
What Does It Really Cost to Live in San Francisco? - ForHackernews
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2014/08/what-does-it-really-cost-to-live-in-san-francisco/379166/
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afafsd
Sure, it's expensive to live in San Francisco, which is why only people who
make a lot of money can or should live there.

It's like Beverley Hills. Nobody complains (or at least if they do, they don't
get publicity) that it's unfair how expensive it is to live in Beverley Hills;
if you can't afford to live in Beverley Hills you live somewhere cheaper.

An unfair comparison perhaps, since Beverley Hills has been super-expensive
for decades whereas San Francisco has recently gone from fairly expensive to
super expensive, meaning there's a lot of people who could previously afford
to rent in San Francisco who no longer can. But that's life, and that's the
risk you take if you choose to rent rather than buy.

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Thaxll
I don't understand the last part, if the rent is high buying will be high too.

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afafsd
I mean that those who have been living in the city for decades but didn't buy
there may now find themselves pushed out. They _could_ have bought twenty
years ago for much less but they didn't. If they'd bought property they would
have instead made a huge profit. That's one of the risks you take when you
rent rather than buy -- that values may go up significantly and push you out.

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madengr
"They could have bought twenty years ago for much less but they didn't."

Ah, but it really wasn't much less 20 years ago. It was STILL expensive
compared to everywhere else.

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eroo
"What it costs" shouldn't be represented as a percent of mean household
income. This is very misleading. For example, if you drive out poor by
increasing prices it may well make a city "more affordable" because both the
numerator (prices) and the denominator (income) are increasing. Despite what
Figure 6 would suggest, New York is not considerably "more affordable" than
Detroit.

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aioprisan
This article is patently wrong in its data representation. And by the way, the
data is from 2010. It cites a "citizen's budget report." Rent for a typical
household in NYC is $14k? Where can you rent out an apartment in NYC for
$1160/month for a "typical regional household"? This is completely absurd. Are
these "regional households" different in family size across cities? Is that
normalized for in these graphs? How is this "Total income for a typical
household" computed? Is that an average or mean? Even then, with a $20k
housing and transportation bill with only $62k of income, how is that doable?
In NYC, a $62 income only takes home $42k, $20k of which will go to housing
and transportation, if you only take public transportation and it is always
available to you. Get real.

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potatolicious
> _" Rent for a typical household in NYC is $14k? Where can you rent out an
> apartment in NYC for $1160/month for a "typical regional household"?"_

NYC is bigger than Manhattan. The parts of Brooklyn and Queens that aren't
filled with rich people (i.e. most of it), as well as the Bronx and Staten
Island, are not nearly as expensive as what you might be used to.

Not to mention statistical sampling of rents is always going to skew lower
than market because of rent stabilization and rent control - it measures how
much people are paying, not how much they would be if they were on the market
today.

NYC is 8.5 million people, only ~1 million of whom live in Manhattan.

I haven't looked at the data itself, but if their measure of NYC is the NYC
Metro (rather than the city proper), rents will go down too, since now we're
including most of North Jersey and a lot of Long Island.

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aioprisan
Part of the issue here that is not measured is just how fan into Staten Island
would you have to go to find a household for ~$1100 what what does that income
to time spend on travel ratio look like? This study says nothing about how far
away they would have to live to normalize for this, as different cities have
different transportation systems access and the time spent on travel is a
considerable component of your happiness, which is obviously not calculated
here. Nowhere did I mention Manhattan, but even in Queens or Brooklyn you will
be hard pressed to find apartments at those price points available. Since when
is Jersey included in NYC housing statistics? Can you point to where that is
stated in the linked article? Ridiculous.

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ChuckMcM
I'm not sure I buy the premise (that you can use the cost of transportation as
another index of affordability) but I do agree that 'affordability' is the
combined cost of food, housing, and transport.

That said its interesting that a place like Mountain View would be both more
affordable housing wise and transportation wise. Does anyone compute the local
minimum of those three chunks?

And at the game last night (go Giants!) it struck me how the differences
between San Francisco (mostly a live in night life kind of place) and San Jose
(mostly a work a day not so much nightlife) had their residency cycles
inverted from each other. Making me wonder if "urban bedroom communities with
restaurants and shopping" will be a thing here in a decade or so.

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madengr
I'm kinda sick of seeing these articles on gentrification. Hey, if you can't
afford to live there on a burger flipping job, then don't f'ing live there.
Then the "rich people" who buy those hamburgers will pay more for them, which
requires higher pay for the burger flippers, and less desirable to live there.
Maybe it will become a desert void of service jobs, which would suck to live
in, thus lowering prices. Oh, and I don't live in CA, actually someplace in
flyover country that is affordable.

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waterlesscloud
Alternatively, people could try to prevent bad things from happening before
they happen.

"Let the city go to hell and then it will adjust" is crappy policy.

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madengr
It's not going to hell, it's a slow adjustment. This isn't rocket science,
it's a simple system stabilized with negative feedback. Wages for low pay jobs
will naturally rise when there is no one there to fill them, instead stimulus
is being introduced to keep those people treading water. It's just the reverse
effect of all the high paying jobs leaving; let all the low paying jobs leave.

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chermanowicz
Where are you going to find a 2 bedroom apt in SF for $1,956 (2014 HUD
FMR)????

[http://www.huduser.org/portal/datasets/fmr/fmrs/FY2014_code/...](http://www.huduser.org/portal/datasets/fmr/fmrs/FY2014_code/2014summary.odn)

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idlewords
Some part of the city you don't want to live in.

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x0x0
stabbings are free; eau-de-bumshit in the mornings too!

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johnrob
This is a case of the 'higher order bit'. Housing costs have increased to the
point where other costs are negligible by comparison. The ratio of <cost-of-
non-housing-good> to rent will of course be low.

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doragcoder
Detroit is above San Diego on the chart in the article. Can someone explain
that to me? I just read how Detroit is an "emerging market", and San Diego is
often cited as a very expensive city.

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adrice727
No, because it doesn't make sense. Salaries in San Diego actually aren't that
much higher than they are in the Detroit area. Neither place has public
transportation (to speak of), and housing prices in San Diego are about twice
of those in Detroit.

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coldcode
Some people who say your sanity.

