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California's skyrocketing housing costs, taxes prompt exodus of residents
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoAnyone else alarmed that a doctor was leaving because the rent was too high? A doctor is one of the jobs that is expected to pay top dollar in American society. If a doctor can't make it in the Bay Area, who's going to cut your hair, serve your beer, or mow your lawn? If wages don't rise in line with skyrocketing living costs, then the only alternative is a permenantly impoverished underclass. People of the Bay Area: are you ok with that?
- niftich 10y agoThe permanently impoverished underclass is already here [1][2][3][4], so the answer seems to be yes. [1] https://newrepublic.com/article/124476/dispossessed-land-dreams https://newrepublic.com/article/124476/dispossessed-land-dre... [2] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/the-place-where-the-poor-once-thrived/470667/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/the-plac... [3] https://www.thenation.com/article/bridging-silicon-valleys-wealth-gap/ https://www.thenation.com/article/bridging-silicon-valleys-w... [4] http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/25/news/economy/middle-class-silicon-valley/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/25/news/economy/middle-class-si...
- boxy310 10y agoRecently took a trip out to the Bay Area, and when I did the back-of-the-napkin calculations, I figured it would actually be cheaper to fly from the Midwest and stay in a hotel every other weekend, than it would be to live there. Really neat place to visit, but I can't understand how anyone in their right mind would live there.
- toephu2 10y agoJust like people from the city might say "I can't understand how anyone in their right mind would live in the midwest"
- bagels 10y agoWhat else can people do? The choices I see (with no mention of efficacy) are: leave, demand better pay, lobby for cohesive regional zoning and transportation planning that meets growth.
- HillaryBriss 10y ago> lobby for cohesive regional zoning and transportation planning that meets growth I agree that this is the right answer in theory. The challenge is that, in practice, by the time the critically important rail line or subway or high speed bus lane (or whatever) is built and put into operation, you're halfway to retirement and your kids are out of high school. So, practically speaking, a lot of people conclude that the only effective voting is the kind done with the feet. Too often state and local governments are not capable of doing their jobs quickly enough to solve the problems.
- toephu2 10y agobtw, how much do doctors (specifically primary care physicians) make in the Bay Area? They don't get bonuses nor stock, just base salary right?
- kamaal 10y agoMay be that is the reason they are moving out!
- kamaal 10y ago>>If wages don't rise in line with skyrocketing living costs, then the only alternative is a permenantly impoverished underclass. If wages don't rise, people will migrate further reducing the supply to a point it won't easy for normal people to live their normal lives. Then the next round of migration will happen and so on.. until there won't be enough people to rent to and then the rents will come down. The worse, the better. Let the rents go up until it all collapses on itself.
- overcast 10y agoIt's unfortunate, California is such a beautiful place. But it's turning into somewhere to visit, and not live. See you soon Sierra's!
- up_and_up 10y agoTotally. Speaking as someone who lived in the bay area for 4 years and happily left after college, why live in CA when you can work remotely from anywhere else, live well, own a sizable property, and make decent bank? The bay area is great to visit, I was literally just there a couple months ago. But to live I would need to make 4x what I do now.
- pixl97 10y agoWell, the weather is nice in many places, and it has some beautiful scenery. Probably why so many people live there in the first place. Texas on the other hand is hot and flat. Really boring here. Oh and it's too crowded. Yep, if you're from California Texas is worse. Don't want to move here. Please stop moving here, please, oh god please.
- throwanem 10y agoReplace "hot and flat" with "gray and rainy" and that's the western third of Oregon, too.
- pm90 10y agoI know what you're trying to do, but its not going to work ;). Texas is about as interesting as you can get, especially if you live in Austin. The housing costs are not ridiculous (yet), you can live in decent house near downtown, COL is low, no state taxes etc. Quite a wonderful state, especially if you're young and in tech. BTW, there is also a vibrant live music scene. And also a lot of theater and art. Did I mention the food? The only thing I would say Texas lacks are good beaches. We do have a lot of rivers/lakes though. But for someone who grew up near the ocean...it does suck.
- 10y ago
- sawthat 10y agoNobody lives there anymore, it's too crowded.
- duaneb 10y agoPopulation density doesn't indicate anything about migration or wealth distribution.
- vermontdevil 10y agoIt's a play on Yogi Berra, a recently deceased baseball player, quote: 'Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.'
- theandrewbailey 10y agoWhat makes it crowded if no one lives there? Empty buildings? /s
- wernercd 10y agoWoosh... That's the sound of the joke going over your head.
- FussyZeus 10y agoNo interest to move to the Bay area. You could work literally anywhere else and live like a millionaire on their salaries but by the time you've paid for a house and car there you might as well live in a VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER.
- jonathankoren 10y agoThere's no river, but I found this. http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sbw/5642724453.html http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sbw/5642724453.html
- jjn2009 10y agoOh wow only 900 a month? finally something I can afford to live in!
