38 ms·

Tech’s flight from San Francisco is a relief to some advocates

105 points by harambae 6y ago

jiveturkey 6y ago
surprisingly rich article. i got a lot out of it.
- pb7 6y ago
  Care to summarize what you've learned?
  - jiveturkey 6y ago
    the article is short enough that it's just better to read it.
    - pb7 6y ago
      I did read it, I just didn't find it nearly as insightful as you it seems so I'm curious what it is you learned from it.
BitwiseFool 6y ago
In a similar vein, my home-city was vying hard to get the Amazon HQ2 to be located in it. The bid was a longshot to begin with, but I was so relieved when Amazon chose not to come to DFW. Sure, I know it would have been great for "The Economy" but terrible for the average Joe and Jane just trying to get a middle class life established here.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  I felt exactly the same when Amazon passed over my home city
- JPKab 6y ago
  I think you're making a big mistake by buying into the argument that a big new employer moving in drives up demand for housing, and therefore it will immediately be a disaster for the community. The reason this argument is flawed is that it's ignoring the supply side of the equation. SV, and especially SF, have numerous restrictions and NIMBY empowerment issues that dramatically constrain the ability to add new supply to the housing market. It's incredibly difficult and expensive to build new housing there. Likewise for Seattle. The local activists tend to ignore this supply constraint, and attack the easy target of the big, evil tech companies and their rather easy to pick-on "yuppie, hipster" employees, acting as if demand for new housing is inherently bad for the region. It's an incredibly myopic, and frankly, greedy, view of the world. "My city was perfect as soon as the dwelling I live in was created, and nothing else should be added after that." DFW doesn't have the same constraints on new development that SV, SF, Seattle have. You wouldn't see a huge spike in housing costs like you had in those locations.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    People in DFW love their single family homes. Like most everywhere else in America: if your policy suggestion is "give up a lot of space and turn your residential neighbourhood into multi-family housing," you're going to get a lot of resistance. It's not so land locked, which has delayed things since people can expand out, but look at what traffic is doing as a result! It'll keep sprawling, and costs will keep going up in the more central areas, though not as fast for sure. Is it better to have growth spread to places that aren't in a not-geographically-bottlenecked-already-full area? Sure, probably. Seems a lot more sustainable and a lot less just a boon to existing lucky landholders. But then your policy solution goes back to "close SF and the other places that are full to push the growth elsewhere," not some sort of "just manage SF's growth better!" wishful thinking.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    It's an incredibly myopic, and frankly, greedy, view of the world. What's greedy is thinking that one has any right whatsoever to the land and community that other people have invested decades of their lives to build. Democracy is and should be run by the people who actually live in an area, not by literal invaders who want to take it away. The place to apply leverage on the housing problem is on the employers and investors who are forcing concentration of industries in one tiny area. There are plenty of places in the US with plenty of land and a willingness to build.
- refurb 6y ago
  This is a great NIMBY argument. “There are people who would benefit highly from Amazon moving here and creating new jobs, but i like DFW the way it is now, so screw those people”
justin_oaks 6y ago
I was thinking that tech companies are in the San Francisco area because that's where a lot of tech talent is found, and tech talent is found there because tech companies are there. Is there anything more to it than that? I'm happy to see tech spread out a bit. The absurd housing prices in San Francisco aren't healthy for either the tech companies nor the non-tech neighbors.
- JPKab 6y ago
  A buddy of mine years ago did a sports-coaching related start-up in Washington, DC. It was a cool idea targeted at high school and college football teams. He wanted to stay in DC, and had the talent he wanted there. His app was high-quality, and he ended up getting an investment from a VC. The VC was based in SF. My buddy didn't want to move there, but the VC made the investment contingent on him relocating to SF, because that's where the VC lived. He made the move. He immediately noticed that he had to pay far more for people who weren't any more productive or talented than what he had in DC. His biggest gripe was that the turnover was a lot higher, and he was often getting people who seemed to have lower aptitude for their roles. Apparently, VC's requiring relocation to SF is a common thing, and I suspect that it's part of the reason so much is concentrated there.
  - draw_down 6y ago
    Welcome to the big leagues.
  - justin_oaks 6y ago
    So now I'm wondering if there are a lot of VCs because there are a lot of tech companies. It's one more thing that seems to compound the feedback loop.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  It's the universities.
- tjalfi 6y ago
  Here [0] is a post that discusses some of the reasons why Silicon Valley became a high tech hub. [0] https://yarchive.net/comp/startups.html https://yarchive.net/comp/startups.html
jeffbee 6y ago
It has always been the preference of the "progressive" (Peskin) wing of SF conservatives to halt population growth by crashing the economy. People who inherit giant Mexican land grant fortunes attend Little Ivies back east, come to SF and become "tenants' rights activists" and spend their lives vilifying people who ride buses to work for a paycheck as "gentrifiers". These people are now psyched that they don't have to share the city with people who have jobs.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Could you put this in less loaded terms? I'm having trouble discerning what your actual point is, besides acrimony.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    No, I don't think I can. The terms aren't loaded, they are descriptive. Elected officials in SF really are wealthy heirs with East Coast educations, vestigial Mexican land grants, and they really do describe themselves as tenants rights activists and they really do describe us as gentrifying techie scum and their plan of record really is to block all solutions to SF's housing crisis and wait for a recession.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      Well, then, citation needed regarding "wealthy heirs with East Coast educations, [and] vestigial Mexican land grants, ...[whose] plan of record really is to block all solutions to SF's housing crisis and wait for a recession," And, are you willing to even consider the possibility that people in the tech industry actually are "gentrifying techie scum," or, some significantly less loaded version of that? It's pretty indisputable that the tech industry has raised housing prices in the Bay Area, mostly because Silicon Valley is no longer a gigantic orchard. Basic economics says that when you take land and put it to a more productive use, as measured by how much money one can make using said land for said new purpose, the price of the land + improvements goes up. That's literally what's happening, and people are being forced out because of it. That's the actual definition of "gentrification." "Scum" is just a pejorative qualifier that would be used by those who don't approve of this dynamic, which, while it displays an ignorance of basic economic principles, is entirely understandable in terms of human psychology. And, it seems utterly stupid for these people to want to crash the local economy, just to get rid of the most productive sector of the economy. Unless there's some other master plan you're not elucidating, and, for which you'd need to provide an actual citation, Occam's Razor says this is absolutely absurd. Do you see where I'm going with this? The scenario you posit, in the terms you describe it, makes city leadership sound like a bunch of literal cartoon villains. While I don't believe they are immune from self interest, and the influence of money in politics, chasing that money away deliberately just doesn't fit in with the simpler "follow the money" scenario, unless there's something more to it than you're alleging. Edit: moved the bit about SF leadership being deliberately obstructionist to the correct quote.
vecinu 6y ago
This article is a rehash of existing information and an insult to tech workers that were forced out (such as myself). If the day to day living conditions were actually acceptable, many people would have stayed during the pandemic. The real problem is the sky high cost of housing with a low quality of life. I put up with increasing crime, dangerous grime (such as needles in bike lanes) and tent cities on sidewalks all over the place for a decade until my brain couldn't take it anymore. I have no problem paying Zurich level prices to live in SF due to its surrounding beauty, great opportunities and people but the mismanagement of the city has proven the high costs do not come with high quality of life. I would share more but I'm typing on my phone, I'm just disappointed to see "techies" still being blamed and called money hungry just because people are looking the other way at other problems.
