
Changing San Francisco is foreseen as a haven for wealthy and childless (1981) - rotskoff
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/09/us/changing-san-francisco-is-foreseen-as-a-haven-for-wealthy-and-childless.html
======
elastic_church
I looked at housing prices in SF going back to 1920, and the year over year
increases are still in line with the annual increases we see today.

All the rhetoric and oddly empowering blame game to the tech industry (at
least for us tech people) is merely trendy.

The only thing that stopped keeping up are salary increases.

~~~
who_is_firing
Over the last 100 years, the Bay Area has created a regulatory environment
which essentially has made increasing housing supply 100x more difficult than
the average American city. This would be "fine" if the population of the area
was constant.

"Unfortunately" the area has been a source of economic growth for the last
century as well. So you need two things for high housing price growth: 1)
factors that restrict housing supply from responding to the market 2) economic
growth or some other factor to make people want to move to the city.

For the NIMBYs, they are ok with #1. They desire that their city stays the
same, it has the same architecture, unblocked vistas, the density they are
used to, the natives they know.

So the NIMBYs argue to those affected by high housing costs that #2 is the
real factor, i.e. "if rich people stopped moving here we would be ok". #2 is
the easier argument to make, as it casts the narrative as outsiders vs
natives. #1 appeals to the existing natives since they don't want change.

We have to figure out a way to change the message to awareness of #1. The
average Bay Area resident has no idea how many of our state and local laws are
in place to make sure that market rents / housing prices can be as high as
possible.

~~~
narrator
Maybe the restrictions on building created the growth? The Bay Area is an
awfully nice place to live if you have money. Every other American city,
except for maybe New York City, is endless chain store filled sprawl which
requires a car to do anything in. Even New York requires a minimum two hour
drive to get to some decent natural scenery while with San Francisco you don't
have to go very far to get to be in a great natural environment.

~~~
dcposch
I made a zoning map of SF yesterday. A lot of our city is sprawl, too: one
house, one driveway, one garage per lot.

[https://dcpos.ch/yimby/zoning](https://dcpos.ch/yimby/zoning)

We can get two birds with a stone by building housing: make our city more
walkable and beautiful, and also alleviate the housing shortage .

Want to support infill, upzoning, and want to beat the NIMBYs? Consider
joining SF Yimby.

It's a small group of ppl who care a lot about this, they're smart and
effective, and many of these local issues are right on the bubble around 50%
support in low turnout elections. This means, with a bit of activism, _you_
can swing the outcome.

~~~
foggyeyes69
How do you join?

~~~
dcposch
Also @foggyeyes69, do you have a Github?

Putting together a list of technologists who care about Yimby stuff.

~~~
foggyeyes69
github.com/virajmahesh

------
alanh
I think sometimes there is a meme that if it's been said before, that’s proof
that the complaint or worry is baseless and hysterical.

But this isn’t so.

Just because it's been said before doesn't make it untrue. San Francisco is in
fact not an easy or great place for those with children but not wealth.

~~~
npiazza83
Most of America isn't a great place for those with children but not wealth!

I think what makes San Francisco a target is that it isn't a great place for
those without children who would be classified as wealthy in any other part of
the country.

You can probably find a path to home ownership in a safe neighborhood with
decent services in any city in the country if you are in the upper quartile of
incomes for that area.

The housing prices in San Francisco are such that most incomes even in the
upper quartile would take a decade to save for a downpayment. You need two
incomes (Two working parents) in the upper quartile of incomes in the area to
get you to home ownership in a good neighborhood.

~~~
freyir
> _Most of America isn 't a great place for those with children but not
> wealth!_

I don't follow.

As you said yourself, in most places in the U.S., a middle or upper-middle
class family can afford to live in a home big enough for a family (which by
global standards, is likely big enough for two or three families). And the
home's in a safe neighborhood. What prevents this scenario from being great?

~~~
alanh
I’m with you. Obviously wealthy children will have more advantages no matter
what, but I personally grew up with one working parent (dad was a teacher with
a summer job and some small side jobs) who was able to support me, my mother,
and 5 siblings in a smallish US town. I was able to receive a good public
education, and we had all the necessities (if nothing else – no nice vacations
or fashionable clothes). It was a safe town… sports programs, extra-
curriculars. Cheap homes. That one working parent was able to buy a 4-bed
home, renovate the attic, add an enclosed porch, re-side and re-shingle, and
pay off the mortgage while raising this family. This scenario would be
entirely impossible in San Francisco and even most of the Peninsula.

~~~
nshelly
Definitely agree that other places are more affordable, especially if you
bring a nest egg from working a few years in an expensive Metro area like NYC,
SF etc.

But the 80s and 90s -- through the first Dotcom crash -- were also a different
era. The Economist considered the US the #1 country to be born in 1988, and
only #16 in 2013. This is reflected in the fall in the number of good middle-
class jobs, housing affordability, health care costs, traffic and
infrastructure, and overall declining quality of factors.

------
huangc10
> Soaring housing costs, urban violence, shifting ethnic patterns and an
> increase in childless adults living together may be turning San Francisco,
> which the Chamber of Commerce likes to call ''everybody's favorite city,''
> into a haven for the young, the old, the wealthy and the childless.

