7 ms·

High rents force some in Silicon Valley to live in vehicles

41 points by grej 9y ago

virmundi 9y ago
Good. Let's see what the SV folk do with the SF NIMBY folk. There should be enough socially minded individuals in SV with the Google or Apple like money to go to zoning meetings to allow more than 5 story buildings. Time for the SJW folk at those companies to put their future property money where their controlling mouths are.
- simonsarris 9y ago
  Do recall that Google itself couldn't even get a couple small bridges built in mountain view to save the polluting commute of its own workers between parts of campus. But even Google money can't shake a small city council. https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2013/12/23/viewpoint-city-should-at-least-study-google-bridge https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2013/12/23/viewpoint-city-shou...
  - virmundi 9y ago
    Google is just one voice. There are people that actually pay taxes on their homes there. Enough of those people should be able to raise a fuss, any fuss. I don't think they will. P(Fussing | SWJ) = .01. There's my odds.
    - greglindahl 9y ago
      The thing you predicted would not happen basically happened in 2016: https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2016/11/08/council-incumbents-abe-koga-and-matichak-elected https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2016/11/08/council-incumbents-... In the same election, neighboring Palo Alto rejected the "residentialist" slate of candidates.
  - thearn4 9y ago
    Serious question, why do the major tech companies put up with this and not slowly migrate elsewhere? I get it's a bit of a chicken vs. the egg game when it comes to where the work is & where the talent is, but the bay area seems like it's at such a critical mass.
    - new299 9y ago
      Because when they're doing well, the benefits (to them) out-way the costs. It was only really obvious to me what the benefits were after I visited Palo Alto. For Stanford spinouts, you can literally go visit 10 VCs within a 20min walk. If must make life so much easier. For larger companies, they still want to interact with VCs and aquire startups. They also want access to other forms of capital/banking services which are available in the area.
s0rce 9y ago
One of the people listed makes $175,000 he can easily afford his own apartment at, conservatively, $3000/month, or he can have a couple roommates and pay around $1000-1400/month. He chooses not to so he can save money and use the amenities at his work. You shouldn't be allowed to live in cars on the street, people paying property taxes are paying for those streets. Free parking is the problem here, you shouldn't be able to leave your car on the street anywhere for long periods, especially not living in it. If you do this you are taking advantage of the system supported by tax paying owners and renters. If the cost of the car registration included the true cost of parking on city streets living in your car would likely be much less attractive for these people who can afford housing but simply choose not to.
- liquidise 9y ago
  > You shouldn't be allowed to live in cars on the street Why not? You cite taxes. If i am allowed to park my car overnight somewhere, what would disallow me from sleeping in that same car over the same period?
  - sanswork 9y ago
    I live in a beach town popular with people driving down the Australian East coast in vans. The problem we have here is that these vans don't have toilet facilities so you end up with people using the bushes along the beach as toilets.
    - sumedh 9y ago
      So catch the people who are using the bushes as toilets don't make it illegal for people to sleep in their cars.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - sanswork 9y ago
        Right so then how do you offset the cost of having to hire rangers to patrol the beach areas at night all year round? And how does that fix the problem where people just wait for the ranger to pass then quickly go and do what they need to do? It's not an easy problem. The town I live in is debating it and working with other coastal councils to try and come up with solutions since the drivers do bring in a lot of revenue to the towns. Overnight washrooms are prone to vandalism that makes them costly to maintain for an example of a problem with an "obvious" solution.
colmvp 9y ago
I know this isn't the same as people who live there, but while in SV, I met Uber/Lyft drivers who drove in from other cities in NoCal and worked 5 days a week in the Bay Area as a driver, sleeping overnight in their cars. Only on the weekends did they drive back home to spend time with family.
- 36bydesign 9y ago
  This was my Uber driver from yesterday in SF
- booleandilemma 9y ago
  To paraphrase William Gibson, the dystopia is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.
- nradov 9y ago
