9 ms·

dotted with $1.5M single family houses and $4,000/mo apartments What about Hayward or East Palo Alto? Or Oakland? I thought there was still plenty of cheap lan

dotted with $1.5M single family houses and $4,000/mo apartments What about Hayward or East Palo Alto? Or Oakland? I thought there was still plenty of cheap land in the Bay Area, but people all want to live in the ritzy bits.

rhizome 12y ago
Commuting anywhere from Hayward & the San L's is a parking lot in all directions. You can have a family home there, but the chance of a family life would be quite beset by traffic. You could BART to SF, but driving to the Peninsula and South Bay are gonna involve a bad time.
- skybrian 12y ago
  It's not great, but on the other hand, if you're a programmer and don't have a family, you don't have to work 9-5. Traffic usually clears up after 10am or so. Also, buying an buying a plugin hybrid will get you in the carpool lane.
  - rhizome 12y ago
    Programmers who don't have a family don't want to live in Hayward or the San L's. None of their friends will live there, very few will visit, and there's nothing there to do if they did. This goes for pretty much the entire 880 and 580 corridors between Seminary and 237.
    - eclipxe 12y ago
      So bottom line, places where people actually want to live, are more expensive. Sounds like supply and demand to me...
      - CalRobert 12y ago
        Artificially constrained supply because existing homeowners are the ones who can vote, and they like seeing housing costs go through the roof.
        rhizome 12y ago
        To be fair, for the past 165 years you haven't been required to be a property owner in order to vote. Also, it wasn't the voters who took Santa Clara and San Mateo counties out of the BART District, delaying even the possibility of high-speed mass transit to those areas until state action was taken this millenium.
        CalRobert 12y ago
        No, but you have to live there to vote. If a community consists primarily of homeowners, and not renters, the interests of the homeowners are what will be reflected. Maybe that's OK, I suppose, but in this case it has meant finding a place to rent is very difficult.
CalRobert 12y ago
For the moment those places are fairly rough, so people with plenty of cash don't really want to live there. Also, there's a pretty enormous change in culture between SF and these cities. That being said, Oakland is being gentrified pretty quickly (along with the less-glamorous bits of south Berkeley).
declan 12y ago
>I thought there was still plenty of cheap land in the Bay Area, but people all want to live in the ritzy bits. There's lots of vacant land on the SF peninsula, but no cheap land. There is cheaper land (not the same as cheap land), as you say, in the east bay, but the non-SF tech jobs tend to be on the peninsula or south bay. BTW, this is the first time that I've heard Belmont or San Mateo or Redwood City being described as "ritzy." :)

rhizome 12y ago

Commuting anywhere from Hayward & the San L's is a parking lot in all directions. You can have a family home there, but the chance of a family life would be quite beset by traffic. You could BART to SF, but driving to the Peninsula and South Bay are gonna involve a bad time.

skybrian 12y ago
It's not great, but on the other hand, if you're a programmer and don't have a family, you don't have to work 9-5. Traffic usually clears up after 10am or so. Also, buying an buying a plugin hybrid will get you in the carpool lane.
- rhizome 12y ago
  Programmers who don't have a family don't want to live in Hayward or the San L's. None of their friends will live there, very few will visit, and there's nothing there to do if they did. This goes for pretty much the entire 880 and 580 corridors between Seminary and 237.
  - eclipxe 12y ago
    So bottom line, places where people actually want to live, are more expensive. Sounds like supply and demand to me...
    - CalRobert 12y ago
      Artificially constrained supply because existing homeowners are the ones who can vote, and they like seeing housing costs go through the roof.
      - rhizome 12y ago
        To be fair, for the past 165 years you haven't been required to be a property owner in order to vote. Also, it wasn't the voters who took Santa Clara and San Mateo counties out of the BART District, delaying even the possibility of high-speed mass transit to those areas until state action was taken this millenium.
        CalRobert 12y ago
        No, but you have to live there to vote. If a community consists primarily of homeowners, and not renters, the interests of the homeowners are what will be reflected. Maybe that's OK, I suppose, but in this case it has meant finding a place to rent is very difficult.

CalRobert 12y ago

For the moment those places are fairly rough, so people with plenty of cash don't really want to live there. Also, there's a pretty enormous change in culture between SF and these cities. That being said, Oakland is being gentrified pretty quickly (along with the less-glamorous bits of south Berkeley).

declan 12y ago

>I thought there was still plenty of cheap land in the Bay Area, but people all want to live in the ritzy bits. There's lots of vacant land on the SF peninsula, but no cheap land. There is cheaper land (not the same as cheap land), as you say, in the east bay, but the non-SF tech jobs tend to be on the peninsula or south bay. BTW, this is the first time that I've heard Belmont or San Mateo or Redwood City being described as "ritzy." :)