
Inside San Francisco's housing crisis - dthal
http://www.vox.com/a/homeless-san-francisco-tech-boom
======
delluminatus
Loading extremely slowly for me. Google cache:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6m1opf...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6m1opfxYLn0J:www.vox.com/a/homeless-
san-francisco-tech-boom)

After reading the article, this quote really jumped out at me:

 _" I was going along, being a good citizen," Todd, now 52 years old, says. "I
was a volunteer firefighter, I coached football and baseball, I was saving my
money, doing everything you're supposed to do, being a single father, raising
my daughter by myself. Then the economy just went to hell and the company
threw me to the wolves."_

This is interesting because it sounds like what I've come to think of as the
"salaryman" mentality: the idea that there is a contract between employee and
company help each other, forever.

I don't want to say it implies entitlement, exactly, but more like a weird
view of reality. Why do people think being a "good citizen" who "does
everything you're supposed to do" means nothing will ever screw them? Or is
this just rhetoric that people use to make themselves sound victimized?

I think this is a generational gap (in America, anyway). I don't think you
would ever hear those words coming from a millennial. Maybe we've just learned
from the mistakes of people like this guy.

~~~
jonnathanson
_" I don't think you would ever hear those words coming from a millennial."_

Probably because Millennials grew up knowing there were wolves just outside
the gates, and that your employer might throw you to them at any time. We're
the first generation of Americans, in quite some time, to have experienced one
significant crash or stagnation after the next. There is no "normal" in the
job market, the stock market, the housing market, or just about any market for
us. There never has been. We don't know normal, so accordingly, we're not
clinging to it.

I don't blame older generations for slipping hard when the rug gets pulled out
from under them. They are products of a very different era. I wouldn't blame a
polar bear for not knowing his way around a tropical rain forest. I wouldn't
blame a jaguar for not knowing his way around an arctic tundra. By the same
token, I don't entirely blame a person from the "good old days" for not
knowing his way around the chaos that characterizes our economy today. And to
whatever degree I do blame him, I don't blame him entirely.

 _" I don't want to say it implies entitlement, exactly..."_

That's because it doesn't. Perhaps it's just my cushy, liberal upbringing
saying this, but emotionally speaking, I have a very hard time calling Todd
"entitled." He works his ass off, struggles to get by, and nearly kills
himself trying to make life seem semi-normal for his young daughter. All of
this on $30 a day. That's odd behavior for an entitled person.

Maybe he lacked a degree of flexibility, or training, or resiliency in his
career that led him to this point. That's a fair critique. He says he saved
money, but we don't know how much, and we don't know what his spending habits
were. Again, fair. We have plenty of things to analyze when picking apart
Todd's story. But one thing he doesn't appear to be is entitled.

~~~
tptacek
This is an understandable but extremely ahistorical perspective. The reality
is that the belief that wolves _weren 't_ outside the gates was a historical
blip from the middle of the 20th century.

~~~
jonnathanson
Absolutely true. The middle of the 20th century was the aberration, not today.
Nevertheless, I think the point still stands: people from the (aberrant) era
of stability are unaccustomed to instability.

Since memories only stretch back so far, and appear to be limited to
generations, it's fair to say that Todd's generational (proximate) perspective
was his "normal," and the "normal" for most people growing up over the last
50-odd years. This can still be true, even if that period was abnormal within
the broader sweep of human history.

Furthermore, I'd argue that today's instability is something quite different
from the historical mean. We're not simply regressing to the natural state of
economics. We're moving out of an aberrant era of atypically shared
prosperity, but at the same time, we're being rocked by the result of a
decades-long experiment in supply-side economics that has confounded and
further destabilized our position. What we were in _then_ was not normal. What
we're in _now_ is not entirely normal, either. But your broader point is very
true: there have always been wolves outside the gates. That we paid no
attention to them for 50-something years is unusual.

------
DanBlake
There is a interesting anti-correlation between this and Prop G.

Prop G will be a retroactive tax applied to anyone who bought a multi unit
building in SF in the last few years who would sell it the next few years.
Tenants have no problem pushing this bill stating that buying a building does
not entitle you to a lifelong contract and that 'things can change' which will
negatively effect you. So even though you bought a building a year ago with no
hint it could be taxed at 25%, you are now expected to pay that tax if you
sell.

Now, on the other hand we have tenants who are upset that they have to leave
their homes they (wrongly) assumed they could rent in forever. Either this is
from ellis, OMI or other eviction. I feel for these people to a extent- But I
am not a believer in the whole "right to stay in your birth city forever"
movement. I do not believe anyone has any more of a right to live in San
Francisco than they do Malibu or Aspen. It is one of the most expensive metros
in the US.

If you are a 90 year old grandmother who was counting on your landlord not
evicting the whole building, you should have known that was a risky bet to
begin with. If you want to stay in a place forever you should buy the home.
Otherwise, you need to be prepared to move should situations change. You need
to prepare for all 'disasters' \- That could be eviction, fire, death, floods,
etc.. If you dont prepare, I will be sorry for you- But I dont think that
entitles legal protection either. If you lose your house from a fire with no
insurance, you are going to bare that burden alone.

