of us staying in the bedroom, the other staying in the living room.)..
It's a tragedy that managers in the valley consider this acceptable pay for doing junior, mid-level, or senior administration.
And what's the saddest thing of all is that this kind of treatment came from Hotmail. Microsoft. figures. at least i dont work for the man anymore.
I'm muddling through the idea of buying a house here in Southern California. For anyone curious about the market, you might like to visit David's Dream House. And if you don't live in Los Angeles, it might be worth a laugh or two.
As a nice contrast to this, may I recommend The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit?
D
----
"Maybe because my involvement with the true technical part of computer businesses are rather weak, but *why* does everyone have to locate in SV?"
Read Jane Jacobs, _Cities and the Wealth of Nations_, _The Econonmy of Cities_, _Death and Life of Great American Cities_. In particular, C&tWoN goes into this question in some detail.
Essentially, people have always gathered, physically, whereever economic activity was/is hottest. It allows greater commonality of understanding, easier exchange of ideas, faster formation of new businesses. When trade was the key to wealth, Philadelphia, New York, and Boson flourished. When heavy industry was king, Chicago and Detroit. Now technology is the key, so wherever there is a successful center of technology people and businesses will flock. Success breeds success.
I have heard that the average techie stays in a SV job for 14 months. Bad for the HR dept. perhaps, but those people changing jobs are tremendous carriers of information, knowledge, and business capability. Exactly the same thing happened in Cleveland and Chicago during the early machine age: young man apprentices himself to the owner of a machine shop, learns the trade, rents a garage down the street and strikes out on his own. That kind of process can only occur when the cost of changing jobs is low. Telecommuting notwithstanding, that means geographic co-location.
So don't expect a sudden exodus of high tech jobs from SV any time soon. The former headquarters of Spyglass is right across from my building in Champaign, IL, empty and waiting to be rented! While Netscape may be part of the AOL borg, they still exist in SV.
sPh
I live in San Jose and a saw on the new a few weeks back that Santa Clara is now offering "low income housing loans" for people making under $100,000/year. As well, I recall that the richer part of Colorado Springs (or where the host ski spot is), also has low income housing loans for the poor saps making $100K.
What I want to know is, where is the *cheapest* place in the US to live including cost of a T1/cable modem? That's one thing you don't hear much in reports of housing out here. There are hundrededs (well probably not that many) of ISPs here and internet access is cheap because of the competition. Now, I don't think I could live anywhere that leaves me with a modem as my only option.
-- Virtual Windows Project
Here are the corrected ones:
:-(
http://www.amazing.com/david/dream-house/ - David's Dream House
http://www.behere.com/ruins/ - Fabulous Ruins of Detroit.
Sorry
D
----
The sale price of a house is an almost purely fictional value.
No more or less so than any other price. The price of housing, like the price of pork bellies or any other commodity, is just exactly the equilibrium value between supply and demand. Things cost what they cost because that's how much people will pay in order to maximize the profit of the buyer and the seller. There is no more "real" quanitity underlying price. If you want to put it that way, all prices are "almost purely fictional."
So, of course they want to sell it for as much as possible.
Uhm, real estate is not exactly unique in this respect. Where I come from, people who sell things generally do so because they want to make money. When I buy a sandwitch from the deli, they want to sell it for as much as possible. As it turns out, "as much as possible" turns out to be about $4.50, because if they charged any more, the losses from people who don't buy sandwitches will outweigh the gains from the increased price. Ditto real estate. The only difference is that people want a house a LOT more than they want roast beef on sourdough, and that difference in desire maps directly onto an increase in price.
There hasn't been enough of a tangible change in that property to justify it's suddenly increased value.
Yes there has. Silicon Valley has suddenly become a black hole of employment for anyone under 30 with a university education. It's nearly impossible to work in Silicon Valley if you live in New York. Therefore lots of people want to buy houses in S.V. More people want it, therefore it is more valuable. That's all there is to it. If a real estate prices a house at more than it's worth, the agent will get offers that are below the asking price. If the agent won't sell for less than the asking price, the buyers will go buy a house fron another, more reasonable agent, who will soon be much richer than the first one.
