
The Bay Area Is Separating into Red and Green Zones - MagicAndi
https://danielmiessler.com/blog/bay-area-separating-red-green-zones/
======
dmode
I have no idea what this article was about. Let's see. Somehow this individual
drives from San Francisco to San Mateo and considers everything in between
poor? Perhaps he should venture a little bit more ? How about driving around
280, Hillsborough, Burlingame, Milbrae up in the hills ? All of these are
beautiful neighborhoods with houses > $2mn. Not sure what he is talking about.
Somehow, he thinks the "stuff on water" is in San Mateo. It is actually Foster
City.

Then he drives south from San Mateo down south and until he reaches Palo Alto,
he thinks everything is working class poor. Interesting, because between San
Mateo and Palo Alto you have Belmont, Redwood City, San Carlos, Atherton, and
Menlo Park. Anybody who believes only working class poor lives in these
cities, not sure how to take them seriously.

Then this person believes whole of San Jose is a slum. Obviously never been to
Evergreen or the myriad of other neighborhoods in San Jose. Then he thinks
Fremont has "promise". I actually live in Fremont and not sure if there is a
working class neighborhood in Fremont. Fremont has beautiful parks and lakes
and great schools.

Ok, Hayward and Oakland are bit rundown. But even Hayward Hills and Oakland
Hills are amazing places to live.

My guess - this person drove down El Camino real in the Peninsula and
concluded everything by driving down one street.

He also makes an incredible claim - only 2-3% have salaries that let them live
comfortably. Others are working on 2-3 jobs. I guess people are working on 2-3
jobs and paying millions for their houses.

What a terrible article.

~~~
danielrm26
You're describing small pockets of wealth that are scattered all over,
surrounded by poverty.

Look at the surface area and the percentages of the population. That's what
the article is about.

It's pretty clear that it's hard to live on even 100K as a family in the Bay
Area, and if you look at the median incomes for most of the cities around the
Bay Area they're nowhere near that.

I don't see how you counter that by naming off a few more rich microclimates.

\--

Also, I wrote the article, and I'm born and raised here. I didn't drive down a
street and come up with this. I've been here for four decades, watching it
change, and this is what I'm seeing. Sorry you didn't like it. :)

~~~
palakchokshi
When you make statements like

"The more I pay attention in the Bay Area the more I’m noticing that it’s a
place of absolute poverty."

"Much of the East Bay is extremely poor."

You really need to quantify absolute poverty and extremely poor. Without some
numbers to back it up the article comes off as out of touch.

Also with you living in San Francisco when you write all these things about
large areas of the Bay Area as being extremely poor the article feels a little
like you are looking down your nose at the "rest of the people". Sorry but
that's what it comes across as.

~~~
danielrm26
I mentioned I grew up in Newark, i.e., Fremont. That's my real hometown.

But I see your point.

------
RealityNow
I think Jamie Dimon said it best, it's almost embarrassing to be an American
these days. Homeless people everywhere, mentally insane people screaming on
the streets, rude classless people (in the ghetto), failing infrastructure, a
narcissistic demagogue trust fund kid as president. Every single major city in
America has a ghetto not unlike a third world country - NYC, LA, Chicago, SF,
etc. I've never understood why we tolerate this poverty in our own backyards.

There was a period when we were the model nation for the world, and that
period is long gone. As long as America is ruled by the mindset of "everyone
for themselves" and free market fundamentalism, nothing is going to improve -
and in fact things are only going to get worse as the job market tightens due
to technological automation.

~~~
sillypog
Although you don't seem to like the president, you have made a lot of the same
points as he did in his campaign. Maybe he will fix these issues and make
America great again.

~~~
ppeetteerr
Not to get political, but the president doesn't have the power to change
things at this level. It's up to congress and state and municipal governments
to institute the kind of change you are thinking about.

~~~
thephyber
Over the past month, I've started to consider that the people that support the
president know this. They want him to champion the identity that they have and
the policies don't matter nearly as much -- they just want to hear someone
"defending" them.

I think it's far more about identity than it is any faith they have in him
being able to actually change anything via policy or legislation.

------
jraines
The parts I'm familiar with are painted a little more gloomy than reality.

Fremont has top rated schools and a median income above 80k. Combine income
with college grad percentage and it's in the 81st percentile on the "superzip"
metric.

Hayward has some run down areas but the median income is $54k. One the
income/college grad metric it's 49th percentile. Basically average for the
country. (When average is seen as a dominion of "sadness", that says something
-- whether about the commentator, the state of the country, or both is up to
you)

The problem, as is beaten to death yet still not enough, is housing costs. In
"average" Hayward, a barely adequate home for a family will run you north of
$600k. What you'd expect in most places as a middle class home closer to
$750k+

------
ProfessorLayton
This article reminds me of my coworkers who think San Mateo is sketchy "On the
other side of the tracks".