~~~
ps4fanboy
As a non american looking at this from the outside this whole rental/tenant
control looks like legislated communism.

~~~
maxerickson
As opposed to what other sort of communism?

Also, note that "Prop G" is more or less the opposite of legislative, it's a
ballot initiative, direct democracy.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Also, note that "Prop G" is more or less the opposite of legislative

Legislative = law making. Prop G is more or less exactly legislative.

> it's a ballot initiative, direct democracy.

Yes, its a ballot initiative, which is a direct form of citizen exercise of
legislative power (expressly, along with the power of referendum, reserved by
the people in the otherwise-general assignment of legislative power to the
State Legislature in Art. 4, Sec. 1 of the California State Constitution.)

~~~
maxerickson
I think I did okay understanding how the other poster was using the word, they
were talking about a government assembly making laws, not about law making in
general (why would anybody bother saying "law making communism" vs
"communism"?).

~~~
dragonwriter
If one is using "communism" as in actual Communist theory, then "government-
assembly-directed-communism" doesn't make sense either -- that's, in that
framework, _socialism_ , communism is what you get after the state withers
away.

If you are using "communism" in the usual sense anti-Communist speakers due --
referring to government structure typical of authoritarian regimes that have
espouse Communism as an ideology -- then distinguishing "government-assembly-
directed communism" vs. "communism" still doesn't make sense, as all such
"communism" is, necessarily, directed by a government assembly.

So I don't think "legislative communism" makes much sense in any case.

~~~
maxerickson
Your last sentence was more or less my point, I just screwed it up with "more
or less the opposite of legislative", which I admit is confused, but I was
trying to say that the Prop wasn't being handed down by the government.

------
jobu
_"...tech growth in cities like Seattle has been the same to San Francisco
relative to its size, but the rise in the cost of living is less than a third
of that experienced in San Francisco. This is largely attributed to the city
building more housing to meet demand."_

This seems to be the root of the problem. So much of the blame gets put on
tech companies or the rich getting richer, but no one blames the elected
officials for not doing the right thing and allowing new housing to be built.

~~~
x0x0
And yet this thread will be filled with tech employees shitting on those less
fortunate than themselves.

And what tech ceo is showing up at city council meetings up and down the
peninsula demanding more housing, or _in any fucking way_ using the platform
their job gives them to help even their own employees, let alone other people
in their communities?

Ladies and gentlemen, DanBlake:

    
    
       If you are a 90 year old grandmother who was counting on your landlord not 
       evicting the whole building, you should have known that was a risky bet to 
       begin with. [1]
    

Yup. Fuck grannie -- why didn't she anticipate rental prices doubling in 5
years?

TheAceOfHearts:

    
    
       Why don't these people just move to more affordable places? [2]
    

Piss on off out of your community, family, job, network, etc etc etc.

DannyBee:

    
    
       Because people believe that once they've lived somewhere long enough, they 
       have a right to live there forever. [3]
    

Yup, it's a mystery why people living in sf don't like tech employees. It's
literally stunning fyigm isn't more popular with the community!

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495124)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8494967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8494967)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495015)

~~~
Kalium
> And what tech ceo is showing up at city council meetings up and down the
> peninsula demanding more housing, or in any fucking way using the platform
> their job gives them to help even their own employees, let alone other
> people in their communities?

