8 ms·

I don't know if you've been in California recently, but in the East Bay at least a large number of small businesses have closed down and formerly vibrant places

I don't know if you've been in California recently, but in the East Bay at least a large number of small businesses have closed down and formerly vibrant places now look like homeless encampments. I used to feel comfortable taking out my phone even after dark on BART, now I don't. The economy might still be chugging along but it's not chugging along on the back of the big cities with ultra liberal takes on crime/homelessness/drugs, it's mostly chugging along due to the suburbs like Newport Beach, Pleasanton, etc. Those places have substantially more conservative views on crime/homelessness/drugs (Newport Beach is actually a Republican district) and don't really tolerate the sort of behavior we see in SF. Seriously, just check out downtown SF if you don't believe me. It feels dead. There are more beggars than tourists. I recently went to a nice restaurant near the MacArthur BART station and not only was it dead, the area around it felt like I was visiting the hood near USC. > why is demand so high that houses are unaffordable It is not that demand is so high but that supply is so low. When you have SFH zoning with massive set back requirements you can't fit many people into the available space.

kelnos 4y ago
> Seriously, just check out downtown SF if you don't believe me. It feels dead. Wouldn't we attribute this more to COVID, though? This thread is talking about a hypothetical poor economy due to businesses leaving because of employee-friendly labor laws. In early 2020 downtown was pretty vibrant. > There are more beggars than tourists. I get that you're exaggerating for effect, but c'mon. I saw plenty of tourists/shoppers in the Powell/Market area in the middle of a weekday last week, out and about, doing their thing.
- ceeplusplus 4y ago
  > Wouldn't we attribute this more to COVID, though? It's been my anecdotal experience that hot areas in other cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like SF and the East Bay are. Nor are they as sketchy - I'd feel comfortable walking around Millennium Park at night and be pretty confident I wouldn't get robbed. Can you say the same about the Embarcadero? > hypothetical poor economy due to businesses leaving because of employee-friendly labor laws Tons of small businesses are dying out and you think the poor economy is hypothetical? Just because Chipotle and McD's can afford to pay every surcharge CA/SF imposes through labor laws doesn't mean small businesses can afford to. It's ironic, because despite all those surcharges the suburbs are still more affordable for a low skill worker than SF is, primarily because the supply of housing is so much better. 2 coffee shops in my local area have closed down recently for good. Starbucks is still going strong, but that doesn't mean the local economy is vibrant. > I saw plenty of tourists/shoppers in the Powell/Market area in the middle of a weekday last week, out and about, doing their thing Hmm, I went last week on a weekday and I'd put it at 50/50 homeless/beggar vs tourist. Powell St. BART/Union Square area. In any case, it was certainly a lot worse than a few years ago when it would be more like 95% tourists. I saw multiple homeless sleeping in Union Square which would have been unimaginable 3 years ago.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > It's been my anecdotal experience that hot areas in other cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like SF and the East Bay are. The Bay Area experienced a massive internal-to-California (largely to the Sacramento area) outmigration during the pandemic, which removed a lot of support for businesses from locals, and tourism hasn't recovered from the pandemic and related restrictions. This has been (on paper) great for me as a Sac area homeowner, but more to the point here it makes judging California economic health by looking at Bay Area brick-and-mortar business district vitality potentially very misleading. > In any case, it was certainly a lot worse than a few years ago when it would be more like 95% tourists. Federal COVID-related domestic air travel restrictions (other than masking, which continues) only just ended, and federal international air travel restrictions still exist. This impacts tourism, obviously.
  - iso1210 4y ago
    > cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like SF and the East Bay are I haven't been to SF, but I have been to New York. I was shocked how dead the area around the WTC was on a Monday morning (I'd just arrived and walked arround for an hour or so absorbing the city and trying to find a hardware store to get a UK-US plug as it had been so long since I travelled internationally). My local town in rural UK was busier than 8AM Monday morning downtown New York. That can't be healthy. This was about 7 weeks ago.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> I don't know if you've been in California recently, but in the East Bay at least a large number of small businesses have closed down and formerly vibrant places now look like homeless encampments. Despite the positive things I said upthread about the long-term trends, there is a very acute short term issue caused by the interaction of the inadequate response to the aggregate and distributional impacts of the pandemic with the preexisting housing affordability issue that is going to become a major long term problem if it isn't addressed.
jrockway 4y ago
Downtowns are always kind of dull and empty outside of work hours. They exist to house a temporary population of millions for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week; after those 8 hours, they are totally abandoned ghost towns because it's not like you can use office buildings for some other purpose at night. Some cities are better at mixing commercial and residential real estate so you feel this effect less. Downtown Chicago always felt eerie to me on nights and weekends. Everything is just closed and there are very few people around. Manhattan is less like this. (There was a time when I would leave work between 11pm and 2am. The bike ride down 2nd Ave was always chaos. The city never sleeps.) I haven't spent a ton of time in San Francisco, but it strikes be as being closer to Chicago than Manhattan. After work, everyone is out in the neighborhoods. In my non-expert opinion, people in California go to bed earlier than in New York. I feel like everyone thinks they need to be up for work at 5am to "beat the traffic" and be in the office for calls at 9am New York time. This means they are in bed 9pm. Meanwhile, you can stay out until midnight in New York and be sentient again for the same 9am call.
jeffbee 4y ago
I ate dinner at Co Nam on the corner nearest MacArthur BART last night and it was absolutely jumping with a huge wait. On my way there I rode down Telegraph through Temescal and there were ridiculous crowds of people on every block. On my way home after East Bay Bike Party (1000+ people easily) there was still a big line of people waiting to get into Marufuku Rame even at 10PM. And there was the typical crowd at Kingfish Pub. The idea that the East Bay somehow died in the last two years is ridiculous.
iso1210 4y ago
If downtown SF is dead, then people aren't living there, demand is very low and thus apartments are very cheap through simple supply and demand. You may want to increase density in downtown SF, and that's a reasonable decision, but you are claiming fewer people are there now then there were a few years ago. I don't believe there's been any drop in the number of housing units in the city, so that must mean apartments are empty. Is that the case?