I've lived 90th and International in Oakland and have a pretty good idea of
what "red" looks like. Speaking from personal experience, San Leandro and
Hayward are nice places to live in, and the crime maps match my experience
with the area [1]. I understand the article was talking about poverty and not
crime, but poverty and crime are correlated [2], so a crime map is a valid
proxy.

I agree that some areas are a bit run down, but overall I think its the
opposite, pockets of "red" surrounded by "green".

[1] [https://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Oakland-
California/crime/](https://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Oakland-
California/crime/) [2]
[https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137](https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137)

------
skybrian
This article shows the danger of going by surface appearances and statistics
in areas that you don't know.

There are a lot of places that don't look like much (for someone used to rich
areas) but are decent, stable communities. That run-down looking restaurant
might be a stable business that serves great food.

~~~
cwyers
I think there's two things that are true -- the author is kind of a glib
poverty tourist, _and_ the Bay Area is becoming increasingly stratified in
income, as illustrated by some of the things he notices. He'd be more credible
if he was better informed about the people he's writing about.

------
Apocryphon
There's always the pat answers of "housing is the government's job", "this
situation was created by public policy" but at this point shouldn't those in
tech, the most lucrative and largest industry in the region, at least allot a
little thought to the problem of inequality? In discussions defending Silicon
Valley, "the press never covers the startups working on hard problems like
human longevity or heart disease, but REAL companies that aren't frivolous
apps exist" always gets trotted out. Well, how about companies that work on
problems that directly impact the Bay Area?

At the very least, earmark higher budgets for corporate philanthropy and
community outreach.

~~~
claytonjy
Sounds like a coordination problem with a first-mover disadvantage. It's in
the best interest of each individual company to keep profits coming back to
improve the business and it's competitiveness, rather than earmarking some for
philanthropy and community outreach. The first company to do so would suffer
while the others continue improving their business.

This is exactly why it's a problem to solve at the government level; a higher
authority, with teeth, is needed to solve these coordination problems and
force market participants to all do the right thing.

~~~
Apocryphon
Certainly it should be the government's job because it is both intended to and
should be most effective/efficient to fix such a tragedy of the commons type
situation.

But your comment is also sad because it shows how despite all of the
iconoclast rhetoric, Silicon Valley companies are often far more risk-adverse,
some could say, cowardly, in not willing to buck change. Not simply on matters
involving social value or controversy, but more mundane topics that have been
brought up before on HN such as willingness to embrace remote work, create
better interview processes, etc.

And that of course, is also understandable. Tech companies are only willing to
disrupt the economic markets and labor practices that would lead to maximum
value extraction and shareholder value. No one sincerely disrupts to "make the
world a better place."

~~~
nerfhammer
Tech has absolutely nothing to gain from sky high real estate prices.

Casting it as an singular moral entity which you can then accuse of moral
delinquency may not help in understanding or solving any particular problem.
If it were in fact a hyper powerful agency that could change the landscape
around itself merely through the commission of its moral will, why would it
not have removed all of the anti-housing laws already? Tech workers don't want
to pay millions for housing. It is not in the tech industry's best interest –
therefore, the issue can't be due to tech having ill best interests.

------
rjbertsche
Saying that construction is a 'basic job skill' is kind of an amazing way to
say you don't understand what is going on there at all. Or that somehow it's
just magic to you. Most jobs have a depth to them, and most people have to
learn quite a bit to do them successfully.

~~~
kposehn
Agreed. Based on the author's description, I think he basically is talking
about what he sees from CalTrain or the 101 without actually looking into the
areas he says are broken.

I live north of San Mateo in one of these "broken" areas. It is most
definitely not broken, and nor are the people. But if you go down by the
CalTrain line you'll see some trash strewn about and some houses that look run
down. But go 200 feet away and it is no longer that.

------
nostrademons
This is fairly accurate, in my experience. I live on the border between
Sunnyvale and Mountain View, and within a couple blocks is a gated street
(closed to vehicular traffic) where a bunch of skateboarding teens hang out.
On the Sunnyvale side of the gate are a bunch of small somewhat run-down
apartment buildings, usually 4- or 8-plexes, and you can never find parking
because each unit often has 3-4 working adults in it. On one side of the
Mountain View street are 60s duplexes; on the other are 90s duplexes; and at
the end of the street is a beautiful neighborhood with $3M homes.

The one caveat, as skybrian mentions, is that you can't really judge a
family's financial status from where they live. A large number of residents in
the run-down areas are immigrant bargain-hunters, often with tech jobs; even
the run-down areas in Silicon Valley are better than many other countries, and
so they'd rather save money than flash their social status. Oftentimes it
turns out that they own 3 houses and are collecting serious rent money from
young American techies who think they're top of the hill in Silicon Valley.

I'm curious whether this is different from other cities. When I lived in
Boston, it wasn't all that different; you'd have gorgeous restored brownstones
in the South End that were a few blocks away from homicides and drug deals in
Dorchester and Roxbury.

