
If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving? - ForHackernews
https://sf.curbed.com/2019/1/30/18196549/san-francisco-everyone-leaving-first-person-migration-california
======
WaltPurvis
This article was originally published on November 8. (I knew I'd read it
before; it was probably linked to and discussed here.)

[https://medium.com/s/story/if-san-francisco-is-so-great-
why-...](https://medium.com/s/story/if-san-francisco-is-so-great-why-is-
everyone-i-love-leaving-d2b167471c35)

~~~
dang
Yup:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18766216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18766216).
This is a somewhat better discussion, though.

------
aphextron
After recently getting back from Portland, it couldn't be more painfully
obvious that the entire problem comes down to housing. They are building new
(affordable!) apartments there like nothing I've ever seen. You literally
can't walk two or three blocks without seeing a construction crane. And the
local culture reflects that. So many business that simply _could not exist_ in
SF were thriving due to the cheap labor and plentiful customer base of 20
somethings that can actually afford to live on their own in the city.

~~~
xefer
It’s also possible that there is such a pent-up demand for housing in San
Francisco that no amount of building could realistically do enough to make
things truly affordable.

~~~
rsync
"It’s also possible that there is such a pent-up demand for housing in San
Francisco that no amount of building could realistically do enough to make
things truly affordable."

I am an SFBA (Marin) resident with a fairly large financial and personal
interest in the health and welfare of the city of San Francisco - so this is
something I think a lot about.

I think your point is interesting and should be considered.

Obviously it isn't _literally true_ \- clearly there would be a point at which
enough housing could be built in San Francisco to hit any arbitrary
affordability number.

However, it's worth considering that any politically and physically
feasible[1] amount of development might not satisfy the latent demand,
nationwide, for a house in San Francisco. It is not inconceivable that there
are literally 2 million people in the US that would like to immediately move
to SF if housing prices were in line with, say, Minneapolis or Denver.

I also think there might be a corollary to this with regard to homelessness in
the state of California. I have read with great interest about the successful
"house the homeless" projects that have been implemented in places like Salt
Lake City which _appear_ to suggest that you can solve a cities homelessness
problem by building enough units to house that population. But what if there
are (essentially, not literally) an _unlimited number of people willing to be
homeless in California_ ? What if the Salt Lake program really only works
because it gets cold and snowy there and, really, there are only so many
people willing to be homeless there and you can, in fact, house them all ?

If either of those are the case, I don't know what a good solution looks like.

[1] Including the time dimension ...

~~~
davidw
What's odd is that you talk to people in the following places who are
convinced that an "unlimited" number of people want to live in their area:

* The bay area

* Boulder

* Austin

* Portland

* Seattle

And so on and so forth - and even right here in Bend, Oregon!

I have a suspicion that everyone wanting to live in _all_ those places
probably isn't actually true.

~~~
ido
There has been a general flocking back into the cities in the last ±20 years.

I don't know about Bend but all other cities you mentioned are desirable urban
hotspots with (relatively) plenty of attractive jobs.

I find it very easy to imagine the supply of people interested in moving to
all of them outstrips supply by so much as to practically be indistinguishable
from unlimited.

There really are _a lot_ of people around and there are as many in not more
decaying/depopulating areas to compensate for the Austins and Berlins of the
world.

~~~
davidw
Except for the fact that when you start looking at data instead of imagining,
it turns out that it's possible to provide enough supply:

[https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2019/01/29/oregons-
housin...](https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2019/01/29/oregons-housing-
supply/)

Housing in Portland is catching up to demand and rents are leveling off.

Seattle is seeing something similar. The bay area is not, because they fight
housing tooth and nail.

------
sampo
> It’s not my fault she’s gone, that all 12 of them are gone. Normal. People
> move all the time. Nothing I could have done.

Except allow building more homes. Vote for politicians who'd have allowed
building more homes. My guess is, the author has voted against her own
interests.

