
Rent Affordability Gap in San Francisco - danso
http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/phes.Rent-Affordability-San-Francisco/page.html#13/37.7375/-122.3935
======
rayiner
Supply of housing in SF is limited (mostly due to the same sort of do-gooders
who make infographics like this one), and demand is what it is, and that sets
the price. Living in a 2BR in the city proper is not a necessity. It's a
luxury. Living with one income in a two bedroom is by itself a luxury. There
is no reason we should expect it to be affordable on a minimum wage salary.

Heck, when I lived in New York, I lived in a 430 square-foot apartment with a
wife and a baby while making six figures. And I was a 35 minute train ride
away from Midtown!

~~~
geebee
I more or less agree with you - living in SF "proper" is a luxury good, kind
of like living in the left bank of Paris. So I definitely don't intend
anything that follows to be interpreted as a disagreement, more just... well,
a riff on the theme, I guess.

Part of the resistance to this comes from the very recent memory of SF
residents. The transformation of an SF address into a luxury good is very
recent.

I'm acutely aware of this having grown up here. I have a friend whose father
was a professor at SF state. He (largely on one salary) raised his family in a
pleasant 4 bedroom (!) house in the inner sunset. Another friend's parents
were school teachers, one part time elementary, one full time middle school.
The had a modest but pleasant place a little further out in the sunset.

It really wasn't until the late 90s that _almost_ all of San Francisco
detached from the middle class. I'm wishy-washy on the term almost here...
there are still affordable corners, I guess... a modest house in nice shape in
the excelsior probably could crack $700. Is that affordable?

I lament this a little bit, but I'm not that outraged. There isn't much to be
done. I do think that a creative culture (which includes tech!) can't really
flourish in such an expensive city. It just limits options too much when you
have to make so much money just to live.

Some of the loss is long term residents who give up on living here (my brother
was a professor at SF State as well, he was barely able to afford to share a
2br apartment with a guy he knew from high school - contrast that with the 4br
house one generation earlier. They've since left SF, probably never to return
as residents, and a good thing for them that they did, because they wouldn't
be able to chart their own course in life with that kind of rent).

But this isn't about localism or resenting people who are moving here. Let me
put it this way - Harvey Milk became who he was partly because he was able to
move to SF and find an inexpensive apartment. SF was once a place where very
creative people who didn't really fit in could show up and find their way in
life, and interesting things emerged from that. I think that was worth much
more than widely available tech talent of VC funding.

One last thing, though - this bashing of "tech workers" is pretty horrendous
as well. Like someone isn't allowed to come out here, take a job, and rent an
apartment?

I guess I just see it as a done deal. The innovation of life, the kind nobody
even understands well enough to fund, that causes people to scratch their
heads and say "what are those people _doing_ "? Hard to believe it will come
from SF anymore. I'm as bummed as the next guy, I just don't really see any
villain here[1].

[1] I know, I know, some people will say building codes are the villain. I'm
not prepared to present a long defense because I actually can't rule this out,
but I'm highly skeptical of this argument... I guess I'd just ask if building
lots of high rise dense apartment buildings would have "saved" manhattan or
the left bank of paris from culture killing real estate prices. To me, the
real solution is that the creative people will move, locally maybe to Oakland,
or that other cities will pop up (austin seems like a prime candidate).

~~~
kyledrake
"I do think that a creative culture (which includes tech!) can't really
flourish in such an expensive city. It just limits options too much when you
have to make so much money just to live."

This is exactly why I moved to Portland, Oregon instead of San Francisco 4
years ago. We've had a very strong creative tech scene here, that has not had
the same levels of cost pressure. It emulated the situation during the
Homebrew Computer Club days in Silicon Valley, it had the formula I thought
would make it a good place to do tech startups.

The affordable cost of living has allowed me to work on projects I otherwise
would not have been able to in SF, because I simply couldn't have afforded it.

Concernedly, Portland rents/houses have been trending upward recently, largely
due to a lot of people moving here from California. It's my hope that Portland
is able to maintain that balance of affordability and ambition... we'll see.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
_Concernedly, Portland rents /houses have been trending upward recently,
largely due to a lot of people moving here from California. It's my hope that
Portland is able to maintain that balance of affordability and ambition...
we'll see._

Well if we could stop telling everybody about it... ;)

------
ivankirigin
This should probably be the number of such jobs needed to rent a room walking
distance to BART or Caltrain in the whole bay area. But then it wouldn't have
an obvious agenda.

Is anyone surprised that cities are expensive or that a city that dramatically
restricts construction of high density housing is even more expensive?

------
njharman
I thought it would be much higher.

I'm a socialist. I believe in Universal Housing (that is every one should be
guaranteed/given shelter (also healthcare, education, and sustenance)). But, I
definitely don't believe in Universal Housing for whereever you want to live.

I'm thoroughly unconcerned that it requires 4-8x times minimum wage to live in
of the best / most popular cities in the world.