[http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/18/technology/google_zoning/](http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/18/technology/google_zoning/)

Care to guess how that went? Tech CEOs are doing the jobs you proclaim them to
not be.

> Yup. Fuck grannie -- why didn't she anticipate rental prices doubling in 5
> years?

She didn't need to. She just needed to know that since she didn't own the
property, she was at risk. That's the risk you take when you rent - you don't
get the safety of owning.

This has been true for centuries. Don't treat it like a novelty.

> Piss on off out of your community, family, job, network, etc etc etc.

I don't know about you, but I've done this. Multiple times. It hasn't killed
me. It's not always fun, but that's life.

Since you're here, I'll ask you - what do you think the correct and acceptable
way for someone to move to and live in SF is?

~~~
x0x0
One letter from google -- um, golf clap? Contrast that with what a company
does when they actually want something. eg Twitter and their tax break [1].
They threaten to leave sf, testimony at the council, meetings with
councilpeople, lobbying, etc.

But no no -- one _letter_ means google is actively working for more housing.

~~~
Kalium
My point is that they do try. It just doesn't get results. What would you have
them do? Pick up, move, and crash the regional economy?

EDIT: If you look, you'll find that it comes up quite often. It's far from
just one letter.

~~~
x0x0
um, they don't actually try, and nothing you've found disproves that. But one
letter was sent!

~~~
Kalium
There's actually quite a lot of material out there about Google wanting to
build more housing.

[http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2012/07/13/google-
housin...](http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2012/07/13/google-housing-axed-
in-citys-general-plan)

[http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2010/02/16/google-pressures-
cit...](http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2010/02/16/google-pressures-city-over-n-
bayshore-plan)

[http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2008/06/18/google-hotel-
falls-t...](http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2008/06/18/google-hotel-falls-
through)

And that's just one website. There's lots out there. It hasn't happened, but
not because Google hasn't tried. What do you expect them to do?

~~~
x0x0
The same amount of effort as when lobbying for something they actually want.
As I said above. See eg twitter for tax breaks, or the $16m google spent
lobbying the US alone in 2013 [1]. Or the ceo going to council meetings and
being actively involved. Or any of a dozen things you could think of yourself
that would demonstrate google actually investing some effort into housing. Or
transport.

But no -- your links show they sent a letter. You even found a second article
mentioning what appears to be the same letter from David Radcliffe. You've
searched the local mountain view papers and there's _three whole mentions_ of
google "working" for more housing dating all the way back to 2008... but they
sent a letter. (Note they couldn't even be bothered to send someone
representing the company to show up to testify at the meeting regarding their
letter.)

They're working overtime on this.

[1]
[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00002200...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000022008)

~~~
Kalium
Just to be clear, your position is that Google should invest many millions
into things that aren't business concerns at all for them. At a time when they
get massive amounts of blowback for any attempt to be involved in local
politics.

Is that right?

~~~
x0x0
Just to be clear, you're now moving the goalposts -- I demonstrated your claim
that google is involved is patent bullshit. Your claim about blowback is
similar.

And yes, companies -- and the larger they are, the more so -- should be
involved in the communities in which they and their employees are located.
This is true for many, perhaps most, firms that aren't tech firms. And they
often are! Go to eg council meetings or zoning board meetings or other local
government meetings in eg nyc. For many people in the communities in which
these large tech firms are located, they've had bad effects. Google has a
responsibility to these communities that they are currently ducking. The tech
community as a whole has a responsibility to the bay area the community is
almost entirely skipping out on. Being proactive about housing and transport
would be helpful to both the employees and other residents of the communities.

~~~
Kalium
I'd say the tech community is obliged to return that care which is shown for
them. At a time when "Die techie scum" is a rallying cry, be thankful apathy
is all you get.

~~~
x0x0
quod erat demonstrandum

------
scythe
People are concerned about "Manhattanization". That SF will become a "big
city" and lose its "cultural charm", if zoning rules are relaxed and taller
buildings are built outside the main valley that runs from FiDi to the
Misdion.

Well, you know what's worse than Manhattan? Miami Beach. That's where SF is
headed, if this jingoism keeps up. You can't fight a mass of rich people who
want to live in your town: you can only contain them.

Build, baby, build.

------
krigi
The housing problem is real. The suppliers/property owners know there is a
lack of supply, so now they're just getting greedy.

Three hours ago this unit was $1600. It was updated to $1800.
[http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/4726648527.html](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/4726648527.html)

It doesn't even have a kitchen. It's just a room with a toilet - at nearly $10
per sq. ft.