~~~
tathougies
To add to this, my wife and I explicitly chose to move in to a 'run-down'
apartment building in order to save. Despite both of us having swanky tech
jobs at the time. In fact, we conducted our apartment search mainly in spanish
in order to get the best deal.

~~~
tsunamifury
If you're living in run-down conditions when you are earning enough to still
be saving and living in decent conditions somewhere else -- you're fooling
yourself. Likely your swanky tech job is netting you relatively less than you
think.

~~~
nostrademons
Curious about your logic there? My experience has been the opposite - it's the
folks who live in run-down conditions and save 50-80% of their income for
decades that end up with a $5-10M net worth, while folks who live comfortably
all that time leave this world with maybe a couple hundred K.

~~~
tsunamifury
Whats the point of dying with $10m?

What I meant is, if you are doing well you can both have nice place to live
AND save. You aren't not doing well if you have to pick one or the other. Many
techies seem to misunderstand their actual relative wealth in the area. Below
$250k/y is lower middle, 500K/y+ is middle and 1M/y+ is upper. But everyone
acts like their 300k/y makes them pocket rich while they live in a hovel.

~~~
nostrademons
1.) Not ever having to worry about not having enough money.

2.) Living knowing that you produced more than you consumed.

3.) Passing it on to your kids.

Anyway, from personal experience - living below your means doesn't mean
deprivation. It means deciding what you actually want and not buying into all
of the messages society sends you about what you _should_ want. Usually you
can get what you _actually_ want for a small fraction of a tech-worker's
salary, and then once you do that, why give the rest to somebody else?

------
jpao79
Highly recommend watching: Ellen Dunham-Jones: Retrofitting suburbia
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_uTsrxfYWQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_uTsrxfYWQ)

Basically what the author (Daniel Miessler) is seeing is this suburban sprawl
being selectively re-invented. Originally the Peninsula was sprawl for San
Francisco in the 1940-70s. Then the housing stock slowly aged and the rich
people moved on to Pleasanton, etc.

At some point Oracle, Google and the dot-com bubble and associated traffic
jams on 880/101 made it make sense to re-examine and subsequently re-
invent/re-invest in infill locations like San Mateo and Mountain View
respectively. Usually the leading indicator for re-development is the school
district.

Mountain View when I was growing up was were you went for well priced non-
Italian/French restaurants. In fact there are some original still there on
Castro street still hanging on if you look closely. It was most definitely not
high end baked French goods (i.e. Alexander's Patisserie).

I would say with the arrival of Box in Redwood City, it's starting to happen
there too.

I'd also add that in places that are not physically constrained (like in Texas
or even Southern California), you just have more sprawl. It looks different
but it doesn't seem any better (or any worse).

------
ppeetteerr
I moved to the city for a few months a week ago and the poverty described in
the article is apparent. Everyone you speak to is struggling to pay rent and
afford more than subsistence. Perhaps it's fairer to equate San Francisco with
London: most of the realestate is owned by the rich whereas everyone else is
struggling to pay for inflated housing prices.

A separate note: I did enjoy San Jose. It's not wealthy but it's a quaint type
of lifestyle that I did not dislike. To say that it's comfortable living,
however, would be a stretch.

------
malchow
If government had just a little more money, and controlled prices just a
little more, this wouldn't be a problem anymore. . .

. . .said every public office-holder in this area for the last fifty years.

------
sillypog
From the article:

"Heading north from Fremont is basically sadness. Hayward, Oakland, San
Leandro, Richmond, Vallejo. They’re all poverty stricken and broken. The only
green zones I see out in that area are maybe in Dublin, Pleasanton, Moraga,
etc., but I honestly don’t know much about those areas because I seldom get
out there."

Oh no, what happened to Piedmont, Berkeley, Kensington and all the other
lovely East Bay towns? Perhaps the author is only seeing poverty because
that's what he's looking for.

To me, the suggestion that living in Dublin is preferable to living in Oakland
sounds bizarre. A lot of people in these "broken" cities would rather be there
than anywhere else, so they must have something going for them.

