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That’s been the mentality in SF for years — “we don’t want to become nyc”. And so what happens? Prices skyrocket, the people who made the city interesting and s

That’s been the mentality in SF for years — “we don’t want to become nyc”. And so what happens? Prices skyrocket, the people who made the city interesting and serve its needs are pushed out, and only the rich enjoy it. The young generation as a whole has little hope of home ownership, while the top who work in well paid jobs reap all the rewards. Those well paid jobs are where it’s expensive to live, so it’s a catch 22. It doesn’t create a balanced society, and in fact just further stresses the differences between the haves versus the have nots. At it’s worst the wealth inequality turns into tinder for moving beyond culture wars into actual war or revolution.

la6471 5y ago
Why do someone need to move to SFO in the first place? Jobs are plentiful nowadays everywhere. So it’s not that for tech jobs one need to move to SFO. Yes one may want to live in Hong Kong , Singapore , Dubai , Mumbai , Paris or SFO but like all over the world certain places have higher per square foot cost than other places.
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  That's where a lot of very high paying jobs are
  - CincinnatiMan 5y ago
    Are the people with very high paying jobs the same people that need help from rezoning?
    - azinman2 5y ago
      No the people who need help were here before the techies came to the city.
    - rcpt 5y ago
      Yes. Because if you don't build housing at every scale the bottom level becomes Sao Paulo slums
      - daniel-cussen 5y ago
        Those slums are actually remarkably better than "poblaciones callampa" (shroom villages) that popped up in the middle of nowhere in the rest of South America. Those favelas have water, electricity, and solid brick construction. And they're painted pretty colors, what's not to like? The real slums of the world where people who have nowhere to go come together and squat are really much less comfortable than that.
        rcpt 5y ago
        Are the shroom villages in the middle of booming economic growth?
        daniel-cussen 5y ago
        Ah...no, more along the dumps and untilled land.
    - epicureanideal 5y ago
      Housing currently costs so much that it's nearly unaffordable even for tech workers.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- justahuman74 5y ago
  Many people move half-way across the world to live in SF, and it's _only_ for the jobs. There is no other reason.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    I think you’ve spent too much time in the tech scene. There are other types in SF, which is a city that has a lot to offer.
    - daniel-cussen 5y ago
      I'm not so sure. I used to party in SF and it was indeed vibrant, but that was more than seven years ago. The tech scene has pushed all the eclectic, weird-haircut, artsy, broke-but-beautiful, etc, scene to places where it is actually able to function economically, with some people telling me about Brooklyn being a better place for that. Certainly the last few times I've been there, before the pandemic, it was like entering the matrix, you get on a ferry and you show up at the Ferry Building, and boom, you're inside the internet, you went through the monitor of your computer. Ads for ad platforms everywhere, startup credit cards, everything targeting startup founders, and you know what that means? Fucking crazy abusive inescapable prices. Even at the MacDonald's, my best recollection is $8.30 for a quarter-pounder. No wonder you would get assistance from the City if you made less than $120,000.
      - daniel-cussen 5y ago
        I'll add that this pushing-out has made the scene lose critical mass.
rank0 5y ago
The youngsters are free to live elsewhere no? I just purchased my first home earlier this year. Obviously I had no choice but to purchase a home in a city/neighborhood I could afford. Why can’t others do the same?
- idreyn 5y ago
  Others are free to do the same, except that they have to continue to commute to where the jobs are. If they're lucky they might live on the fringes of BART but increasingly people are just condemned to hours-long gridlocked freeway commutes to get to their $17/hr job in SF. To recover any kind of decent quality of life you're talking about moving to a different region/state.
  - kcplate 5y ago
    $17/hr is essentially an unskilled labor rate in 2021. Why not make a move? $15-17/hour jobs are pretty plentiful in other places with a far lower COL than SFO.
    - kelnos 5y ago
      If you're making $17/hr in an unskilled job in SF, and move to somewhere cheap, you're probably now making $12/hr. Maybe that change is worth it, maybe not.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        i live in des monies iowa. the local burger king is starting at 15/hr. if you can live on 17 in SF, then 15 here will seem like riches) i know of plenty of other jobs that pay more as well with little experience needed.
        kelnos 5y ago
        That's great to hear that people are able to earn a living wage where you are. You cannot live on $17/hr in SF. Your post-tax income wouldn't even cover the the rent of a studio apartment. Not sure how you'd pay for food and transportation on top of that. Let alone actually doing anything fun that would make it worth living here. That's 40 hrs/wk, of course. Many people end up working twice that, or more, across several jobs, in order to make ends meet here. And at that point I wonder why they stay.
Aspos 5y ago
Can you elaborate and explain this further to a curious non-american? So, sounds like the problem is in transportation: if train ride from a low-cost area to a high cost area would take minutes and cost almost nothing, then the problems you mentioned would not be an issue, right? So, why try to fight the laws of economics? Why not let the rich where they want, and let the poor commute to high-job areas by solving the transportation problem? Why there is so much ado and drama? What am I missing here?
- tcmart14 5y ago
  Some of this is ancedotal from a coworker who has a friend who works in a "support role" in silicon valley. That being something like the guy who keeps the AC going, janitor or working in a FAANG coffee shop. While there is some transportation, the issue is, some of this friends in this role, have to take a 1-2 hour commute (using public transit) since they have been priced out that far.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    Why don't they just get a job that is a 10 minute commute? Even poor businesses in America want their AC running sometimes.
    - Baeocystin 5y ago
      That's what a lot of them do. I live in Gilroy, and my neighbor is an HVAC guy that moved from San Jose to Gilroy, and only services as far north as Morgan Hill. He has more work than he'd ever be able to fill, but now has the work/life balance to actually see his kids, too. The neighbor one more house down is a welder, same deal. The family at the end of the street, another trade, another SF/SJ escapee. Hell, I work in tech directly, and am pleased to say that 90% of my clients are within a 20 minute drive. I don't earn a FAANG salary, but I don't need to, either, and I am 100% certain (and I say this non-judgmentally, just a statement of fact) that I actually enjoy my daily life more than many of my former compatriots.
    - romwell 5y ago
theluketaylor 5y ago
The really frustrating part being they don't need to become Manhattan to keep prices under control. If the areas zoned for single family in the Bay had been raised to 3-4 stories and multi-unit 30 years ago you could have tripled or quadrupled the number of people living in San Francisco without the need for any high rises. Human-scale neighbourhoods would still dominate the city. All the growth of the city could have been easily absorbed without high rises if mixed use mid rise development was allowed. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the next best time is now and California is finally deciding to plant some trees.
- selectodude 5y ago
  San Francisco would have a population of 1.8 million if it merely had the density of Brooklyn.
- rcpt 5y ago
  But the hilarious part about "Manhattanization" is that these people actually think they'll become the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world by accident.
WalterBright 5y ago
> Prices skyrocket The world desperately needs a new metaphor. How about "prices zoom to the moon!"