Around 1991 my self and 3 other 20-21 yr old college dropouts moved to SF,
rented a two bedroom. Can't remember wages, doubt minimum wage cause most jobs
pay more than that in SF. I did temp work, two waitresses, and I don't
remember what 4th did. There were trade-offs. But we wanted to live __in __the
city even when everyone else our income bracket was being forced out to
Oakland. I lived all over SF for 14 years with increasing income and
decreasing roomates. It 'd doable, if you want it bad enough.

~~~
twoodfin
_But, I definitely don 't believe in Universal Housing for whereever you want
to live._

Interesting. How do you think such a system of Universal Housing should work?
One alternative is to build high density public housing which, IMHO, has been
shown to be an utter disaster from which many poor communities are still
suffering.

Another alternative is to incentivize the poor to leave high cost areas and
spread out to where they could be housed more affordably/safely/sanely. I'm
not sure that's as terrible an idea, but it certainly has downsides, including
potentially sacrificing whatever culture and community already exists in
poorer areas.

I am not a socialist; my currently preferred form of welfare is simply to give
people cash (and _more_ cash, rather than less, if they obtain a job). But I'm
definitely curious to hear the other side.

~~~
dkokelley
_> Another alternative is to incentivize the poor to leave high cost areas and
spread out to where they could be housed more affordably/safely/sanely._

That incentive exists in the form of cost-of-living savings.

~~~
twoodfin
Sure, but is that enough? How do you create "Universal Housing" if some poor
person living in San Francisco stubbornly refuses to buy a bus ticket to
Montana?

------
dspeyer
As usual, "afford" means "make roughly three times the rent".

Take a look at Outer Mission, which has a monthly rent of $2150 and an
affordability of 4.0.

    
    
       10.24 $/hour * 8 h/workday * 21 wd/month = 1720 $/m
       4.0 * 1720 $/month = 6881 $/month
       6881 \approx 3 * 2150
    

So while having 4 incomes is recommended for living there, it isn't actually
needed. You could live there on a smaller income by being careful about your
smaller expenses.

~~~
heyitsnick
A 4x factor sure sounds very high, though maybe the costs in SF (or in the US
in general) are different to my own;from my experience over the last 6 years,
living in a variety of setups in different cities in Europe, I spend 50-60% of
my monthly outgoing on rent (then about 10% on bills, 10% on transport,
leaving ~20% on misc and recreation). A 2x factor seems much more reasonable.

~~~
potatolicious
You won't find an apartment in SF with a 2x ratio, landlords will run
screaming away from you. This is a city where you _line up_ with other
prospective tenants to see apartments, and deals are sealed frequently on the
spot - and where bidding wars are not unheard of.

If you come to SF intending to rent an apartment on a 2x factor, you will be
homeless.

The insane rents in SF is an express of the extremely constricted supply -
which has other effects beyond merely just rent. It's a landlord's market and
they can afford to be extremely choosy about who they rent to.

~~~
graue
I've found NYC almost as bad. Just being able to afford the rent isn't enough.
Here, yearly income 40x rent is standard, and sometimes even that's not
enough.

Since I'm doing contract work and don't have a regular salary, one landlord
told me outright that even though I had demonstrated I could pay, he wouldn't
rent to me because he "wanted a more stable tenant".

It feels terribly insulting to be told that, and makes me long for a humbler
city like Chicago or Minneapolis, where if you have money, a landlord will
take it without nearly this level of nonsense.

Or Berlin. I looked at apartment prices there and began to feel quite jealous
of the Germans :)

------
w1ntermute
This is all due to regulation and zoning laws. Given the demand, SF should
look like Hong Kong by now: [http://photomichaelwolf.com/#architecture-of-
densitiy/8](http://photomichaelwolf.com/#architecture-of-densitiy/8)

~~~
toufka
It's starting to. Having been here since ~2008 - there was literally _no_ new
construction until about last year. And now there are about a dozen high-
density apartment buildings going up (on Divis, Market, Duboce, 3rd, etc.).
Likely that the greater housing crisis coupled with an explosion of local jobs
at the same time greatly increased the burden.

------
NelsonMinar
Made by Stephanie May. Here's some comments about this map on her blog:
[http://www.mizmay.com/2013/05/Rental-Housing-
SF.html](http://www.mizmay.com/2013/05/Rental-Housing-SF.html)

~~~
rayiner
Read her other posts. It's basically the same litany of views (supporting
highly paid municipal workers and rent controls while opposing aggressive
policing) that have pushed people out into the suburbs, simultaneously
destroying American cities while putting their finances in shambles.

~~~
pessimizer
People ran to the suburbs because of rent controls and highly paid municipal
workers? In what narrative?

~~~
spikels
Both of these policies drive up the cost of living causing families to move
out[1]:

Rent control makes apartment rentals more expensive (and lower quality).

Overpaid municipal workers must be supported with higher taxes and/or higher
fees.

[1] [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Families-exodus-
leaves...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Families-exodus-leaves-S-F-
whiter-less-diverse-3393637.php)

~~~
huxley
The article you cite doesn't say anything about overpaid municipal workers or
rent control.

------
bostonscott
Seems to me the premise of many comments on this post is that people should
have a right to live in San Fran.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Well, if someone was born, grew up, and spent their whole life in SF before
being forced out by rent increases... why not? Should we just say it's
perfectly fine that housing markets keep forcing the middle and working
classes further, further, ever further out of the urban cores?

