4 ms·

I think it's extremely important not to discount the circumstances of individuals. Like you said, they're people too. But the value in this data is in helping

by bhupy 6y ago

I think it's extremely important not to discount the circumstances of individuals. Like you said, they're people too. But the value in this data is in helping us understand what the root causes are, and what the solutions should be. > Arbitrarily excluding certain metro areas because "you're a techie and can live anywhere" is just counter to reality, and just seems like a way to skew the numbers. The goal behind "arbitrarily" analyzing the data per-metro is not to skew the numbers, but to help us understand that the root cause is largely local, rather than a global systemic one. Everyone knows that housing is way more expensive than a median income can afford in San Francisco, but that's a San Francisco problem, not an America problem. It's also one that's generally well understood: they're not building enough housing due to exogenic limits.

notacoward 6y ago
I completely agree that we should understand the root cause, but I completely disagree that excluding certain cities helps us do that. Rather, it obfuscates. If you want to illuminate, you should aggregate by population density, then slice and dice by age, income quintile (not just median), parental income quintile, etc. > that's a San Francisco problem What's your excuse for the hundreds of places that aren't San Francisco but still have ridiculous ratios between income and housing prices? Your own sources identify some. The absolute last thing this site needs is more SF-centric tunnel vision.
- bhupy 6y ago
  > What's your excuse for the hundreds of places that aren't San Francisco but still have ridiculous ratios between income and housing prices? There aren't "hundreds" of places. Here's a list of metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) by population -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic... In the top 10, only 3 have experienced a dramatic increase in income-to-home-price multiple -> https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/home-price-income-ratios https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/home-price-income-ratios Of those that have experienced a dramatic increase, the root causes are common: restrictive land use policy that prevents us from building more housing. One may call that "tunnel vision", but others may call that "systematically isolating root causes".
  - notacoward 6y ago
    > In the top 10, only 3 Yet again why the arbitrary limitation? Your own source shows about a dozen areas going from the 5-8 band to the over-8 band since 1990. More than two dozen going from the 4-5 band or lower to the 5-8 band. When each multiple represents most of $100K. When the entire graph should ideally remain about the same color overall but is clearly getting worse. Buy hey, let's look only at the top 10 out of 392 and ignore the fifth of the population that's not in an MSA. That's totally the way to "systematically isolate root causes" ... so long as the root causes are the ones we find convenient. Otherwise not.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      It's not arbitrary, I'm just sampling the most populous because that's typically where the increases have allegedly been the most dramatic. The intention behind choosing only the top 10 is to be as minimally charitable to my own point as possible. In the top 20 most populous MSAs, only 7 experienced a substantial multiplier increase. In the top 50, it's even less. The further down the list you go, the less likely there has been a dramatic increase in home-price-to-income ratio. There's a whole collection of "Fine, American cities" (https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1221828340656431105 https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1221828340656431105) where multipliers have either not increased, or decreased.
- jbay808 6y ago
  > The absolute last thing this site needs is more SF-centric tunnel vision. Indeed. Canadian here -- you Americans have it good! In Canada, there aren't so many metros to choose from. Moving away from the city you grew up in generally means moving much, much farther away, and adapting to a very different climate. For any given profession, the number of places with good opportunities is also a much more limited selection.

by bhupy 6y ago

notacoward 6y ago

I completely agree that we should understand the root cause, but I completely disagree that excluding certain cities helps us do that. Rather, it obfuscates. If you want to illuminate, you should aggregate by population density, then slice and dice by age, income quintile (not just median), parental income quintile, etc. > that's a San Francisco problem What's your excuse for the hundreds of places that aren't San Francisco but still have ridiculous ratios between income and housing prices? Your own sources identify some. The absolute last thing this site needs is more SF-centric tunnel vision.

bhupy 6y ago
> What's your excuse for the hundreds of places that aren't San Francisco but still have ridiculous ratios between income and housing prices? There aren't "hundreds" of places. Here's a list of metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) by population -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic... In the top 10, only 3 have experienced a dramatic increase in income-to-home-price multiple -> https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/home-price-income-ratios https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/home-price-income-ratios Of those that have experienced a dramatic increase, the root causes are common: restrictive land use policy that prevents us from building more housing. One may call that "tunnel vision", but others may call that "systematically isolating root causes".
- notacoward 6y ago
  > In the top 10, only 3 Yet again why the arbitrary limitation? Your own source shows about a dozen areas going from the 5-8 band to the over-8 band since 1990. More than two dozen going from the 4-5 band or lower to the 5-8 band. When each multiple represents most of $100K. When the entire graph should ideally remain about the same color overall but is clearly getting worse. Buy hey, let's look only at the top 10 out of 392 and ignore the fifth of the population that's not in an MSA. That's totally the way to "systematically isolate root causes" ... so long as the root causes are the ones we find convenient. Otherwise not.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    It's not arbitrary, I'm just sampling the most populous because that's typically where the increases have allegedly been the most dramatic. The intention behind choosing only the top 10 is to be as minimally charitable to my own point as possible. In the top 20 most populous MSAs, only 7 experienced a substantial multiplier increase. In the top 50, it's even less. The further down the list you go, the less likely there has been a dramatic increase in home-price-to-income ratio. There's a whole collection of "Fine, American cities" (https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1221828340656431105 https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1221828340656431105) where multipliers have either not increased, or decreased.
jbay808 6y ago
> The absolute last thing this site needs is more SF-centric tunnel vision. Indeed. Canadian here -- you Americans have it good! In Canada, there aren't so many metros to choose from. Moving away from the city you grew up in generally means moving much, much farther away, and adapting to a very different climate. For any given profession, the number of places with good opportunities is also a much more limited selection.