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Changing San Francisco is foreseen as a haven for wealthy and childless (1981)
- sctb 10y agoRelevant recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453644
- HeavenBanned 10y agoWhat a surprise: the NIMBY, white flight, privileged, white, upper-class has always carved out private spaces for themselves in large cities.
- BadassFractal 10y agoCause I'm praying for rain And I'm praying for tidal waves I wanna see the ground give way. I wanna watch it all go down. Mom, please flush it all away. I wanna see it go right in and down. I wanna watch it go right in. Watch you flush it all away. Originally meant for LA, but oddly applicable.
- pokler 10y agoMom's comin' round to put it back the way it ought to be.
- kinghajj 10y agoLooked up the lyrics, had some fun. A lot of verses fit well with both settings. Fuck that Mark Zuckerberg and Fuck all his clones. Fuck all these swag-toting Hip coder wannabes. Learn to swim. Fuck retro anything. Fuck your tattoos. Fuck all you junkies and Fuck your short memory. Learn to swim. Fuck those recruiters With hidden agendas. Fuck these dysfunctional, Insecure activists.
- memoryfab_com 10y agoNYtimes writing news about SF as a haven for wealthy and childless is like SFchronicles writing about NY as haven for wealthy and carless.
- loafa 10y agoNew York and San Francisco are both havens for the wealthy and childless. But is this a real problem? Different areas are good for different types of people. If you want to have children, move to somewhere you can have a proper backyard, because leaving your kids indoors all day will send both you and them crazy.
- stephancoral 10y agoI grew up in NYC. I certainly didn't stay indoors all day. You know there's like five or six absolutely massive sprawling parks in the city right? Not to mention exploring your neighborhood on bike and by foot. Growing up in the city is amazing and I feel bad for my peers who tell me of their suburban youth with the backyard and pool but they had to walk 30 minutes just to go to a store or see a friend.
- nerfhammer 10y agoYea, ironically you actually spend much more time outside in NYC because everyone walks everywhere, and there's always a nice park within a couple blocks of wherever you are.
- Swizec 10y agoSame, grew up in a (small) city and it was amazing. We roamed and explored and had fun. My sister, 8 years younger, not so much. Everyone had clubs and extracuriculars and computers and homework and TV. No free time to roam and explore after school before parents come home.
- loafa 10y agoI know that things have changed since I was a kid in the 80s and suburban parents are no longer happy sending their kids outside to roam the streets unsupervised. But surely even back in the day, parents wouldn't have sent young children to hang out unsupervised in Central Park?
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- alanh 10y agoI think sometimes there is a meme that if it's been said before, that’s proof that the complaint or worry is baseless and hysterical. But this isn’t so. Just because it's been said before doesn't make it untrue. San Francisco is in fact not an easy or great place for those with children but not wealth.
- npiazza83 10y agoMost of America isn't a great place for those with children but not wealth! I think what makes San Francisco a target is that it isn't a great place for those without children who would be classified as wealthy in any other part of the country. You can probably find a path to home ownership in a safe neighborhood with decent services in any city in the country if you are in the upper quartile of incomes for that area. The housing prices in San Francisco are such that most incomes even in the upper quartile would take a decade to save for a downpayment. You need two incomes (Two working parents) in the upper quartile of incomes in the area to get you to home ownership in a good neighborhood.
- freyir 10y ago> Most of America isn't a great place for those with children but not wealth! I don't follow. As you said yourself, in most places in the U.S., a middle or upper-middle class family can afford to live in a home big enough for a family (which by global standards, is likely big enough for two or three families). And the home's in a safe neighborhood. What prevents this scenario from being great?
- alanh 10y agoI’m with you. Obviously wealthy children will have more advantages no matter what, but I personally grew up with one working parent (dad was a teacher with a summer job and some small side jobs) who was able to support me, my mother, and 5 siblings in a smallish US town. I was able to receive a good public education, and we had all the necessities (if nothing else – no nice vacations or fashionable clothes). It was a safe town… sports programs, extra-curriculars. Cheap homes. That one working parent was able to buy a 4-bed home, renovate the attic, add an enclosed porch, re-side and re-shingle, and pay off the mortgage while raising this family. This scenario would be entirely impossible in San Francisco and even most of the Peninsula.
- huangc10 10y ago> Soaring housing costs, urban violence, shifting ethnic patterns and an increase in childless adults living together may be turning San Francisco, which the Chamber of Commerce likes to call ''everybody's favorite city,'' into a haven for the young, the old, the wealthy and the childless. Love reading posts of old articles from the 80s and 90s. It's like nothing much has changed over the past 30 or so years. Except the average housing price has gone up from ~$100,000 to ~$1,000,000 (you know, cuz of inflation and stuff...)