  SFGate had an article about this phenomenon. http://m.sfgate.com/business/article/When-Their-Shifts-End-Uber-Drivers-Set-Up-Camp-10876374.php http://m.sfgate.com/business/article/When-Their-Shifts-End-U...
sputknick 9y ago
I haven't been to Silicon Valley in ~15 years, is living in outer suburbs and commuting not an option? Here in Seattle, you can live in the outer suburbs and pretty easily get to Seattle. I'm not crazy about my 45-60 minute commute, but I like not paying Seattle-sized rent.
- Judgmentality 9y ago
  45-60 minutes away from San Francisco (I'd argue that's the epicenter of SV today), with traffic, might get you to Oakland or somewhere in the peninsula (not even close to San Jose). The rents there are also ridiculously high, although slightly better than San Francisco. To actually live in cities further away you'd need to drive at least 90 minutes, and realistically 2 hours - each way.
- austenallred 9y ago
  I commute to San Francisco every day - 15 min drive to BART then an hour on BART. About as far as you could expect a reasonable person to love. It costs me $300/month to pay for commute and parking, and a 2 BR apartment runs us $2500/month. It's a nicer area (for wife/daughter) but it doesn't really get far below $2,000 in even the worst areas, and that commute wears on you.
- colechristensen 9y ago
  When I worked remotely for a bay area startup and did some hypothetical apartment shopping, there was no amount of rent saved that came close to being worth the commute time. It was a min-max problem with no optimum. Live close and take a significant lifestyle hit, live far and give up time for any sort of lifestyle. I chose instead to live remote and take a work-interaction situation hit which ultimately led to leaving that position. Oh well, such is life.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Quality of life is paramount. Jobs come, jobs go.
  - aanm1988 9y ago
40acres 9y ago
How about the folks who work for the tech companies in the area, are they also struggling with rent or is the average salary of an engineer in SV enough to cover the recent increases?
- sidlls 9y ago
  I earn a substantial income in the Bay Area. It's not the $250k/yr Google experience, but it's in that ballpark (within 25%). My commute into the city is about 90 minutes one way (using trains and biking or walking). Rent on the attached home my family lives in is half my take-home pay. The only reason it isn't more than half after the 8% increase my landlord added this last renewal is because I got a substantial raise.
  - jrysocarras 9y ago
    Assuming you're making 25% less than $250k/yr, that puts you at ~$190k/yr. Are you saying you pay ~90k/yr ($7.5k/month!) to live 90 min away from the city? If so, what are your living conditions?
    - sidlls 9y ago
      It's my pay net of taxes, pre-tax savings like 401k, HSA, etc., not half my gross pay. That amount (total) is around $90k/year (give or take--I'm not giving exact numbers, here), and if you divide that by 12, roughly half (again, not exact) is rent. My family (self, wife, two children) live what I'd describe as a modest lifestyle (for America). The home is big enough to be comfortable but not big enough to have "extras" (e.g. there's no space suitable for a private home-office). I would normally describe it as a comfortably middle-class (not affluent) lifestyle, but considering the savings and other perks the taxes pay for that'd be a bit disingenuous, in my view. I do think the rent is excessive, though. The same home we're living in would sell for perhaps $150k-$250k (depending on neighborhood) in the location my wife's family lives. The high end of that range is a 25% down-payment on what the units in the community we live in sell for the last few months; a ridiculous valuation by any reasonable standard. There isn't as much cultural variety there, but it's not exactly a cultural wasteland (e.g. there are a variety of native-come-to-America run restaurants for Afghan and other similar foods, stores, a non-trivial presence of foreign-born non-whites, etc.). The offerings of the Bay Area don't justify the huge difference in prices.
driverdan 9y ago
I'm currently converting a 25 ft former shuttle bus to my home. I make enough money to buy a house here in Austin but have chosen to live in a vehicle. I like tiny homes and wanted to build my own place so it would meet my wants and needs. Zoning makes building small hard and land costs make it very expensive per square foot. I like to travel and would rather take my home with me than sleep in a hotel or hostel.
chmaynard 9y ago
I'd love to find out what SF Bay Area property owners who rent their properties out to others are doing with their extraordinary windfall profits. Are there any academic studies or reports that explore this question?
1dundundun 9y ago
Is this the situation with those RV's lined up just outside of Stanfords campus?

