After recently getting back from Portland, it couldn't be more painfully obvious that the entire problem comes down to housing. They are building new (affordable!) apartments there like nothing I've ever seen. You literally can't walk two or three blocks without seeing a construction crane. And the local culture reflects that. So many business that simply could not exist in SF were thriving due to the cheap labor and plentiful customer base of 20 somethings that can actually afford to live on their own in the city.
BTW, anyone who wants to see more homes and more housing options in Oregon should vocally support HB 2001. Our YIMBY group here in Bend just had a meeting with our state rep about it and it went pretty well. It's a practical, market-based approach to add housing, and add to the diversity of housing.
As exciting as this is to see. It's hard for me to watch Portland change into a different city. I think the hardest aspect right now is the amount of trash that is being thrown aside in the roads, parks, and greenways. I was born and raised in this area and it's been tough for me to witness this beautiful city being treated that way. If you want to help clean up Portland, I strongly recommend volunteering with the SOLVE Organization.
I hope Portland will continue to be a beautiful city for my children to enjoy.
I find this post interesting. I moved out of Portland last year because I was summarily priced out of the city. By "Portland" are you including Gresham/Milwaukie/Beaverton in your estimation?
About seven years ago my friends and I got a 2bd 1.5br apartment for $775 per month in SW Portland. That same apartment is now about double that. In many of the new or renovated buildings you can see a lot of studio apartments with a price floor of $1,300 per month.
Also, little things like a beer that used to cost $2.09 now costs $4.19. What used to be a $4 sandwich is now $7.25, $1.60 tacos went up to about $3. Even prices for stuff like clothing at Goodwill went up significantly over the years that I lived in Portland.
I know this is just my personal experience (and that of my friends), but the genral trend that I saw was an enormous shift to accomodate higher income individuals and families, and an exodus of lower income people all over the place.
It’s also possible that there is such a pent-up demand for housing in San Francisco that no amount of building could realistically do enough to make things truly affordable.
> It’s not my fault she’s gone, that all 12 of them are gone. Normal. People move all the time. Nothing I could have done.
Except allow building more homes. Vote for politicians who'd have allowed building more homes. My guess is, the author has voted against her own interests.
Which one is more important, keeping the "charm" of houses and neighborhoods where you cannot afford to live anyway, or keeping those 12 your closest childhood friends, even if that means allowing to build apartment buildings for them to live in? You choose.
SF is a city where zoning and homevoters: http://cityobservatory.org/homevoters-v-the-growth-machine/ have made the city impossible for any normal person to live a normal life there. Even tech workers making $150k/yr find it hard to live there. The solution is simple (remove any parking minimums, lot setbacks, and non-technical height limits) and the problems are entirely legal/regulatory.
"Which one is more important, keeping the "charm" of houses and neighborhoods where you cannot afford to live anyway, or keeping those 12 your closest childhood friends, even if that means allowing to build apartment buildings for them to live in? You choose."
It is worth noting that both of those are reasonable, acceptable democratic outcomes.
I personally would like to see much more in-fill and height in a lot of the city of San Francisco - but I am dismayed when I hear other such proponents of this idea rejecting the results of democratic processes as illegitimate.
There is a serious movement underway in California to remove local control of housing/zoning/development and enact statewide, top down controls and incentives - simply because democratic processes did not produce "acceptable" results.
The common retort is that local councils and county boards and neighborhood associations - local control - is by nature undemocratic (something something only old retired people have time to go to county board hearings something something) but I would like to point out that those very same people who hope to remove local controls in favor of top-down, region-wide planning, were very much in favor of legalizing marijuana (as I was) and instituting local control at the expense of the (federal) top-down, region-wide planning.
I think it's too late for that. Adding more reasonable priced homes just means that companies currently looking outside the valley can now continue to grow there so there will continuously be a shortage and thus high pricing and wages. It's going to take a significant bubble burst to reset it.
Also, foreign investment from wealthy families stashing money overseas. Seems like we don’t talk about that much when our $100k house is worth $1.2 million
> Also, above all, I don’t want California to stop growing and benefiting from all the international and domestic migrants who flock here for opportunity and/or safety.