You keep referring to "the concrete value" of a thing, as though there really were such a thing, outside of how much people will pay for it. There isn't. Take gold. What is the concrete value of a gold bar? Can a chemist measure it's "concrete value" with the right tools? What are it's units of measure (in metric, of course)? The price of gold has been falling for years. Is there some undocumented physical process going on by which the "concrete value" is seeping out of the world's gold? Of course not. There's no such thing as "concrete value." There's just "value." It's units of measure are Dollars (or Yen or Pounds or Euros or whatever), and the only way to measure value is to try and sell it and see what people will pay.
You're right, liquidating MS would not produce $500 billion in assets if liquidated right now. But so what? The people who are paying for Microsoft stock think it's worth $500 billion, and so it is. Part of their calculation of that value is that Microsoft is extremely unlikely to totally liquidate itself in the near (or even long-term) future. It may be broken up by the courts, but that arguably will not result in the destruction of that much value.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
Does anyone know the economics on constructing modern highrise buildings for a place like Silicon Valley? If the costs of earthquake-proofed tall buildings are not prohibitive, it sure seems that it would be worth it to rezone places to allow highrises with hundreds of apartments/condos, gigabit ethernet connections in every room, with startup-incubators, meeting rooms, etc. for the entrepreneurially inclined in the same building.
What are the obstacles?
Welcome to the dark side of the free market.
It's not like everyone out here is gouging. In fact, it's all too easy to find stories of people putting their house up for sale and receiving offers above the asking price. Interest rates are low, money is plentiful (for the moment), and housing is in very short supply, so prices are high for those units that are available.
Apart from building more houses and easing the space crunch, it's difficult to see how this problem could be addressed. I can assure you rent control will not go over well here. It's also difficult to make the ethical case that some outside agency (government, whatever) should be able to tell people what they can/can't accept for their property.
However, one of the Bay Area's hallmarks is its commitment to open space preservation and well-planned, environmentally sensitive growth. So it's not really possible to plop a couple thousand housing units on a vacant sector of land. One needs only to look at the Los Angeles Metroplex for an example of what happens with unplanned development.
This problem will eventually solve itself as more housing units are built and companies establish remote offices or encourage telecommuting (the advent of the Internet makes this even easier than before). Howver, I think a rather more serious problem needing worrying about is what is going to happen to the banks holding mortgages on these properties when the bubble finally bursts. I'm concerned that property values may fall to as little as half their present level, and banks will be left with X dollars loaned out against collateral worth X/2. About the best we can hope for is that the fall won't be precipitous.
The first speedbump in this roaring market will happen around 1 January, 2000, if for nothing other then purely psychological reasons. If nothing else, it's going to be an interesting ride.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Based on the numbers, stay in Athens!! As usual, the cost of living in SV looks to be more 'adjusted' than pay is :-)
Personally, I'm in Lithonia (next to Stone Mountain).
Here are the corrected ones:
:-(
http://www.amazing.com/david/dream-house/ - David's Dream House
http://www.bhere.com/ruins/ - Fabulous Ruins of Detroit.
Sorry
D
----
"Are you on crack? Have you ever been to Boston? A grid?"
Boston is clearly not a grid. But Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York (somewhat, also clouded by ease of water transport) _are_ all railroad cities. By that I mean that the outer edges of the cities, and the inner ring of suburbs, were developed around commuter railroads in the 1860-1920 period (although oddly enough this pattern continues today in Chicago). As the cities were filled in around the railroads, they naturally developed in patterns that made it possible to live using only public transportation.
Today, although automobiles have been overlaid onto this structure, the underlying pattern still exists. Therefore it is possible to find ways of life that don't involve dependence on the auto. {Disclosure: when I lived in Chicago I owned two cars, but I did 60% of my _commuting_ on public transit. So I am neither a transit fanatic nor a car hater)
If, however, this pattern doesn't exist, it is almost impossible to overlay it on an automobile-based design (modern St. Louis, Atlanta, LA, etc). The infrastructure and patterns of life just aren't there. Plus the zoning laws make it impossible to build "the old way".