- adkadskhj 6y ago
  I was in SF a couple times for work and i was absolutely shocked at how disgusting it was. Granted, i'm not a city person.. insanely so - i hate cities.. but this was a new level for me. The amount of raw sewage alone that i smelt blew my mind. I'm shocked how much people put up with there.
  - kyleblarson 6y ago
    I spent nearly every other week in SF from 2011 until COVID hit in February. Went to NY for a conference last year and immediately thought 'holy shit this city is CLEAN'.
    - selectodude 6y ago
      >Went to NY for a conference last year and immediately thought 'holy shit this city is CLEAN' Heh, and here I am in Chicago thinking "holy shit this city is filthy!" when I go to New York. I haven't been to San Francisco in awhile, it must have deteriorated.
      - pengaru 6y ago
        The harsh winters alone send Chicago's homeless places like SF. The city's municipal workers used to wash down the surviving homeless encampments hiding from the cold on Lower Wacker with bleach and a fire hose without notice. You could differentiate Chicago's genuine homeless from the career panhandlers downtown by the bleach-stained clothes. Not sure if they still use this practice, but it wouldn't surprise me. It's easy to criticize SF for its negligence, but the homeless challenges are real and the affordable solutions tend to be severely lacking empathy. And SF lacks a rude force of nature doing most of the work every winter. Damp and chilly, sure, but still relatively comfortable. Chicago has it easy in this department, and its occupants aren't exactly the most empathetic towards the homeless either.
RestlessMind 6y ago
SF had a city budget of approx. 12B in 2019-20[1]. If there is a tech flight, who is going to pick up the tab? Some of the options I see range from unlikely to very unlikely to impossible - cut government services, increase city income tax, add a wealth tax for SF residents, incentivize the tech industry to return. [1] https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/FY2019-20_and_FY2020-21_Mayor%27s_Proposed_Budget_Presentation.pdf https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/FY2019-20_and_FY2020-2...
- selectodude 6y ago
  >SF had a city budget of approx. 12B in 2019-20 That is fucking bananas. Chicago has a city budget of $12 billion this year with a population almost exactly three times higher. What in the hell are they spending money on?
  - baggy_trough 6y ago
    Shoveling enormous amounts of cash to homeless nonprofits who are incentivized to keep people homeless.
  - fmajid 6y ago
    The budget was $6B in 2008. About 40% of the windfall was captured by the bureaucracy in pay and benefits. And the city also has a huge welfare-industrial complex that bristled at the audacity of former Supervisor Sean Elsbernd when he asked for accountability for the money spent. Most of the activists interviewed for the article are in fact part of that parasitic group.
    - asdff 6y ago
      Why aren't people marching on city hall about this?
  - mikeryan 6y ago
    What in the hell are they spending money on? Salaries and Pension obligations. If SF was going to make one great budgetary fix it would be to move away from pensions for public employees and move to a more traditional 401k retirement funds. The amount of money the city has to continue to pay to fund pension obligations is obscene. My Mom married an ex SF firefighter. He had done his 25 years, retired around 50 and lived to 92. Full Pension for 40 years and now my Mom gets a chunk. She was his second wife and married him 25 years after he left the department. Great for her... https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-trouble--19000-highly-compensated-city-employees-earned-150000-in-pay--perks/ https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-...
mikeryan 6y ago
I have a feeling that post covid any outflows from SF will be replaced by a pretty rapid inflow of new people trying to get in while its more "affordable" Get a new, rent-controlled place now - you'll never have a better opportunity.
- raldi 6y ago
  Indeed. This effect is delayed during quarantine since so many of the things that make cities great are on hold. Once museums and restaurants reopen, live music returns, and people start throwing parties, folks holing up in Tracy are going to start feeling some serious FOMO and peer pressure, and discounted rent will complete the irresistible offer.
- paxys 6y ago
  It depends on where WFH policies of all the tech companies end up.
subsubzero 6y ago
Act two of the tech's flight will not be so pretty for SF. I don't think the advocates will be thrilled with the results. Given SF has been extremely heavy handed with the lockdowns, and a huge number of people leaving, alot of them well paid. Restaurants and businesses are closing(and moving out of the area) at a rapid pace. Expect a historic drop in revenue for the city, this means less services, less funding for education, more filth, more homeless, more drugs everywhere. The residents who have the means will get fed up with the downward spiral, leading to a negative feedback in life quality and revenue. Politicians in SF always money hungry will then try to hit the 'billionaires' where it hurts, 'their wallets', and try to raise taxes leading to more people leaving. Not everyone who is leaving is because of the cost of living, its also people who are fed up. The quality of life thing is huge, half of my Wife's good friends left the bay area the past year or two, a bunch of my co-workers in tech left and alot of it was people are sick of how poorly the place is run and is turning into a dump. I left in the summer and will never return, I grew up in the area so its been bittersweet, but I don't regret moving one bit.
- foxtr0t 6y ago
  San Francisco, the city in a perpetual death spiral. The number of bad "SF's gonna die!" takes on HN/twitter is so absurd I now read them with a "So bad it's good" type mindset. The number of times WSJ opinions alone have declared California dead is probably 20+. The thing that will stop the oft remarked upon "death spiral" is, ahem, the fucking CA housing market. Where there are fluctuations in expensive asset prices, people see opportunity. If housing prices in SF drop by 5%, it's not like all the wealthy individuals who can buy just sit on the sidelines. Younger people with lesser means see opportunities to get rent control at a decent price etc. I'm looking forward to retractions of all these level zero takes when rent prices spike in July. This is of course nothing new, for instance NY has gone through many ups and downs of its own and all along many in the media claimed "NY is dying!"
  - subsubzero 6y ago
    It is laughable with the number of articles that state this recently, I do think things are different as large name brand companies have moved out very recently: Pinterest paid big money to break its lease to move out of SF, Stripe is moving out, Charles Schwab and McKesson, and Bechtel also moved their HQ out of SF and CA in general. These moves were all done pre-covid but as a bay area resident the past year has been horrible like none other, fires raging all summer and toxic smoke, pg&e shutting off the power all the time, crime is really, really bad. I had stuff stolen from my house, a first of living an entire lifetime in the bay area.
mikestew 6y ago
Elberling...is among those who believe the city was being overrun by people who arrived for one reason. “The motivation got to this get-rich-quick attitude,” he said. “And that isn’t what our city is about." It's what your city has been about for over 170 years. Your fucking football team is named for this very idea.[0][1] Now, that's not to say I'm not sympathetic. Even in the less-expensive Seattle area I wonder where my hair dresser is supposed to live (I know where she lives: nowhere near Redmond). I'm trying to think of anyone I know that lives within the boundaries of "Eastside" (...of Seattle) that doesn't work in software and isn't married to same. I came up with one person: a psychologist. IOW, I have drifted from my modest roots and now only know high-income people. That's fine, I guess, but boy howdy, I'll bet I've grown far more out-of-touch and more bubbled than I'd like to think. But I see a lot of what I perceive to be jealousy amongst the noble concern for those less well off. Are you blocking those "new, expensive condos" because of concern for the poor or because you don't think wealthy people should have a place to live in SF? (Okay, fine, they can consume all of the cheap housing, and...oh, this has been rehashed ad nauseam.) I don't even have a snappy question for those that block corporate busses, y'all are just "doing something" for the sake of doing so (and the 'gram points, I imagine). But mostly I see a lot of "I was here first" attitude, like that counts for something. As if one gets to define "what our city is about", even if one gets it horribly wrong from the start. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_49ers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_49ers [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Forty-niners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Forty-nin...
- hinkley 6y ago
  Seattle also has international shipping, multiple Universities, and, at least for now, Boeing. Being a software town rounds out the demographics, instead of dominating them. A lot of midwestern towns have faded away because they were single industry towns. I can sympathize with people who don't want their city to be beholden to one group of people, who might disappear at any moment, after having extracted what they want from the city.