Which one is more important, keeping the "charm" of houses and neighborhoods
where you cannot afford to live anyway, or keeping those 12 your closest
childhood friends, even if that means allowing to build apartment buildings
for them to live in? You choose.

~~~
rsync
"Which one is more important, keeping the "charm" of houses and neighborhoods
where you cannot afford to live anyway, or keeping those 12 your closest
childhood friends, even if that means allowing to build apartment buildings
for them to live in? You choose."

It is worth noting that _both of those_ are reasonable, acceptable democratic
outcomes.

I personally would like to see much more in-fill and height in a lot of the
city of San Francisco - but I am dismayed when I hear other such proponents of
this idea rejecting the results of democratic processes as illegitimate.

There is a serious movement underway in California to remove local control of
housing/zoning/development and enact statewide, top down controls and
incentives - simply because democratic processes did not produce "acceptable"
results.

The common retort is that local councils and county boards and neighborhood
associations - local control - is by nature undemocratic (something something
only old retired people have time to go to county board hearings something
something) but I would like to point out that those very same people who hope
to _remove local controls_ in favor of top-down, region-wide planning, were
very much in favor of legalizing marijuana (as I was) and _instituting local
control_ at the expense of the (federal) top-down, region-wide planning.

Democracy for thee, but not for me ...

~~~
yaacov
Very few people are pro- or anti- local control in general. People have
specific policy goals, and achieve those goals at the level (local, state,
federal) where they’re most feasible. There’s no hypocrisy there.

~~~
rsync
I encourage you to read the local progressive press in San Francisco - for
instance, the 48 hills blog[1]. There is a serious and growing sentiment that
removing local housing authority and controls is the proper solution to these
problems.

In fact, there are governmental working bodies that are moving in this
direction - Plan Bay Area comes to mind, as well as Governor Newsome's
proposed transportation funding mechanism[2]. Or just read the literature from
the Yimby party in SF[3] - see part VI, bullet #2 ...

[1] [https://48hills.org/](https://48hills.org/)

[2] [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/01/gavin-
newsom-...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/01/gavin-newsom-
housing-reform-transportation-budget-homeless/580192/)

[3]
[https://yimbyaction.org/sf/platform/](https://yimbyaction.org/sf/platform/)

------
maxsilver
> There is an apocalyptic amount of people moving into California, and no one
> blames them for the overcrowding and the shifting culture. But when too many
> Californians leave California and settle in, say, Portland, they are blamed
> for ruining the place by way of simply being themselves.

Part of this is where the money comes from.

Poorer/lower-middle-class people (mostly) move into California, to work these
jobs under varying amounts of duress. It's hard to complain about the kid who
moved from Iowa/Wisconsin/Tennessee/etc, and is hoping their first real tech
job at Uber or Facebook or Netflix justifies the move. That's why discussion
moves to hating the companies, not the people.

But when Californians leave, they leave wealthy (in comparison). Even if they
were poor-ish in California, just the act of selling their home (or condo, or
any unit, anywhere in the state) instantly propels them straight to the upper-
class or upper-middle-class when they move to places like Idaho or Nebraska or
Michigan.

So, when they move here, and say things like "$200k for a beat up old house?
That's nothing! A _downpayment_ in California would be $200k!" \-- it gets
easy to hate the coastal person _for their money_. Because you sure as hell
aren't earning that cash local -- Our hometown Gordon Foods corporate jobs
aren't paying even 33% of the wages a corporate Uber Eats job does. Our local
housing prices are no longer driven by local wages, they're driven largely by
what percentage of coastal people are cashing out their wealth and dumping it
into our hometowns (or what percent of coastal private equity funds are buying
up our cities to rent back to us at inflated rates)

\----

That's not to defend these actions, I am _not_ saying this is right (no one
should hate anyone over this). But it does at least help understand why the
blame goes where it does. The blame follows the money. In California, that
money comes from the companies. But in flyover-USA, that money is coming from
the _Californians_ (or NYC/Boston/DC/Seattle/Denver transplants), because you
sure as hell aren't ever earning that much money from any local company here.

~~~
geebee
Do you have any stats on the wealth distribution of people leaving California?
This really is a situation where more demographic information would be
helpful, since an average wouldn't tell you as much. Do the wealthy
Californians tend to be old, retirees? Young with kids? Are half the
Californians leaving well off, with other half largely penniless?

Your assertion that "when Californians leave, they leave wealthy" may be true,
but I would like to see it substantiated with some kind of cite.

Having grown up in SF (I'm in my late 40s), I have, by this point, seen a lot
of people leave (and arrive), and they run the gamut.

I know a couple with two small kids who did what everyone in Portland fears
most - they bought in SF during the housing bust, sold recently, collected
800k or so, and now own a house outright in Portland.