- danso 10y agoI don't know if reading this makes me feel better, as in, at least everyone else around me is getting fucked. Or if I'll soon feel worse for having accepted an offer to stay, even after 2 shitty years. I didn't harbor any fantasies of owning in New York but at least it was more fun and cheaper by far than Menlo Park
- TwiztidK 10y agoI just visited some friends in southern California and the possibility of me moving out there came up in conversation. So, I used a cost of living calculator to figure how much more I would need to make to be at the same level... 60% more. Definitely not going to happen.
- rdtsc 10y agoI visited a few times in the past. Spent a large part of the day stuck in LA traffic. It wasn't even morning or evening community, it seems it is an all day kinda thing. There was a metro / subway there but it never seemed to go where we wanted to go.
- kronazoan 10y agoI only took Uber mostly but would also commute from downtown to Beverly Hills. I never once got stuck in traffic but we always left after 10am. Also it depends on which way you are going. The 405 north of Sunset is a disaster if you (in general) are going from West LA to the Valley after work but if you travel the opposite ways, traffic is generally fine...
- rconti 10y agoTraffic in LA is an all day (and all night) thing. But, like anywhere else, you can choose to live close to work -- or not. The light rail is actually a huge success story in LA right now.
- HillaryBriss 10y agoNot to worry. In just 25 more years, the metro system will go almost all the way to the airport.
- aphextron 10y agoMeh, it's not impossible. My salary went up 50% when I moved here.
- shawndumas 10y ago
- KKKKkkkk1 10y agoOne of the local public radio stations had a show this week about how well San Francisco is doing budget-wise. Apparently, the San Francisco budget in the last decade has been growing much faster than the local economy, and it's been all going towards paying pension obligations, assistance to homeless and low-income people etc. Talk about killing the golden goose.
- TDL 10y agoBeing from Chicago I say it's a good thing to pay down the pension obligations. Pension obligations can cause a lot of problems in the future. Although I don't believe governments should be growing their budgets aggressively, squaring gov obligations is a good thing.
- WalterSear 10y agoThey aren't paying them down. They are just paying them.
- shiftpgdn 10y agoWhy do government pensions even exist anymore? There is absolutely no reason for them and they need to go. The government can pay a reasonable salary if they wanted skilled workers.
- TDL 10y agoI agree with you. I think pensions are a mistake in general, however, many municipalities, counties, and states are locked in to existing pensions schemes. I am for doing away with pensions in the future, but the existing obligations need to be funded appropriately.
- sphinx65 10y agoPensions aren't the mistake, low interest rates are the mistake.
- 10y ago
- shawndumas 10y agoprint view http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?articleId=30037774&siteId=568 http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/pr...
- smaili 10y agoAnyone happen to know what is the definition of "middle class" for the Bay Area? Given the higher incomes amd cost of living, I have to assume the range is higher than most other regions.
- refrigerator 10y agoIs the salary of remote employees working for Bay Area companies the same as for local employees, or do they differ based on cost of living?
- kylestlb 10y agoI have worked at two separate companies where they differ, typically 10-13% delta from what I remember...
- hibikir 10y agoIn my current SF employer, a very large percentage of senior engineers with kids just remote from other places. The trick here is that companies that aren't paying top dollar in SF have a lot of trouble getting senior engineers, as the Netflixes and Facebooks of the world pay more and offer RSUs. However, the same salaries that are seen as a bit lacking in SF are good enough to attract top remote talent. Therefore, the difference is not necessarily about lower salaries by cost of living, but lower salaries by company.
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoI'm fine here. I have a job in tech and I'll be able to put down roots and buy a home, Etc. However by virtue of living here I basically force all of my children to do the same or move away. it's simply too hard to live here unless you're working in tech.
- ZanyProgrammer 10y agoTo enjoy a halfway decent life in the Bay Area (to not require roommates to meet expenses, own a car, and not have to commute from the Central Valley everyday) I'd say you have to make 6 figures. Or be married to/BFF with someone who does. Moving from the Bay Area to Portland, my salary increased by 8%, but I can afford my own apartment and s brand new car, middle class hallmarks that were way out of my league in Sunnyvale or Fremont.
- justinlardinois 10y agoSix figures is a huge exaggeration. You can reasonably find a one bedroom apartment for yourself in west San Jose for $2000/month, likely less if you shop around or are willing to live in a studio, and live off $1000-1500/month for everything else. Even if you're making payments of a few hundred a month on, you don't need to be anywhere close to six figures to have that lifestyle. Granted, the level of income you'd need for this is still hard to achieve without a tech job. But you don't need six figures. Unless by the Bay Area you meant living in San Francisco. Then all bets are off.