~~~
ulfw
That is just beyond ridiculous. A small room you can't even sleep in (mentions
excessive noise SEVERAL times) for almost $40,000/yr pre-tax all-in. Why
people move there is beyond me...

------
TheAceOfHearts
Why don't these people just move to more affordable places?

~~~
astrocat
Many may interpret this as victim blaming but I think it's a valid question:
why have we as a country/culture become so much more resistant to moving? I
know I've read more comprehensive literature on this before a but a quick
google brought up these starting points:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/11/declining_ame...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/11/declining_american_mobility_an_ongoing_mystery.html)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/generati...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/generation-
stuck-why-dont-young-people-move-anymore/254349/)

I understand that we develop local support networks of friends and family and
it's easy to understand why moving comes with the fear of having to start in a
new place with no such network. But it seems that this fear has become
limiting - that we are now refusing to relocate to places where greater
opportunity exists because we can't stand the thought of leaving our current
network behind. We're stuck, effectively. And it exacerbates the conditions in
places like SF.

~~~
anigbrowl
_places where greater opportunity exists_

like where? You might as well ask why tech companies don't set up elsewhere
and start their own little versions of Silicon Valley instead of spending $$$
to headquarter in SF.

~~~
scott_karana
Most people don't require the startup connections and capital of SV; they just
want to _survive and do their job_ , not start a speculative business venture.

Working as a firefighter/waiter/mechanic/nurse is roughly the same in the Bay
as it is in (say) Oklahoma, but prices of living are proportionally much more
favourable.

------
kiba
So, we got political deadlock in a way that constrains new housing addition.

Why is the law not being changed?

~~~
beering
Because they don't want it changed. Is it that hard to imagine that there's a
subset of SF residents that don't want new housing built?

~~~
eqdw
It's trivially easy. Just think of all the debates we've had over
gentrification in Nob Hill or Pac Heights.

Oh wait. We haven't had any.

Because these are the enclaves of people with so much wealth that even the
techies can't afford to move in.

------
api
It's simple:

Roaring economy, NIMBYism, affordable housing -- pick two.

SF has picked roaring economy and NIMBYism.

------
ktothemc
I was the person who wrote that super-long take on the San Francisco housing
crisis in spring on TechCrunch. [http://www.techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-
housing/](http://www.techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/)

I'll just say this. It's four issues compounded.

1) Growth controls enacted in the 1960s and 1970s: Beginning in the late
1960s, the California Supreme Court started making a series of anti-
development rulings: for example, one decision ruled that cities didn't have
to compensate property owners for down-zoning their property, which reduces
its value. This, of course, reduced financial risks for city governments that
wanted to downzone massive tracts of land in their territory.

At the same time, cities across the Bay began enacting growth controls.
Petaluma was the first in 1972, with an ordinance that restricted the number
of houses that could be built per year to 500. (Economic studies comparing
Petaluma with adjacent cities showed that its property prices rose at a faster
pace than cities w/out growth control.)

Anti-growth measures began being widely adopted across the entire region. The
behavior of California home prices started deviating from nationwide norms
around 1975 or so. The problem became especially acute by the late 1970s, and
so homeowners and tenants gave themselves a very sweet deal by effectively
freezing their property taxes and rents via Prop. 13 and rent control. This
insulated a majority of voters in cities like San Francisco from having to
make tough decisions about in-fill development to match population growth. At
this point, the mismatch is so out of whack and land is so valuable in San
Francisco, that building a lot more housing probably wouldn't make it
affordable to, say, a teacher salary level. Construction costs are $500,000
per unit, so your base price has to be at least that.

2) A byproduct of tech-dependent economic development strategy happens to be a
lot of income inequality. I haven't seen a good solution to this. After
manufacturing jobs dissipated from the U.S., a handful of cities like New
York, Boston and San Francisco were successful at reviving themselves through
a route of attracting highly-skilled, high-income workers. A consequence of
this is a barbell-like jobs market where you have highly compensated workers
in finance and tech on one side, and a whole cohort of service workers on the
other. I've seen this wherever I travel. I went to Tel Aviv, which is arguably
more dependent on tech than San Francisco with 10-11 percent of the workforce
in the industry versus 6.7 percent here. Same issues with income inequality,
inclusiveness and diversity.

3) Globalization of capital flows. Real estate used to be more of a local
business, but now a lot of local firms have been swallowed up by REITS, which
don't have any connection to the local community. At the same time, the
Chinese property market is collapsing, sending flows of homebuyers and their
cash over here. These are people who may not intend to actually live in the
Bay Area, yet they buy up homes without even seeing them. The city doesn't
know how to police this. How would you build a law or tax around regulating
this behavior? New York may attempt a pied-a-terre tax, but no one really
knows how to deal with this issue of vacant housing units held as investments.
Technologically, it's easy to track who is doing what where at all times. But
legally, there are a lot of issues around privacy with policing this if
foreign buyers are taking up 1/3 of the new housing stock as investments.

Similarly in the venture world, while overall VC funds being raised is lower
than what it was during the first dot-com bubble, according to the NVCA,
there's a lot of PE and foreign investment that I don't think is calculated
into the overall numbers.

4) Last is the lack of regional coordination. New York is 8.4 million people
under one government. London is also 8.4 million people under one government.
The Bay Area is 7 million people under 101 city governments and 10 bus and
rail systems. There have been numerous attempts to consolidate power over the
last century, but all have failed. The California state Constitution also
deeply empowers its city governments compared to other states. So what happens
is the rich cities don't build any housing, because they like their property
values and don't like traffic congestion, or to crowd their schools. This
drives prices up in the suburbs to a point where, on balance, urban
environments look more attractive -- not just because of changing tastes, but
also because they're not _that_ much more expensive than the South Bay. So
young people end up crowding into these poorer disinvested neighborhoods like
the Mission or Oakland, which then displaces minorities and the elderly far
out into the exurbs or even Central California.