I know a woman who grew up in Palo Alto in the 1970s and works as a
documentary film maker. She left for Denver with nothing but the savings that
can get you through a few months.

Lots more, and they're anecdotes, but it's enough to make me suspect that
"when Californians leave, they leave wealthy" isn't true often enough to make
it a generally accurate statement, even if it does describe a substantial
number of these cases.

~~~
austincheney
California is bleeding something like 60,000 people each year just to Texas.
The Californians moving to north Texas metros do not appear poor relative to
neighboring Texans enjoying superior standards of living with deprecated wages
compared to California.

When I bought my Texas house about a decade ago the average house price in my
metro was about $200,000 and now I think it is about $250,000. These average
houses are individual units from 2500-3000sqft on a quarter acre lot. If you
are able to sell an equivalent CA house for $2,000,000 you are moving in
wealthy compared to Texans. It doesn't mean you can afford a mansion here
though, because property taxes are about equal to CA property taxes at about
6.5% per year.

~~~
geebee
You did say "do not appear to be poor". Is there a chance you're noticing
wealthy people, because they tend to be more noticeable?

Yes, people who bought a house while ago in California, sell, and move to
Texas would have a lot of money. But again, is this typical?

I'm not saying it necessarily isn't typical, just that "it seems like", or
"appears to be" isn't data. A lot of people leave California because they can
cash in on their house, but a lot of people also leave because they'll never
be able to get a foothold in the housing market.

We really do need some data on this to have a meaningful conversation about
it.

~~~
burlesona
I would love to see the data on this as well. But at least anecdotally around
me (an immigrant working in tech in SF), the overwhelming number of people who
moved here are following a plan that looks like this:

1\. Get a big tech job in SF and earn > $200k per year (in some cases 2-3x
that). 2\. Deal with living in a run down apartment yet still paying
$2200-3500/mo. 3\. Shovel a large percentage of your income into savings for
5-10 years. 4\. Move back to <anywhere else> with $300k in cash.

At which point you can pay either pay straight cash, or make a huge
downpayment, for a nice house and live pretty comfortable in the upper middle
class for the rest of your life.

Again I would love to see scientific data on this, but in my immediate work
setting, I've heard 12 of the 15 engineers I work with state this as their
"life plan."

Of the three who that isn't their plan, two are Bay Area natives, and one (I
think) has decided he'd like to stay.

So, circling up to the parent comments, there are certainly large numbers of
these people leaving every year, taking their <geographically relative> big
bags of cash back to the corners of the world.

------
specialp
Unfortunately this is the circle of life in high cost living areas. The NYC
area has been expensive for a long period of time. SF now has become even more
expensive and this phenomenon is newer to the area than NYC. The people I grew
up with had the following outcomes:

* Got a high paying job and stayed (not many)

* Tried to make it here, but ended up moving to NC or FL

* Work lower paying jobs dual income and struggle

* Got a job in the area they went to university

SF was not super expensive 10-15 years ago. I mean it was not like living in a
Midwest city but you could still get by on a reasonable income.

Central Fl and many areas in NC have a large amount of New Yorkers. This trend
is going to accelerate as top tier cities become more popular and affluent,
and costs will spiral. Unfortunately cities like Orlando that take in a lot of
fleeing New Yorkers do not build the same density and downtowns as older
cities so it is less likely that they will become as desirable for higher
paying jobs. They are more suburban in nature and are car dependent.

What needs to be done is to make high density cities from the start somewhere
else. Make a high speed rail link from SF to some area outside and start new
with affordable high density in mind. Then people will initially commute to SF
but the new area can then flourish. Otherwise old high density cities will
continue to explode in popularity with post 1950s sprawl cities taking in mid
income people.

~~~
ummonk
NYC isn’t nearly as expensive. I know people who have bought affordable houses
in places like New Jersey and have reasonable commutes. That just isn’t
possible in the Bay Area.

~~~
paulie_a
NJ isn't NYC

That's like saying Chicago isn't expensive if you just buy in a different
state.