> Despite the fact that my rent makes some people do spit-takes, I am still a beneficiary of an inflated Bay Area salary.
OP did choose. The point of the article is buyer's remorse.
> There is an apocalyptic amount of people moving into California, and no one blames them for the overcrowding and the shifting culture. But when too many Californians leave California and settle in, say, Portland, they are blamed for ruining the place by way of simply being themselves.
Part of this is where the money comes from.
Poorer/lower-middle-class people (mostly) move into California, to work these jobs under varying amounts of duress. It's hard to complain about the kid who moved from Iowa/Wisconsin/Tennessee/etc, and is hoping their first real tech job at Uber or Facebook or Netflix justifies the move. That's why discussion moves to hating the companies, not the people.
But when Californians leave, they leave wealthy (in comparison). Even if they were poor-ish in California, just the act of selling their home (or condo, or any unit, anywhere in the state) instantly propels them straight to the upper-class or upper-middle-class when they move to places like Idaho or Nebraska or Michigan.
So, when they move here, and say things like "$200k for a beat up old house? That's nothing! A downpayment in California would be $200k!" -- it gets easy to hate the coastal person for their money. Because you sure as hell aren't earning that cash local -- Our hometown Gordon Foods corporate jobs aren't paying even 33% of the wages a corporate Uber Eats job does. Our local housing prices are no longer driven by local wages, they're driven largely by what percentage of coastal people are cashing out their wealth and dumping it into our hometowns (or what percent of coastal private equity funds are buying up our cities to rent back to us at inflated rates)
----
That's not to defend these actions, I am not saying this is right (no one should hate anyone over this). But it does at least help understand why the blame goes where it does. The blame follows the money. In California, that money comes from the companies. But in flyover-USA, that money is coming from the Californians (or NYC/Boston/DC/Seattle/Denver transplants), because you sure as hell aren't ever earning that much money from any local company here.
Do you have any stats on the wealth distribution of people leaving California? This really is a situation where more demographic information would be helpful, since an average wouldn't tell you as much. Do the wealthy Californians tend to be old, retirees? Young with kids? Are half the Californians leaving well off, with other half largely penniless?
Your assertion that "when Californians leave, they leave wealthy" may be true, but I would like to see it substantiated with some kind of cite.
Having grown up in SF (I'm in my late 40s), I have, by this point, seen a lot of people leave (and arrive), and they run the gamut.
I know a couple with two small kids who did what everyone in Portland fears most - they bought in SF during the housing bust, sold recently, collected 800k or so, and now own a house outright in Portland.
I know a woman who grew up in Palo Alto in the 1970s and works as a documentary film maker. She left for Denver with nothing but the savings that can get you through a few months.
Lots more, and they're anecdotes, but it's enough to make me suspect that "when Californians leave, they leave wealthy" isn't true often enough to make it a generally accurate statement, even if it does describe a substantial number of these cases.
"There is an apocalyptic amount of people moving into California,"
Really? New york is crowded. Chicago is crowded. The bay area is just spread out. It just feels crowded because California won't build upwards, which is a result of its backward housing laws, codes, and tax systems.
If people moving to your area and investing lots of their own money in the local economy is a bad thing, your local policies, politicians, and probably politics are very useless.
People investing money into the local economy should always be a good thing, and if the locals aren't capturing enough of that to mitigate the increase in costs, that's on them for voting in incompetent or evil politicians. Blaming the people coming in with money isn't going to solve anything.
It's not just the money either. It's the failed policies that Californians bring with them that got them in this high cost of living mess in the first place. People moved to these other states to avoid things like high taxes. Then when Californians move to these states, they start voting for policies that increase local and state taxes and policies that generally increase the cost of living.
The mostly men who move to California for the tech jobs are called "tech-bros" and are hated on for various reasons and often blamed for inflated rents and the expensive housing market.
Unfortunately this is the circle of life in high cost living areas. The NYC area has been expensive for a long period of time. SF now has become even more expensive and this phenomenon is newer to the area than NYC. The people I grew up with had the following outcomes:
* Got a high paying job and stayed (not many)
* Tried to make it here, but ended up moving to NC or FL
* Work lower paying jobs dual income and struggle
* Got a job in the area they went to university
SF was not super expensive 10-15 years ago. I mean it was not like living in a Midwest city but you could still get by on a reasonable income.