- ZanyProgrammer 10y agoIn order to be able to afford 2K for a one bedroom apartment (definitely on the low end for Santa Clara County) you're going to have to save up at least that much for moving expenses. Want to try doing that on a less than 6 figure salary (I'd say 85K maybe if you want to stretch it). 60K could've landed you a cheap apartment in 2007, but not anymore.
- justinlardinois 10y ago
- dawhizkid 10y agoSeattle is tempting as a SF resident but I think Seattle tech scene is much more risk-adverse (i.e. AMZN, MSFT employees) and not as entrepreneurially minded as in SF.
- crucifiction 10y agoYou are right. Seattle is the bay area for people who have kids they want in good schools and to have a decent upper middle class lifestyle with cars/large house/lawn. With that comes risk adverse big-tech-co jobs that pay high but steady.
- cylinder 10y agoWhy does that matter to you personally? As an entrepreneur, you want to go where others won't, i.e. less competitive environments.
- nugget 10y agoI spent most of my childhood in California. Real estate is and always has been the number one industry in the state. The majority of my childhood friends' wealth seems to derive from houses their families bought in the early 80s or earlier. Prices have benefited from a stable of one trick ponies - fixed low property taxes (prop 13), massive population growth (net domestic migration is now negative), job growth from the tech sector, the cultural shift to assortive mating of dual income white collar professionals, and the drop to near zero interest rates. I thought for sure that prices had hit the mathematically inevitable plateau - and then came tens of billions in foreign capital fleeing China. Is there another unpredictable one trick pony waiting in the wings? At some point it seems like prices would have to hit a ceiling reflecting the fact that all future appreciation and demand has been pulled forward, at which time the great financial machine grinds down to a much slower pace, if not a halt. It will be interesting to watch and see what happens.
- FuturePromise 10y agoProperty taxes are not "low". Even under Prop 13, they go up 2% a year. California's property taxes are about median for the nation. It has the absolute highest income tax (for incomes above $1MM) and near the highest sales tax. So anyone who opposes Prop 13 is simply wrong. Without it, California would have the highest tax in the nation, by far. With such a large tax base, there's no need to tax that high percentage wise. The money is being wasted.
- adrenalinelol 10y agoNegative interests rates... The Fed wants to stay relevant as a means of correction economic recessions and the rate is still pretty much ~0% atm.
- cubano 10y agoThe price will hit a ceiling at the exact time demand = supply, and not a moment before. A worldwide markets for these homes now exists, which means the number of people who both want and can afford them is huge, and therefore the price will rise until that condition is no longer true. Also, I believe we are again seeing signs of loan company shenanigans which, if so, will allow easy-to-game capital to continue to chase prices upwards as well.
- honkhonkpants 10y agoNB: net _domestic_ migration. Population still increasing.
- sideband 10y agoThere's some sort of Stockholm syndrome prevalent among too many Bay Area residents that compels them to accept the lower quality of life. I lived there for several years until recently, and it was a surreal experience to hear others discuss the sacrifices they were making just to have a roof over their family's head, to provide a half-decent education for their children. And these were well-payed folks at the brand-name companies! Those that took a tech job straight out of college and had never lived anywhere else seemed the worst affected. Not enough realized that they deserved more then they were getting back from the Bay Area.
- cylinder 10y agoSounds like they aren't paying enough. If people demanded what they needed to live a decent life, they would either have to get it or the companies would wake up and relocate more quality jobs to lower COL locations.
- overcast 10y agoProblem is, soon as everyone starts demanding more, then the cost of everything else goes up. There is limited space, and those people making the most, will pay the most regardless. Just a never ending cycle.
- hackeratti 10y agoA lot of folks are also immigrants, who need to wait close to a decade to become citizens to be able to demand anything.
- wbsun 10y agoPeople are considering killing Prop 13, which will make more residents leave.
- Decade 10y agoIn my personal fantasy, killing Proposition 13 would be done in a progressive manner. Grandma who has paid off her house in Westwood Park and is now a paper millionaire would still keep her 1975 property tax level, but Disneyland would be taxed at currently prevailing rates. http://www.ocregister.com/taxdollars/strong-477502-ownership-property.html http://www.ocregister.com/taxdollars/strong-477502-ownership... http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/jun/29/conversation-prop-13-taxes/ http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/jun/29/convers...
- hx87 10y agoIn my personal fantasy, Grandma would keep her 1975 property tax level, as long as her municipality allows her and her neighbors to build or convert her house into apartments. Low property taxes should be rewards for a lack of NIMBYism.