Although... I was reading in "Trains" just the other day how development of commuter rail was pushed forward 3-4 years after the last big California earthquake (Loma Preita? I can't remember). New track was laid on abandoned ROW, trainsets borrowed from Toronto, and rail service started in 2 weeks while the rubble was still being cleared from the highway overpasses. So maybe there is some movement for change.
sPh
And the roads are too crowded and narrow in Sunnyvale to ride a bicycle. If you're a mountain biker you can maybe brave the potholes and ramp the sidewalks, but that's pretty dangerous.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
First off, I live in the Valley. Mountain View, to be precise. I used to live in Boston. I've gone from spliting a $1500 1400 sq ft flat to a $1200 600sq ft 1-br. Not alot of fun.
The problem here is a simple one: No space for new housing, and an influx of people. A secondary issue is the massive amount of wealth that has been suddenly created by the Internet IPOs over the last 2 years. It's a simple Adam Smith problem of supply vs. demand (and ability to pay).
As other people have mentioned, there is a heavy commitment to retaining the larger open spaces here for recreation and preservation. And I can't say I'm really sorry about that (it's actually nice to go biking along the San Andreas :-). The result, though, is that the only real places to build, given the geography, are East (Walnut Creek and such) and North (Marin County).
Now we run into the Curse of Silicon Valley: the world's shittiest public transporation system. There are like 6 million people in the Bay Area. Yet, for all practical purposes, you can't ride any public transporation to work. The system is really a conglomeration of about 15 independently run trains, buses, and light rail, none of which are coordinated with eachother, or connect in any sane manner. So you have to drive to work. And there are huge choke points to getting places, which can't really be fixed (like the GG and Bay Bridges). So, living in Marin County and working in Cupertino isn't an option (can we say a 3-4 hour commute?)
Moving from Boston was a harsh blow on this regards. You could actually live 50 miles from work and only have to drive to the local train stop (maybe 1-2 miles) to get into downtown. Hell, the bus/subway system was so good that you could practically get from any point inside of I-95 to any other point inside with only a couple of blocks walking, total.
Don't I wish this was the case here in the Valley.
Until the Bay Area gets it's head out of it's ass and manages to coherently plan and build a regional transit system, the housing prices will get worse. 'Course, the system should make the Big Dig ($10+ Billion) look like chicken feed when it comes to cost. But it's the only way. Too bad it won't happen before I leave.
I'm buying a house this winter. Expect to pay about $.5m for it, and get a lower-middle-class house I'll do work on. Figure to sell it about 2005 and move somewhere else where the housing prices are sane. 'Course, I might just make $100k or more, since prices are climbing about 10% or more per year.
What's the old saying? Takes Money To Make Money?
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
This makes no sense to me. Why would anyone want to live is SoCal and spend four hours a day in traffic?
I live 12 miles from work, it's a 15 minute drive through three towns and one national park. With today's communications infrastructure, it no longer matters where you live. Why live there?
The biggest problem I see is the street layout is "off the grid." In Chicago proper, the streets are straight and laid out at right angles, with few exceptions. It's so easy to drive, well, except for the new fad of double parking. Even when the Edens Expressway was shut down for two years, there wasn't the traffic catastrophe you see in SV. The cars just melted into the grid.
In the western 'burbs, like Arlington Heights and such, the streets are curly-cue like in SV. Multiple massive housing developments dump in one or two eightlane arteries that are ALWAYS choked. There is no way to develop mass transit with these housing patterns.
The phenomema that causes sky-high housing prices is that curly-cue streets, while causing traffic congestion, also cause a low density of housing, which causes a shortage, which drives up prices.
Putting housing and streets on the grid results in a high density of housing, which increases supply and lowers prices.
The best thing about grid layout, though, is you can actually walk to places from your house or apartment. Walk to the park, restaurant, store, whatever. In curly-cue, you drive to the Jewell, then get back on the drag to your next stop. You're just adding to congestion and stress.
For me, the best move was not geographic. It was getting out of towns with messed up streets, and moving back to a place with a rational street layout.
That's almost exactly what happened here in Sweden about
8 years ago.
Many companies thought that investing in real estates was a
good business, so they bought a lot of houses, especially in
the central areas of bigger towns. This increased
interest in real estates led to higher prices, which made more
people think that investing in real estates would be worthwhile,
buying more houses and accelerating the spiral even more.
A lot of companies then started to take expensive loans, using
their allready bought houses as security and the banks were
just all too happy to make even more business.
This sudden demand for new houses made the construction
companies very busy and they had the time of their life. Building
more and more new houses, making more of a profit and
employing more people.
