5 ms·

Honest question here: Do people have the right to live wherever they want? I hear a lot about SF prices, and housing, and employment/pay, and it all really see

by cbanek 10y ago

Honest question here: Do people have the right to live wherever they want? I hear a lot about SF prices, and housing, and employment/pay, and it all really seems to come down to this one fundamental question. A lot of people want to live in SF, which is a very small geographic area. The simple law of supply and demand shows that prices will be high, and people that can pay those prices will stay, and people that aren't willing or can't will leave. This seems to be what is happening right now, economics in action. In the end, there's likely a few possible outcomes: 1) We need people to do the "low jobs" that wouldn't pay enough to live in SF. Jobs like cleaning, food service, etc. All of these things still need to happen. So these people either need to get paid enough to live there, or there needs to be some kind of amazing commuting going on. This would continue the price rises. 2) People that can afford SF realize it's so expensive that it's not worth it. This helps deflate the prices, and increase economies elsewhere. It honestly feels like we've got a bit of both going on. Many companies are getting out of SF because of the costs and moving elsewhere. But there's still too many people (and a lot of young people) trying to get in. We haven't hit equilibrium yet, so prices rise. But the real question is, for people that can't afford to live in SF, and are constantly protesting that fact - do you have the right to live there, or should you just move somewhere else? There are plenty of jobs in the US, and while there may be some real reasons that you NEED to live in SF (taking care of family is one that comes to top of mind), I can't honestly see any requirement to living there. This is one of the reasons why I moved out of California entirely, after living in SF and LA, and moved to Nevada. But I'm not one of these people protesting that they can't afford to live where they choose, and thinking that's a right. As far as I can tell, it's not a right. If you can't afford it, you can't have it. Not everyone can live in mid-town Manhattan or SF. Everyone does, so the people that make it are the people that can pay. Things and times change. If you don't change with them, then you're the one standing in the road waiting to get run over.