la6471 5y ago

Why do someone need to move to SFO in the first place? Jobs are plentiful nowadays everywhere. So it’s not that for tech jobs one need to move to SFO. Yes one may want to live in Hong Kong , Singapore , Dubai , Mumbai , Paris or SFO but like all over the world certain places have higher per square foot cost than other places.

throwaway6734 5y ago
That's where a lot of very high paying jobs are
- CincinnatiMan 5y ago
  Are the people with very high paying jobs the same people that need help from rezoning?
  - azinman2 5y ago
    No the people who need help were here before the techies came to the city.
  - rcpt 5y ago
    Yes. Because if you don't build housing at every scale the bottom level becomes Sao Paulo slums
    - daniel-cussen 5y ago
      Those slums are actually remarkably better than "poblaciones callampa" (shroom villages) that popped up in the middle of nowhere in the rest of South America. Those favelas have water, electricity, and solid brick construction. And they're painted pretty colors, what's not to like? The real slums of the world where people who have nowhere to go come together and squat are really much less comfortable than that.
      - rcpt 5y ago
        Are the shroom villages in the middle of booming economic growth?
        daniel-cussen 5y ago
        Ah...no, more along the dumps and untilled land.
  - epicureanideal 5y ago
    Housing currently costs so much that it's nearly unaffordable even for tech workers.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
justahuman74 5y ago
Many people move half-way across the world to live in SF, and it's _only_ for the jobs. There is no other reason.
- azinman2 5y ago
  I think you’ve spent too much time in the tech scene. There are other types in SF, which is a city that has a lot to offer.
  - daniel-cussen 5y ago
    I'm not so sure. I used to party in SF and it was indeed vibrant, but that was more than seven years ago. The tech scene has pushed all the eclectic, weird-haircut, artsy, broke-but-beautiful, etc, scene to places where it is actually able to function economically, with some people telling me about Brooklyn being a better place for that. Certainly the last few times I've been there, before the pandemic, it was like entering the matrix, you get on a ferry and you show up at the Ferry Building, and boom, you're inside the internet, you went through the monitor of your computer. Ads for ad platforms everywhere, startup credit cards, everything targeting startup founders, and you know what that means? Fucking crazy abusive inescapable prices. Even at the MacDonald's, my best recollection is $8.30 for a quarter-pounder. No wonder you would get assistance from the City if you made less than $120,000.
    - daniel-cussen 5y ago
      I'll add that this pushing-out has made the scene lose critical mass.