kelnos 4y ago

> Seriously, just check out downtown SF if you don't believe me. It feels dead. Wouldn't we attribute this more to COVID, though? This thread is talking about a hypothetical poor economy due to businesses leaving because of employee-friendly labor laws. In early 2020 downtown was pretty vibrant. > There are more beggars than tourists. I get that you're exaggerating for effect, but c'mon. I saw plenty of tourists/shoppers in the Powell/Market area in the middle of a weekday last week, out and about, doing their thing.

ceeplusplus 4y ago
> Wouldn't we attribute this more to COVID, though? It's been my anecdotal experience that hot areas in other cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like SF and the East Bay are. Nor are they as sketchy - I'd feel comfortable walking around Millennium Park at night and be pretty confident I wouldn't get robbed. Can you say the same about the Embarcadero? > hypothetical poor economy due to businesses leaving because of employee-friendly labor laws Tons of small businesses are dying out and you think the poor economy is hypothetical? Just because Chipotle and McD's can afford to pay every surcharge CA/SF imposes through labor laws doesn't mean small businesses can afford to. It's ironic, because despite all those surcharges the suburbs are still more affordable for a low skill worker than SF is, primarily because the supply of housing is so much better. 2 coffee shops in my local area have closed down recently for good. Starbucks is still going strong, but that doesn't mean the local economy is vibrant. > I saw plenty of tourists/shoppers in the Powell/Market area in the middle of a weekday last week, out and about, doing their thing Hmm, I went last week on a weekday and I'd put it at 50/50 homeless/beggar vs tourist. Powell St. BART/Union Square area. In any case, it was certainly a lot worse than a few years ago when it would be more like 95% tourists. I saw multiple homeless sleeping in Union Square which would have been unimaginable 3 years ago.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > It's been my anecdotal experience that hot areas in other cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like SF and the East Bay are. The Bay Area experienced a massive internal-to-California (largely to the Sacramento area) outmigration during the pandemic, which removed a lot of support for businesses from locals, and tourism hasn't recovered from the pandemic and related restrictions. This has been (on paper) great for me as a Sac area homeowner, but more to the point here it makes judging California economic health by looking at Bay Area brick-and-mortar business district vitality potentially very misleading. > In any case, it was certainly a lot worse than a few years ago when it would be more like 95% tourists. Federal COVID-related domestic air travel restrictions (other than masking, which continues) only just ended, and federal international air travel restrictions still exist. This impacts tourism, obviously.
- iso1210 4y ago
  > cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like SF and the East Bay are I haven't been to SF, but I have been to New York. I was shocked how dead the area around the WTC was on a Monday morning (I'd just arrived and walked arround for an hour or so absorbing the city and trying to find a hardware store to get a UK-US plug as it had been so long since I travelled internationally). My local town in rural UK was busier than 8AM Monday morning downtown New York. That can't be healthy. This was about 7 weeks ago.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> I don't know if you've been in California recently, but in the East Bay at least a large number of small businesses have closed down and formerly vibrant places now look like homeless encampments. Despite the positive things I said upthread about the long-term trends, there is a very acute short term issue caused by the interaction of the inadequate response to the aggregate and distributional impacts of the pandemic with the preexisting housing affordability issue that is going to become a major long term problem if it isn't addressed.

jrockway 4y ago

Downtowns are always kind of dull and empty outside of work hours. They exist to house a temporary population of millions for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week; after those 8 hours, they are totally abandoned ghost towns because it's not like you can use office buildings for some other purpose at night. Some cities are better at mixing commercial and residential real estate so you feel this effect less. Downtown Chicago always felt eerie to me on nights and weekends. Everything is just closed and there are very few people around. Manhattan is less like this. (There was a time when I would leave work between 11pm and 2am. The bike ride down 2nd Ave was always chaos. The city never sleeps.) I haven't spent a ton of time in San Francisco, but it strikes be as being closer to Chicago than Manhattan. After work, everyone is out in the neighborhoods. In my non-expert opinion, people in California go to bed earlier than in New York. I feel like everyone thinks they need to be up for work at 5am to "beat the traffic" and be in the office for calls at 9am New York time. This means they are in bed 9pm. Meanwhile, you can stay out until midnight in New York and be sentient again for the same 9am call.

jeffbee 4y ago

I ate dinner at Co Nam on the corner nearest MacArthur BART last night and it was absolutely jumping with a huge wait. On my way there I rode down Telegraph through Temescal and there were ridiculous crowds of people on every block. On my way home after East Bay Bike Party (1000+ people easily) there was still a big line of people waiting to get into Marufuku Rame even at 10PM. And there was the typical crowd at Kingfish Pub. The idea that the East Bay somehow died in the last two years is ridiculous.

iso1210 4y ago

If downtown SF is dead, then people aren't living there, demand is very low and thus apartments are very cheap through simple supply and demand. You may want to increase density in downtown SF, and that's a reasonable decision, but you are claiming fewer people are there now then there were a few years ago. I don't believe there's been any drop in the number of housing units in the city, so that must mean apartments are empty. Is that the case?