seannaM 10y ago
Maybe people shouldn't run over people who are in the road
RickS 10y ago
The socially accepted answer is "no". I don't just mean in the regional sense (san francisco), but the literal sense (your neighbor's yard). Property can be owned, ownership can be transferred/negotiated, and rights tied somehow to that ownership are necessary for occupation. But you're asking the wrong question, IMO. The right question is "do we have a moral obligation to make housing as accessible as it could be for the largest number of people?" I think we do, at least to a point. Some places take it farther than others, but the general consensus is that SF's prices are a result of malleable policies and past decisions, not just hard facts of life (though the "water on 3 sides" thing is a hard fact for sure). People aren't complaining that they're magically entitled to live wherever they happen to be standing. They're complaining that a system capable of helping more people live better is performing pretty poorly. I think that's great that there's uproar. Personally I fear the day we stop demanding that the world around us get better.
- cbanek 10y ago
  I agree with your question: "do we have a moral obligation to make housing as accessible as it could be for the largest number of people?" I say the answer to that is yes. But if you make the question specific to a particular area, my answer would be no. Just about anywhere in the US is cheaper to house people than SF (other than NYC). It'd also probably be better for the economy to develop other urban and even suburban areas, because there would be more jobs related to people living in those areas (think cashiers, gas stations, places to eat, etc.) While some places are hard to live, because there's no water, no medical services, etc, there's a lot of places to go live. The big question now is about jobs. There's a lot of jobs in SF, and not a lot of jobs in small affordable towns, and people need jobs. But I think that's a self fulfilling cycle, in that tech jobs can really happen anywhere. You don't need a railroad, or factory, or have a port. Overall I feel like people in SF are complaining that they can't afford to live in SF. Not where they are standing, or in a great neighborhood, but they want to live in SF. And most of them are blaming the tech companies completely. I'm also not sure what system is helping or hurting people here. It seems to be simple economics. And while I'm all about helping people, knowing some of the ways people get around rent control in both SF and NYC, you're really fighting the clock to get things back to a normal equilibrium. I'm all about people demanding things get better, but it just seems like people are angry that things suck, and while there are things that we can do (both people and government), nobody is budging.
pmoriarty 10y ago
"A lot of people want to live in SF, which is a very small geographic area" San Francisco has a land area of 47 square miles. Manhattan has a land area of 23 square miles, with 4 times the population density per square mile of SF.
- cbanek 10y ago
  Manhattan is also exorbitantly expensive. Even more so than SF, with more people. This also relates to the skyscrapers argument mentioned by a sibling thread.
  - santaclaus 10y ago
    Average rent for a 1 bedroom in Manhattan is $3,400.00 / month. That seems to be about on par with the 'city' parts of SF. In Manhattan you also get a much better public transit system, more restaurants, and more museums.
    - pmoriarty 10y ago
      There's also a much, much better night life in NYC, way more going on artistically and culturally. There are far more people in NYC (which could be a good or bad thing, depending on whether you like city life). NYC also feels way more alive to me, and SF has the feel of a sleepy backwater town in comparison. NYC is a much bigger terrorist target than SF, though.
      - cbanek 10y ago
        SF has better weather too, or at least different weather. Plus if you like surfing, SF is probably your choice.
    - sotojuan 10y ago
      Rents above Central Park and Columbia University are lower, but of course the neighborhoods are less "desirable". I've never been to a Bay Area, but NYC's subway system means you can live in a cheap area in Brooklyn or Queens and still have a reasonable commute to a Manhattan job.
wolfgke 10y ago
> A lot of people want to live in SF, which is a very small geographic area. The simple law of supply and demand shows that prices will be high Rather: The complicated zoning laws show that prices will be high. Otherwise one would simply build skyscrapers.
- cbanek 10y ago
  It's true, if there were more supply, the prices could theoretically come down, but I've rarely seen a cheap apartment in a skyscraper. Usually developers would only build such a thing if they can make a huge amount of money and get the highest (or at least current) rates for most of the occupancy. In short, people would stop building skyscrapers once they didn't make financial sense anymore for the developer, and that doesn't necessarily mean when it's affordable for a tenant.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    At first skyscrapers (or generally new housing) are expensive. They attract the more wealthy people, freeing their current locations for other people. That makes a lot of new housing, which is always good when there isn't enough. The effects comes in later. People with enough money to afford the best new buildings refuse to live in the older ones. The price of the older places go down (or at least is put down by the new building). Fast forward 30 years. The "old skyscrapers" are not the best place anymore, there are newer better places, they become more affordable, while the newest place is more expensive. (who knows what will be the expected standard of living in 30 years?) That's long term planning. You need luxury skyscrapers now to control pricing later for the cheaper buildings.
    - cbanek 10y ago
      This of course assumes the rent for older places goes down, but it seems like rents are kept artificially high (well the last person paid X) and almost never go down for a region. Over time I agree, that economics will take over, as long as there aren't even more people wanting to move in, but that doesn't seem likely.
et-al 10y ago
> Honest question here: Do people have the right to live wherever they want? [...] But the real question is, for people that can't afford to live in SF, and are constantly protesting that fact - do you have the right to live there, or should you just move somewhere else? Short answer: no. However I, and probably you, come from a place where we're able to obtain jobs fairly easily in other parts of the country. Mobility is something we expect and are actually privileged to. For those protesting, the idea of leaving San Francisco may be a completely outlandish thought for them. I'm not saying one way is right, but I think there's a level of emphathy that needs to be used when we're talking about the concept of "home." Abstracting this into simple economics seems callous when we're talking about displacing people. Also, the audience here might not be the best source to get an answer from a person/family being forced out.
- cbanek 10y ago
  I totally get this. This is also personal to me, in that I personally moved out of CA to NV because of the cost of living. If it was just as cheap to live in CA, I would live there, with my friends. I get that this can be an emotional issue, but while economics may be callous, so is the harshness of reality. The same could be said for the cost of health care, and other rising costs that people are struggling to pay. But denial doesn't help either. In the end, you end up racking up a lot of debt, then you move/declare bankruptcy/become homeless anyway. In the end, I find facing the facts, and acting on them a much more reliable strategy for success. I feel too many people think they are "entitled" to these things, instead of taking reasonable actions to improve their situation.
  - et-al 10y ago
    I agree with everything you said. It's my personal philosophy, too: "adapt or die." And like you, I'll most likely move out of here because to put nearly a million dollars on a rotting woodframe TIC flat in an earthquake zone isn't the most financial prudent decision. But dammit, I do love this stinkin' city.
dreamdu5t 10y ago
Everyone does have the right to live in SF. Anyone is free to earn the money required to afford a place here. The people who earn 100k+ didn't win some sort of lottery... they choose to work in industries that pay well. They get up everyday and go to work like everyone else. Yes, some people are born into families with better support than others - but everyone has the opportunity to go to college and study STEM. Any student with decent grades and lack of capital qualifies for financial aid and scholarships.
superuser2 10y ago
"It's just economics" will make sense when there is by-right authority to build arbitrarily dense housing everywhere in the city. As it stands, existing residents can't afford to buy out all potential high-density development, but are asserting their right to preserve low-density neighborhood character all the same. It shouldn't be a right to live where you choose, but it is something society should optimize for. It shouldn't be a right to block urbanization either. If we took away the capability to block urbanization, a lot more people would get to live where they choose.
PrimalDual 10y ago
People don't have the right to live wherever they want but in the United States the government(local or federal) should not be able to limit immigration of citizens between regions inside the country. I fail to see the difference between visa requirements for foreigners that wish to live in the United States and a rent requirement to live in the Bay Area. Obviously San Francisco and the Bay Area are not sovereign so they can't require visas and border control but they have instituted a system that has the same effect. Notice that I assume government regulations are the sole cause of high housing costs in the Bay Area. Another question worth asking would be how stringent do your housing regulations have to be to be considered a violation of other citizens' freedoms?
m0llusk 10y ago
That isn't an honest question. The honest fact in this case is that decades of anti development activism have resulted in a huge gap between demand for housing units and available supply. If large numbers of people choosing to move to an urban area were fundamentally impossible then Tokyo and Hong Kong would have overheated and melted down a long time ago but they didn't because their rules for development are different and do not have this failing.
- cbanek 10y ago
  They are both having problems: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/hayman-s-bass-says-hong-kong-property-market-is-in-free-fall http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/hayman-s-b... The Japanese asset bubble is also a classic, and some would say the Japanese economy is still recovering from that these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)