~~~
greenyoda
Large parts of NJ (including NJ's five largest cities[1]) are part of the "NYC
Metro Area", right across the Hudson River and well-connected to NYC by
commuter rail and bus routes. The commute from NJ to midtown Manhattan can be
shorter than the commute from some of the outlying parts of NYC.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area)

------
CPLX
> But what this “native” Bay Area kid won’t do is start blaming the guy from
> North Carolina or Wisconsin or Boston—basically every other person in the
> bar—for propelling the rents into the sky and inadvertently forcing the
> “locals” to flee.

That's one option. The other option would be to blame all the Bay Area natives
who are seemingly happy to build massive employment centers but are completely
fucking allergic to building apartment buildings.

But what do I know, I just live in New York, which really does share a lot of
the dynamic described in the article as well and has it's share of problems
with migration and gentrification, but where we also know how to actually
build housing.

It helps.

------
lefstathiou
Taking a macro view on it and ignoring individual circumstances, I believe San
Francisco is slowly bleeding itself out which may be a net positive for
society (and I would apply this to my home NYC as well).

I don’t believe it’s a good idea for our society long term to have ALL of the
nation’s leading X (technologists, bankers, engineers) in one city or state.
As painful as it is to see your community leave, taking a perhaps heartless
view on this, these talented people are going to other places and will
revitalize communities.

I live in NYC and it pains me to bump into people who are enslaved by their
paycheck commuting 3 hours (no exaggeration) a day. Moms and dads never seeing
their kids dealing with crumbling infrastructure. I believe they could cut
that paycheck in half, live in Charlotte or any number of good cities and lead
a much happier life.

I guess I’m saying that while I wouldn’t wish being priced out of your
community to anyone, for people on the trajectory of being priced out, the
sooner perhaps the better to a happier life somewhere else.

~~~
dimva
We will still have ALL of the nation's leading engineers in one city / area,
but no one else will be able to afford to live there. Even non-leading
engineers will be forced to move out, and will no longer be able to learn from
the leading engineers, lowering national productivity.

I don't know why you assume the leading engineers will move. As a "leading
engineer", I don't see why I would take a $200-300k/year paycut and a less
interesting job just to leave San Francisco, even though it pains me to see
what the local politicians here are doing to their people.

~~~
malandrew
I know of a few unicorns that have already started moving their interesting
jobs to other cities when a few of their leading engineers express interest in
moving out of the SF Bay Area. When I told my boss I was planning on moving,
he and my director offered to let me start a satellite team in the office I'm
transferring too.

I wouldn't be surprised if some tech companies start creating "moving
charters" where a team gets slated to move to another satellite office and
engineers interested in that satellite office transfer into that team and then
the team is moved after like 1-year.

The SF Bay Area still leads in interesting jobs, but I increasingly see
interesting jobs with leading engineers in other cities and that trend will
only continue over time. In my company, I can think of four satellite offices
that I know has strong engineers with interesting projects in low cost of
living cities that I'd consider moving to.

------
jarjoura
Every so often one of these articles comes along and someone writes at length
about the struggle of living in the bay area. I've been here over 13 years now
and these articles are a constant.

First, the Bay Area never promised to be anything to anyone. It had its roots
in the gold rush and then the military, followed by the semiconductor rush and
today the internet. At each iteration, people flooded into the region to work
in lucrative jobs and push out the farmers that lived here for generations.

There may have been a larger creative scene in SF, but it never was as rich
and diverse as people think they remember it to be. 13 years ago, the entire
eastern 1/2 of SF was abandoned warehouses and homeless encampments. I mean,
potrero hill was where you could go buy your coke, it was full of drug
dealers! Now look at that neighborhood.

But ultimately, SF is a small city, not that diverse and lacks many of the
things that make paying NYC prices worth it for NYers. That has been true for
its entire history and I don't think that will change.

However, if creative industries are your thing, and what you crave, move to LA
or NYC. That's where you'll find all of that, from amazing artists to bands
that are amazing, even if they're playing at your local pub.

~~~
wwweston
> However, if creative industries are your thing, and what you crave, move to
> LA or NYC

Having done this, I still think it's a little sad if the Bay Area can't figure
out how to make room for a creative culture. There's so many reasons it
matters:

* a region that economically squeezes would-be bands or artists starting in a garage or warehouse is also going to squeeze capital-poor garage startups, not to mention supporting everyday labor that may not be making tech industry money

* it's likely that the same kind of open/change-minded/creative culture that feeds artistry feeds entrepreneurship (psychedelics aren't the only thing that can open your mind)

* sometimes people _like_ living in places with vibrant cultural capital

* while it may never have had the creative mass that NY or LA has had, I can't believe the Bay and even a wider region out 101 & 80 doesn't have plenty of creative talent looking for a center

~~~
jarjoura
Berkeley is as close to that as you’re going to get here.