Central Fl and many areas in NC have a large amount of New Yorkers. This trend is going to accelerate as top tier cities become more popular and affluent, and costs will spiral. Unfortunately cities like Orlando that take in a lot of fleeing New Yorkers do not build the same density and downtowns as older cities so it is less likely that they will become as desirable for higher paying jobs. They are more suburban in nature and are car dependent.
What needs to be done is to make high density cities from the start somewhere else. Make a high speed rail link from SF to some area outside and start new with affordable high density in mind. Then people will initially commute to SF but the new area can then flourish. Otherwise old high density cities will continue to explode in popularity with post 1950s sprawl cities taking in mid income people.
NYC isn’t nearly as expensive. I know people who have bought affordable houses in places like New Jersey and have reasonable commutes. That just isn’t possible in the Bay Area.
> But what this “native” Bay Area kid won’t do is start blaming the guy from North Carolina or Wisconsin or Boston—basically every other person in the bar—for propelling the rents into the sky and inadvertently forcing the “locals” to flee.
That's one option. The other option would be to blame all the Bay Area natives who are seemingly happy to build massive employment centers but are completely fucking allergic to building apartment buildings.
But what do I know, I just live in New York, which really does share a lot of the dynamic described in the article as well and has it's share of problems with migration and gentrification, but where we also know how to actually build housing.
Taking a macro view on it and ignoring individual circumstances, I believe San Francisco is slowly bleeding itself out which may be a net positive for society (and I would apply this to my home NYC as well).
I don’t believe it’s a good idea for our society long term to have ALL of the nation’s leading X (technologists, bankers, engineers) in one city or state. As painful as it is to see your community leave, taking a perhaps heartless view on this, these talented people are going to other places and will revitalize communities.
I live in NYC and it pains me to bump into people who are enslaved by their paycheck commuting 3 hours (no exaggeration) a day. Moms and dads never seeing their kids dealing with crumbling infrastructure. I believe they could cut that paycheck in half, live in Charlotte or any number of good cities and lead a much happier life.
I guess I’m saying that while I wouldn’t wish being priced out of your community to anyone, for people on the trajectory of being priced out, the sooner perhaps the better to a happier life somewhere else.
We will still have ALL of the nation's leading engineers in one city / area, but no one else will be able to afford to live there. Even non-leading engineers will be forced to move out, and will no longer be able to learn from the leading engineers, lowering national productivity.
I don't know why you assume the leading engineers will move. As a "leading engineer", I don't see why I would take a $200-300k/year paycut and a less interesting job just to leave San Francisco, even though it pains me to see what the local politicians here are doing to their people.
Every so often one of these articles comes along and someone writes at length about the struggle of living in the bay area. I've been here over 13 years now and these articles are a constant.
First, the Bay Area never promised to be anything to anyone. It had its roots in the gold rush and then the military, followed by the semiconductor rush and today the internet. At each iteration, people flooded into the region to work in lucrative jobs and push out the farmers that lived here for generations.
There may have been a larger creative scene in SF, but it never was as rich and diverse as people think they remember it to be. 13 years ago, the entire eastern 1/2 of SF was abandoned warehouses and homeless encampments. I mean, potrero hill was where you could go buy your coke, it was full of drug dealers! Now look at that neighborhood.
But ultimately, SF is a small city, not that diverse and lacks many of the things that make paying NYC prices worth it for NYers. That has been true for its entire history and I don't think that will change.
However, if creative industries are your thing, and what you crave, move to LA or NYC. That's where you'll find all of that, from amazing artists to bands that are amazing, even if they're playing at your local pub.
