9 ms·

While the rising cost of housing is an easy target, why not put the pressure on the companies that are driving the influx of workers and out of control cost of

• colek42 9y ago
  why not have them subsidize and improve public transportation? Don't they do this already with property and state income taxes?
  • twobyfour 9y ago
    The taxes that states and municipalities are giving them breaks on in order to lure them into the region?
  • cbhl 9y ago
    The SFMTA Commuter Shuttle Program is only allowed to recover costs of the program itself, for regulatory reasons. Locals don't actually want to fix this problem -- ethnic groups are afraid of losing their homes, because historically that's what new housing construction has done. All of SoMa was built by razing a predominantly black community and replacing it with what is there now. You can go to the SFMOMA and see photos of what it used to look like.
• wvenable 9y ago
  Yeah, someone who is 62 isn't just going to get another equivalent job close to home.
• andrewjl 9y ago
  This isn't an issue of tech companies forcing anyone out. Bay area municipalities and NIMBY property owners have created a hostile regulatory environment for property developers, leading to a lack of new housing coming onto the market and driving rents upward.
  • nxsynonym 9y ago
    True, but new housing wouldn't be needed if there wasn't such a high influx of people moving into the Bay area. Sure tech isn't the only player in the game, but they're surely one of the biggest. If less people were moving there for high paying jobs - rent wouldn't rise as quickly or as drastically.
    • falsedan 9y ago
      > new housing wouldn't be needed Bay Area housing supply has been growing less than demand for the last 30 years. New housing is needed, regardless of who is employing whom.
      • KekDemaga 9y ago
        California building codes are pretty extreme from what I've seen, they go as far as measuring the pull force required to open a door for example. This seems like a place where a little deregulation would go a long way.
        • mvid 9y ago
          That's a nice idea, but this is a region where the ground you build on is your enemy.
          • falsedan 9y ago
            Counterpoint: Tokyo.
            • 9y ago
• ahhhhhhhhhh 9y ago
  ...because these companies can just go somewhere else that won't pressure them, so when cities are faced with a billion dollar tech campus or none at all they often feel like they have to bend. Cities often even cut taxes to see big companies come into town. Capitalism will always win against public infrastructure.
  • weberc2 9y ago
    It's not really "winning" so much as finding an economic equilibrium (unless that's what you mean by "capitalism"). I think the problem here is the regulation that prevents the construction of new homes. If you remove that artificial barrier, housing costs could decline. Alternatively, the municipalities could tax the real estate developers who are profiting from the regulation, but if you can get that resolution to pass muster then there probably wouldn't be any regulation to begin with.
    • ahhhhhhhhhh 9y ago
      good point
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• ehnto 9y ago
  Would that be the purpose of property tax and state corporate taxes? Genuine question. I have always imagined the benefit to a city of having big businesses move in was to bring in more tax through boosted economic activity that would allow them to improve the city overall. Perhaps I played too much Sim City.
  • nxsynonym 9y ago
    I think in theory this is how it should work - but I think part of the issue is the multi-city sprawl that's happening. When an area of influence grows that big, who is held responsible? I'm sure no one is volunteering to pick up the slack and shoulder the burden of all the improvements.
• rhizome 9y ago
  If tech companies are drawing people into cities and forcing out those who keep the city itself operating, why not have them subsidize and improve public transportation? Lower income housing? Don't you think people are already trying to do this? There is resistance from many sides, which is, you know, the story here in general.
• Analemma_ 9y ago
  There are so many misconceptions in this post... > why not put the pressure on the companies that are driving the influx of workers and out of control cost of living? What do you hope to accomplish with this "pressure"? That these companies hire fewer people? > Lower income housing? Housing costs are one of those nasty problems where throwing money at it just doesn't work (and I'm saying this as a democratic socialist whose proposed solution to most problems is "tax the rich in order to throw money at it"). Imagine if big tech companies pledged a billion dollars or whatever to build a bunch of housing units. What would happen? This: other developers would pull back on new construction, because the pledge would throw a wrench in the supply/demand, and you'd be right back where you started. The correct solution is upzoning and, to be blunt, disenfranchisement of NIMBYs. > If tech companies are drawing people into cities and forcing out those who keep the city itself operating, why not have them subsidize and improve public transportation? Most of the big ones do: they offer a lot of incentives to not drive, including paying for employees to take public transport or offering shuttle buses (which at least keep them out of cars). > move their headquarters out of the city centers? They aren't in city centers: 4 of the Big 5 (Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook) are all headquartered in suburbs. Only Amazon is headquartered in a city center. > It seems crazy to me that people get driven out of their homes by real estate developers who re-develop due to tech-wages. Why does that seem crazy? It's just supply-and-demand.