------
randomacct3847
I think this experience is very different for gay men (speaking as one living
in SF). Because gay men are more likely to not want kids (and probably still
less likely to be married at a certain age), there is less a need to be able
to afford a 3 bedroom home and in my experience there is no late 20/early 30
exodus from SF that I see with some of my straight friends. Then there’s the
extra benefit of SF and other major urban centers like NYC and LA in just
having a large LGBT population, which many “second tier” cities that are
cheaper do not have and would be a major downside to moving out.

------
mathattack
SF isn’t so great anymore. It’s like New York, but with more junkies and no
cheaper boroughs.

It has more drug addicts than people enrolled in public high schools.
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/02/sa...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/02/san-
francisco-fact-of-the-day.html)

------
ctime
This article is really spot on. It feels like we're in a big speculative mess
in Bay Area. The home-price-to-income ratio in SJ is about 20x [1] Anything
over 3x used to be considered "risky". Let's say in Costal Areas it was be
allowed to double, then you have 6x. That's good, not great, but ok. And
that's about what pricy DC and NY cost. SJ is 20x. How is this possibly
sustainable? Not even going to get into the dual income trap that only makes
it marginally more realistic.

How is this good for average folks, like the ones that keep society running?
How will this work in the long run? There will basically be two classes of
people, the rich and the ultra poor who barely survive. I suspect poor don't
have the money or the knowledge about elsewhere or they _would_ be moving out
in droves.

[1] - [https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/where-the-house-
price...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/where-the-house-price-to-
income-ratio-is-most-out-of-whack/561404/) * I should note peak home prices in
the last 12 mo were in mid july and houses have fallen by about 5%, so this
ratio might actually be lower.

~~~
malandrew
Moving is really quite expensive, especially if you're moving a family. On top
of that, many people have a support network of family and friends that they
would leave behind too. If you have small kids, these support networks are
super useful since you'd have the added cost of daycare or babysitting in a
market where you have no support network.

------
twtw
These two statements seem to conflict a bit. Anybody else think so?

> are flooding their home, driving up rents, installing yoga studios,
> polluting the local vibe with new technology, and generally making
> everything suck while sipping kale juice.

> These people want to be artists, teachers, blacksmiths, therapists,
> mechanics, and musicians. They want to have children, open bakeries, own a
> house ...they aren't techies; they had the audacity to want something
> besides tech.

Are the people who left California and who apparently are driving up rents and
sipping kale juice in wherever they ended up artists, mechanics, musicians,
and blacksmiths? California rents have gone up apparently because technology
companies pay workers enough they can afford $3000/mo rents for an apartment.
Is the effect of an influx of bakers, musicians, artists (who I'm assuming
probably can't afford high rents) sufficient to inflate rents enough to
complain about? I would have said the "californians" people complain about are
employed by technology companies (or other high paying companies).

~~~
geebee
You've accurately described what San Franciscans complain about. The writer of
this piece mentioned that San Franciscans don't tend to show hostility to
people based on where they're from, and that's largely true, we don't have a
particular region or state people complain about they way people in, say,
Portland, complain about California.

However, a lot of San Franciscans do complain constantly about techies.

One thing to keep in mind - some states, such as Oregon and Washington, have
had a strong undercurrent of hostility to California for the last century.
This is an interesting perspective:

[http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Class...](http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Pacific%20Northwest%20History/Lessons/Lesson%201/1.html)

------
waynecochran
It's funny to see Californians complain about folks moving to California and
driving up housing costs. I grew up in Bend, Oregon where housing was driven
up by tons of Californians moving there. Bay area folks only have themselves
to blame for their "I got mine" attitude and not allowing anyone to build more
housing. I fly every week to Santa Clara because there is no way I am moving
there -- my home here in WA is almost paid off.