- Decade 10y agoYeah, I’m not so heartless. Attitudes like that are why pro-development people have attracted a reputation as bullies and villains. Grandma wants to live out her days in the small house and quiet neighborhood where she has lived her life? Too bad, her land is more useful to society being consolidated into a tower full of “luxury” apartments. That may be true. Especially in San Francisco, where grandmas and older gentlemen form a voting bloc that have delayed construction all over the Bay Area. But that doesn’t make it right in my mind to force grandma to either expand her property or get out. Now, zoning laws: That’s another injustice that should be corrected. Proposition 13 has the additional perversity of discouraging repairs and improvements, because “new construction” [0] triggers a reassessment and a huge jump in property taxes. However, it’s a small step between letting grandma fix her house, and letting her rich developer son replace her house with a 4-story apartment building, pocketing the difference between the market rate rents and the low 1975 property tax, and starving the school district of funds. If we don’t want to kick out fixed-income people, then we should simply tie the reassessment to the person’s ability to pay the higher tax. [0] https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/faqs/newconstruction.html https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/faqs/newconstruction.html
- FreakyT 10y agoAll control of Bay Area housing should be put into the hands of a single "housing czar" with absolute authority to rezone. Usually democratic methods are preferable, but in this case it's clear they've failed in an absolute sense, and a new approach is needed.
- cylinder 10y agoSame with transportation. The reason transport is such a mess is because of all the different municipalities involved. To continue to think of the Bay as a group of totally independent cities is ridiculous.
- justinlardinois 10y agoI get what you're saying, but what's the alternative? Go back to the first half of the 1900s where San Jose was annexing everything?
- cylinder 10y agoTransportation handled on a state level with total authority by the state to place tracks and stations wherever they want. Certainly consultation should take place but ultimately state decides. And yes, forced municipality amalgamation should take place. Enough with all the small villages that want to be their own city with their own rules to keep others out. Take a look at what Sydney is doing right now with council amalgamations to override NIMBY power. Melbourne did this a long time ago and as a result has been able to effect a lot more urban planning.
- Redoubts 10y agoI think it would make more sense if counties and/or towns were consolidated rather than being the checkerboard of beggar-thy-neighbor constituencies it is now.
- aphextron 10y agoWhen people saying housing costs are out of control in California, really they mean the bay area. Every other part of the state is no worse than anywhere else.
- sk8ingdom 10y agoThis is objectively not true [1] and has the same sort of arrogance that frustrates people who live in other areas of the state. Is the cost of living ridiculous? Absolutely, but the higher-than-average salaries at least help compensate. Consider, for example, San Diego [2], which is considered the worst city for long term wealth accumulation in the entire USA. 1. http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/California/ http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/California/ 2. http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/oct/26/san-diego-worst-building-wealth/ http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/oct/26/san-die...
- astrange 10y agoHard to believe this article when it says Detroit is a better place to earn wealth than NYC.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- greedo 10y agoSan Diego county coastal isn't what I would consider in control...
- sphinx65 10y agoHuh? CA has had real estate values vastly above the average since the 1980's. I remember seeing dumpy ranch houses in Salinas, CA for nearly a half a million in 1992. Such a house would have been $40K almost anywhere else.
- spking 10y agoIt's just as bad down here in LA. Six figure incomes get eaten up pretty fast by rent/mortgage and taxes.
- sphinx65 10y agoThis is happening almost everywhere, but at a less frightening pace than CA. And we are told continually by the chattering class and politicians that skyrocketing real estate prices - asset inflation - is a good thing. Since forever a stable residential real estate market was the goal and people understood its value. Now we're all gamblers, meaning losers. When the hedge funds and REIT's stop speculating in residential real estate and pull out, there will be a deafening crash.
- guftagu 10y agoWhy would they stop and pull out?
- Retric 10y agoBubbles act as de facto Ponzi schemes. As money movies in prices inflate and returns are good. This attracts more money. However, it's the flow of money which is generating above market returns which requires exponential increases to keep returns up. Exponential growth is never sustainable so eventually new money can't keep up which lowers the returns. This further reduces the influx of money, further depressing returns. This pops the bubble. Of note, the 401k system did similar things to the stock market which ended up reducing returns. In the end exponential returns are only viable when the outflow of money is greater than the inflow enabling a steady state. Eventually returns will end up averaging out as if that influx never happened, but it's going to take decades. EX: A farm get's a fixed amount of sunlight, it can increase efficiency up to a point, but in the end it's going to output a fixed amount of food <= some constant * amounts of land. Investing more money can't push past that limit (diminishing returns), so eventually you just have more money chasing a lower return. On the other hand if you don't invest more money then the dividend continues indefinitely. A huge range of things have increased in value because other parts of the economy improve. But, this is limited by overall economic growth. Also of note long term market manipulations are counter productive. You can prop up housing prices by reducing future returns.
- throwanem 10y agoWhy did they in 2008?