  - labcomputer 6y ago
    Sure, but being an industry town is largely a consequence of city policy. Specifically, policy which makes it too expensive to live in the city unless you're part of that dominant industry. It's "Dutch Disease"[1] from a different angle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
cletus 6y ago
I haven't lived in SF but I work in tech and have been visiting for 10 years. My hot take is that NYC (where I have lived) is better in every way except for the weather. Every time I arrived at SFO and walked outside I was like "why don't I live here?". Then I get to the tent cities, the grime, the open drug use and the hordes of homeless and I'm like "oh yeah, that's why". And that's before you get to the sky-high cost of living. Given the zoning and building constraints in the Bay Area, IMHO the big tech companies were over-capacity for how many workers that whole area can support. Fixing the zoning and required infrastructure to support more people is not something that will change overnight either (or ever, potentially). So the pandemic has shepherded in what might be the turning point for this unsustainable growth: and that is permanent remote work. Let me put it this way: I used to say that everyone (who worked at Google) lives in the Bay Area to work at Google whereas people work at Google everywhere else to live in those places. This isn't strictly true of course but generally I think it is. I see this move as being a boon for a lot of cities in the US: Atlanta, Dallas, Austin and Denver spring to mind. And this likely has long-term political consequences. Georgia flipped blue (just) in the election just gone largely due to Atlanta's growth. I think Texas will flip blue within 10-15 years. SF could be a nice place to live but it isn't. That was largely due to there being too many people who had to live there. This won't change overnight either but I see alleviating that "need" to live in the Bay Area as being a net positive.
- drak0n1c 6y ago
  Studies show that transplants from blue states moving to Texas actually voted red at a higher rate than those born in TX. Keep in mind that there are millions of right-leaning individuals in populated coastal areas (much more than many red states combined) and of the pool of people considering moving they are often the most motivated. The rate may be different for those moving to states other than TX though. https://www.texaspolicy.com/will-texas-flip-because-of-blue-state-migrants-dont-bet-on-it/ https://www.texaspolicy.com/will-texas-flip-because-of-blue-... https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/11/09/native-texans-voted-for-native-texan-beto-o-rourke-transplants-went-for-ted-cruz-exit-poll-shows/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/11/09/native-t... https://www.thecentersquare.com/texas/gov-abbott-new-texas-voters-are-more-conservative-than-natives/article_8a250872-1c5a-11ea-9fc0-4303155b0d9d.html https://www.thecentersquare.com/texas/gov-abbott-new-texas-v...
ArtDev 6y ago
I have worked remotely for more than 10 years and I hate big cities. I lived in Palo Alto once; never again. There are so many great places and small towns in the US that could use an influx of money and energy. These places are beautiful and housing is cheap. Tech needs to spread the wealth by moving to small towns. Small towns have been suffering from reduced wages (and therefore reduced tax revenue) and a brain drain to cities for decades. Join the local city council and help improve the small town you moved to.
- miranda_rights 6y ago
  I moved to a small-medium city in a more rural part of the US, from SF, about 6 months ago. It truly is beautiful from a nature perspective but the car-forward culture and lack of diversity makes it difficult to imagine living here long-term. My non-white partner has no community here and we as a mixed-race couple have gotten a few "looks". It's hard to help improve an area where you feel unwanted and out of place.
keiferski 6y ago
Reading some old Kerouac or hardboiled novels, it’s hard to believe that it’s even the same city. Even Manhattan hasn’t changed as much in comparison.
- tqi 6y ago
  Is that inherently a bad thing?
  - keiferski 6y ago
    When it becomes impossible for artists, writers, and other culture creators to live in a city, I’d say yes. SF used to be an amazing haven for weirdos that shaped American art and culture. That’s all gone now.
    - shuckles 6y ago
      There are plenty of weirdos shaping American culture living in San Francisco today, just better monetized.
    - tqi 6y ago
      100% agree, cities should prioritize building enough housing to keep it affordable. I don't think cities should prioritize maintaining the density or "character" of a city, which is how I had interpreted the original comment about old Kerouac or hardboiled novels.
  - asdff 6y ago
    Cities should be complete. A complete city means you are able to have rich people living along side working people. Cities need to be complete to be truly green, because in this case the working class are commuting within their neighborhood to work, perhaps even walking or biking, not three hours across town in the cheapest car they can afford.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
tqi 6y ago
"Bhakta, a San Francisco native and tenant organizer for affordable housing nonprofit Mission Housing, is well-versed in the seismic impact that the growth of the tech industry has had on the city. As software companies expanded over the past decade, they drew thousands of well-off newcomers who bid up rents and remade the city’s economy and culture." Those rents were by and large captured by SF "natives" who bought or inherited their properties decades ago. I've never understood why I, a transplant who needed a place to live, was blamed for high rents and not my landlords, real estate millionaires who vote against new development. Look at this fucking map and tell me who has benefitted the most from the sky high cost of living: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Interactive-map-shows-how-much-property-tax-you-15685009.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Intera...
- eli_gottlieb 6y ago
  >Those rents were by and large captured by SF "natives" who bought or inherited their properties decades ago. I've never understood why I, a transplant who needed a place to live, was blamed for high rents and not my landlords, real estate millionaires who vote against new development. Because the people blaming you are the children of those homeowners and stand to inherit their property.
- Kalium 6y ago
  > I've never understood why I, a transplant who needed a place to live, was blamed for high rents and not my landlords, real estate millionaires who vote against new development. It's always psychologically easier to blame outsiders for your problems than to look in the mirror. Especially when experts are telling you that most of the causative factors are policies you hold quite close to your heart.
  - milkytron 6y ago
    Are you saying OP should blame their self?
    - Kalium 6y ago
mapgrep 6y ago
This is part of the cycle that makes the Bay Area wonderful. People come, people go, some people stay. In my opinion some of the most interesting work (including but not exclusively in tech) is going to happen in the next few years in the Bay Area precisely because of the opportunities and breathing space this outflow of people (and perhaps eventually money) is going to open up. I lived in the Bay Area for 20 years, including college and 2-3 tech booms (depending how you count). From what I saw, there is always some portion of local people (like the angry anti-skyscraper guy in this article) that is too xenophobic and anti change, just as there is always some portion of newcomers that is too transactional, extractive, and ready to skip town when the going gets tough. Both postures are perfectly defensible; it's tough living in a place where rents are as unpredictable as they can be in the Bay Area, and tech leaders have not historically shown (IMO) enough commitment to the community and tax base, meanwhile those who move to the Bay Area for work are under no obligation to like it and stay, even if their complaints (about rent control, regulation, "dirty" streets, etc) are totally cliched. Somewhere out there in the city some bleary eyed veteran of the scene is negotiating a tiny, bargain sublet for a few desks and a slice of a server closet in SoMA and will release something quietly revolutionary in the next year or so that in five years will be the next big thing. Or maybe it will be a cheery eyed newcomer leasing factory time in Hayward for a hardware thing, or someone testing robots in a warehouse in West Oakland, or whatever. Right now is one of the times when things get interesting.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  This is a great comment because it recognizes that all of what's happening is cyclical. San Francisco has boomed and busted in the past, it will boom and bust again. People comparing it to Detroit seem to ignore that that city itself is in the throes of a revival. How could S.F., which even without tech is in a prime geographical location and climate, do even less?
- asdff 6y ago