rank0 5y ago

The youngsters are free to live elsewhere no? I just purchased my first home earlier this year. Obviously I had no choice but to purchase a home in a city/neighborhood I could afford. Why can’t others do the same?

idreyn 5y ago
Others are free to do the same, except that they have to continue to commute to where the jobs are. If they're lucky they might live on the fringes of BART but increasingly people are just condemned to hours-long gridlocked freeway commutes to get to their $17/hr job in SF. To recover any kind of decent quality of life you're talking about moving to a different region/state.
- kcplate 5y ago
  $17/hr is essentially an unskilled labor rate in 2021. Why not make a move? $15-17/hour jobs are pretty plentiful in other places with a far lower COL than SFO.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    If you're making $17/hr in an unskilled job in SF, and move to somewhere cheap, you're probably now making $12/hr. Maybe that change is worth it, maybe not.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      i live in des monies iowa. the local burger king is starting at 15/hr. if you can live on 17 in SF, then 15 here will seem like riches) i know of plenty of other jobs that pay more as well with little experience needed.
      - kelnos 5y ago
        That's great to hear that people are able to earn a living wage where you are. You cannot live on $17/hr in SF. Your post-tax income wouldn't even cover the the rent of a studio apartment. Not sure how you'd pay for food and transportation on top of that. Let alone actually doing anything fun that would make it worth living here. That's 40 hrs/wk, of course. Many people end up working twice that, or more, across several jobs, in order to make ends meet here. And at that point I wonder why they stay.

Aspos 5y ago

Can you elaborate and explain this further to a curious non-american? So, sounds like the problem is in transportation: if train ride from a low-cost area to a high cost area would take minutes and cost almost nothing, then the problems you mentioned would not be an issue, right? So, why try to fight the laws of economics? Why not let the rich where they want, and let the poor commute to high-job areas by solving the transportation problem? Why there is so much ado and drama? What am I missing here?

tcmart14 5y ago
Some of this is ancedotal from a coworker who has a friend who works in a "support role" in silicon valley. That being something like the guy who keeps the AC going, janitor or working in a FAANG coffee shop. While there is some transportation, the issue is, some of this friends in this role, have to take a 1-2 hour commute (using public transit) since they have been priced out that far.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  Why don't they just get a job that is a 10 minute commute? Even poor businesses in America want their AC running sometimes.
  - Baeocystin 5y ago
    That's what a lot of them do. I live in Gilroy, and my neighbor is an HVAC guy that moved from San Jose to Gilroy, and only services as far north as Morgan Hill. He has more work than he'd ever be able to fill, but now has the work/life balance to actually see his kids, too. The neighbor one more house down is a welder, same deal. The family at the end of the street, another trade, another SF/SJ escapee. Hell, I work in tech directly, and am pleased to say that 90% of my clients are within a 20 minute drive. I don't earn a FAANG salary, but I don't need to, either, and I am 100% certain (and I say this non-judgmentally, just a statement of fact) that I actually enjoy my daily life more than many of my former compatriots.
  - romwell 5y ago

theluketaylor 5y ago

The really frustrating part being they don't need to become Manhattan to keep prices under control. If the areas zoned for single family in the Bay had been raised to 3-4 stories and multi-unit 30 years ago you could have tripled or quadrupled the number of people living in San Francisco without the need for any high rises. Human-scale neighbourhoods would still dominate the city. All the growth of the city could have been easily absorbed without high rises if mixed use mid rise development was allowed. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the next best time is now and California is finally deciding to plant some trees.

selectodude 5y ago
San Francisco would have a population of 1.8 million if it merely had the density of Brooklyn.
rcpt 5y ago
But the hilarious part about "Manhattanization" is that these people actually think they'll become the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world by accident.

WalterBright 5y ago

> Prices skyrocket The world desperately needs a new metaphor. How about "prices zoom to the moon!"