4 ms·

I don't understand. Why are there so many light colored areas in the city where rent is half/third of Mission. Non SF person here. Can anyone explain? With exp

I don't understand. Why are there so many light colored areas in the city where rent is half/third of Mission. Non SF person here. Can anyone explain? With exploding demand it should have trickled there by now ( Bayview, Excelsior)

cjensen 11y ago
Bayview has a reputation of having extreme amounts of crime. At least, that's my perception as someone who lives in the Bay Area.
SandersAK 11y ago
SF and the bay area in general have done an astonishingly bad job of updating mass transit to handle growth. I used to live in NY and thought the MTA was stupid and short sighted, but since moving here, they come off as geniuses compared to BART etc.
- resu_nimda 11y ago
  What large cities have mass transit that is not astonishingly bad, stupid, and/or short sighted, in your opinion? Maybe it's actually just a really hard problem?
  - SandersAK 11y ago
    It's a hard problem, but BART's issues come down to a bunch of fiefdom infighting among different counties. Paris and London have pretty fantastic transit.
  - KingMob 11y ago
    Well, the MTA in New York is certainly stupid and wasteful. But they have slowly started building new lines again (the 7 expansion, the Second Ave subway), so they're not totally short-sighted. And as much I grumble, NYC is one of the few places in America I feel ok about going all around the city without a car. I think it's only a hard political problem, but not a hard technical problem at this point.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - shard 11y ago
    Seoul has a pretty fantastic public transit system. Busses and subways come every 5 to 15 minutes, are clean and fast (you better hold on tight!), and are still expanding year after year to the few underserved areas in Seoul and to the cities surrounded Seoul. There are digital signs giving you the time and location of the coming vehicle, and TVs showing news and entertainment segments. Strong cellular service so you're never without a connection. The busses and subways do stop running around midnight to 1AM, but there is always the choice of taking a taxi, which are also plentiful, fast, and cheap (a ride from the south part of Seoul to the north part is only about $10).
  - sampo 11y ago
    > What large cities have mass transit that is not astonishingly bad, stupid, and/or short sighted, in your opinion? I'd guess any European city is better than NYC, which is the best that America has.
- sampo 11y ago
  Kind of ironic, that one of the most degenerate and backwards-looking of the first worlds cities when it comes to urban planning and transport, happens to be the location the most forward-looking people in web tech and startups.
- ryanSrich 11y ago
  If you work in SOMA, Bayview and Excelsior don't seem far at all. Why not just bike or walk?
  - Decade 11y ago
    Walking to Excelsior? Are you joking? I work in SoMA and live in Excelsior, and it takes me half an hour to bike each way. And I'm a relatively fast biker, in a good location with major roads near my house. Most of Excelsior is narrow roads on steep hills. Parking is one of my less favorite activities there. Bayview is not very pleasant. My friend's home was burglarized. My brother was mugged and his G1 stolen, back when that was the only Android phone. There are noisy trains and a smelly sewage treatment plant. There are reasons people aspire not to live there.
lnanek2 11y ago
Mission is where all the cool night life is. Big companies right on Market and in financial district like Microsoft's Yammer office. SOMA is where the startups are. There are some startups in the Dogpatch further that direction towards Bayview, but already the commute time for most employees is double if you do that due to having to switch from BART train to MUNI train which is much slower and less frequent, and god knows what serves most of Bayview. Buses where you would get mugged and stuck in traffic maybe? I'd be happier in the East Bay at that point as long as BART was near. The few times I've tried the bus system, half the time the bus is full or late. I own a car, but traffic is ridiculous, so I don't consider it usable for commuting.
- mdeeks 11y ago
  We (MSFT/Yammer office) are most definitely NOT in the financial district (god I wish). We're in the tenderloin/civic area where you regularly see addicts shooting up on the stairs as you walk down to bart. It is one of the worst areas of the city. Though it is getting nicer now that many companies are moving in.
  - eip 11y ago
    "I have never seen crack smoked so casually before." --Dave Chappelle
- fennecfoxen 11y ago