  There is a fallacy here. Yes, these things are cyclical, but rents are still not crashing to levels affordable to the working class. The bay area is getting the worst of both worlds: a crisis on the streets and, even despite recent decreases, rents unaffordable to normal working people. This is sort of unprecedented uncharted territory beyond the boom and bust cycles up until this point. The people you wrote about in the last paragraph still can't afford to get in, and it's not like there is a lot of work in, say, the restaurant industry right now to finance these side efforts.
Semiapies 6y ago
I'm glad I never moved there.
- freetime2 6y ago
  I lived in the Bay Area for about a decade before moving away to be closer to family a few years ago. I have zero regrets for the time I spent there. I met a lot of great people. It was a great place to start out in my career because of the abundant job opportunities. The weather was fantastic. Of course SF is not to everyone's taste, and maybe you are indeed better off for never having lived there. But for all of its recent problems, there were good reasons that people continued to move there in droves. And I am thinking this current shake up will be a good thing for the city, relieving some of the pressure on the housing market and opening up new opportunities for people.
paxys 6y ago
Funny that there's not a single mention in the article about natives and long-time locals who have constantly voted against new construction or any progressive housing measure, which is the root cause of the crisis to begin with. No mention also of all the corruption/bribery scandals which city hall is currently involved in. Nor large landlords who can choose to rent out their apartment to whoever they want at whatever price they want. Nope, it's always young techies that are the problem since they are the easiest target. I think these advocates will find that even after all these tech companies have taken flight the city's problems will still remain, perhaps worse than before due to the loss of the massive tax base.
- yonran 6y ago
  > Funny that there's not a single mention in the article about natives and long-time locals who have constantly voted against new construction or any progressive housing measure, which is the root cause of the crisis to begin with Not only is there political opposition to housing that the article omits, but the two quoted “affordable housing advocates” (Chirag Bhakta and John Elberling) themselves demonize privately constructed housing and are complicit in exacerbating the housing shortage. Though to be fair, they have their own theories of how they think new housing causes gentrification, and they typically try to encumber developers with low-income housing requirements and other community benefits rather than opposing new housing for the sake of benefiting incumbent landlords. In particular, John Elberling has been the biggest proponent of increasing low-income housing requirements in new construction up to the point where apartment buildings are expected to be only marginally feasible (https://sfcontroller.org/inclusionary-housing-technical-advisory-committee https://sfcontroller.org/inclusionary-housing-technical-advi...), and he dismisses the effect that this would have on preventing new housing. He also opposed with farcical arguments statewide upzoning that would have allowed more construction in wealthy neighborhoods (opposed SB 827 https://www.facebook.com/TODCOgroup/posts/435262493564720 https://www.facebook.com/TODCOgroup/posts/435262493564720 and opposed SB 50 https://48hills.org/2019/12/supes-to-vote-on-wieners-development-bill/ https://48hills.org/2019/12/supes-to-vote-on-wieners-develop...).
cercatrova 6y ago
Are there any that are going to move into SF? I am planning on doing so after quarantine since rents will be lower but big tech compensation appears to be the same.
- bradlys 6y ago
  Some peers of mine are considering hopping back in soon to lock-in a lower rate before things get back to normal.
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
the tech population has always been blamed for housing or lack there of...after this flight, when homes and apartments become available, watch them stay empty even with reduced rent. why? because those who have always wanted more 'housing' could never afford it anyways. if there are no jobs for 'techies', there wont be any jobs for the second tier in the service sector economy. they cant afford to live in the housing they wanted build. what they have always wanted was affordable cheap housing in the most expensive cities of the usa. it was always the govt and their out of control budgets and unfunded pension liabilities. and feel good vote bank pacifying budget. blaming tech was a convinient distraction. because its easy to rouse the mob to go and lynch someone else instead of submitting to a forensic audit or a rip out transparent budget analysis. that..some might say...is not only unreasonable and unacceptable, but also impossible. some econ 101 has to play out in real life so that when the post orgasmic bliss after the outrage porn ebbs away, economic and fiscal reality can float up where the sun shines. because. free market forces.
hartator 6y ago
> When Chirag Bhakta saw a headline recently that said tech workers were fleeing San Francisco, he had a quick reaction: “Good riddance.” > “They used their capital to radically shift the makeup of poor, working-class communities,” Tech people are not working class?
- kenhwang 6y ago
  Generally considered to be professional class. Working class generally refers to jobs that require little experience/education to enter since skills can be learned on the job. Professional class generally requires higher education.
  - pb7 6y ago
    Weird mix of sugarcoating and needlessly dividing people. Not you, but the terms.
    - dralley 6y ago
      Not at all. It's the difference between an AWS employee and an Amazon fulfillment employee. If you actually think that the two positions are at all comparable, I suggest you do a stint working in a warehouse for some perspective.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- eli_gottlieb 6y ago
  If you get paid in stock options or RSU's, by definition, you are not working-class. You are receiving an ownership stake in the enterprise.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Tech people are not working class? In traditional class terminology, rooted largely in the Marxist analysis of relations in capitalism, “Tech people” are mostly part of the distinct knowledge-worker subgroup of the working class (“proletarian intelligentsia”) though, because of the high pay and other aspects of the field, many have escaped to the middle class (as part of the “petit bourgeois intelligentsia”), and a very few (typically tech founders turned unicorn CxO) have entered into the upper class (“haut bourgeoisie”). Modern American terminology has little consistent theoretical or empirical grounding, but typically reserves “working class” for the below-median-income segment of classic working class, calls most of the rest of the classic working class “middle class”, and calls approximately the classic middle class “upper middle class” or part of the “upper class”.
b20000 6y ago
so where are people moving and why?
renewiltord 6y ago
It always amazes me that people get offended by this stuff. There's so much money in SF that tech people are actually small fry. Tech money buys surprisingly little political influence because the government, unions, construction are all very powerful. Your company got sold for $100 million? Big deal, you are a flea before the power that Rome Aloise (who you have never heard of) wields, let alone the real big fish. You know that odd feeling of unfairness and powerlessness? That's what it's like to be an immigrant subject to capricious laws. Now that's you because you are an insect before the San Francisco Political Machine. This is what it means to have all the incentives shaped against you. And you can grumble on the Internet but it'll do nothing. Because it is unfair. It is disingenuous. It is propaganda. But that's politics.
hurrdurr2 6y ago
So tech folks came in looking to get rich quick, creating huge wealth disparities which helped fuel the homeless problem and the associated social issues, but now that they can all work from home and is complaining that SF is now "a dump" they all picked up and left. Sounds about right.
- dnissley 6y ago
  How do wealth disparities contribute to the homeless problem? Is your theory that the homeless in San Fransisco are primarily displaced residents who previously were paying for local housing?
  - hurrdurr2 6y ago
    Are you seriously asking how expanding wealth disparity contributes to homelessness? Does rent increasing across the entirety of the bay area (which increasingly only techies can afford) not contribute to poorer people getting kicked out and become homeless?
    - deepakhj 6y ago
      Are you seriously saying that new consumers have control over the production of housing supply?
      - hurrdurr2 6y ago
        This comment is so stupid I'm kind of amazed. Don't get so defensive techbro. Remember, if you don't like it here anymore just move away. Then you can do what the other techbros do on this board, boast about their new five acre forest house and shiny new Tesla, then post pics from their window showing off the view.
        deepakhj 6y ago
        Nice ad hominem attack and ignoring my statement. I’ll humor you. I own neither a Tesla nor a house. I rent. I’ve lived in sf going on almost 22 years. Where did I say I didn’t like living here?