> However, if creative industries are your thing, and what you crave, move to LA or NYC
Having done this, I still think it's a little sad if the Bay Area can't figure out how to make room for a creative culture. There's so many reasons it matters:
* a region that economically squeezes would-be bands or artists starting in a garage or warehouse is also going to squeeze capital-poor garage startups, not to mention supporting everyday labor that may not be making tech industry money
* it's likely that the same kind of open/change-minded/creative culture that feeds artistry feeds entrepreneurship (psychedelics aren't the only thing that can open your mind)
* sometimes people like living in places with vibrant cultural capital
* while it may never have had the creative mass that NY or LA has had, I can't believe the Bay and even a wider region out 101 & 80 doesn't have plenty of creative talent looking for a center
I think this experience is very different for gay men (speaking as one living in SF). Because gay men are more likely to not want kids (and probably still less likely to be married at a certain age), there is less a need to be able to afford a 3 bedroom home and in my experience there is no late 20/early 30 exodus from SF that I see with some of my straight friends. Then there’s the extra benefit of SF and other major urban centers like NYC and LA in just having a large LGBT population, which many “second tier” cities that are cheaper do not have and would be a major downside to moving out.
This article is really spot on. It feels like we're in a big speculative mess in Bay Area. The home-price-to-income ratio in SJ is about 20x [1] Anything over 3x used to be considered "risky". Let's say in Costal Areas it was be allowed to double, then you have 6x. That's good, not great, but ok. And that's about what pricy DC and NY cost. SJ is 20x. How is this possibly sustainable? Not even going to get into the dual income trap that only makes it marginally more realistic.
How is this good for average folks, like the ones that keep society running? How will this work in the long run? There will basically be two classes of people, the rich and the ultra poor who barely survive. I suspect poor don't have the money or the knowledge about elsewhere or they would be moving out in droves.
Moving is really quite expensive, especially if you're moving a family. On top of that, many people have a support network of family and friends that they would leave behind too. If you have small kids, these support networks are super useful since you'd have the added cost of daycare or babysitting in a market where you have no support network.
It works in the short run because a lot of people who own homes here bought them back when they were much cheaper, and are now sitting on piles of equity. The market price is driven by the high end of income, who are the people who actually bid for the limited supply of housing on the market.
These two statements seem to conflict a bit. Anybody else think so?
> are flooding their home, driving up rents, installing yoga studios, polluting the local vibe with new technology, and generally making everything suck while sipping kale juice.
> These people want to be artists, teachers, blacksmiths, therapists, mechanics, and musicians. They want to have children, open bakeries, own a house ...they aren't techies; they had the audacity to want something besides tech.
Are the people who left California and who apparently are driving up rents and sipping kale juice in wherever they ended up artists, mechanics, musicians, and blacksmiths? California rents have gone up apparently because technology companies pay workers enough they can afford $3000/mo rents for an apartment. Is the effect of an influx of bakers, musicians, artists (who I'm assuming probably can't afford high rents) sufficient to inflate rents enough to complain about? I would have said the "californians" people complain about are employed by technology companies (or other high paying companies).
You've accurately described what San Franciscans complain about. The writer of this piece mentioned that San Franciscans don't tend to show hostility to people based on where they're from, and that's largely true, we don't have a particular region or state people complain about they way people in, say, Portland, complain about California.
However, a lot of San Franciscans do complain constantly about techies.
One thing to keep in mind - some states, such as Oregon and Washington, have had a strong undercurrent of hostility to California for the last century. This is an interesting perspective:
I think it's possible that section has a different interpretation. The way I read it, the complaint is that the author's friends, who are bakers, musicians, and artists, can no longer afford to live in the bay area, due to their inability to compete, on a musicians salary, not even for the $3000/mo apartment, but that there are no longer enough choices, even out in Richmond, for them to stay in the area at all. All because they had the audacity not to attach themselves to a tech company.
It's funny to see Californians complain about folks moving to California and driving up housing costs. I grew up in Bend, Oregon where housing was driven up by tons of Californians moving there. Bay area folks only have themselves to blame for their "I got mine" attitude and not allowing anyone to build more housing. I fly every week to Santa Clara because there is no way I am moving there -- my home here in WA is almost paid off.
