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People should give up. People should leave the area. They should move where they can find a job and a cost of living that's reasonable. The fact that people
by fatbird 9y ago
People should give up. People should leave the area. They should move where they can find a job and a cost of living that's reasonable. The fact that people don't give up is why landlords can afford to charge $2,800/month for a 1 bedroom. You can't rent at $2,800/month if no one will sign the lease.
- sandralisa88 9y ago> like Shawn responded I didn't know that someone able to make $6367 in one month on the > internet . read more>>>>>>>>>>>https://tinyurl.com/ly6hd5g https://tinyurl.com/ly6hd5g
- Houshalter 9y agoMove where exactly? So many people want to live there for a reason. If moving to another city saves you $1k a month on rent, but you lose $1.5k in income, it doesn't make any economic sense.
- timothycrosley 9y agoSeattle. Lose ~2-5 thousand a year in income on average as a Software engineer, save 1-2 thousand a month on rent, and no income tax: https://www.codementor.io/blog/best-cities-software-engineer-earnings-271vpf599k https://www.codementor.io/blog/best-cities-software-engineer...
- toephu2 9y agoEvery city has its pros and cons. Seattle is no exception. You move to Seattle so you can save a couple bucks, okay so what? Then you get seasonal depression because its overcast all the time.* *except during summer when it's beautiful
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoEh, I've been in LA for a year and it's too darn sunny. I can't wait to move back to Seattle and get some good pine scented rain again. But I get your intention, and it's been our strategy for a few decades now: over exaggerate seattle's rain problem to keep Californians from moving up and driving housing prices up even further. Unfortunately, it's no longer working, Seattle just keeps getting more popular and more pricey every year.
- posguy 9y agoI feel ya there, I don't think I could do LA, but then again I was getting sunburned just driving around with the windows rolled up when I spent a few weeks down there.
- timothycrosley 9y agoSure that's true. I take Vitamin D, and have a light that I use during the winter. However, it's really both the Spring and Summer that are beautiful IMO, which is half the year. I make sure to take my vacations during the other half. I also tend to get more work done during that half, since staying indoors is conducive toward it. But, per the article I posted: it's not a couple bucks, on average - you end up after paying your rent, and taxes - having double the money left over living in Seattle over San Francisco. And it will probably only move more in Seattle's favor, as Seattle keeps on building: http://www.spur.org/news/2017-06-15/keep-building-oakland http://www.spur.org/news/2017-06-15/keep-building-oakland. Vitamin D pills are cheap. Living in San Francisco is not.
- posguy 9y agoIMO we still need to dezone Seattle, parking minimums and height caps are strangling new development and eliminating the possibility of affordable, unsubsidized housing for the average working person. I hate seeing my old classmates and friends move from Fremont to Marysville or further, no good reason why we have to keep every single building in Seattle super short and build parking that will sit empty.
- timothycrosley 9y ago100% agree. We are doing better than most tech cities right now, but that's unfortunately a low bar. I want us to build so much that anyone who wants to live or start some crazy business here can without hesitation.
- posguy 9y agoYeah, I'd much rather see an apartment or condo building go up in the city limits rather than up in say Bothell. Dense complexes where a 3bed/2bath is in the low $1600s shouldn't be held 15 miles outside the city limits, there is no reason beyond terrible zoning that that couldn't be built in Ballard or Magnolia or the Central District.
- 9y ago
- posguy 9y agoHa, don't tell 'em about Seattle, remember its cold and wet and the sun never shines up here! On a more serious note, after spending a few weeks in SoCal with the SO, I have no intention of ever moving to such a hostile climate. No onshore breeze + sunburns from driving for 40min = No bueno. At least it takes more than 40min to burn on a sunny day in Seattle :P
- fiblye 9y agoThe vast majority of the world deals with seasons. It'll be okay. And frankly, the PNW is outright pleasant. The NE gets covered in snow for 1/4 of the year, and transplants to Portland and Seattle complain about it being cloudy.
- blahblah12 9y agothis. so much this. A thousand times this. You have no idea how much it affects you to be in a city that has gray skies for like 3/4 the year. You can go days without seeing the sun in the Winter. Honestly, I theorize, half-jokingly, that Seattle's startup scene never took off because people get too depressed by the weather and give up.
- WalterBright 9y agoSeattle just passed a city income tax.
- timothycrosley 9y agoYes. With 3 important caveats: 1) similar things have happened in the past and got overturned, because it's against the WA state constitution. A challenge has already been mounted and the income tax isn't even in effect yet. 2) There is a very very small number of Tech Employees this would actually affect as it's only a 2% of income tax on income over 250K for individual, and 500K for married couple. 3) It's only on Seattle proper, independent of where you work, so you could literately live one block outside of Seattle and not pay. Most people who make that much already do live outside Seattle in Medina or Bellevue. It's really just a symbolic gesture, to appease the base of those in office, that will most likely be overturned.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rdl 9y agoSeattle is full/horrible. Do not move here if you are a San Franciscan. Especially don't bring your government philosophy, tax policies, or aversion to reality here.