41 points by grej 9y ago

Good. Let's see what the SV folk do with the SF NIMBY folk. There should be enough socially minded individuals in SV with the Google or Apple like money to go to zoning meetings to allow more than 5 story buildings. Time for the SJW folk at those companies to put their future property money where their controlling mouths are.

simonsarris 9y ago
Do recall that Google itself couldn't even get a couple small bridges built in mountain view to save the polluting commute of its own workers between parts of campus. But even Google money can't shake a small city council. https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2013/12/23/viewpoint-city-should-at-least-study-google-bridge https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2013/12/23/viewpoint-city-shou...
- virmundi 9y ago
  Google is just one voice. There are people that actually pay taxes on their homes there. Enough of those people should be able to raise a fuss, any fuss. I don't think they will. P(Fussing | SWJ) = .01. There's my odds.
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    The thing you predicted would not happen basically happened in 2016: https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2016/11/08/council-incumbents-abe-koga-and-matichak-elected https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2016/11/08/council-incumbents-... In the same election, neighboring Palo Alto rejected the "residentialist" slate of candidates.
- thearn4 9y ago
  Serious question, why do the major tech companies put up with this and not slowly migrate elsewhere? I get it's a bit of a chicken vs. the egg game when it comes to where the work is & where the talent is, but the bay area seems like it's at such a critical mass.
  - new299 9y ago
    Because when they're doing well, the benefits (to them) out-way the costs. It was only really obvious to me what the benefits were after I visited Palo Alto. For Stanford spinouts, you can literally go visit 10 VCs within a 20min walk. If must make life so much easier. For larger companies, they still want to interact with VCs and aquire startups. They also want access to other forms of capital/banking services which are available in the area.

s0rce 9y ago

One of the people listed makes $175,000 he can easily afford his own apartment at, conservatively, $3000/month, or he can have a couple roommates and pay around $1000-1400/month. He chooses not to so he can save money and use the amenities at his work. You shouldn't be allowed to live in cars on the street, people paying property taxes are paying for those streets. Free parking is the problem here, you shouldn't be able to leave your car on the street anywhere for long periods, especially not living in it. If you do this you are taking advantage of the system supported by tax paying owners and renters. If the cost of the car registration included the true cost of parking on city streets living in your car would likely be much less attractive for these people who can afford housing but simply choose not to.

liquidise 9y ago
> You shouldn't be allowed to live in cars on the street Why not? You cite taxes. If i am allowed to park my car overnight somewhere, what would disallow me from sleeping in that same car over the same period?
- sanswork 9y ago
  I live in a beach town popular with people driving down the Australian East coast in vans. The problem we have here is that these vans don't have toilet facilities so you end up with people using the bushes along the beach as toilets.
  - sumedh 9y ago
    So catch the people who are using the bushes as toilets don't make it illegal for people to sleep in their cars.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - sanswork 9y ago
      Right so then how do you offset the cost of having to hire rangers to patrol the beach areas at night all year round? And how does that fix the problem where people just wait for the ranger to pass then quickly go and do what they need to do? It's not an easy problem. The town I live in is debating it and working with other coastal councils to try and come up with solutions since the drivers do bring in a lot of revenue to the towns. Overnight washrooms are prone to vandalism that makes them costly to maintain for an example of a problem with an "obvious" solution.

colmvp 9y ago

I know this isn't the same as people who live there, but while in SV, I met Uber/Lyft drivers who drove in from other cities in NoCal and worked 5 days a week in the Bay Area as a driver, sleeping overnight in their cars. Only on the weekends did they drive back home to spend time with family.

36bydesign 9y ago
This was my Uber driver from yesterday in SF
booleandilemma 9y ago
To paraphrase William Gibson, the dystopia is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.
nradov 9y ago
SFGate had an article about this phenomenon. http://m.sfgate.com/business/article/When-Their-Shifts-End-Uber-Drivers-Set-Up-Camp-10876374.php http://m.sfgate.com/business/article/When-Their-Shifts-End-U...

sputknick 9y ago

I haven't been to Silicon Valley in ~15 years, is living in outer suburbs and commuting not an option? Here in Seattle, you can live in the outer suburbs and pretty easily get to Seattle. I'm not crazy about my 45-60 minute commute, but I like not paying Seattle-sized rent.