There’s a lot of discussion in this thread of restrictions on building, but an equally big problem in San Francisco is constructions costs. Even if all limits on building were liberalized tomorrow, housing would still be extremely expensive because of the high cost of construction. There are many causes, including the accumulation of well-meaning environmental regulations over the last 10 years. The Terner center at Berkeley put together a great focus group with developers and contractors where they discuss these causes:
Because of exclusionary zoning and prop 13, both of which are supported by middle-aged and retired homeowners, a dominant political force in California.
Its not. The quality of life is terrible here for what you are paying for. I pay $3000 for a one bedroom and constantly have homeless people in my garage or camping next to my building. My car has been broken into several times. Cops don’t walk a beat or do anything whatsoever to prevent crime. If you call the cops they basically shrug it off unless there’s actual violence happening. The traffic is terrible, public transportation is terrible (mostly because BART and Muni let on people who don’t pay). There are piles of feces and needles all over the city center. I honestly love the weather, but there are just so many negatives to your daily experience here. If I could move, I would.
This ending is poignant and obviously true. However, it's also true that individuals can support the YIMBY movement in whatever manner they are comfortable, which as a unified force is the best means to reducing rents that we have. Campaign to reform zoning to allow denser residential buildings; reform building regulations to encourage development; abolish Proposition 13 to bolster market dynamism; eliminate the mortgage income tax deduction to counter price lift; allow ADUs on single-family housing zones; do whatever you can to encourage increasing housing supply.
As aphextron pointed out elsewhere in this thread, it's all about housing. And the housing problem is solved by supply. Demand is what it is, and as long as there is a cultural and employment nexus, demand isn't going down appreciably any time soon.
For me, the key is knocking off any concerns about gentrification or the loss of a community's "character." These are selfish blankets that are comfort for NIMBYs. Yeah, I might jokingly jab at hipsters and their ways. But I absolutely do not want them regulated out of the area by way of restrictive zoning, building regulations, and other thinly veiled exclusion in the form of constrained property rights.
A lot of people only see gross salary and forget the only thing that matters is how much money you net at the end of the year.
For most in the middle class if you compare the cost of living index to a less desirable place to live, even with the much reduced wages, it makes fiscal sense leave.
> only thing that matters is how much money you net at the end of the year
No it doesn't. Other things matter too.
I gladly give up spectacular amounts of money to live in New York City because I have no interest in living anywhere else. Glancing around it appears I am not alone.
The article is all qualitative, but the quantitative numbers bear it out, at a state level at least. In 2016, the state had rough 150,000 more internal emigrants then immigrants (from census data) This is a continuation or acceleration of a trend that has been occurring for 30 years- see https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/great-california-ex.... If my back of the envelope calculation is right,
California had a net outflow of 10% of its current population over 30 years. Of course that is made up for by births and external migration, but matches the authors observation.
[+] [-] WaltPurvis|7 years ago|reply
https://medium.com/s/story/if-san-francisco-is-so-great-why-...
[+] [-] aphextron|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|7 years ago|reply
https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2019/01/29/oregons-housin...
BTW, anyone who wants to see more homes and more housing options in Oregon should vocally support HB 2001. Our YIMBY group here in Bend just had a meeting with our state rep about it and it went pretty well. It's a practical, market-based approach to add housing, and add to the diversity of housing.
[+] [-] simook|7 years ago|reply
I hope Portland will continue to be a beautiful city for my children to enjoy.
[+] [-] bojackstorkman|7 years ago|reply
About seven years ago my friends and I got a 2bd 1.5br apartment for $775 per month in SW Portland. That same apartment is now about double that. In many of the new or renovated buildings you can see a lot of studio apartments with a price floor of $1,300 per month.
Also, little things like a beer that used to cost $2.09 now costs $4.19. What used to be a $4 sandwich is now $7.25, $1.60 tacos went up to about $3. Even prices for stuff like clothing at Goodwill went up significantly over the years that I lived in Portland.
I know this is just my personal experience (and that of my friends), but the genral trend that I saw was an enormous shift to accomodate higher income individuals and families, and an exodus of lower income people all over the place.
[+] [-] randomacct3847|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaostheory|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xefer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sampo|7 years ago|reply
Except allow building more homes. Vote for politicians who'd have allowed building more homes. My guess is, the author has voted against her own interests.