- nfriedly 10y agoMy wife and I spent a year in the Bay Area (San Mateo), and there was a lot to love. Great weather, awesome farmers markets, plenty of work, etc. But holly cow was it expensive! My rent was around $2000/month. I had a co-worker living in SF proper who's apartment was $4500/month. And that was 4-5 years ago, it's probably gone up by now. After a year, we moved back to Ohio - I now have a good-sized house on nearly an acre of land, and my 15-year mortgage is just over $1000/month. The difference is going into my retirement savings: I'm on track to have enough to retire at around age 45.
- lubujackson 10y agoYup, rents have gone up approx. 50% in the last few years. A 1 BR in SF is now averaging $3200/mo. I believe. AVERAGING. The secret killer behind these prices is that only newcomers pay them. Most renters who have been in SF for more than 5 years are in a rent-controlled building, which means their rent is basically locked in, which is good on one hand but on the other, you can never move out. Black mold? Leaking roof? Rat infestation? Illegal units stealing your electricity? It creates a situation where people will deal with any and all hazards and illegal situations just to maintain their low rent because they know if they move they have nowhere else to go.
- owyn 10y agoYep, rents have doubled since I moved here. I moved to the bay area about 8 years ago. In that time, the house in Seattle that I lived in doubled in value, the equivalent of about 50k/year. Since I have lived here, the rents have also doubled, the equivalent of about 25k/year. I'm actually paying about the same (mortgage there vs rent here). I could have parked everything in AAPL and made about 5x. There are opportunity costs everywhere. Money is only part of the equation but I'm making more than that difference in salary and I'm a LOT happier in SF. Being closer to friends and family and having a better work/life balance, being able to ride my bike to work, makes a big difference for me in overall happiness score. YMMV of course. The building I live in used to be a terrible slum situation, and the new owners have renovated it (of course, living here during the renovation wasn't fun). I feel lucky there. Friends of mine have also been evicted and moved to other cities or other countries as a result of not being able to afford anything.
- chiph 10y agoCould there be a brain drain here? I see these people as being the smart ones - those who realize they're in a losing financial situation, and have the motivation to do something about it, even though in the short term it's painful for them (leaving friends & uprooting their family).
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoI had it easy - moved to CA after college, stayed 10 years, then moved back to friends and family. Used the increase in my CA house to fund a farm in Iowa. Still work on startups, but remotely.
- superswordfish 10y agoEditorializing, there's been a brain drain for some time now, with money men replacing creative types.
- mr_tristan 10y agoHeh, funny to read this on the day my moving van arrives to get my things outta here! It's a little sad, but we simply got fed up with the standard of living here. And, the Bay Area just feels mismanaged. Getting around is a royal pain. After living in Vienna, I was amazed at people who thought Bart was great. Really? I found it dirty, slow, and crazy expensive. Of course everything is just crazy expensive. A beer garden opened up nearby, with a few nice tables and some decent beers. 2 beers will cost you about $16. It's like the entire economy is about paying rent. I remember going to heuriger in Vienna and grabbing a bottle of totally decent wine for about 8 EUR. I'm not sure 64k people out of 38 million counts as an exodus, though. There's a whole lot of immigration going on.
- musha68k 10y agoI don't know when the wave actually broke but I was very disillusioned by the vibes of the bay area when I stayed for GDC in 2009. It seemed like they drove out most of the hippies a long time ago, more often than not people were just acting, very superficially and with a creepy adherence to a lost cultural heritage that felt more like selling out (get your shrink-wrapped Jerry Garcia T-shirt and GTFO). To make things even more depressing one could feel the omnipresence of a rampantly ignorant / myopic tech monoculture. I remember that I felt very relieved when I got back to Vienna.. :/
- Kalium 10y agoThe hippies either aged out or bought property decades ago. They were a real thing for a couple of years at most. The rest is myopic and ignorant nostalgia.
- planteen 10y agoBoulder seems like this, too.
- blendo 10y agoThere was _way_ too much couture tie-dye at the Haight-Ashbury street fair a few weeks ago. But then I stopped by the California Historical Radio Society booth (Radio Day is July 23 in Alameda!), and spoke with them abuot their "KSAN Live Jive CD Project", and all the good memories came flooding back. If you're curious about the Bay Area, read David Talbot's wonderful history, "Season of the Witch".
- iamjdg 10y agoThese people who sold their Bay Area homes and moved somewhere else to pay cash for a house seem to gloss over the fact that they were able to do this because they struggled in the Bay Area for so many years and became real estate wealthy. They won't see this kind of real estate wealth growth in their new communities.
- sliverstorm 10y agoThat's kind of the point, you can get more for less struggle elsewhere. They are giving up the wealth growth.
- rconti 10y agoRight, but it glosses over the fact that they were not able to afford their lifestyle 'organically' in their new place. It only seems awesome because they're going in with huge wads of California cash.
- sliverstorm 10y agoOnly if you are focusing on "wow they bought a lavish mansion with fifty acres and a stable". If they move to Ohio and buy a house- guess what, property ownership is very normal and attainable in Ohio by relatively ordinary people. Mega California bucks aren't necessary.