~~~
tptacek
Here's a question for you: REITs dehumanize and perhaps volatilize real estate
markets. Do their benefits outweigh their costs? And if so, what are those
benefits? Is it legitimate public policy in a system that ostensible has free
markets as a principle to suppress or otherwise regulate REITs?

~~~
tedunangst
Benefit: REITs commoditize the real estate market. If you're just a regular
joe and you want to invest in stock or gold or pork bellies, a reasonably
small investment is enough to get you started. Trying to buy into real estate
is nigh impossible, though, unless you pool money because the "unit" price is
so high.

~~~
kasey_junk
Umm Pork Bellies would be nearly impossible to invest in for an average
investor even before they stopped being exchange traded commodities. The
margin requirements alone are on the order of real estate investments, not to
mention the contract prices.

~~~
tedunangst
Initial margin for pork bellies was around $2000, which is hardly on the order
of most real estate investments. Anyway, it was just metonymy.

~~~
kasey_junk
On which exchange?

~~~
tedunangst
Well, it's hard to find exact numbers now, but with a daily price limit of
0.03 on a contract of 40000, that's $1200. Figure double for initial margin.

I mean, even if you were to take delivery (!!!), pork bellies traded for less
than $1 per pound, so you could buy it outright for less than many real estate
deals.

Oh, here, found a number: $1620 for CME.
[http://www.investopedia.com/university/commodities/commoditi...](http://www.investopedia.com/university/commodities/commodities16.asp)

------
Kalium
To those people who believe this is the fault of tech - I have a question.

What is the ethical way to move to San Francisco? Or anywhere in the Bay? What
do you think is a good solution to this, beyond some variant on tech people
owing undefined amounts of money to everyone else?

~~~
k-mcgrady
I don't live in the US so my view is purely that of an outsider reading about
this on HN over the last few years.