105 points by harambae 6y ago

jiveturkey 6y ago

surprisingly rich article. i got a lot out of it.

pb7 6y ago
Care to summarize what you've learned?
- jiveturkey 6y ago
  the article is short enough that it's just better to read it.
  - pb7 6y ago
    I did read it, I just didn't find it nearly as insightful as you it seems so I'm curious what it is you learned from it.

BitwiseFool 6y ago

In a similar vein, my home-city was vying hard to get the Amazon HQ2 to be located in it. The bid was a longshot to begin with, but I was so relieved when Amazon chose not to come to DFW. Sure, I know it would have been great for "The Economy" but terrible for the average Joe and Jane just trying to get a middle class life established here.

buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
I felt exactly the same when Amazon passed over my home city
JPKab 6y ago
I think you're making a big mistake by buying into the argument that a big new employer moving in drives up demand for housing, and therefore it will immediately be a disaster for the community. The reason this argument is flawed is that it's ignoring the supply side of the equation. SV, and especially SF, have numerous restrictions and NIMBY empowerment issues that dramatically constrain the ability to add new supply to the housing market. It's incredibly difficult and expensive to build new housing there. Likewise for Seattle. The local activists tend to ignore this supply constraint, and attack the easy target of the big, evil tech companies and their rather easy to pick-on "yuppie, hipster" employees, acting as if demand for new housing is inherently bad for the region. It's an incredibly myopic, and frankly, greedy, view of the world. "My city was perfect as soon as the dwelling I live in was created, and nothing else should be added after that." DFW doesn't have the same constraints on new development that SV, SF, Seattle have. You wouldn't see a huge spike in housing costs like you had in those locations.
- majormajor 6y ago
  People in DFW love their single family homes. Like most everywhere else in America: if your policy suggestion is "give up a lot of space and turn your residential neighbourhood into multi-family housing," you're going to get a lot of resistance. It's not so land locked, which has delayed things since people can expand out, but look at what traffic is doing as a result! It'll keep sprawling, and costs will keep going up in the more central areas, though not as fast for sure. Is it better to have growth spread to places that aren't in a not-geographically-bottlenecked-already-full area? Sure, probably. Seems a lot more sustainable and a lot less just a boon to existing lucky landholders. But then your policy solution goes back to "close SF and the other places that are full to push the growth elsewhere," not some sort of "just manage SF's growth better!" wishful thinking.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  It's an incredibly myopic, and frankly, greedy, view of the world. What's greedy is thinking that one has any right whatsoever to the land and community that other people have invested decades of their lives to build. Democracy is and should be run by the people who actually live in an area, not by literal invaders who want to take it away. The place to apply leverage on the housing problem is on the employers and investors who are forcing concentration of industries in one tiny area. There are plenty of places in the US with plenty of land and a willingness to build.
refurb 6y ago
This is a great NIMBY argument. “There are people who would benefit highly from Amazon moving here and creating new jobs, but i like DFW the way it is now, so screw those people”

justin_oaks 6y ago

I was thinking that tech companies are in the San Francisco area because that's where a lot of tech talent is found, and tech talent is found there because tech companies are there. Is there anything more to it than that? I'm happy to see tech spread out a bit. The absurd housing prices in San Francisco aren't healthy for either the tech companies nor the non-tech neighbors.

JPKab 6y ago
A buddy of mine years ago did a sports-coaching related start-up in Washington, DC. It was a cool idea targeted at high school and college football teams. He wanted to stay in DC, and had the talent he wanted there. His app was high-quality, and he ended up getting an investment from a VC. The VC was based in SF. My buddy didn't want to move there, but the VC made the investment contingent on him relocating to SF, because that's where the VC lived. He made the move. He immediately noticed that he had to pay far more for people who weren't any more productive or talented than what he had in DC. His biggest gripe was that the turnover was a lot higher, and he was often getting people who seemed to have lower aptitude for their roles. Apparently, VC's requiring relocation to SF is a common thing, and I suspect that it's part of the reason so much is concentrated there.
- draw_down 6y ago
  Welcome to the big leagues.
- justin_oaks 6y ago
  So now I'm wondering if there are a lot of VCs because there are a lot of tech companies. It's one more thing that seems to compound the feedback loop.
jeffbee 6y ago
It's the universities.
tjalfi 6y ago
Here [0] is a post that discusses some of the reasons why Silicon Valley became a high tech hub. [0] https://yarchive.net/comp/startups.html https://yarchive.net/comp/startups.html

jeffbee 6y ago

It has always been the preference of the "progressive" (Peskin) wing of SF conservatives to halt population growth by crashing the economy. People who inherit giant Mexican land grant fortunes attend Little Ivies back east, come to SF and become "tenants' rights activists" and spend their lives vilifying people who ride buses to work for a paycheck as "gentrifiers". These people are now psyched that they don't have to share the city with people who have jobs.

pmiller2 6y ago
Could you put this in less loaded terms? I'm having trouble discerning what your actual point is, besides acrimony.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  No, I don't think I can. The terms aren't loaded, they are descriptive. Elected officials in SF really are wealthy heirs with East Coast educations, vestigial Mexican land grants, and they really do describe themselves as tenants rights activists and they really do describe us as gentrifying techie scum and their plan of record really is to block all solutions to SF's housing crisis and wait for a recession.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Well, then, citation needed regarding "wealthy heirs with East Coast educations, [and] vestigial Mexican land grants, ...[whose] plan of record really is to block all solutions to SF's housing crisis and wait for a recession," And, are you willing to even consider the possibility that people in the tech industry actually are "gentrifying techie scum," or, some significantly less loaded version of that? It's pretty indisputable that the tech industry has raised housing prices in the Bay Area, mostly because Silicon Valley is no longer a gigantic orchard. Basic economics says that when you take land and put it to a more productive use, as measured by how much money one can make using said land for said new purpose, the price of the land + improvements goes up. That's literally what's happening, and people are being forced out because of it. That's the actual definition of "gentrification." "Scum" is just a pejorative qualifier that would be used by those who don't approve of this dynamic, which, while it displays an ignorance of basic economic principles, is entirely understandable in terms of human psychology. And, it seems utterly stupid for these people to want to crash the local economy, just to get rid of the most productive sector of the economy. Unless there's some other master plan you're not elucidating, and, for which you'd need to provide an actual citation, Occam's Razor says this is absolutely absurd. Do you see where I'm going with this? The scenario you posit, in the terms you describe it, makes city leadership sound like a bunch of literal cartoon villains. While I don't believe they are immune from self interest, and the influence of money in politics, chasing that money away deliberately just doesn't fit in with the simpler "follow the money" scenario, unless there's something more to it than you're alleging. Edit: moved the bit about SF leadership being deliberately obstructionist to the correct quote.

vecinu 6y ago

This article is a rehash of existing information and an insult to tech workers that were forced out (such as myself). If the day to day living conditions were actually acceptable, many people would have stayed during the pandemic. The real problem is the sky high cost of housing with a low quality of life. I put up with increasing crime, dangerous grime (such as needles in bike lanes) and tent cities on sidewalks all over the place for a decade until my brain couldn't take it anymore. I have no problem paying Zurich level prices to live in SF due to its surrounding beauty, great opportunities and people but the mismanagement of the city has proven the high costs do not come with high quality of life. I would share more but I'm typing on my phone, I'm just disappointed to see "techies" still being blamed and called money hungry just because people are looking the other way at other problems.