  • nxsynonym 9y ago
    I'll admit I'm not a city planner. I don't have the answers to the problems. It's just frustrating to see what's happening with these mega-cities and how it's affecting the lives of so many people negatively. Surely the benefit of having these boosted economies doesn't outweigh the negative aspects - or do they? Bay area has a whole bucket of specific problems - but there are general shared trends that extend to other cities with big tech industries.
    • Analemma_ 9y ago
      > Surely the benefit of having these boosted economies doesn't outweigh the negative aspects - or do they? I think the answer is that with well-managed development, having boosted economies can have few or no negative aspects, but the Bay Area is sorely lacking that right now. As others have said, the lion's share of the blame is not with the tech companies (they're just hiring workers they need), but with the area's terrible NIMBY politics that are blocking the construction of more housing.
• jsonne 9y ago
  You assume that everyone working for a tech company is a 6 figure programmer. There are plenty of secretaries, social media coordinators, sales people etc. That likely make less than what a sanitation worker, cop firefighter, etc. make. It isn't so clear cut.
• wang_li 9y ago
  Just yesterday I was commenting here on this very situation, but she has already moved her home out of the city in search of less expensive rent. She really should find a job out of the city as well. If the highly paid workers in the city want to buy coffee or sandwiches or whatever, they can pay prices that reflect the true cost of living in the city and not some indirect subsidized price.
  • greyfox 9y ago
    or just bring your own coffee and lunch?
  • icebraining 9y ago
    She really should find a job out of the city as well. If the highly paid workers in the city want to buy coffee or sandwiches or whatever ...she's a public health adviser for the United States Department of Health and Human Services. I'm pretty sure she's not selling sandwiches.
    • wang_li 9y ago
      The same principle applies.
      • icebraining 9y ago
        How so? What do highly paid workers in the city have to do with her job?
        • wang_li 9y ago
          She presumably provides a service to those in the area where she works. Whether she makes sandwiches or gives life advice, the price paid by the consumers of her service should be somewhat correlated with the cost of living in the area.
  • fencepost 9y ago
    TL;DR on my own comment: she's in her early 60s with all that entails for jobs and job hunting. She's making the best of being basically trapped.
• ianai 9y ago
  I think there's a problem of congregation. i.e. Real network effects reinforcing labor concentration - to the exclusion of support business. Companies want their employees close at hand. Those same employees attract further, similar businesses nearby. I don't know how to change that. Tele-presence doesn't seem as in demand.
• davidf18 9y ago
  The issue is the zoning density restrictions that cause and politically induced scarcity of housing -- "rent seeking" a form of market failure or market inefficiency. The fix is quite simple: rescind the zoning laws that create artificial scarcity of land which benefits wealthy landlords such as our President Trump while making renters pay far higher rents than they would in a functioning, efficient market. Since about 2001, Japan has had federal laws that overrule local laws related to zoning. The result: in 2014, 140,000 housing units built in Tokyo vs < 90,000 for all of California and 20,000 in NYC. Get rid of the laws that create market failures, that prohibit the market from working efficiently, and you will see a big housing boom and plenty of housing. It is really that simple.
• FireBeyond 9y ago
  On the other hand, I feel that she's over-compensating a little. No-one's saying the $1600/month that she was paying for a 1br in Alameda is "cheap" in any way... But at $81K salary, her $1000/mo rent is only just touching 20% of her take home, which is in the "very comfortable" range (for reference, most property management companies want you to be "not exceeding 35% of take home income").