  > god knows what serves most of Bayview. Well, the T train runs down the edge of Bayview as far as the Bayshore Caltrain station. But it's reasonably slow and kind of awkwardly routed for the time being (it goes past the ballpark and along the Embarcadero before reversing down Market). Maybe that will change when they open the central subway in the future.
lastofus 11y ago
Hunters Point (part of Bayview) is also a superfund site. That might be a bit of a turnoff as well...
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  You'd think so, but in Brooklyn they have a Whole Foods built right above a superfund site (the Gowanus Canal). Sufficiently hot real estate markets can make for some strange situations. http://inhabitat.com/nyc/wp-content/blogs.dir/2/files/2013/12/UGE-Lighting-Solutions-at-Whole-Foods-Side1.jpg http://inhabitat.com/nyc/wp-content/blogs.dir/2/files/2013/1...
mmohebbi 11y ago
That's due to a combination of crime, local businesses (e.g. fancy coffee shops and bars), and access to commuter shuttles. You can see some of these in heat map form here: http://www.trulia.com/local/san-francisco-ca/ http://www.trulia.com/local/san-francisco-ca/
arjie 11y ago
I live in the Excelsior. I live just off Mission Street, and 10 mins on foot from BART, so it isn't all the public transit (the 44 and 52 go to Glen Park BART from where all trains are 10 mins up to Montgomery, the 14 is a slow alternative downtown). My personal theory is that it's because most of the places to hang out here aren't the kind that's popular in the Mission. I also walk down these streets frequently late at night to buy stuff from the Safeway. I don't think it's very dangerous.
- aetherson 11y ago
  I currently live in the Outer Mission and previously lived in Excelsior, and I second all this. Basically, these are the last places in SF that are: 1. Relatively affordable. 2. Relatively close to BART. I live a five minute walk from Balboa Park BART and my mortgage is $3,000 a month for a 2BR1BA house with garage that I bought two years ago. Previously I lived a 10 minute walk from Glenn Park BART and my rent was $2,000 a month for a 2BR1BA house with garage (albeit now a few years old, so I'm sure the rent is higher now). The area is pretty safe. It's not like a rural small town or like what I kind of assume Pac Heights is like, but it's probably safer than Inner Mission or SOMA, and both I and my wife (a small woman) feel safe wandering around singly after dark. So why is it relatively cheap? Well, first, inertia from a point when it was less safe -- you can see some of the progression of the neighborhood by looking at the houses. Recently remodeled ones do not have metal security gates on their doors or bars on their windows, but ones that haven't been touched in 15 or 20 years definitely do. But also, it's just not a very hip neighborhood and doesn't have the density of bars/coffee shops/bicycle stores that other neighborhoods do. It's a little farther from the nightlife centers of the city. Ultimately, I think these areas are rapidly gentrifying as well, but they're behind the curve of the rest of the city.
choppaface 11y ago
One of the things missing on the map is elevation. FiDi & SOMA are effectively surrounded by Twin Peaks, Russian Hill, Pacific Heights, and Portrero Hill. Those hills contribute to increasing commute times as well as cultural boundaries.
infecto 11y ago
Its all to do with transportation and nightlife. Bart runs down market street and then south through the mission. A lot of people work near market street. Easy commute. The mission also has a strange mix of gentrification. It has a big mix of locals and new tech workers. With the influx of tech workers there is also a lot of nightlife. Now if you live in a place like sunset or anywhere in the southern part of the city you are kind of stuck. The southern part of the city you will have to take a bus. The bus can be a terrible experience, if you live on the edges expect a 1hr 1way commute. This is just a rough guideline, not always true. Sure sunset has muni trains but its still slow because the majority of the time muni is above ground on the road and does not have right of way. I live in outer richmond. I think the pricing data is skewed here due to seacliff. TLDR; transportation sucks. Most of the areas that look cheap require you to have a car and drive.
Chanel_Bunnell 11y ago
Herd mentality. Work in the same kind of startups, with the same kind of people, drink in the same kind of bars, live in the same trendy neighborhoods, date the same kind of chicks/guys. It's kind of amazing that every once on a while something original actually comes out of all this.

cjensen 11y ago

Bayview has a reputation of having extreme amounts of crime. At least, that's my perception as someone who lives in the Bay Area.