Judgmentality 9y ago
45-60 minutes away from San Francisco (I'd argue that's the epicenter of SV today), with traffic, might get you to Oakland or somewhere in the peninsula (not even close to San Jose). The rents there are also ridiculously high, although slightly better than San Francisco. To actually live in cities further away you'd need to drive at least 90 minutes, and realistically 2 hours - each way.
austenallred 9y ago
I commute to San Francisco every day - 15 min drive to BART then an hour on BART. About as far as you could expect a reasonable person to love. It costs me $300/month to pay for commute and parking, and a 2 BR apartment runs us $2500/month. It's a nicer area (for wife/daughter) but it doesn't really get far below $2,000 in even the worst areas, and that commute wears on you.
colechristensen 9y ago
When I worked remotely for a bay area startup and did some hypothetical apartment shopping, there was no amount of rent saved that came close to being worth the commute time. It was a min-max problem with no optimum. Live close and take a significant lifestyle hit, live far and give up time for any sort of lifestyle. I chose instead to live remote and take a work-interaction situation hit which ultimately led to leaving that position. Oh well, such is life.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Quality of life is paramount. Jobs come, jobs go.
- aanm1988 9y ago

40acres 9y ago

How about the folks who work for the tech companies in the area, are they also struggling with rent or is the average salary of an engineer in SV enough to cover the recent increases?

sidlls 9y ago
I earn a substantial income in the Bay Area. It's not the $250k/yr Google experience, but it's in that ballpark (within 25%). My commute into the city is about 90 minutes one way (using trains and biking or walking). Rent on the attached home my family lives in is half my take-home pay. The only reason it isn't more than half after the 8% increase my landlord added this last renewal is because I got a substantial raise.
- jrysocarras 9y ago
  Assuming you're making 25% less than $250k/yr, that puts you at ~$190k/yr. Are you saying you pay ~90k/yr ($7.5k/month!) to live 90 min away from the city? If so, what are your living conditions?
  - sidlls 9y ago
    It's my pay net of taxes, pre-tax savings like 401k, HSA, etc., not half my gross pay. That amount (total) is around $90k/year (give or take--I'm not giving exact numbers, here), and if you divide that by 12, roughly half (again, not exact) is rent. My family (self, wife, two children) live what I'd describe as a modest lifestyle (for America). The home is big enough to be comfortable but not big enough to have "extras" (e.g. there's no space suitable for a private home-office). I would normally describe it as a comfortably middle-class (not affluent) lifestyle, but considering the savings and other perks the taxes pay for that'd be a bit disingenuous, in my view. I do think the rent is excessive, though. The same home we're living in would sell for perhaps $150k-$250k (depending on neighborhood) in the location my wife's family lives. The high end of that range is a 25% down-payment on what the units in the community we live in sell for the last few months; a ridiculous valuation by any reasonable standard. There isn't as much cultural variety there, but it's not exactly a cultural wasteland (e.g. there are a variety of native-come-to-America run restaurants for Afghan and other similar foods, stores, a non-trivial presence of foreign-born non-whites, etc.). The offerings of the Bay Area don't justify the huge difference in prices.

driverdan 9y ago

I'm currently converting a 25 ft former shuttle bus to my home. I make enough money to buy a house here in Austin but have chosen to live in a vehicle. I like tiny homes and wanted to build my own place so it would meet my wants and needs. Zoning makes building small hard and land costs make it very expensive per square foot. I like to travel and would rather take my home with me than sleep in a hotel or hostel.

chmaynard 9y ago

I'd love to find out what SF Bay Area property owners who rent their properties out to others are doing with their extraordinary windfall profits. Are there any academic studies or reports that explore this question?

1dundundun 9y ago

Is this the situation with those RV's lined up just outside of Stanfords campus?