- dmode 9y agoDon't be fooled by Seattle's position on income taxes. Seattle has some of the highest regressive taxes. For example, alcohol taxes in WA are 10x higher than CA https://taxfoundation.org/how-high-are-taxes-distilled-spirits-your-state-2016/ https://taxfoundation.org/how-high-are-taxes-distilled-spiri...
- mercutio2 9y agoPeople keep using Glassdoor numbers and think they’re representative. Representative of low performers, maybe, but even then I’m not convinced. The idea that a high performer only gives up $5k total comp going to Amazon or Microsoft in Seattle is... well, feel free to believe that. You’re making a ton of money any which way relative to the general population. But most people I know in the Bay Area don’t report that they’re leaving net income on the table staying here. Maybe all those software engineers are just bad at accounting, seems to be everyone’s analysis.
- timothycrosley 9y agoEh, it doesn't really matter what stats you drive from they all paint the same picture. More and more engineers are moving here from San Francisco for that reason. People never report that there leaving net income on the table, especially once they have enough to be comfortable, and most never even search to look.
- mercutio2 9y agoIf you’re looking at $100-150k total comp, and expect to max out there, you should definitely move to Seattle. If you’re interested in earning $300-400k/year after working for a BigCo for 4-5 years, Seattle isn’t going to work out to a better net savings/year. I think it’s perfectly fine to max out at $100-150k. You’re still extremely rich by any standard. And startups in The Bay Area will pay you vastly less regardless, so Seattle may well be a better place for startups. But I think you’re doing people a disservice if you convince them they’ll save more money working in Seattle than the Bay Area.
- timothycrosley 9y agoThe same people who make 300-400k in San Francisco, also do so in Seattle. I don't know where your getting your information from, but all existing stats disagree with you for a reason.
- mercutio2 9y ago
- thrillgore 9y agoSuburban Atlanta is always an option.
- pcwalton 9y agoThe simple fact is that there are a lot of people who need to live in the Bay Area. Wishing people would just leave is what the NIMBY organizations have been trying for decades. It doesn't work, and it inflicts undue hardship on everyone who wasn't one of the lucky ones who bought in early. The only thing that does work is confronting the fact that a lot of people need to live here and encouraging housing supply to meet demand.
- timr 9y ago"Wishing people would just leave is what the NIMBY organizations have been trying for decades." ...and yet, this crisis is only about 5 years old. Between 2008 and 2012, San Francisco rents were going down, not up. San Francisco's population declined in the 1980s. Say what you will about construction rates, but this is an acute housing crisis, brought on by an asset bubble, instigated by historically low interest rates. One way to look at the current situation is to get upset and say "how dare this community not overturn its way of life to accommodate our industry!", but another, equally valid viewpoint is to acknowledge the simple fact that it's painfully stupid to try to cram the entire tech industry in a 49-square-mile patch of land (or realistically, a 20-square mile patch; nobody in tech believes there's life west of Divisidero or east of Embarcadero). So no, people don't "need" to live here. There's no practical reason that the tech industry couldn't be spread all over the world. It was actually always kind of dumb and impractical to found startups here. But it's trendy for 20-something tech bros to live here right now, and therefore, everyone else is expected to move aside and make room.
- mattm 9y agoAirBnB is a huge factor. Take a look at http://insideairbnb.com/san-francisco/ http://insideairbnb.com/san-francisco/ and the chart under Activity and see it go up after 2012.
- briandear 9y agoAirBnB doesn’t cause 3 bedroom tract houses in Cupertino to cost $2 million. There is AirBnB in Houston and it has almost an unmeasurable effect of prices. I don’t know if the Bay Area has rent control, but those types of policies (along with planning commissions and other bureaucracies have more deleterious impacts than a thousand AirBnBs. The simple fact is that if you own a Bay Area home, you will oppose increased supplies because it makes your home less valuable. Homeowners are simply attempting to protect their equity. If housing prices dropped 20% because of increased supply, suddenly tens of thousands are now upside down on their home. I know the actual reason, but I still can’t help but wonder why Hong Kong/Seoul/Shanghai style high rises are not more of a thing in the Bay Area. There seems like a ton of good spots along the 280 from San Bruno to Woodside.
- chrissnell 9y agoAs someone living in the Midwest and telecommuting to SFBA, that's almost unbelievable to me. I pay less than that for my brand new and quite nice 5/4 house on almost half an acre of land. With all of the remote work available, why would you stay here? I manage a team with two remote-friendly job openings currently. You could work for me and go live in Telluride, CO for less than that East Bay 1br and still have money left over.