My problem is this: a lot of tech companies, based outside San Francisco go
out of their way to make it easy for employees to live in SF and get to work
outside of it. This is bad for the people who have lived there for a long time
as they can't compete with the money the tech industry brings to the market.
If your job is in SF I think it's perfectly fine to live there no matter what
industry it's in. But taking space and driving up the price of space that
could be used by someone who NEEDS to live there (e.g. a local
butcher/hairdresser/convenience store owner) when you don't is unethical in my
opinion. Not to mention that if those people can't live in the city and close
down or move their businesses your life there won't be as good. It's not
illegal and like all ethical questions the answer will differ from person to
person but that's what I think about it.

Edit:

Of course the problem is the mindset of a lot of tech people (evident in this
thread). They think logically and love 'the free market'. They're also
predominantly young. They don't understand living in a place for 30/40 years
and being forced out. They seem to ignore the emotions involved or feel they
are irrelevant.

~~~
eqdw
> My problem is this: a lot of tech companies, based outside San Francisco go
> out of their way to make it easy for employees to live in SF and get to work
> outside of it.

This is not accurate, for two reasons.

First off: Many of the peninsula cities (where these tech companies are
located) make it _even harder_ to build housing, especially for immigrants.
Most of the housing in cities like PA and MV are single family homes that cost
upwards of seven figures. You can't even afford that on your average tech
salary; the only reason the people living there can afford it is because they
moved in before the prices rose so much.

The second, something I only learned recently, as of Sept 30th of this year,
companies in the Bay Area with over 50 employees are legally required to
either subsidize public transit for their employees, or provide their own
(source:
[https://commuterbenefits.511.org/](https://commuterbenefits.511.org/)).
Painting Google busses as "going out of their way to make it easy for
employees to live in SF" is (at least as of last month) not accurate

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Painting Google busses as "going out of their way to make it easy for
employees to live in SF" is (at least as of last month) not accurate"

Ok but as you allude to those buses have been going on much longer than the
last month. Also - they aren't public transit. They're private transport. I
don't know the specifics of that law but I don't think private transport
provided by the company would count.

~~~
eqdw
> Ok but as you allude to those buses have been going on much longer than the
> last month.

You're right. I did. Because they have. I don't know the details of any
legislation that may have applied before the one that I linked. But I would
like to highlight the irony of the voters (via the government) of California
legally mandating that these busses be run (see Kalium's comment), even after
they have become such a hot button issue.

It's no wonder that we have so many social problems we can't manage, when our
voters and legislators act so schizophrenically.

In terms of "a lot of tech companies, based outside San Francisco go out of
their way to make it easy for employees to live in SF and get to work outside
of it", this argument could be applied verbatim to the government paying for
freeways to allow cars to efficiently drive back and forth between cities.
This argument could also be applied to people who commute in from the suburbs
(look to the bay bridge; there is a metric ton of them) and 'take' high-paying
jobs that could be given to the locals who can't afford the rent here. But it
doesn't matter. Criticizing the commuter busses _for allowing people to live
somewhere other than they work_ is an unrealistic perspective that ignores
reality. People will live where they want to and can live. People will work
where they want to and can work. Neither of these facts are the busses
_faults_

------
scobar
"For many San Franciscans who have been displaced or are on the verge of
losing their homes, there's pain and a sense of powerlessness."

When I recently visited the Bay Area for the first time, I spoke with a worker
who was helping with the catering of one of the events I attended. I sat with
him while he was on break, and getting a bite to eat. When I asked him about
himself, the conversation quickly arrived at this topic of gentrification.
This sense of powerlessness is exactly how he felt, but there was also
resentment toward new inhabitants making enough to afford the high cost of
living.

Tech companies and workers are not the only (nor the main) cause of this
issue, yet they're likely receiving a higher fraction of the blame. Whether
this resentment is justified or not, it doesn't seem to be getting better with
time. The cold but logical advice to "just move somewhere more affordable."
isn't an acceptable solution to many of those who were or will be displaced.

I don't want to move to the Bay Area and exacerbate the problem, but there are
clearly some great benefits of basing a startup there. So it's a difficult
choice. Hopefully VR or another technology will make remote work a better
solution than relocation in the future. Also, a better way to quickly and
affordably retrain and enter a new profession must be made available to
displaced workers so automation can replace low-wage service industry jobs
faster.