Then, when the companies discovered that there was not
enough demand for their appartments (after all, we're just 9
million citizens) they panicked and tried to sell them
as fast as possible and that way bursting the bubble.
The result was that a lot of these real estate companies and
building companies went bancrupt, spreading chaos in
the economy.
The government had to intervene and shell out loads of
money to prevent the involved banks from going bancrupt,
which otherwise would have wrecked even more havoc to
the economical system.
First, it's understandable that existing businesses aren't going to be moving anytime soon.
It's also understandable that most employees will want to be near a major cities for their cultural/ entertainment needs.
And then there's the factor of being close to other similar business in order to do business with them.
But, as the ad from an IBM commercial above indicates, why not start these startup companies in other tech-savvy areas of the country - Dallas, Houston, Boston, etc.? The internet make nearly all business-related concerns negliable - You can video conference, share code and documents, and a whole bunch of stuff, and rather cheaply too.
IMO, I cannot find pity for the situation save for those 'poor' workers. I was in SF about 2 years ago for a few days, and even then, saw was the Valley's cost of living is. It's a situation that seems to have been let build to this point by the 'high culturites' of SF and those that provide the services of living.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
You people are on top of the world right now. You're making a killing financially. Leave this kind of whining to the NBA.
-LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
So clearly the local zoning boards are happy with the current situation - high prices and all (more fools they). Although if firemen, cops, and teachers can't live there, then the quality of essential services will decline, putting a damper on property values in a most unplesant way (the market will not be denied).
Disclaimer: I don't live anywhere near Silicon Valley - I live in NJ. (But some things are the same all over.)
--
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool
Its no secret that a lot of WC companies are moving more operations to the East Coast. Sun just built a massive facility in Burlington MA. It will eventually hold 2,500. Oracle just announced that its build a new campus in MA for 1,000 people and it will still have a NH campus for about 500 people.
****
"I'd never want to join a club that would have me as a member" - G. Marx
Many of the problems discussed on this page (especially the public transportation issues) could have been anticipated with a couple of runs with Sim City... :)
--
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool
Hey -
Silicon Valley isn't the only place that has high prices on real-estate:
Boston is climbing that ladder too. Right now, the average price per square foot of office space in Boston is higher than Manhattan's. That's saying something. The average 1 bedroom rental is around $800/mo. A lot of this is due to the abolishment of rent control, and the "gentrification" of various neighborhoods.
The prices of homes in the Boston area (all the way out to Rt 128, which encircles the greater Boston area) seem to be at a minimum $300,000. While this in no way compares to the situation in Silicon Valley (a single floor ranch that an older couple sold, went for 2.1 Million), it is indicative of a series of related problems...
1> The sale price of a house is an almost purely fictional value. Think about it - I mean, I know "land appreciates in value" - but does the house as well? Almost anything else you buy depreciates over time. Granted, land is in finite supply - thus it's value will increase as the demand for it increases - but the house on that land should really depreciate, unless it is substancially improved.
2> This increase in price stems from a vested interest on the part of two parties - the owner, and the real-estate agent responsible for selling the property. Keep in mind that the agent gets a percentage cut of the sale price! So, of course they want to sell it for as much as possible.
3> Like the stock market, the real estate market is so over inflated it's incredible. Essentially they are creating money out of nothing. There hasn't been enough of a tangible change in that property to justify it's suddenly increased value. However, when the property changes hands again, the goal is of course to sell it for even more! Thus further inflating it's price without regard to it's actual concrete value.
4> We are, in the age of "information" and as such, we are often concerned more with increasing the value of things rather than the actual worth of things. By value, I mean percieved dollar worth of something. By worth, I mean the tangible concrete value of something.
Look at Microsoft - they are worth over $500 billion - the next closest company is GE, and they are only $300 billion or so. If you liquidated MS - would their assets in any way come close to $500 billion? I know that value is based on their possible future earnings (ignore any possibility of an OS revolution here for a moment) - but do you really think that 5 years from now they'd be worth 500 billion in assets?
Sorry for the rant - but this is something I feel pretty strongly about. The housing situation in some parts of the country is merely a symptom of how far out of whack we've become. Just because someone will pay it doesn't mean you should take it.