Love reading posts of old articles from the 80s and 90s. It's like nothing
much has changed over the past 30 or so years. Except the average housing
price has gone up from ~$100,000 to ~$1,000,000 (you know, cuz of inflation
and stuff...)

~~~
pmiller2
Since you quoted the one sentence that made me scratch my head, I'll glom onto
it here. How are any of those things good for young people?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
The young who are childless but still have a high income. That implies,
though, that if/when they have kids, they're going to find San Francisco to be
less attractive...

~~~
pmiller2
Sure, but most young people don't have a high income.

~~~
jbpetersen
It's a lot more likely that they do when you precondition on them living in
SF.

~~~
pmiller2
Doesn't that apply equally to everybody?

------
skolos
Interesting bit:

>in 1970 the number of Hispanics was arrived at by a computer model that
listed everyone with a Spanish surname as Hispanic

because census in 1970 did not allow differentiation Hispanics. It also
probably means that decrease in whites from 70's to 80's is overstated.

~~~
stephenboyd
They could check this by testing the same model against later census results.

------
memoryfab_com
NYtimes writing news about SF as a haven for wealthy and childless is like
SFchronicles writing about NY as haven for wealthy and carless.

~~~
stephancoral
Except this was written in 1981 when NYC wasn't exactly the shining globalized
mall it was today and the wealthy were fleeing like hell to CT and Jersey.

~~~
geebee
That's interesting, and true. In the early 80s, the middle class abandonment
of cities running at full throttle. New York and San Francisco had enough of
an urban core to retain some of their middle class, but yeah, a lot of people
left. This was the era of dirty harry movies, where people felt it was all
kind of coming apart, that cities were sinking ships, and that you might want
to get out while you can.

It started turning around in the 90s, culturally (I remember commentaries on
shows like "Friends", that an urban ideal was emerging, at least among young
adults). This wasn't a brand new thing by any means, but preferring an urban
environment started to make its way back into the mainstream again. And now,
interestingly, it's full throttle once again, but this time, it's people
trying to cram _into_ cities rather than fleeing them. Rather than talking
about "getting out" of SF, people talk about being "priced out" of San
Francisco and NY and regrettably feeling forced to move to the suburbs. I'm
not sure how much of this is really sincere - I live south of 280 in SF, and a
lot of people who say they were priced out would turn their nose up at my
neighborhood. But still, I don't think this kind of talk was as common in the
early 80s.

On another note - I felt New York was worse than SF, in terms of blight, in
the early 90s when I lived there. Growing up in SF had certainly prepared me
for the homelessness and aggressive panhandling, but it was heavier in NY.
This may of course just reflect the neighborhoods I was in, but in NY, people
asking for chance would follow me for blocks, negotiating (do you have subway
tokens? I take subway tokens!) I was frequently approached for spare change in
bars and restaurants (once, I dropped some money while paying for my coffee, a
homeless man in NY jumped up to collect it for me, then held onto it as he
entered negotiations for how much he would keep - possession being 9/10ths of
the law, I guess).

I went back to NY recently, after 20 years away, and my perception is that
you're experience far less of this sort of thing in NY than SF now. Certainly,
there were still homeless people in NY, but the aggression I'd experienced
earlier really wasn't nearly as notable. In SF, I'd say it's gotten steadily
heavier, more aggressive. Not sure why.

------
dominotw
What is the a good city now for mid-income childless ? More fun activities,
concerts ect and low taxes that go to roads and public transport and not
schools, parks and libraries.

~~~
sbarre
Pittsburgh!

~~~
bsder
Sorry, Northeast winters suck. Really, really, suck.

~~~
brandonmenc
Pittsburgh doesn't really get hit with bad winters - not the way that, say,
Buffalo does.

------
sctb
Relevant recent discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453644](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453644)

------
maplebed
Nice to see that 36 years later they're writing the same thing.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/san-francisco-
children...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/san-francisco-
children.html) "San Francisco Asks: Where Have All the Children Gone?"

------
BadassFractal
Cause I'm praying for rain And I'm praying for tidal waves I wanna see the
ground give way. I wanna watch it all go down. Mom, please flush it all away.
I wanna see it go right in and down. I wanna watch it go right in. Watch you
flush it all away.

Originally meant for LA, but oddly applicable.

~~~
pokler
Mom's comin' round to put it back the way it ought to be.

------
swagv1
It's funny how people think this crap was just invented in the past 10 years
in SF.

------
cwsmith17
I work as an housing activist in SF. If you want to get more involved, shoot
me an email and we'll get coffee. Cwsmith17@gmail.com

~~~
akjainaj
What's a "housing activist"?

------
jamespitts
How do we get people to change something ominous yet moves slowly across
generations? We're all afflicted with a short attention span and plenty of
day-to-day problems, and we elect leaders to deal with the here and now.

This issue affects so many wicked problems, including how social systems
respond to human-made environmental devastation.

Thankfully there are some leaders who will do the hard thing.

------
vonnik
and then this piece lands: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/san-
francisco-children...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/san-francisco-
children.html)

------
theptip
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