by cbanek 10y ago

seannaM 10y ago

Maybe people shouldn't run over people who are in the road

RickS 10y ago

The socially accepted answer is "no". I don't just mean in the regional sense (san francisco), but the literal sense (your neighbor's yard). Property can be owned, ownership can be transferred/negotiated, and rights tied somehow to that ownership are necessary for occupation. But you're asking the wrong question, IMO. The right question is "do we have a moral obligation to make housing as accessible as it could be for the largest number of people?" I think we do, at least to a point. Some places take it farther than others, but the general consensus is that SF's prices are a result of malleable policies and past decisions, not just hard facts of life (though the "water on 3 sides" thing is a hard fact for sure). People aren't complaining that they're magically entitled to live wherever they happen to be standing. They're complaining that a system capable of helping more people live better is performing pretty poorly. I think that's great that there's uproar. Personally I fear the day we stop demanding that the world around us get better.

cbanek 10y ago
I agree with your question: "do we have a moral obligation to make housing as accessible as it could be for the largest number of people?" I say the answer to that is yes. But if you make the question specific to a particular area, my answer would be no. Just about anywhere in the US is cheaper to house people than SF (other than NYC). It'd also probably be better for the economy to develop other urban and even suburban areas, because there would be more jobs related to people living in those areas (think cashiers, gas stations, places to eat, etc.) While some places are hard to live, because there's no water, no medical services, etc, there's a lot of places to go live. The big question now is about jobs. There's a lot of jobs in SF, and not a lot of jobs in small affordable towns, and people need jobs. But I think that's a self fulfilling cycle, in that tech jobs can really happen anywhere. You don't need a railroad, or factory, or have a port. Overall I feel like people in SF are complaining that they can't afford to live in SF. Not where they are standing, or in a great neighborhood, but they want to live in SF. And most of them are blaming the tech companies completely. I'm also not sure what system is helping or hurting people here. It seems to be simple economics. And while I'm all about helping people, knowing some of the ways people get around rent control in both SF and NYC, you're really fighting the clock to get things back to a normal equilibrium. I'm all about people demanding things get better, but it just seems like people are angry that things suck, and while there are things that we can do (both people and government), nobody is budging.

pmoriarty 10y ago

"A lot of people want to live in SF, which is a very small geographic area" San Francisco has a land area of 47 square miles. Manhattan has a land area of 23 square miles, with 4 times the population density per square mile of SF.

cbanek 10y ago
Manhattan is also exorbitantly expensive. Even more so than SF, with more people. This also relates to the skyscrapers argument mentioned by a sibling thread.
- santaclaus 10y ago
  Average rent for a 1 bedroom in Manhattan is $3,400.00 / month. That seems to be about on par with the 'city' parts of SF. In Manhattan you also get a much better public transit system, more restaurants, and more museums.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    There's also a much, much better night life in NYC, way more going on artistically and culturally. There are far more people in NYC (which could be a good or bad thing, depending on whether you like city life). NYC also feels way more alive to me, and SF has the feel of a sleepy backwater town in comparison. NYC is a much bigger terrorist target than SF, though.
    - cbanek 10y ago
      SF has better weather too, or at least different weather. Plus if you like surfing, SF is probably your choice.
  - sotojuan 10y ago
    Rents above Central Park and Columbia University are lower, but of course the neighborhoods are less "desirable". I've never been to a Bay Area, but NYC's subway system means you can live in a cheap area in Brooklyn or Queens and still have a reasonable commute to a Manhattan job.

wolfgke 10y ago

> A lot of people want to live in SF, which is a very small geographic area. The simple law of supply and demand shows that prices will be high Rather: The complicated zoning laws show that prices will be high. Otherwise one would simply build skyscrapers.

