3 ms·
i did and am remote now. prior to that i lived in sf for 7 years. a lot to love about the city, but not enough to keep me there anymore. lack of decent affordab
by moneycantbuy 3y ago
i did and am remote now. prior to that i lived in sf for 7 years. a lot to love about the city, but not enough to keep me there anymore. lack of decent affordable housing seems to be the root of the city’s problems and i don’t see that changing in my lifetime.
As a young man, moving to SF was stimulating and launched my career. But now as a middle-aged man it became too depressing stepping over junkies passed out in front of my expensive yet crappy apartment just to discover my car had been broken into again. all for the pleasure of commuting to a mostly empty office to have video meetings with international colleagues.
not to say that these problems are unique to sf, it seems opioids have devastated many cities in america as has unaffordable housing. a broad solution could be to reduce wealth inequality or heavily tax those who insist they need to own more than 3 homes, but that’s basically asking the powerful to relinquish their power, which rarely happens.
- zzzzzzzza 3y agomy suspicion would be that more equitable wealth distribution would make housing even more expensive in some scenarious even taxing third homes could ultimately reduce the supply of housing a land value tax on the other hand...
- nojvek 3y agoWhy would equitable wealth distribution make housing expensive?
- BigRedDog1669 3y agoMy guess is that they meant: If you give a lot of people that previously couldn't afford a house more money it will increase the demand and prices. The issue is that there is a shortage of housing which is primarily due to zoning preventing the construction of houses in a lot of areas.
- nojvek 3y agoAh this implies definition of wealth is purely $ value, not what their inflation-adjusted “afford to buy material goods and services” value.
- zzzzzzzza 3y agofor any given dollar a middle class/poor household would be more likely to spend it on housing or additional square footage than a richer household
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago[dead]
- CraigRo 3y agoSf has the problem that it is not dense. Let everyone build a condo and prices will tumble
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoSF is the second most dense large city in the USA (after NYC). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... (look at the last table, bolded cities not a part of some other city's metro area).