  • rbcgerard 9y ago
    I think the answer is she's making a choice based on her preferences: 1. Live and Work in SF make $80k, and live in small expensive housing 2. Work in SF and make $80k, live in Stockton and get more and pay less for a house, and spend a ton of time commuting 3. Live and Work in Stockton, make way less, live in a place larger than SF but Smaller than #2 and not have to commute She chose #2 - others make different choices
    • spiralpolitik 9y ago
      For (3) you are of course assuming that there is a job in Stockton for her skill set. There may not be which makes option 3 an non starter.
  • ojbyrne 9y ago
    Minor note, because my thoughts were along similar lines - she was evicted from her $1600/month apt, and presumably would pay significantly more for it now.
  • OrwellianChild 9y ago
    I think it's important to acknowledge a very different set of priorities for someone in their early 60s, who is: 1) Close to retirement age 2) Likely still saving as much as possible so she can retire 3) May have other expenses not detailed in the article, stemming from family needs, health concerns, etc. Also note that a property management company is evaluating someone from the "risk of non-payment" perspective - not a financial advisor's.
• twblalock 9y ago
  Why punish companies for being successful enough to create attractive, high-paying jobs? The consequences of doing that won't be very good for anyone. A slower economy will hurt the low-income workers a bit more than the high-income workers. What we need is a solution that encourages and accommodates success, not one that punishes it.
  • 0xffff2 9y ago
    Why not punish companies for creating jobs in an already crowded area? How many attractive, high-paying jobs in SF are tied to the city by any physical necessity? If companies want to avoid being punished, all they have to do is move their offices to a less crowded city.
    • wbl 9y ago
      It isn't crowded. SF is less dense then Brooklyn. The "city" of Palo Alto could easily use a few more stories.
    • closeparen 9y ago
      Crowding is the whole point of cities: get lots of people and jobs together in a small space and let them benefit from each other. If lack of crowding is more important to someone than economic opportunity, they can go live in the countryside. The benefits of centralization & economic opportunity for you but no one else isn't a stable equilibrium or a coherent policy goal. The only way you could plausibly achieve that over the long term is with border controls and immigration policy, something that's explicitly off the table for the interior of the United States per the Constitution.
    • twblalock 9y ago
      If they move to a less-crowded city, and offer good jobs there, that city will become crowded, especially when former employees leave to start other companies in the same area. That's how Silicon Valley became what it is. If a lot of tech companies moved to other cities, it would probably happen there, too.
• nerfhammer 9y ago
  The same thing is happening in most other cities albeit perhaps more slowly, most of which have no particular industry to blame it on. It's a shortage caused by zoning. https://www.axios.com/sky-high-home-prices-are-thwarting-thwarting-economic-mobility-2466575966.html https://www.axios.com/sky-high-home-prices-are-thwarting-thw...
• ethanhunt_ 9y ago
  Why should taxpayers subsidize unsustainable prices for the restaurants/shops/services? If it's just left alone, the market will react to this. If a 1BR apt costs $2500/mo, then the price of a sandwich might go to $25 to be able to pay that sandwich-makers $75k/yr wage. And if SFers don't like paying $25 for a sandwich then they can vote for more density.
  • svachalek 9y ago
    Nah, there are much more viable market solutions. There will be 4 sandwich makers sharing that apartment, or they will commute for hours, or the sandwiches will be made somewhere else and shipped in, or the sandwich shop will make you build your own sandwich, or it will understaff and you'll have to wait 30 minutes for your sandwich...
• stillhere 9y ago
  This all falls squarely on the shoulders on landlords and their greed. Once they take a look at the applicant's tech salaries, the prices go up.
• closeparen 9y ago
  >why not put the pressure on the companies that are driving the influx of workers and out of control cost of living? You're going to need some extremely powerful public policy interventions to push back on a force as powerful in human civilization as urbanization. It's so much better for society and for the individuals who currently don't live in major cities to centralize into them. You're going to need some extreme regulation to reverse the incentives that have driven the push towards cities worldwide and for thousands of years. And for what? To protect a relatively tiny constituency of people who currently live in cities and want them to stay small, against the giant national/worldwide population that wants economic opportunity, and to use its resources for something other than cars?