~~~
nattaggart
It sounds like you are suggesting a rather perverse sort of inheritance where
the "right" to San Francisco stock is granted to those who are born into it
irregardless of that man's wealth, merit, or ability.

Allocating resources this way would be bad enough if housing stock was a
public good, but it's not. It's owned by landlords who are then required to
subsidize the lifestyle of the beneficiaries of this "right".

~~~
MrMorden
If TPTB wanted affordable housing, they'd get out of the way, ditch rent
control, let developers build more of it, and subsidize rental for the poor.

There's one showstopper problem with a more free-market approach--the
overriding purpose of rent control is to subsidize rich parasites like Charlie
Rangel. It would be a lot harder for such people to have their housing paid
for by others if subsidies were explicit and means-tested. Sure, poor people
wouldn't come out worse, but they're not the ones making the rules.

------
StavrosK
As an aside, I love the needless interactivity on what is essentially an
image.

~~~
VeejayRampay
As an aside, I love the needless negativity on what is essentially a nice
interactive map.

~~~
StavrosK
I wasn't being negative, I was just pointing out that the map features weren't
very useful in this instance, yet they were included.

~~~
mertd
It actually makes it unusable on a mobile phone browser.

~~~
notimetorelax
Works fine on my tablet with Chrome.

------
kyledrake
Richmond is a great part of town, my friends used to live there and I enjoyed
visiting them. But the transit accessibility is terrible. Even with express
busing it takes up to 40 minutes to get downtown. If they put in better mass
transit options, it would be a much more suitable place to live and I think
you would see this map even out more.

That said, the people that live there tend to be older families that have been
in SF for a long time, and to them that's probably not a high priority (they
often live under rent control and probably don't work downtown in tech). If
you change the status quo, you threaten their ability to live there by raising
prices.

I don't think this is going to go away until the exorbitant valuations on tech
startups does. It's the main force that's driving these price increases, just
like it was during the first bubble.

------
tallowen
What do the numbers you get when you hover over a neighborhood mean? They seem
to be somewhat contradictory.

Household income to afford this rent is always way higher than the median
income of those who actually live there. Is there an error in the way these
numbers are being calculated or am I misunderstanding the headings?

~~~
dmckeon
1) A mismatch between the "2 bedroom" metric and the actual mix of occupied
dwelling spaces.

2) Marginal demand - current supply and demand has more effect on currently
available properties than on previously existing leases. If rent control is in
effect, long-time rentals may cost much less than the current market rates.

------
wozniacki
As a purely informational resource, can someone add how those minimum wage
earners can avail themselves of affordable housing, which seem to dot every
neighborhood in the city?

What does it take and how many, indeed, do?

------
nonchalance
One thing to note is the word "Average". In the financial district, for
example, the apartments along the water have far higher market rates than
those even a few blocks away

------
xfour
Well done, nicely cutup neighborhood polygons on gorgeous base tiles.

Obviously something is wrong with Financial District, I don't think the data
you are using was accurate there.

~~~
blackjack48
Why not? FiDi is home to some of the most expensive luxury units in the city.
This fall, voters will consider a proposal to build new luxury units along The
Embarcadero.

------
Glyptodon
Why 2-br instead of 1-br/studio?

~~~
rtpg
I thought the same thing too, but I guess if there's two of you working, then
two minimum-wage jobs "should" work. You can apply the same sort of reasoning
by assuming 2 people are paying for it

Still frustrating that people will somehow defend the minimum-wage/rent
disparity.

~~~
Glyptodon
I agree that getting by in SF on minimum wage jobs is likely impossible, but
at the same time for most of human history separate bedrooms have been a
luxury.

It'd be interesting to find out if two people could afford a studio or 1-br
for 4 jobs or fewer. (I'm guessing not, but you never know.)

~~~
rtpg
For most of human history indoor plumbing has also been a luxury.

Though you're right that a 1-br + living space should be "decent" for 2 people
(the 2-br probably has a living +kitchen too, so is probably not bad in living
arangements). Studios are usually a pretty tight fit (euphemism) for 2 people
I'd think though.

~~~
nmcfarl
I've lived in a couple of studios with my previous SO, for something like 3-4
years. In a huge number of ways I prefer it to live living in a 2 bedroom like
I do now (however I much prefer living with my wife, so....)

It enforces a minimalist aesthetic, excellent cooperation, solid space
management and living a good chunk of your life out of the house. Which makes
for a nice lifestyle.

However your mileage may vary (and I think it certainly matters that we chose
to live this way, and where not forced to...)

~~~
rtpg
I don't know what size your studio was, but as a student I've been in studios
around 18m2, and I fill it up well enough with my own stuff. Might be more due
to my hoarder personality than other things

------
avty
Time to move to low cost areas such as Texas.

------
schoper
No worries, the government subsidizes the living arrangements of the lower
classes so that they can continue to live and breed in pathological
concentrations in expensive cities. The supply of people to mug/rape you is
still higher than out in the suburbs.