adkadskhj 6y ago
I was in SF a couple times for work and i was absolutely shocked at how disgusting it was. Granted, i'm not a city person.. insanely so - i hate cities.. but this was a new level for me. The amount of raw sewage alone that i smelt blew my mind. I'm shocked how much people put up with there.
- kyleblarson 6y ago
  I spent nearly every other week in SF from 2011 until COVID hit in February. Went to NY for a conference last year and immediately thought 'holy shit this city is CLEAN'.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    >Went to NY for a conference last year and immediately thought 'holy shit this city is CLEAN' Heh, and here I am in Chicago thinking "holy shit this city is filthy!" when I go to New York. I haven't been to San Francisco in awhile, it must have deteriorated.
    - pengaru 6y ago
      The harsh winters alone send Chicago's homeless places like SF. The city's municipal workers used to wash down the surviving homeless encampments hiding from the cold on Lower Wacker with bleach and a fire hose without notice. You could differentiate Chicago's genuine homeless from the career panhandlers downtown by the bleach-stained clothes. Not sure if they still use this practice, but it wouldn't surprise me. It's easy to criticize SF for its negligence, but the homeless challenges are real and the affordable solutions tend to be severely lacking empathy. And SF lacks a rude force of nature doing most of the work every winter. Damp and chilly, sure, but still relatively comfortable. Chicago has it easy in this department, and its occupants aren't exactly the most empathetic towards the homeless either.

RestlessMind 6y ago

SF had a city budget of approx. 12B in 2019-20[1]. If there is a tech flight, who is going to pick up the tab? Some of the options I see range from unlikely to very unlikely to impossible - cut government services, increase city income tax, add a wealth tax for SF residents, incentivize the tech industry to return. [1] https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/FY2019-20_and_FY2020-21_Mayor%27s_Proposed_Budget_Presentation.pdf https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/FY2019-20_and_FY2020-2...

selectodude 6y ago
>SF had a city budget of approx. 12B in 2019-20 That is fucking bananas. Chicago has a city budget of $12 billion this year with a population almost exactly three times higher. What in the hell are they spending money on?
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  Shoveling enormous amounts of cash to homeless nonprofits who are incentivized to keep people homeless.
- fmajid 6y ago
  The budget was $6B in 2008. About 40% of the windfall was captured by the bureaucracy in pay and benefits. And the city also has a huge welfare-industrial complex that bristled at the audacity of former Supervisor Sean Elsbernd when he asked for accountability for the money spent. Most of the activists interviewed for the article are in fact part of that parasitic group.
  - asdff 6y ago
    Why aren't people marching on city hall about this?
- mikeryan 6y ago
  What in the hell are they spending money on? Salaries and Pension obligations. If SF was going to make one great budgetary fix it would be to move away from pensions for public employees and move to a more traditional 401k retirement funds. The amount of money the city has to continue to pay to fund pension obligations is obscene. My Mom married an ex SF firefighter. He had done his 25 years, retired around 50 and lived to 92. Full Pension for 40 years and now my Mom gets a chunk. She was his second wife and married him 25 years after he left the department. Great for her... https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-trouble--19000-highly-compensated-city-employees-earned-150000-in-pay--perks/ https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-...

mikeryan 6y ago

I have a feeling that post covid any outflows from SF will be replaced by a pretty rapid inflow of new people trying to get in while its more "affordable" Get a new, rent-controlled place now - you'll never have a better opportunity.

raldi 6y ago
Indeed. This effect is delayed during quarantine since so many of the things that make cities great are on hold. Once museums and restaurants reopen, live music returns, and people start throwing parties, folks holing up in Tracy are going to start feeling some serious FOMO and peer pressure, and discounted rent will complete the irresistible offer.
paxys 6y ago
It depends on where WFH policies of all the tech companies end up.

subsubzero 6y ago

Act two of the tech's flight will not be so pretty for SF. I don't think the advocates will be thrilled with the results. Given SF has been extremely heavy handed with the lockdowns, and a huge number of people leaving, alot of them well paid. Restaurants and businesses are closing(and moving out of the area) at a rapid pace. Expect a historic drop in revenue for the city, this means less services, less funding for education, more filth, more homeless, more drugs everywhere. The residents who have the means will get fed up with the downward spiral, leading to a negative feedback in life quality and revenue. Politicians in SF always money hungry will then try to hit the 'billionaires' where it hurts, 'their wallets', and try to raise taxes leading to more people leaving. Not everyone who is leaving is because of the cost of living, its also people who are fed up. The quality of life thing is huge, half of my Wife's good friends left the bay area the past year or two, a bunch of my co-workers in tech left and alot of it was people are sick of how poorly the place is run and is turning into a dump. I left in the summer and will never return, I grew up in the area so its been bittersweet, but I don't regret moving one bit.

foxtr0t 6y ago
San Francisco, the city in a perpetual death spiral. The number of bad "SF's gonna die!" takes on HN/twitter is so absurd I now read them with a "So bad it's good" type mindset. The number of times WSJ opinions alone have declared California dead is probably 20+. The thing that will stop the oft remarked upon "death spiral" is, ahem, the fucking CA housing market. Where there are fluctuations in expensive asset prices, people see opportunity. If housing prices in SF drop by 5%, it's not like all the wealthy individuals who can buy just sit on the sidelines. Younger people with lesser means see opportunities to get rent control at a decent price etc. I'm looking forward to retractions of all these level zero takes when rent prices spike in July. This is of course nothing new, for instance NY has gone through many ups and downs of its own and all along many in the media claimed "NY is dying!"
- subsubzero 6y ago
  It is laughable with the number of articles that state this recently, I do think things are different as large name brand companies have moved out very recently: Pinterest paid big money to break its lease to move out of SF, Stripe is moving out, Charles Schwab and McKesson, and Bechtel also moved their HQ out of SF and CA in general. These moves were all done pre-covid but as a bay area resident the past year has been horrible like none other, fires raging all summer and toxic smoke, pg&e shutting off the power all the time, crime is really, really bad. I had stuff stolen from my house, a first of living an entire lifetime in the bay area.

mikestew 6y ago

Elberling...is among those who believe the city was being overrun by people who arrived for one reason. “The motivation got to this get-rich-quick attitude,” he said. “And that isn’t what our city is about." It's what your city has been about for over 170 years. Your fucking football team is named for this very idea.[0][1] Now, that's not to say I'm not sympathetic. Even in the less-expensive Seattle area I wonder where my hair dresser is supposed to live (I know where she lives: nowhere near Redmond). I'm trying to think of anyone I know that lives within the boundaries of "Eastside" (...of Seattle) that doesn't work in software and isn't married to same. I came up with one person: a psychologist. IOW, I have drifted from my modest roots and now only know high-income people. That's fine, I guess, but boy howdy, I'll bet I've grown far more out-of-touch and more bubbled than I'd like to think. But I see a lot of what I perceive to be jealousy amongst the noble concern for those less well off. Are you blocking those "new, expensive condos" because of concern for the poor or because you don't think wealthy people should have a place to live in SF? (Okay, fine, they can consume all of the cheap housing, and...oh, this has been rehashed ad nauseam.) I don't even have a snappy question for those that block corporate busses, y'all are just "doing something" for the sake of doing so (and the 'gram points, I imagine). But mostly I see a lot of "I was here first" attitude, like that counts for something. As if one gets to define "what our city is about", even if one gets it horribly wrong from the start. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_49ers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_49ers [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Forty-niners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Forty-nin...