SandersAK 11y ago

SF and the bay area in general have done an astonishingly bad job of updating mass transit to handle growth. I used to live in NY and thought the MTA was stupid and short sighted, but since moving here, they come off as geniuses compared to BART etc.

resu_nimda 11y ago
What large cities have mass transit that is not astonishingly bad, stupid, and/or short sighted, in your opinion? Maybe it's actually just a really hard problem?
- SandersAK 11y ago
  It's a hard problem, but BART's issues come down to a bunch of fiefdom infighting among different counties. Paris and London have pretty fantastic transit.
- KingMob 11y ago
  Well, the MTA in New York is certainly stupid and wasteful. But they have slowly started building new lines again (the 7 expansion, the Second Ave subway), so they're not totally short-sighted. And as much I grumble, NYC is one of the few places in America I feel ok about going all around the city without a car. I think it's only a hard political problem, but not a hard technical problem at this point.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- shard 11y ago
  Seoul has a pretty fantastic public transit system. Busses and subways come every 5 to 15 minutes, are clean and fast (you better hold on tight!), and are still expanding year after year to the few underserved areas in Seoul and to the cities surrounded Seoul. There are digital signs giving you the time and location of the coming vehicle, and TVs showing news and entertainment segments. Strong cellular service so you're never without a connection. The busses and subways do stop running around midnight to 1AM, but there is always the choice of taking a taxi, which are also plentiful, fast, and cheap (a ride from the south part of Seoul to the north part is only about $10).
- sampo 11y ago
  > What large cities have mass transit that is not astonishingly bad, stupid, and/or short sighted, in your opinion? I'd guess any European city is better than NYC, which is the best that America has.
sampo 11y ago
Kind of ironic, that one of the most degenerate and backwards-looking of the first worlds cities when it comes to urban planning and transport, happens to be the location the most forward-looking people in web tech and startups.
ryanSrich 11y ago
If you work in SOMA, Bayview and Excelsior don't seem far at all. Why not just bike or walk?
- Decade 11y ago
  Walking to Excelsior? Are you joking? I work in SoMA and live in Excelsior, and it takes me half an hour to bike each way. And I'm a relatively fast biker, in a good location with major roads near my house. Most of Excelsior is narrow roads on steep hills. Parking is one of my less favorite activities there. Bayview is not very pleasant. My friend's home was burglarized. My brother was mugged and his G1 stolen, back when that was the only Android phone. There are noisy trains and a smelly sewage treatment plant. There are reasons people aspire not to live there.

lnanek2 11y ago

Mission is where all the cool night life is. Big companies right on Market and in financial district like Microsoft's Yammer office. SOMA is where the startups are. There are some startups in the Dogpatch further that direction towards Bayview, but already the commute time for most employees is double if you do that due to having to switch from BART train to MUNI train which is much slower and less frequent, and god knows what serves most of Bayview. Buses where you would get mugged and stuck in traffic maybe? I'd be happier in the East Bay at that point as long as BART was near. The few times I've tried the bus system, half the time the bus is full or late. I own a car, but traffic is ridiculous, so I don't consider it usable for commuting.

mdeeks 11y ago
We (MSFT/Yammer office) are most definitely NOT in the financial district (god I wish). We're in the tenderloin/civic area where you regularly see addicts shooting up on the stairs as you walk down to bart. It is one of the worst areas of the city. Though it is getting nicer now that many companies are moving in.
- eip 11y ago
  "I have never seen crack smoked so casually before." --Dave Chappelle
fennecfoxen 11y ago
> god knows what serves most of Bayview. Well, the T train runs down the edge of Bayview as far as the Bayshore Caltrain station. But it's reasonably slow and kind of awkwardly routed for the time being (it goes past the ballpark and along the Embarcadero before reversing down Market). Maybe that will change when they open the central subway in the future.