Which one is more important, keeping the "charm" of houses and neighborhoods where you cannot afford to live anyway, or keeping those 12 your closest childhood friends, even if that means allowing to build apartment buildings for them to live in? You choose.
[+] [-] jseliger|7 years ago|reply
SF is a city where zoning and homevoters: http://cityobservatory.org/homevoters-v-the-growth-machine/ have made the city impossible for any normal person to live a normal life there. Even tech workers making $150k/yr find it hard to live there. The solution is simple (remove any parking minimums, lot setbacks, and non-technical height limits) and the problems are entirely legal/regulatory.
[+] [-] rsync|7 years ago|reply
It is worth noting that both of those are reasonable, acceptable democratic outcomes.
I personally would like to see much more in-fill and height in a lot of the city of San Francisco - but I am dismayed when I hear other such proponents of this idea rejecting the results of democratic processes as illegitimate.
There is a serious movement underway in California to remove local control of housing/zoning/development and enact statewide, top down controls and incentives - simply because democratic processes did not produce "acceptable" results.
The common retort is that local councils and county boards and neighborhood associations - local control - is by nature undemocratic (something something only old retired people have time to go to county board hearings something something) but I would like to point out that those very same people who hope to remove local controls in favor of top-down, region-wide planning, were very much in favor of legalizing marijuana (as I was) and instituting local control at the expense of the (federal) top-down, region-wide planning.
Democracy for thee, but not for me ...
[+] [-] karmakaze|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newshorts|7 years ago|reply
Also, foreign investment from wealthy families stashing money overseas. Seems like we don’t talk about that much when our $100k house is worth $1.2 million
[+] [-] platz|7 years ago|reply
> Despite the fact that my rent makes some people do spit-takes, I am still a beneficiary of an inflated Bay Area salary.
OP did choose. The point of the article is buyer's remorse.
[+] [-] beamatronic|7 years ago|reply
>> rent
There is one thing that you can do, which takes away this word’s power
>> buy
If you are a young person here, buy something. Anything. Hold onto it for life.
[+] [-] maxsilver|7 years ago|reply
Part of this is where the money comes from.
Poorer/lower-middle-class people (mostly) move into California, to work these jobs under varying amounts of duress. It's hard to complain about the kid who moved from Iowa/Wisconsin/Tennessee/etc, and is hoping their first real tech job at Uber or Facebook or Netflix justifies the move. That's why discussion moves to hating the companies, not the people.
But when Californians leave, they leave wealthy (in comparison). Even if they were poor-ish in California, just the act of selling their home (or condo, or any unit, anywhere in the state) instantly propels them straight to the upper-class or upper-middle-class when they move to places like Idaho or Nebraska or Michigan.
So, when they move here, and say things like "$200k for a beat up old house? That's nothing! A downpayment in California would be $200k!" -- it gets easy to hate the coastal person for their money. Because you sure as hell aren't earning that cash local -- Our hometown Gordon Foods corporate jobs aren't paying even 33% of the wages a corporate Uber Eats job does. Our local housing prices are no longer driven by local wages, they're driven largely by what percentage of coastal people are cashing out their wealth and dumping it into our hometowns (or what percent of coastal private equity funds are buying up our cities to rent back to us at inflated rates)
----
That's not to defend these actions, I am not saying this is right (no one should hate anyone over this). But it does at least help understand why the blame goes where it does. The blame follows the money. In California, that money comes from the companies. But in flyover-USA, that money is coming from the Californians (or NYC/Boston/DC/Seattle/Denver transplants), because you sure as hell aren't ever earning that much money from any local company here.
[+] [-] geebee|7 years ago|reply
Your assertion that "when Californians leave, they leave wealthy" may be true, but I would like to see it substantiated with some kind of cite.
Having grown up in SF (I'm in my late 40s), I have, by this point, seen a lot of people leave (and arrive), and they run the gamut.
I know a couple with two small kids who did what everyone in Portland fears most - they bought in SF during the housing bust, sold recently, collected 800k or so, and now own a house outright in Portland.
I know a woman who grew up in Palo Alto in the 1970s and works as a documentary film maker. She left for Denver with nothing but the savings that can get you through a few months.