hinkley 6y ago
Seattle also has international shipping, multiple Universities, and, at least for now, Boeing. Being a software town rounds out the demographics, instead of dominating them. A lot of midwestern towns have faded away because they were single industry towns. I can sympathize with people who don't want their city to be beholden to one group of people, who might disappear at any moment, after having extracted what they want from the city.
- labcomputer 6y ago
  Sure, but being an industry town is largely a consequence of city policy. Specifically, policy which makes it too expensive to live in the city unless you're part of that dominant industry. It's "Dutch Disease"[1] from a different angle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

cletus 6y ago

I haven't lived in SF but I work in tech and have been visiting for 10 years. My hot take is that NYC (where I have lived) is better in every way except for the weather. Every time I arrived at SFO and walked outside I was like "why don't I live here?". Then I get to the tent cities, the grime, the open drug use and the hordes of homeless and I'm like "oh yeah, that's why". And that's before you get to the sky-high cost of living. Given the zoning and building constraints in the Bay Area, IMHO the big tech companies were over-capacity for how many workers that whole area can support. Fixing the zoning and required infrastructure to support more people is not something that will change overnight either (or ever, potentially). So the pandemic has shepherded in what might be the turning point for this unsustainable growth: and that is permanent remote work. Let me put it this way: I used to say that everyone (who worked at Google) lives in the Bay Area to work at Google whereas people work at Google everywhere else to live in those places. This isn't strictly true of course but generally I think it is. I see this move as being a boon for a lot of cities in the US: Atlanta, Dallas, Austin and Denver spring to mind. And this likely has long-term political consequences. Georgia flipped blue (just) in the election just gone largely due to Atlanta's growth. I think Texas will flip blue within 10-15 years. SF could be a nice place to live but it isn't. That was largely due to there being too many people who had to live there. This won't change overnight either but I see alleviating that "need" to live in the Bay Area as being a net positive.

drak0n1c 6y ago
Studies show that transplants from blue states moving to Texas actually voted red at a higher rate than those born in TX. Keep in mind that there are millions of right-leaning individuals in populated coastal areas (much more than many red states combined) and of the pool of people considering moving they are often the most motivated. The rate may be different for those moving to states other than TX though. https://www.texaspolicy.com/will-texas-flip-because-of-blue-state-migrants-dont-bet-on-it/ https://www.texaspolicy.com/will-texas-flip-because-of-blue-... https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/11/09/native-texans-voted-for-native-texan-beto-o-rourke-transplants-went-for-ted-cruz-exit-poll-shows/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/11/09/native-t... https://www.thecentersquare.com/texas/gov-abbott-new-texas-voters-are-more-conservative-than-natives/article_8a250872-1c5a-11ea-9fc0-4303155b0d9d.html https://www.thecentersquare.com/texas/gov-abbott-new-texas-v...

ArtDev 6y ago

I have worked remotely for more than 10 years and I hate big cities. I lived in Palo Alto once; never again. There are so many great places and small towns in the US that could use an influx of money and energy. These places are beautiful and housing is cheap. Tech needs to spread the wealth by moving to small towns. Small towns have been suffering from reduced wages (and therefore reduced tax revenue) and a brain drain to cities for decades. Join the local city council and help improve the small town you moved to.

miranda_rights 6y ago
I moved to a small-medium city in a more rural part of the US, from SF, about 6 months ago. It truly is beautiful from a nature perspective but the car-forward culture and lack of diversity makes it difficult to imagine living here long-term. My non-white partner has no community here and we as a mixed-race couple have gotten a few "looks". It's hard to help improve an area where you feel unwanted and out of place.

keiferski 6y ago

Reading some old Kerouac or hardboiled novels, it’s hard to believe that it’s even the same city. Even Manhattan hasn’t changed as much in comparison.

tqi 6y ago
Is that inherently a bad thing?
- keiferski 6y ago
  When it becomes impossible for artists, writers, and other culture creators to live in a city, I’d say yes. SF used to be an amazing haven for weirdos that shaped American art and culture. That’s all gone now.
  - shuckles 6y ago
    There are plenty of weirdos shaping American culture living in San Francisco today, just better monetized.
  - tqi 6y ago
    100% agree, cities should prioritize building enough housing to keep it affordable. I don't think cities should prioritize maintaining the density or "character" of a city, which is how I had interpreted the original comment about old Kerouac or hardboiled novels.
- asdff 6y ago
  Cities should be complete. A complete city means you are able to have rich people living along side working people. Cities need to be complete to be truly green, because in this case the working class are commuting within their neighborhood to work, perhaps even walking or biking, not three hours across town in the cheapest car they can afford.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

tqi 6y ago

"Bhakta, a San Francisco native and tenant organizer for affordable housing nonprofit Mission Housing, is well-versed in the seismic impact that the growth of the tech industry has had on the city. As software companies expanded over the past decade, they drew thousands of well-off newcomers who bid up rents and remade the city’s economy and culture." Those rents were by and large captured by SF "natives" who bought or inherited their properties decades ago. I've never understood why I, a transplant who needed a place to live, was blamed for high rents and not my landlords, real estate millionaires who vote against new development. Look at this fucking map and tell me who has benefitted the most from the sky high cost of living: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Interactive-map-shows-how-much-property-tax-you-15685009.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Intera...

eli_gottlieb 6y ago
>Those rents were by and large captured by SF "natives" who bought or inherited their properties decades ago. I've never understood why I, a transplant who needed a place to live, was blamed for high rents and not my landlords, real estate millionaires who vote against new development. Because the people blaming you are the children of those homeowners and stand to inherit their property.
Kalium 6y ago
> I've never understood why I, a transplant who needed a place to live, was blamed for high rents and not my landlords, real estate millionaires who vote against new development. It's always psychologically easier to blame outsiders for your problems than to look in the mirror. Especially when experts are telling you that most of the causative factors are policies you hold quite close to your heart.
- milkytron 6y ago
  Are you saying OP should blame their self?
  - Kalium 6y ago

mapgrep 6y ago

This is part of the cycle that makes the Bay Area wonderful. People come, people go, some people stay. In my opinion some of the most interesting work (including but not exclusively in tech) is going to happen in the next few years in the Bay Area precisely because of the opportunities and breathing space this outflow of people (and perhaps eventually money) is going to open up. I lived in the Bay Area for 20 years, including college and 2-3 tech booms (depending how you count). From what I saw, there is always some portion of local people (like the angry anti-skyscraper guy in this article) that is too xenophobic and anti change, just as there is always some portion of newcomers that is too transactional, extractive, and ready to skip town when the going gets tough. Both postures are perfectly defensible; it's tough living in a place where rents are as unpredictable as they can be in the Bay Area, and tech leaders have not historically shown (IMO) enough commitment to the community and tax base, meanwhile those who move to the Bay Area for work are under no obligation to like it and stay, even if their complaints (about rent control, regulation, "dirty" streets, etc) are totally cliched. Somewhere out there in the city some bleary eyed veteran of the scene is negotiating a tiny, bargain sublet for a few desks and a slice of a server closet in SoMA and will release something quietly revolutionary in the next year or so that in five years will be the next big thing. Or maybe it will be a cheery eyed newcomer leasing factory time in Hayward for a hardware thing, or someone testing robots in a warehouse in West Oakland, or whatever. Right now is one of the times when things get interesting.