- ringwalt 10y agoHuh? There is a lot more room for growth in small cities with functional tech industries, and these people can now afford to speculate on multiple properties for the price of their small Bay Area house.
- pyre 10y ago> They won't see this kind of real estate wealth growth in their new communities. The question is do they expect to?
- wanderr 10y agoAs someone who enjoys being outdoors, I love CA and the Bay Area especially. The weather is great year round, and there is so much spectacular and wildly different areas to see within a relatively short drive, it's amazing. But the cost of living is completely insane. It doesn't help that I moved from one of the cheapest places to live (Gainesville, FL), but my salary just about tripled when I made the move, and it's still a struggle. My $650/mo mortgage for a 1200 square foot house that seemed expensive and kinda small at the time is replaced by a $3k/mo rent for 930 square feet. Then state income taxes take a huge chunk where FL had none, yet FL's sales tax is the same or lower... CA is roundly better than FL in just about every other way so it's worth paying a premium for now to be out here but it's pretty clear that it's not sustainable long term. I'm also happy to be paying much higher taxes if the money is being used responsibily but it is incredibly frustrating to see the government continually make no progress on solving the affordability and traffic problems of the area.
- ryandrake 10y agoI'm a Florida transplant as well and I agree with you 100%. Used to live on the beach for 1/4 of what I pay here to live 2 hours from work. I'd love to go back, but the "opportunity risk" is real. You lose your tech job suddenly in the Bay Area, and you might spend 3-6 months and you're back at work. You lose your tech job in Florida, and you're probably going to be moving out of the state. Tons of people have already popped up in these threads saying things like "But Austin!" And "What about Raleigh-Durham?" etc. While there might be greater than 1 tech company in these areas, they still don't hold a candle to the Bay Area when it comes to where you best mitigate the risk of job loss.
- tsunamifury 10y agoWe've lost most of our friends now, and the roots we were putting down over the last 7 years are eroding a bit. For the record our household income fluctuates between 300 and 400k and we live in a microhouse (500sqft) in Berkeley. Expanding is a difficult proposition. Its an interesting set of factors that lets me buy a Ferrari far easier than a house. First lifestyle money, then tech money, now foreign investment. And there are a lot of subtle changes neighboorhood to neighboorhood. Mission was once the most expensive in SF, now Berkeley is surpassing even them. Hayes Valley becomes hip, and Precedio Heights becomes more affordable because of the lack of public transit. For the most part i've surmised that the city is full of smaller town transplants who graduate and think their 120k offer is the greatest opportunity of their lives. They shortly find out it barely gets them a toilet with two roommates and end up leaving for Seattle, Portland, etc while staying with their company. This cycle repeats over and over Meanwhile, this engine extends the SFBay problem to the B and C cities -- leaving fewer places to run to.
- cylinder 10y agoWhat am I missing -- rent for large houses in nice East Bay suburbs seems to be around $3500-$4000 a month which is easily less than a third of your take-home income. I'm not sure about Berkeley proper.
- rconti 10y agoYeah. I don't know. We bought a real house on the Peninsula on far less income.
- linuxlizard 10y agoCome to Boise, Idaho (USA). We need high tech people. Excellent quality of life, low commutes. https://www.tsheets.com/living-in-boise/ https://www.tsheets.com/living-in-boise/ (I don't work at T-Sheets but they have a great page on living in Boise.) Also in Boise: Micron, HP's laser printer division.
- throwanem 10y agoIf I hadn't stayed in Baltimore, I probably would've ended up in Boise. It's a lovely town.
- mikestew 10y agoCraigslist shows about a half dozen jobs, just like it always does when I look. Other sources have similar results. Where might one find these companies that "need tech people"? Because I'm seriously looking to get out of the Seattle area, and Boise would be a first choice, but for the lack of available jobs.
- patmcguire 10y agoI left NYC for the Bay Area two years ago and just moved back. A lot of it was for personal and career reasons, a lot wasn't. At a certain point I couldn't justify paying oodles for a dark 1BR in Mountain View when that same money could get a better apartment in the West Village.
- hkarthik 10y agoI went the opposite route as most. I was remote for 3 years from Texas and then moved to the Bay Area for work. And I have a family of four. Key aspects that make it work for me are the following: * Accept a long commute to a more family-friendly community with good schools. * Live near BART and use it everyday. * Work in the city, not the South Bay. * Make sure you have two strong professional incomes. * Pay for good quality child care and/or after school care. * Pay the high housing costs and accept that you will redirect a good portion of your investments towards housing here. And it won't be as nice. All in all its been worth it for me. I am working with extremely smart, driven people who I am learning a ton from. I don't have to hide my political views, and everyone has been open and accepting. It has been very easy for us to make great friends in a short time.