------
_linden_
If you are serious about the problems that result from NIMBY anti-growth
sentiments, I strongly recommend that you join one of the following groups
working to influence their city councils to build more housing. Just liking
them on FB goes a long way to giving them more influence and credibility with
their city councils and when you reshare their blogs or FB posts, if they gain
just one more person willing to come to city hall with them, it's a terrific
win. People ARE trying to do something about this problem, including many from
the tech sector.

Take the feelings you have from this article and channel into a concrete good
that you can do right now, today, for minimal effort and zero cost. The sad
truth is that the people whose voices get heard at city council today are
generally those people wealthy enough in both dollars and time to spend hours
every week at city hall. They're mostly retired homeowners sitting on
multimillion dollar properties. Renters, poor people, and homeless people
receive almost no representation because they don't have the luxury of coming
to city hall meetings- they're busy figuring out where they're going to spend
the night and how they're going to feed their kids this week. These groups are
doing just that on their behalf, so please support them.

If you're in Palo Alto, check out www.paloaltoforward.com (also
www.facebook.com/paloaltoforward

If you're in Mountain View, check out
[http://balancedmv.org/](http://balancedmv.org/) and
[https://www.facebook.com/mvhousingdiversity](https://www.facebook.com/mvhousingdiversity)

If you're in SF,
[https://www.facebook.com/BARentersFed](https://www.facebook.com/BARentersFed)
and www.sfbarf.org

Menlo Park:
[https://www.facebook.com/MenloParkNoOnM](https://www.facebook.com/MenloParkNoOnM)

------
smsm42
Something that jumped at me in the beginning, about the soup kitchen line:

Some carry iPods and smartphones, others come in suits.

Am I wrong to assume that somebody that can afford a smartphone and
accompanying plans (which are not that cheap) and other gadgets like iPod,
which probably means they own a computer and a broadband internet connection
too - usually aren't so poor that they would literally starve without a soup
kitchen?

~~~
chipotle_coyote
This is a common thought, but it can be awfully misleading.

First, anything that doesn't have a recurring charge -- like the suit and the
iPod -- is something that may well have been bought when they had a higher
income level.

Second, if you're looking for work today -- even outside of the tech sector --
not having a phone is very often not an option. Prospective employers need to
be able to reach you and vice-versa, and if you're a temp worker or day
laborer you need to be able to get that phone message very fast. If you're
homeless a mobile phone may be your only realistic option.

Why not a cheaper phone than a smartphone? Even if you're poor, you may still
want email and text messages and web browsing; email is _close_ to a necessity
in America today, web browsing is immensely useful, and that smartphone may
also be your only source of entertainment. I think HN-ers may also tend to
think of "smartphone" as implying "$200+ device and $100/mo bill," but it's
pretty easy to get a $50 Android or Lumia phone and a $50-60/mo plan these
days.

Last but not least, IIRC the article suggested the "suits and smartphones"
types were people who weren't homeless yet, but whose rents had increased to a
point where they were having trouble affording food. Someone making $20 an
hour, way over minimum wage, would gross about $40K a year and _net_ about
$2500 a month -- they'd be lucky if "only" 75% of that was going to rent
(assuming they'd started renting a few years ago when that was remotely
possible). But they'd be making _way_ too much to qualify for any government
assistance like food stamps (SNAP).

~~~
smsm42
iPod is not very useful without a computer and supposedly new music downloaded
through the internet using broadband. Phones can be gotten for free (e.g. the
famous "Obamaphone" or SafeLink) but it doesn't have to be a _smartphone_ ,
which requires an expensive data plan ($60/m for a person who has literally no
money for food seems to be not a negligible sum). The employer has to reach
you, but it doesn't have to like your Facebook updates, right? I'm just
thinking maybe it's not always need but sometimes convenience.

------
stephenitis
Huge props for the beautiful layout and format.

I'm excited that publishers/authors are taking more time into the design of
articles they roll out.

------
adwf
Sounds like a great startup idea: End the San Francisco construction ban. Make
a lot of money.

Everyone always says to look for pain points when creating your startup, this
is a great example. Maybe it's overlooked because it's not internet/software
related ;)

------
dothething
Move.

~~~
tsotha
Yes. If housing is so damn expensive where you live, go somewhere else. It's
really that simple.