- briandear 9y agoI work remotely for a company in the Cupertino area while living on 2 acres in the south of France – my entire “estate” cost less than a 2 bedroom apartment would have cost in SFO. Even commuting monthly for two days of meetings is still cheaper than living in the Bay Area. I would like to live in the Bay Area but it’s financial suicide.
- Sleeep 9y agoWhat's a 5/4 house? The Midwest is stereotypical for "affordable living" but I live in New England and it's fairly affordable here too in comparison. I own a three bedroom in town, with 20% down my P+I is $750 a month and PITI is $1275 a month. If I financed the whole thing the PITI would be $1462 a month. I think my housing cost is about average for the US.
- CameronBanga 9y agoI think here, it means 5 bedroom 4 bath.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- isotropy 9y ago> What's a 5/4 house? 5 bedrooms/4 bathrooms
- pascalxus 9y agoThere's not much remote work available. Those jobs are the most desirable and also the very hardest to get. In the past 10 years, i've received 100s of calls from desperate recruiters looking for Software engineers: and every single time, it's because they're looking to fill positions of companies in Palo Alto or San Francisco. Anytime, I ask them to find a position outside of the penninsula or SF, they turn up empty handed (east bay). Companies can learn from this as well: there's a difference between # of workers working in a field and labor supply vs labor demand.
- crawshaw 9y agoMany do. The cost to society is enormous. If housing and labor markets were entirely elastic, and those are the only two factors your people need to consider, then "go away" could be a reasonable government policy. But people are more than their income and their cost of living. Consider a recovering opioid addict making minimum wage. Medicaid for health care. They are recovering, not relapsed, because of great support from their parents, brother, and grandparents, all of whom live in (say) Oakland. If we look at the labor market and the housing market, the rational economic decision is to move away. Away from their family, the support network that keeps this person employable (and quite possibly alive). Should the whole family move? Not all jobs are everywhere. Should the brother quit Berkeley? These webs are not easily untangled. If their support network were a Church, or a local football club, the cost would be same: leave your life behind so the Bay Area can stay suburban. Expensive housing destroys the small, vital institutions that hold our society together by driving people apart.
- fatbird 9y agoThis is a great comment and I wish I saw more like it on HN, where such webs are frequently ignored when discussing the latest opportunity for disruption.
- sliverstorm 9y agoMoving obviously doesn't work in all cases. But urbanizing doesn't permanently remove the problem, it delays it. Ultimately any plot of land has a maximum carrying capacity. If some of these issues are not solved, what's to say that a decade after we urbanize, we won't be right back here with this same problem? Personally, I have definitely noticed many people who have convinced themselves they have to stay despite their miserable conditions. Nevermind they have no family in the area, few friends, and despite their very well paying job they can barely afford food & rent. They could surely never be happy elsewhere! It's like some kind of bubble, where we imagine the whole rest of the country is a backwater hellhole and won't even imagine we could leave.
- crawshaw 9y agoYou claim demand to live in the Bay Area exceeds housing technology carrying capacity. Do you have any evidence for this? No city on Earth is full. (Indeed, estimates of human population growth show planetary population stabilizing at less than one tenth our global carrying capacity, so this is not surprising.) It would be extraordinary for the Bay Area to be the first, and so calls for extraordinary evidence.
- afpx 9y agoI stay here because I've not found any place on Earth that's as good for working in technology. And, every year, this area creeps even further ahead. It's just an amazing place. So, I tolerate the pain for the opportunity to enjoy my career to the fullest.
- 998213981381 9y agoI don't understand this sentiment. Whenever I see an announcement out of Silicon Valley, it is invariable an old technology hyped as the latest sensation. Compare that with for example Microsoft Research, who actually do things I find interesting.
- Retric 9y agoOdd, I find the bay rather stagnate. It's constantly chasing last weeks fad and a few years behind cutting edge research.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- afpx 9y agoWhere do you live?
- johan_larson 9y agoMaybe it's time for some soft vigilante action. Start mailing people brochures about how Denver, Seattle, Portland and Austin are really really nice places. And enclose a bullet.
- chadgeidel 9y agoDenverite here. It's not Silicon Valley, but rents and housing are pretty out of control here too. Additionally it's still very car-centric. Lots of opportunity though. I really have no idea what the "enclose a bullet" part means.
- tnecniv 9y agoHe means put a bullet in the envelope as some vague threat.
- kevinburke 9y agoOregon has been putting commercials on SFBA airwaves saying "move here."
- davidw 9y agoAnd housing is getting expensive here too.
- jff 9y agoAll those places are sick to death of Californians moving in and fucking things up.
- teen 9y agoI did. LA is 1000x better. I don't miss anything about SF, except Golden Gate Park :)