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Some of the living arrangements people are resorting to just reek of desperation: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-millennials-live-in-san-francisco-2017-2 h

Some of the living arrangements people are resorting to just reek of desperation: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-millennials-live-in-san-francisco-2017-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-millennials-live-in-san-f... Living in vans. Living in boxes in larger apartments. Thirty people living in a 10-bedroom building. There is vast demand to live in these cities, and their governments are utterly failing to accommodate it in an orderly and dignified fashion.

ghaff 10y ago
Or maybe it's just the market's way of telling employees and employers that it's a big beautiful country that doesn't begin and end with a small peninsula on the West Coast.
- johan_larson 10y ago
  Yes, there is that. I keep being surprised that major employers keep paying the SV surtax to employ engineers in the Bay area rather than in cheaper places. I understand these organizations need to keep people in the Bay area, sure. It's the center of the industry; it's where a lot of new things happen. But do they need so many people within a half-hour of HQ? Seems like an obvious place to cut costs.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    I get that companies want to have an SV presence but you can do that and limit your headcount there. I also get that some people really value the ability to hop jobs to other geographically close employers but options (which is effectively what we're talking about here) have some upper value. I expect it will all self-correct. There is new housing coming on line. There is some upper limit to the premium companies will pay and some lower limit to the squalor software engineers will tolerate to live in SF. Market corrections can certainly happen.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  It's amazing that most companies, including tech companies, operate technology with a diaspora of people across the globe. Yet the bigshots need to be in SFO for reasons.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    I'd say "Why work for a tech company that pushes the externalities of high housing costs onto you by not allowing remote work" but I assume it'd be drowned out by the same sound as the rush of folks to grab shovels and pick axes during the gold rush era. Housing in the Bay Area is like roads; build more and capacity will simply be soaked up. Either move elsewhere or accept the SV tax. No property owner in their right mind would vote for more building (depressing the value of, most likely, the largest asset they own). TL;DR Vote with your feet, prefer remote first companies.
    - Inthenameofmine 10y ago
      That's actually a really good point for housing as public infrastructure. The parallels to roads are very interesting.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Appreciate it. Everyone says "build baby build!"; Facebook, Google, etc have deep enough pockets they'll simply fill that new housing stock with tech workers and you'll be back to where you started (outrageously expensive housing). You must destroy demand. It is the only way out.
        Inthenameofmine 10y ago
        Well demand is a good thing in this case. It implies good economic development. My point was more that market mechanisms don't make sense for public good infrastructure/monopolies. Building as much (and sustainably) as possible + a land tax to discourage speculation and people not actually living in housing might be a better solution.
- erispoe 10y ago
  If only the market was working as you think it does. If you remove regulations getting in the way of building faster and denser, I bet you that San Francisco would see a construction boom and prices go down significantly over time. Prices are way up precisely because housing is no free market and we created a lot of barriers to new supply. The fact that so many people want to live here despite such crazy prices is a strong indication that there's a lot of demand to live in the city.

ghaff 10y ago

Or maybe it's just the market's way of telling employees and employers that it's a big beautiful country that doesn't begin and end with a small peninsula on the West Coast.

johan_larson 10y ago
Yes, there is that. I keep being surprised that major employers keep paying the SV surtax to employ engineers in the Bay area rather than in cheaper places. I understand these organizations need to keep people in the Bay area, sure. It's the center of the industry; it's where a lot of new things happen. But do they need so many people within a half-hour of HQ? Seems like an obvious place to cut costs.
- ghaff 10y ago
  I get that companies want to have an SV presence but you can do that and limit your headcount there. I also get that some people really value the ability to hop jobs to other geographically close employers but options (which is effectively what we're talking about here) have some upper value. I expect it will all self-correct. There is new housing coming on line. There is some upper limit to the premium companies will pay and some lower limit to the squalor software engineers will tolerate to live in SF. Market corrections can certainly happen.
Spooky23 10y ago
It's amazing that most companies, including tech companies, operate technology with a diaspora of people across the globe. Yet the bigshots need to be in SFO for reasons.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  I'd say "Why work for a tech company that pushes the externalities of high housing costs onto you by not allowing remote work" but I assume it'd be drowned out by the same sound as the rush of folks to grab shovels and pick axes during the gold rush era. Housing in the Bay Area is like roads; build more and capacity will simply be soaked up. Either move elsewhere or accept the SV tax. No property owner in their right mind would vote for more building (depressing the value of, most likely, the largest asset they own). TL;DR Vote with your feet, prefer remote first companies.
  - Inthenameofmine 10y ago
    That's actually a really good point for housing as public infrastructure. The parallels to roads are very interesting.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Appreciate it. Everyone says "build baby build!"; Facebook, Google, etc have deep enough pockets they'll simply fill that new housing stock with tech workers and you'll be back to where you started (outrageously expensive housing). You must destroy demand. It is the only way out.
      - Inthenameofmine 10y ago
        Well demand is a good thing in this case. It implies good economic development. My point was more that market mechanisms don't make sense for public good infrastructure/monopolies. Building as much (and sustainably) as possible + a land tax to discourage speculation and people not actually living in housing might be a better solution.
erispoe 10y ago
If only the market was working as you think it does. If you remove regulations getting in the way of building faster and denser, I bet you that San Francisco would see a construction boom and prices go down significantly over time. Prices are way up precisely because housing is no free market and we created a lot of barriers to new supply. The fact that so many people want to live here despite such crazy prices is a strong indication that there's a lot of demand to live in the city.