- Woodie
You know if you're a redneck if ....
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
... Does that include crack? Or has your mayor smoked it all?
/ rant>
<rant='morons_who_elected_barry.rnt'<ObDCSwipe<
Cheapest place to live has to be Mississippi. The question is, do you want to live there? Not unless you like hunting, fishing, monster trucks, red necks, and shotguns in rear windows. A liking for chewing tobacco can help too (grin).
:-).
Really, the biggest problem with going with a really cheap place like that is one of job diversity. I lived in Louisiana for quite some years (same thing as Mississippi, except with better food, grin), and while I had no problem finding a job, they were all pretty much the same -- specialty software for local conditions (e.g., school administration software to handle Louisiana state laws, accounting software to handle Mississippi rules regarding contractors doing business with the state, etc.), or if you were more of a consultant than developer, you got to install lots of Windows NT LAN's. That gets boring after a while, unless you LIKE wearing suits (because you have to spend a lot of time in meetings with government bureaucrats and businessmen).
I'd suggest going to one of the larger cities that have a reasonable cost of living but are not in the Silicon Valley. It's even better if there's recreation nearby. Atlanta is ok in the Southeast, though the Blue Ridge park is a bit far if you're an outdoors type and there's a few too many "suits" for my tastes. Phoenix, where I live now, has a lot of mountain preserves if you like hiking, plus a national forest (no trees in it though, it's desert!) for longer hikes and water sports (well, there is a river through it, though the dams stop all the water before it gets to Phoenix). Raleigh-Durham? Better have at least a MSCS, it's more of a think-tank type environment than a Silicon Valley-ish startup type environment. Dallas? You can make lots of money in Dallas, but it must be the most boring city on the planet. Dallas is so boring that half of Dallas crosses the border into Louisiana on the weekends to visit the gambling casinos and eat Louisiana food. Austin is great, lots of jobs, lots of outdoors activities nearby, a really rockin' music scene. San Antonio is nice too, though not as much variety in high-tech jobs, and not the same kind of music scene as Austin (still has a good variety though).
Somebody mentioned Jacksonville, Florida. While that's reasonable if you like the beach, it's otherwise a quite forgettable city, and while hurricanes usually diverge northward or southward, it IS on the coast, and hurricanes usually do hit within a few hundred miles of Jacksonville on a regular basis.
Anyhow, I think I managed to insult everybody here (especially Yankees up north, who are probably furious that I didn't mention their favorite ice-shrouded corrupt dirty expensive city in the Rust Belt!), so I'll go now
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Atlanta metro area, new home lower 100,000s
"Eliminate zoning laws, and the price of corrugated steel will skyrocket. A severe shortage of refrigerator boxes would ensue"
I can't agree. You might want to scan through _Crabgrass Frontier_ or _A Pattern Language_ (don't have the authors at hand but both are in print) for a better written discussion than I can provide. But here goes:
Although zoning has many purposes, chief among them is to enforce social conformity and keep "undesirables" out of certain areas. Zoning provisions such as miminum garage/driveway sizes, maximum FAR (floor-area ratio), mimimum lot sizes, mimimum setback provisions are very often designed specifically to keep out "bad" development: row houses, low price houses, apartments, etc. Which just happens to be the type of housing that lower income people can afford.
Even something as subtle as the stair standards in the Uniform Building Code have their affect. The stairway code is dictated largely by the NFPA (fire protection codes and standards). Now, I can understand why firefighters want pitch and headroom restrictions on stairs. But the fact is the UBC stairway code makes it impossible to build an _affordable_ two story house on a reasonably sized lot. If my turn-of-the-century craftsman four square is blown away by a tornado tomorrow, I would not be allowed to rebuild it: there just isn't enough room for the stairs and the setback requirements. Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of these have existed in the Midwest since 1900.
I have a hard time believing that fire fighting requirements are the _only_ reason that is so.
Anyway, that's my rant for today!
sPh
double
raise_rent(double rent)
{
if (no_people > no_homes)
rent *= rent;
return (rent);
}
Christopher Alexander et al are the authors. Fascinating book, but you might be better off starting at his overview, A Timeless Way of Building. Visit Amazon for them, there are some interesting reviews there, too.
I found both books to be compelling reading - I was a little surprised the quality of writing was so high.
D
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