- pj_mukh 10y ago"I am working with extremely smart, driven people who I am learning a ton from." This is something being overlooked completely. There aren't a lot of other places that have this concentration of progressive minded bright (tech and non-tech) individuals. Great things will come out of this density. It sucks that the non-techies are being pushed out, but that should accelerate the need for housing reform. This density must be maintained and made widely accessible. Vote. Call your rep. http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/trailer_bill_language/local_government/documents/707StreamliningAffordableHousingApprovals_000.pdf http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/trailer_bill_language/local_...
- sbardle 10y agoAt the risk of the grossest generalisation, the Bay Area has worked because it's combined two very different types of people. On the one hand, the engineers/techies (with roots in the defence industry and conservative midwest backgrounds) and on the other, the idealists/utopians (with roots in the counter-culture movement). Strange bedfellows, but a world-changing combination back then. I don't live in the Valley now, so can't comment on the situation, but I hear it is far more of a mono-culture now.
- 10y ago
- jff 10y agoThen they move to another state, and drive up the housing markets, and vote for all the same stuff that made California untenable, and wonder why the natives are hostile.
- iceManChild 10y agoI live in the Bay Area. I have been able to make it work for me and love it here, though I do understand some of the reasons why others may not. Cost probably tops that list. But, the complaints about traffic should not be focused on California. In my experience most of the cities I have to travel to (Seattle, Phoenix, Atlanta) have much worse traffic issues. My colleagues in those cities spend 5-10 extra hours driving during the week compared to what my coworkers and I spend.
- rconti 10y agoI moved from Seattle to the Bay Area about 15 years ago, and at the time, Seattle traffic was far worse. Of course, the metro Bay Area is physically larger, so it's possible to conjure up a worse commute involving more miles, but for the same number of miles, at the time, Seattle was worse. Traffic in the Bay Area has gotten quite bad of late, but I know Seattle has done the same. I live 7mi from work so it hardly phases me. Particularly when I bike in.
- fiatmoney 10y agoJust wait until enough democratic voters are imported to overturn Proposition 13 (caps property taxes at roughly what they were when you bought the house, and requires 2/3 vote in the legislature for tax increases). California is trying so hard to go full Venezuela, and the only buffer they have are the three or so major industries that are doing well (agriculture, entertainment, and tech). If there's a contraction in those sectors, expect a death spiral.
- FuturePromise 10y agoIt doesn't really "cap it". It can go up 2% a year, and does!
- ekekekekekekl 10y agoThe bay area is just awful, do not move here^Wthere!
- zeveb 10y agoCalifornia today is the United States in a decade or two: its dysfunctions are the product of decades of poor policy decisions (often, the poor decision was to have a policy in the first place) by voters and their elected officials alike. A huge problem is that people move from California to other states in order to escape Californian problems, but once they get to their new state they miss a few things about California, and agitate to make their new state more Californian in those few aspects. Multiply that across all the Californian emmigrants in a state, and suddenly that state has California-style problems again. The only solution I can see is to amend the Constitution (specifically, the Fourteenth Amendment) to provide that people who move to a state must be naturalised into it rather than immediately gain citizenship. Perhaps a decade-long waiting period would give folks time to acculturate. An advantage of this would be that Californians who have escaped to other states would still be voting in California, even as they are acculturating to a saner state government system: in effect, California would get wiser voters for free. You can substitute 'New Jersey', 'Massachusetts' or 'New York' for 'California' above and get much the same effect.
- dmode 10y agoThis makes no sense. Because people who move to California also move from other states.
- zeveb 10y ago> This makes no sense. Because people who move to California also move from other states. But California (like Texas) is large enough that a uniform sampling of Americans from other states injected into California is like adding a drop of water to the ocean. The Californian exodus to smaller states, OTOH, is more like dumping a #10 can of ketchup into a hot tub.
- rconti 10y agoYou appear to be blaming Californians on what are probably natural tendencies of the people already living there.
- 10y ago
- dmode 10y agoSo, "exodus" is used to define a mere outflow of 60K residents ? That is less than 0.05%. Also, this article makes no sense. If California was losing people for the last 22 years, how come it's population went from 29 million in 1990 to 40 million in 2016 ? I hate how none of these "exodus" articles are data centric and explain these two discrepancies. Is the population growth then due to birth rate ? or due to immigration ? Also, interestingly the same article notes that job growth in Bay Area has been at it's highest point ever
- rconti 10y agoYeah, they used outflow numbers for the entire state to "prove" that there's an exodus from the Bay Area. Here's your hint: "California has seen negative outward migration to other states for 22 of the last 25 years." Obviously the Bay Area does not have negative outward migration, or the traffic and housing issues would be solved. Another interesting quote cites a man inexplicably commuting from SF to the East Bay which is not something you'd do if you were trying to optimize your housing costs. A third cites a woman and her sister moving from The Villages in SJ to Dayton, Ohio. Not mentioned is the fact that The Villages is a retirement community on a golf course (you have to be over 55 to live there).