Apocryphon 6y ago
This is a great comment because it recognizes that all of what's happening is cyclical. San Francisco has boomed and busted in the past, it will boom and bust again. People comparing it to Detroit seem to ignore that that city itself is in the throes of a revival. How could S.F., which even without tech is in a prime geographical location and climate, do even less?
asdff 6y ago
There is a fallacy here. Yes, these things are cyclical, but rents are still not crashing to levels affordable to the working class. The bay area is getting the worst of both worlds: a crisis on the streets and, even despite recent decreases, rents unaffordable to normal working people. This is sort of unprecedented uncharted territory beyond the boom and bust cycles up until this point. The people you wrote about in the last paragraph still can't afford to get in, and it's not like there is a lot of work in, say, the restaurant industry right now to finance these side efforts.

Semiapies 6y ago

I'm glad I never moved there.

freetime2 6y ago
I lived in the Bay Area for about a decade before moving away to be closer to family a few years ago. I have zero regrets for the time I spent there. I met a lot of great people. It was a great place to start out in my career because of the abundant job opportunities. The weather was fantastic. Of course SF is not to everyone's taste, and maybe you are indeed better off for never having lived there. But for all of its recent problems, there were good reasons that people continued to move there in droves. And I am thinking this current shake up will be a good thing for the city, relieving some of the pressure on the housing market and opening up new opportunities for people.

paxys 6y ago

Funny that there's not a single mention in the article about natives and long-time locals who have constantly voted against new construction or any progressive housing measure, which is the root cause of the crisis to begin with. No mention also of all the corruption/bribery scandals which city hall is currently involved in. Nor large landlords who can choose to rent out their apartment to whoever they want at whatever price they want. Nope, it's always young techies that are the problem since they are the easiest target. I think these advocates will find that even after all these tech companies have taken flight the city's problems will still remain, perhaps worse than before due to the loss of the massive tax base.

yonran 6y ago
> Funny that there's not a single mention in the article about natives and long-time locals who have constantly voted against new construction or any progressive housing measure, which is the root cause of the crisis to begin with Not only is there political opposition to housing that the article omits, but the two quoted “affordable housing advocates” (Chirag Bhakta and John Elberling) themselves demonize privately constructed housing and are complicit in exacerbating the housing shortage. Though to be fair, they have their own theories of how they think new housing causes gentrification, and they typically try to encumber developers with low-income housing requirements and other community benefits rather than opposing new housing for the sake of benefiting incumbent landlords. In particular, John Elberling has been the biggest proponent of increasing low-income housing requirements in new construction up to the point where apartment buildings are expected to be only marginally feasible (https://sfcontroller.org/inclusionary-housing-technical-advisory-committee https://sfcontroller.org/inclusionary-housing-technical-advi...), and he dismisses the effect that this would have on preventing new housing. He also opposed with farcical arguments statewide upzoning that would have allowed more construction in wealthy neighborhoods (opposed SB 827 https://www.facebook.com/TODCOgroup/posts/435262493564720 https://www.facebook.com/TODCOgroup/posts/435262493564720 and opposed SB 50 https://48hills.org/2019/12/supes-to-vote-on-wieners-development-bill/ https://48hills.org/2019/12/supes-to-vote-on-wieners-develop...).

cercatrova 6y ago

Are there any that are going to move into SF? I am planning on doing so after quarantine since rents will be lower but big tech compensation appears to be the same.

bradlys 6y ago
Some peers of mine are considering hopping back in soon to lock-in a lower rate before things get back to normal.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

the tech population has always been blamed for housing or lack there of...after this flight, when homes and apartments become available, watch them stay empty even with reduced rent. why? because those who have always wanted more 'housing' could never afford it anyways. if there are no jobs for 'techies', there wont be any jobs for the second tier in the service sector economy. they cant afford to live in the housing they wanted build. what they have always wanted was affordable cheap housing in the most expensive cities of the usa. it was always the govt and their out of control budgets and unfunded pension liabilities. and feel good vote bank pacifying budget. blaming tech was a convinient distraction. because its easy to rouse the mob to go and lynch someone else instead of submitting to a forensic audit or a rip out transparent budget analysis. that..some might say...is not only unreasonable and unacceptable, but also impossible. some econ 101 has to play out in real life so that when the post orgasmic bliss after the outrage porn ebbs away, economic and fiscal reality can float up where the sun shines. because. free market forces.

hartator 6y ago

> When Chirag Bhakta saw a headline recently that said tech workers were fleeing San Francisco, he had a quick reaction: “Good riddance.” > “They used their capital to radically shift the makeup of poor, working-class communities,” Tech people are not working class?

kenhwang 6y ago
Generally considered to be professional class. Working class generally refers to jobs that require little experience/education to enter since skills can be learned on the job. Professional class generally requires higher education.
- pb7 6y ago
  Weird mix of sugarcoating and needlessly dividing people. Not you, but the terms.
  - dralley 6y ago
    Not at all. It's the difference between an AWS employee and an Amazon fulfillment employee. If you actually think that the two positions are at all comparable, I suggest you do a stint working in a warehouse for some perspective.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
eli_gottlieb 6y ago
If you get paid in stock options or RSU's, by definition, you are not working-class. You are receiving an ownership stake in the enterprise.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Tech people are not working class? In traditional class terminology, rooted largely in the Marxist analysis of relations in capitalism, “Tech people” are mostly part of the distinct knowledge-worker subgroup of the working class (“proletarian intelligentsia”) though, because of the high pay and other aspects of the field, many have escaped to the middle class (as part of the “petit bourgeois intelligentsia”), and a very few (typically tech founders turned unicorn CxO) have entered into the upper class (“haut bourgeoisie”). Modern American terminology has little consistent theoretical or empirical grounding, but typically reserves “working class” for the below-median-income segment of classic working class, calls most of the rest of the classic working class “middle class”, and calls approximately the classic middle class “upper middle class” or part of the “upper class”.

b20000 6y ago

so where are people moving and why?

renewiltord 6y ago

It always amazes me that people get offended by this stuff. There's so much money in SF that tech people are actually small fry. Tech money buys surprisingly little political influence because the government, unions, construction are all very powerful. Your company got sold for $100 million? Big deal, you are a flea before the power that Rome Aloise (who you have never heard of) wields, let alone the real big fish. You know that odd feeling of unfairness and powerlessness? That's what it's like to be an immigrant subject to capricious laws. Now that's you because you are an insect before the San Francisco Political Machine. This is what it means to have all the incentives shaped against you. And you can grumble on the Internet but it'll do nothing. Because it is unfair. It is disingenuous. It is propaganda. But that's politics.

hurrdurr2 6y ago

So tech folks came in looking to get rich quick, creating huge wealth disparities which helped fuel the homeless problem and the associated social issues, but now that they can all work from home and is complaining that SF is now "a dump" they all picked up and left. Sounds about right.

dnissley 6y ago
How do wealth disparities contribute to the homeless problem? Is your theory that the homeless in San Fransisco are primarily displaced residents who previously were paying for local housing?
- hurrdurr2 6y ago
  Are you seriously asking how expanding wealth disparity contributes to homelessness? Does rent increasing across the entirety of the bay area (which increasingly only techies can afford) not contribute to poorer people getting kicked out and become homeless?
  - deepakhj 6y ago
    Are you seriously saying that new consumers have control over the production of housing supply?
    - hurrdurr2 6y ago
      This comment is so stupid I'm kind of amazed. Don't get so defensive techbro. Remember, if you don't like it here anymore just move away. Then you can do what the other techbros do on this board, boast about their new five acre forest house and shiny new Tesla, then post pics from their window showing off the view.
      - deepakhj 6y ago
        Nice ad hominem attack and ignoring my statement. I’ll humor you. I own neither a Tesla nor a house. I rent. I’ve lived in sf going on almost 22 years. Where did I say I didn’t like living here?