lastofus 11y ago

Hunters Point (part of Bayview) is also a superfund site. That might be a bit of a turnoff as well...

bradleyjg 11y ago
You'd think so, but in Brooklyn they have a Whole Foods built right above a superfund site (the Gowanus Canal). Sufficiently hot real estate markets can make for some strange situations. http://inhabitat.com/nyc/wp-content/blogs.dir/2/files/2013/12/UGE-Lighting-Solutions-at-Whole-Foods-Side1.jpg http://inhabitat.com/nyc/wp-content/blogs.dir/2/files/2013/1...

mmohebbi 11y ago

That's due to a combination of crime, local businesses (e.g. fancy coffee shops and bars), and access to commuter shuttles. You can see some of these in heat map form here: http://www.trulia.com/local/san-francisco-ca/ http://www.trulia.com/local/san-francisco-ca/

arjie 11y ago

I live in the Excelsior. I live just off Mission Street, and 10 mins on foot from BART, so it isn't all the public transit (the 44 and 52 go to Glen Park BART from where all trains are 10 mins up to Montgomery, the 14 is a slow alternative downtown). My personal theory is that it's because most of the places to hang out here aren't the kind that's popular in the Mission. I also walk down these streets frequently late at night to buy stuff from the Safeway. I don't think it's very dangerous.

aetherson 11y ago
I currently live in the Outer Mission and previously lived in Excelsior, and I second all this. Basically, these are the last places in SF that are: 1. Relatively affordable. 2. Relatively close to BART. I live a five minute walk from Balboa Park BART and my mortgage is $3,000 a month for a 2BR1BA house with garage that I bought two years ago. Previously I lived a 10 minute walk from Glenn Park BART and my rent was $2,000 a month for a 2BR1BA house with garage (albeit now a few years old, so I'm sure the rent is higher now). The area is pretty safe. It's not like a rural small town or like what I kind of assume Pac Heights is like, but it's probably safer than Inner Mission or SOMA, and both I and my wife (a small woman) feel safe wandering around singly after dark. So why is it relatively cheap? Well, first, inertia from a point when it was less safe -- you can see some of the progression of the neighborhood by looking at the houses. Recently remodeled ones do not have metal security gates on their doors or bars on their windows, but ones that haven't been touched in 15 or 20 years definitely do. But also, it's just not a very hip neighborhood and doesn't have the density of bars/coffee shops/bicycle stores that other neighborhoods do. It's a little farther from the nightlife centers of the city. Ultimately, I think these areas are rapidly gentrifying as well, but they're behind the curve of the rest of the city.

choppaface 11y ago

One of the things missing on the map is elevation. FiDi & SOMA are effectively surrounded by Twin Peaks, Russian Hill, Pacific Heights, and Portrero Hill. Those hills contribute to increasing commute times as well as cultural boundaries.

infecto 11y ago

Its all to do with transportation and nightlife. Bart runs down market street and then south through the mission. A lot of people work near market street. Easy commute. The mission also has a strange mix of gentrification. It has a big mix of locals and new tech workers. With the influx of tech workers there is also a lot of nightlife. Now if you live in a place like sunset or anywhere in the southern part of the city you are kind of stuck. The southern part of the city you will have to take a bus. The bus can be a terrible experience, if you live on the edges expect a 1hr 1way commute. This is just a rough guideline, not always true. Sure sunset has muni trains but its still slow because the majority of the time muni is above ground on the road and does not have right of way. I live in outer richmond. I think the pricing data is skewed here due to seacliff. TLDR; transportation sucks. Most of the areas that look cheap require you to have a car and drive.

Chanel_Bunnell 11y ago

Herd mentality. Work in the same kind of startups, with the same kind of people, drink in the same kind of bars, live in the same trendy neighborhoods, date the same kind of chicks/guys. It's kind of amazing that every once on a while something original actually comes out of all this.