- dmode 10y agoHa ha ha. These anecdotes prove the level journalism have fallen due to clickbait. The commute from SF to East Bay is pretty easy during rush hour.
- khuey 10y agoIt's immigration. California has had negative net domestic migration for a while. Population growth in the state is driven by immigration.
- dadkins 10y agoDon't forget natural growth, i.e. birth. According to census estimates, California had a natural population increase of 1,332,394 (births - deaths) from April 2010 -- August 2015. In that same period it had a net immigration of 568,884 people, consisting of +834,999 international and -266,115 domestic. On the other hand, when you look at the San Francisco bay area metropolitan region, you'll see that there's no domestic exodus and a net immigration of 274,598 people over the last five years. [http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/PEP/2015/PEPTCOMP/0400000US06|310M200US41860|310M200US41940 http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/PEP/2015/PEPT...] So, yeah, with a little over ~90,000 new people per year in the region, the picture looks very different than the one the article was trying to paint.
- mmanfrin 10y agoI have literally never heard anyone cite California taxes as having any contribution on them leaving. The only people I've heard mention 'high California taxes' are people who are explicitly trying to solicit Californians to move to wherever they are ('come to Texas! We have way lower taxes than you!').
- lsaferite 10y agoAs someone not in CA, it's a reason I have no desire to move there.
- khuey 10y agoFor the vast majority of people I think high real estate costs are a much bigger problem than high state taxes. CA state income tax is less than 9.3% of income for most people, a home is probably at least 30%.
- justinlardinois 10y agoAgreed. It seems odd to harp on that, especially for a Bay Area newspaper. Also, it's not at all specific on what kind of taxes it's talking about and it makes it sound like taxes are higher in the Bay Area than the rest of California. Local income tax is more or less nonexistent in California (and the US in general, really). Property taxes are some of the lowest in the country. We do have a high state income tax compared to other states, but it's still negligible compared to federal income taxes. I guess your federal income taxes will be higher in California because you'll make more money here than in most other states.
- skynetv2 10y agoeven with good salaries, I would move away from California at the first chance I get.
- gumby 10y agoThe work environment is really great and I'm glad I can quickly drive out into the countryside, but the overall environment is pretty terrible: there's inadequate investment in infrastructure leading to crummy roads, crummy schools, essentially no public transport, slow internet (in Palo Alto of all places), and the like. Taxes need to go up a lot and the whole NIMBY thing has to go. California used to be a progressive place and we are still living off that investment. But like any extractive economy we are unsustainably mining the investments of the late 1940s to the early 1970s. I must say I really enjoy tech so the Valley is the only place for me to work. It was fun living in SF but the companies up there aren't tech focused to the same degree.
- thaw13579 10y agoReading the comment section of that article is quite a bizarre experience
- mikestew 10y agoI'll read the article later, but this sounds like a replay of about twenty years ago. Articles in the WSJ, NYT, et. al., about how CA's high housing prices and taxation are causing an exodus to such places as Las Vegas (and we see how that turned out). I was too young to have paid attention at the time, but I wouldn't be surprised to go back to the archives to the 70s, where one might find the same articles. I know, this time it's different $BECAUSE_REASONS. No, it's not. Some individuals and companies will leave, but CA will continue to be crowded in some areas, heavily taxed, and costly, just like it's always been.
- HillaryBriss 10y agoYes. Also, tax rates are higher today than they were in the 1970s. One data point: California statewide sales tax base rate was in the 3.75% to 5.0% range in the 1970s. Today it's 6.25%. https://www.boe.ca.gov/sutax/taxrateshist.htm https://www.boe.ca.gov/sutax/taxrateshist.htm
- naveen99 10y agoAtleast california state or San Francisco city don't yet claim a cut of your intellectual property. After all you use their land and infrastructure. Also, the state and city governments don't yet have their own firehouse of data collection into your communication. I wonder if some enterprising landlord will put in a clause into the lease to own your intellectual property and communications while in your residence. Would people sign the lease for a 20% rent discount ?
- binarysolo 10y agoHoo boy, these articles make the rounds every couple days. People live in the Bay Area because of: professional opportunities, culture, weather, and social network. If you value those things more than high cost of living then you stay -- you either have the privilege of money or the tolerance of being financially stretched and not have all the nice things.
- hans 10y agoIt also seems like there's no push from the buy side, in CA we're all sheep. likely b/c there is no community so the rent-taking can wratchet up all day long. I think if people en masse began to reject extortion rent we could have a situation. This never seems to happen but it would be a spectacle: thousands of 160k/yr workers decide to camp in tents until rents subside, all camped out in the streets in a section of Sf.