- pmiller2 10y agoSince you quoted the one sentence that made me scratch my head, I'll glom onto it here. How are any of those things good for young people?
- AndrewUnmuted 10y agoI think it's more that they the bad for people with children.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoThe young who are childless but still have a high income. That implies, though, that if/when they have kids, they're going to find San Francisco to be less attractive...
- pmiller2 10y agoSure, but most young people don't have a high income.
- jbpetersen 10y agoIt's a lot more likely that they do when you precondition on them living in SF.
- pmiller2 10y ago
- elastic_church 10y agoI looked at housing prices in SF going back to 1920, and the year over year increases are still in line with the annual increases we see today. All the rhetoric and oddly empowering blame game to the tech industry (at least for us tech people) is merely trendy. The only thing that stopped keeping up are salary increases.
- huangc10 10y agoAgreed. It's easier to blame what's in front of our eyes and trending. However, I wouldn't go as far as saying the tech industry had nothing to do with it. It's all relative.
- elastic_church 10y agothe 'tech industry' is now. the gold speculators were then. the city could have just as easily become a carcass of the industrial era like many others.
- ubercore 10y agoYou might be right, but this feels like a facile argument. Is SF an outlier in the last 30 years? Perhaps tech industry has supported a recent continuation of trends that died in the rest of the country. How has SF housing policy compared to the rest of nation impacted prices? What about cost of living _besides_ housing? That's by no means comprehensive, but I'd just suggest a) more sources and b) a more holistic look at the issue than housing prices.
- pmiller2 10y agoBut, housing prices essentially are the issue. A region where teachers, baristas, and janitors can't afford to live just can't function.
- ubercore 10y agoI agree they'd be a huge part of it. I guess I'm just trying to call out that you can't completely discount the influence the tech industry has had on the bay area by looking at _just_ housing prices. I'm certain there's more to it than that, even if it's the single biggest issue.
- jamespitts 10y agoHow do we get people to change something ominous yet moves slowly across generations? We're all afflicted with a short attention span and plenty of day-to-day problems, and we elect leaders to deal with the here and now. This issue affects so many wicked problems, including how social systems respond to human-made environmental devastation. Thankfully there are some leaders who will do the hard thing.
- maplebed 10y agoNice to see that 36 years later they're writing the same thing. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/san-francisco-children.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/san-francisco-children... "San Francisco Asks: Where Have All the Children Gone?"
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dominotw 10y agoWhat is the a good city now for mid-income childless ? More fun activities, concerts ect and low taxes that go to roads and public transport and not schools, parks and libraries.
- sbarre 10y agoPittsburgh!
- jostmey 10y agoI was just there this past week. I could not believe how much the city has changed since I was last there 5 years ago. It is taking off
- bsder 10y agoSorry, Northeast winters suck. Really, really, suck.
- brandonmenc 10y agoPittsburgh doesn't really get hit with bad winters - not the way that, say, Buffalo does.
- knz 10y agoMany of the cities in the midwest have had small booms due to a good mix of recreational activities, affordable housing, solid job markets, and a good environment if you chose to have kids. Of course, they don't have the "cool" factor of SFO or NYC etc.
- ashark 10y agoIf you're used to mountains, oceans, et c you might find the landscapes and outdoor activities (aside from boating at the ubiquitous man-made lakes) in the Midwest lacking, to put it mildly. Most of it's also pretty far from anywhere that's much more interesting. If you're lucky you'll be in a location where you can take a 3-day weekend of mostly driving and spend a day somewhere better, but that's about as good as it gets. Hard to get decent fresh seafood at anything like a reasonable price, too, for obvious reasons, so hope you're not in love with seafood. Flights to Asian or European countries are more expensive than and take longer than on the West and East coasts, respectively, too, again for obvious reasons. It is cheap though, and some of the cities have decent (and improving) culture, considering how inexpensive they are. Source: lifelong Midwesterner, lived in four Midwestern states.
- skolos 10y agoInteresting bit: >in 1970 the number of Hispanics was arrived at by a computer model that listed everyone with a Spanish surname as Hispanic because census in 1970 did not allow differentiation Hispanics. It also probably means that decrease in whites from 70's to 80's is overstated.
- stephenboyd 10y agoThey could check this by testing the same model against later census results.
- swagv1 10y agoIt's funny how people think this crap was just invented in the past 10 years in SF.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- theptip 10y agoPlus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
- vonnik 10y agoand then this piece lands: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/san-francisco-children.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/san-francisco-children...
- cwsmith17 10y agoI work as an housing activist in SF. If you want to get more involved, shoot me an email and we'll get coffee. Cwsmith17@gmail.com
- akjainaj 10y agoWhat's a "housing activist"?