cbanek 10y ago
It's true, if there were more supply, the prices could theoretically come down, but I've rarely seen a cheap apartment in a skyscraper. Usually developers would only build such a thing if they can make a huge amount of money and get the highest (or at least current) rates for most of the occupancy. In short, people would stop building skyscrapers once they didn't make financial sense anymore for the developer, and that doesn't necessarily mean when it's affordable for a tenant.
- user5994461 10y ago
  At first skyscrapers (or generally new housing) are expensive. They attract the more wealthy people, freeing their current locations for other people. That makes a lot of new housing, which is always good when there isn't enough. The effects comes in later. People with enough money to afford the best new buildings refuse to live in the older ones. The price of the older places go down (or at least is put down by the new building). Fast forward 30 years. The "old skyscrapers" are not the best place anymore, there are newer better places, they become more affordable, while the newest place is more expensive. (who knows what will be the expected standard of living in 30 years?) That's long term planning. You need luxury skyscrapers now to control pricing later for the cheaper buildings.
  - cbanek 10y ago
    This of course assumes the rent for older places goes down, but it seems like rents are kept artificially high (well the last person paid X) and almost never go down for a region. Over time I agree, that economics will take over, as long as there aren't even more people wanting to move in, but that doesn't seem likely.

et-al 10y ago

> Honest question here: Do people have the right to live wherever they want? [...] But the real question is, for people that can't afford to live in SF, and are constantly protesting that fact - do you have the right to live there, or should you just move somewhere else? Short answer: no. However I, and probably you, come from a place where we're able to obtain jobs fairly easily in other parts of the country. Mobility is something we expect and are actually privileged to. For those protesting, the idea of leaving San Francisco may be a completely outlandish thought for them. I'm not saying one way is right, but I think there's a level of emphathy that needs to be used when we're talking about the concept of "home." Abstracting this into simple economics seems callous when we're talking about displacing people. Also, the audience here might not be the best source to get an answer from a person/family being forced out.

cbanek 10y ago
I totally get this. This is also personal to me, in that I personally moved out of CA to NV because of the cost of living. If it was just as cheap to live in CA, I would live there, with my friends. I get that this can be an emotional issue, but while economics may be callous, so is the harshness of reality. The same could be said for the cost of health care, and other rising costs that people are struggling to pay. But denial doesn't help either. In the end, you end up racking up a lot of debt, then you move/declare bankruptcy/become homeless anyway. In the end, I find facing the facts, and acting on them a much more reliable strategy for success. I feel too many people think they are "entitled" to these things, instead of taking reasonable actions to improve their situation.
- et-al 10y ago
  I agree with everything you said. It's my personal philosophy, too: "adapt or die." And like you, I'll most likely move out of here because to put nearly a million dollars on a rotting woodframe TIC flat in an earthquake zone isn't the most financial prudent decision. But dammit, I do love this stinkin' city.

dreamdu5t 10y ago

Everyone does have the right to live in SF. Anyone is free to earn the money required to afford a place here. The people who earn 100k+ didn't win some sort of lottery... they choose to work in industries that pay well. They get up everyday and go to work like everyone else. Yes, some people are born into families with better support than others - but everyone has the opportunity to go to college and study STEM. Any student with decent grades and lack of capital qualifies for financial aid and scholarships.

superuser2 10y ago

"It's just economics" will make sense when there is by-right authority to build arbitrarily dense housing everywhere in the city. As it stands, existing residents can't afford to buy out all potential high-density development, but are asserting their right to preserve low-density neighborhood character all the same. It shouldn't be a right to live where you choose, but it is something society should optimize for. It shouldn't be a right to block urbanization either. If we took away the capability to block urbanization, a lot more people would get to live where they choose.

PrimalDual 10y ago

People don't have the right to live wherever they want but in the United States the government(local or federal) should not be able to limit immigration of citizens between regions inside the country. I fail to see the difference between visa requirements for foreigners that wish to live in the United States and a rent requirement to live in the Bay Area. Obviously San Francisco and the Bay Area are not sovereign so they can't require visas and border control but they have instituted a system that has the same effect. Notice that I assume government regulations are the sole cause of high housing costs in the Bay Area. Another question worth asking would be how stringent do your housing regulations have to be to be considered a violation of other citizens' freedoms?

m0llusk 10y ago

That isn't an honest question. The honest fact in this case is that decades of anti development activism have resulted in a huge gap between demand for housing units and available supply. If large numbers of people choosing to move to an urban area were fundamentally impossible then Tokyo and Hong Kong would have overheated and melted down a long time ago but they didn't because their rules for development are different and do not have this failing.

cbanek 10y ago
They are both having problems: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/hayman-s-bass-says-hong-kong-property-market-is-in-free-fall http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/hayman-s-b... The Japanese asset bubble is also a classic, and some would say the Japanese economy is still recovering from that these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)