Lots more, and they're anecdotes, but it's enough to make me suspect that "when Californians leave, they leave wealthy" isn't true often enough to make it a generally accurate statement, even if it does describe a substantial number of these cases.
[+] [-] jostmey|7 years ago|reply
Really? New york is crowded. Chicago is crowded. The bay area is just spread out. It just feels crowded because California won't build upwards, which is a result of its backward housing laws, codes, and tax systems.
[+] [-] dimva|7 years ago|reply
People investing money into the local economy should always be a good thing, and if the locals aren't capturing enough of that to mitigate the increase in costs, that's on them for voting in incompetent or evil politicians. Blaming the people coming in with money isn't going to solve anything.
[+] [-] malandrew|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] youeseh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] specialp|7 years ago|reply
* Got a high paying job and stayed (not many)
* Tried to make it here, but ended up moving to NC or FL
* Work lower paying jobs dual income and struggle
* Got a job in the area they went to university
SF was not super expensive 10-15 years ago. I mean it was not like living in a Midwest city but you could still get by on a reasonable income.
Central Fl and many areas in NC have a large amount of New Yorkers. This trend is going to accelerate as top tier cities become more popular and affluent, and costs will spiral. Unfortunately cities like Orlando that take in a lot of fleeing New Yorkers do not build the same density and downtowns as older cities so it is less likely that they will become as desirable for higher paying jobs. They are more suburban in nature and are car dependent.
What needs to be done is to make high density cities from the start somewhere else. Make a high speed rail link from SF to some area outside and start new with affordable high density in mind. Then people will initially commute to SF but the new area can then flourish. Otherwise old high density cities will continue to explode in popularity with post 1950s sprawl cities taking in mid income people.
[+] [-] ummonk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CPLX|7 years ago|reply
That's one option. The other option would be to blame all the Bay Area natives who are seemingly happy to build massive employment centers but are completely fucking allergic to building apartment buildings.
But what do I know, I just live in New York, which really does share a lot of the dynamic described in the article as well and has it's share of problems with migration and gentrification, but where we also know how to actually build housing.
It helps.
[+] [-] lefstathiou|7 years ago|reply
I don’t believe it’s a good idea for our society long term to have ALL of the nation’s leading X (technologists, bankers, engineers) in one city or state. As painful as it is to see your community leave, taking a perhaps heartless view on this, these talented people are going to other places and will revitalize communities.
I live in NYC and it pains me to bump into people who are enslaved by their paycheck commuting 3 hours (no exaggeration) a day. Moms and dads never seeing their kids dealing with crumbling infrastructure. I believe they could cut that paycheck in half, live in Charlotte or any number of good cities and lead a much happier life.
I guess I’m saying that while I wouldn’t wish being priced out of your community to anyone, for people on the trajectory of being priced out, the sooner perhaps the better to a happier life somewhere else.
[+] [-] dimva|7 years ago|reply
I don't know why you assume the leading engineers will move. As a "leading engineer", I don't see why I would take a $200-300k/year paycut and a less interesting job just to leave San Francisco, even though it pains me to see what the local politicians here are doing to their people.
[+] [-] kiba|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jarjoura|7 years ago|reply
First, the Bay Area never promised to be anything to anyone. It had its roots in the gold rush and then the military, followed by the semiconductor rush and today the internet. At each iteration, people flooded into the region to work in lucrative jobs and push out the farmers that lived here for generations.
There may have been a larger creative scene in SF, but it never was as rich and diverse as people think they remember it to be. 13 years ago, the entire eastern 1/2 of SF was abandoned warehouses and homeless encampments. I mean, potrero hill was where you could go buy your coke, it was full of drug dealers! Now look at that neighborhood.
But ultimately, SF is a small city, not that diverse and lacks many of the things that make paying NYC prices worth it for NYers. That has been true for its entire history and I don't think that will change.
However, if creative industries are your thing, and what you crave, move to LA or NYC. That's where you'll find all of that, from amazing artists to bands that are amazing, even if they're playing at your local pub.
[+] [-] wwweston|7 years ago|reply
Having done this, I still think it's a little sad if the Bay Area can't figure out how to make room for a creative culture. There's so many reasons it matters:
* a region that economically squeezes would-be bands or artists starting in a garage or warehouse is also going to squeeze capital-poor garage startups, not to mention supporting everyday labor that may not be making tech industry money
* it's likely that the same kind of open/change-minded/creative culture that feeds artistry feeds entrepreneurship (psychedelics aren't the only thing that can open your mind)
* sometimes people like living in places with vibrant cultural capital
* while it may never have had the creative mass that NY or LA has had, I can't believe the Bay and even a wider region out 101 & 80 doesn't have plenty of creative talent looking for a center
[+] [-] randomacct3847|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathattack|7 years ago|reply
It has more drug addicts than people enrolled in public high schools. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/02/sa...
[+] [-] ctime|7 years ago|reply
How is this good for average folks, like the ones that keep society running? How will this work in the long run? There will basically be two classes of people, the rich and the ultra poor who barely survive. I suspect poor don't have the money or the knowledge about elsewhere or they would be moving out in droves.
[1] - https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/where-the-house-price... * I should note peak home prices in the last 12 mo were in mid july and houses have fallen by about 5%, so this ratio might actually be lower.
[+] [-] malandrew|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ummonk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jswizzy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dchichkov|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twtw|7 years ago|reply
> are flooding their home, driving up rents, installing yoga studios, polluting the local vibe with new technology, and generally making everything suck while sipping kale juice.
> These people want to be artists, teachers, blacksmiths, therapists, mechanics, and musicians. They want to have children, open bakeries, own a house ...they aren't techies; they had the audacity to want something besides tech.
Are the people who left California and who apparently are driving up rents and sipping kale juice in wherever they ended up artists, mechanics, musicians, and blacksmiths? California rents have gone up apparently because technology companies pay workers enough they can afford $3000/mo rents for an apartment. Is the effect of an influx of bakers, musicians, artists (who I'm assuming probably can't afford high rents) sufficient to inflate rents enough to complain about? I would have said the "californians" people complain about are employed by technology companies (or other high paying companies).
[+] [-] geebee|7 years ago|reply
However, a lot of San Franciscans do complain constantly about techies.
One thing to keep in mind - some states, such as Oregon and Washington, have had a strong undercurrent of hostility to California for the last century. This is an interesting perspective:
http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Class...
[+] [-] fragmede|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waynecochran|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgewfraser|7 years ago|reply
https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/San_Francisco_Cons...
[+] [-] zapita|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diogenescynic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twtw|7 years ago|reply
> If I could move, I would.
If you don't mind, why can't you move? Caring for family members?
[+] [-] bhauer|7 years ago|reply
This ending is poignant and obviously true. However, it's also true that individuals can support the YIMBY movement in whatever manner they are comfortable, which as a unified force is the best means to reducing rents that we have. Campaign to reform zoning to allow denser residential buildings; reform building regulations to encourage development; abolish Proposition 13 to bolster market dynamism; eliminate the mortgage income tax deduction to counter price lift; allow ADUs on single-family housing zones; do whatever you can to encourage increasing housing supply.
As aphextron pointed out elsewhere in this thread, it's all about housing. And the housing problem is solved by supply. Demand is what it is, and as long as there is a cultural and employment nexus, demand isn't going down appreciably any time soon.
For me, the key is knocking off any concerns about gentrification or the loss of a community's "character." These are selfish blankets that are comfort for NIMBYs. Yeah, I might jokingly jab at hipsters and their ways. But I absolutely do not want them regulated out of the area by way of restrictive zoning, building regulations, and other thinly veiled exclusion in the form of constrained property rights.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] edoo|7 years ago|reply
For most in the middle class if you compare the cost of living index to a less desirable place to live, even with the much reduced wages, it makes fiscal sense leave.
[+] [-] CPLX|7 years ago|reply
No it doesn't. Other things matter too.
I gladly give up spectacular amounts of money to live in New York City because I have no interest in living anywhere else. Glancing around it appears I am not alone.
[+] [-] topkai22|7 years ago|reply