------
georgewfraser
There’s a lot of discussion in this thread of restrictions on building, but an
equally big problem in San Francisco is constructions costs. Even if all
limits on building were liberalized tomorrow, housing would still be extremely
expensive because of the high cost of construction. There are many causes,
including the accumulation of well-meaning environmental regulations over the
last 10 years. The Terner center at Berkeley put together a great focus group
with developers and contractors where they discuss these causes:

[https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/San_Francisco_Cons...](https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/San_Francisco_Construction_Cost_Brief_-
_Terner_Center_January_2018.pdf)

------
zapita
Because of exclusionary zoning and prop 13, both of which are supported by
middle-aged and retired homeowners, a dominant political force in California.

------
diogenescynic
Its not. The quality of life is terrible here for what you are paying for. I
pay $3000 for a one bedroom and constantly have homeless people in my garage
or camping next to my building. My car has been broken into several times.
Cops don’t walk a beat or do anything whatsoever to prevent crime. If you call
the cops they basically shrug it off unless there’s actual violence happening.
The traffic is terrible, public transportation is terrible (mostly because
BART and Muni let on people who don’t pay). There are piles of feces and
needles all over the city center. I honestly love the weather, but there are
just so many negatives to your daily experience here. If I could move, I
would.

~~~
twtw
> I pay $3000 for a one bedroom

> If I could move, I would.

If you don't mind, why can't you move? Caring for family members?

~~~
diogenescynic
Me and my wife both have jobs here and finding two jobs at once to relocate is
difficult. Both our families are here, not caring for them (yet) but that also
makes it hard.

------
bhauer
> _I can’t change the rent._

This ending is poignant and obviously true. However, it's also true that
individuals can support the YIMBY movement in whatever manner they are
comfortable, which as a unified force is the best means to reducing rents that
we have. Campaign to reform zoning to allow denser residential buildings;
reform building regulations to encourage development; abolish Proposition 13
to bolster market dynamism; eliminate the mortgage income tax deduction to
counter price lift; allow ADUs on single-family housing zones; do whatever you
can to encourage increasing housing supply.

As aphextron pointed out elsewhere in this thread, it's all about housing. And
the housing problem is solved by _supply_. Demand is what it is, and as long
as there is a cultural and employment nexus, demand isn't going down
appreciably any time soon.

For me, the key is knocking off any concerns about gentrification or the loss
of a community's "character." These are selfish blankets that are comfort for
NIMBYs. Yeah, I might jokingly jab at hipsters and their ways. But I
absolutely do not want them regulated out of the area by way of restrictive
zoning, building regulations, and other thinly veiled exclusion in the form of
constrained property rights.

------
edoo
A lot of people only see gross salary and forget the only thing that matters
is how much money you net at the end of the year.

For most in the middle class if you compare the cost of living index to a less
desirable place to live, even with the much reduced wages, it makes fiscal
sense leave.

~~~
CPLX
> only thing that matters is how much money you net at the end of the year

No it doesn't. Other things matter too.

I gladly give up spectacular amounts of money to live in New York City because
I have no interest in living anywhere else. Glancing around it appears I am
not alone.

~~~
edoo
True, I would qualify that with 'fiscally speaking', or also 'given regions
you would be willing to live'.

------
topkai22
The article is all qualitative, but the quantitative numbers bear it out, at a
state level at least. In 2016, the state had rough 150,000 more internal
emigrants then immigrants (from census data) This is a continuation or
acceleration of a trend that has been occurring for 30 years- see
[https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/great-california-
ex...](https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/great-california-exodus-
closer-look-5853.html). If my back of the envelope calculation is right,
California had a net outflow of 10% of its current population over 30 years.
Of course that is made up for by births and external migration, but matches
the authors observation.

------
malandrew
It's not great. Everything interesting has moved to the East Bay or out of
state. All that left is high rents. I've already got plans to leave in April.
The only thing good that remains is a lot of the most interesting tech jobs at
the larger companies like Facebook, Google, Uber, AirBnB, etc. However even
those have a shelf-life because it's only a matter of time (5-10 years is my
guess) because those are no longer the exciting companies anymore. If SF
starts losing the future unicorns to other markets, it's only a matter of time
until the golden goose dies.

Word on the street is that several unicorns are planning more and more
engineering growth outside the SF Bay Area in 2019 and beyond.

~~~
throwaway98121
If everything interesting had moved out, people wouldn’t be moving in and
rents would fizzle out. I think you meant to say things you f8nd interesting
have moved out.

------
egypturnash
None of my artist friends who were born in SF can afford to live there any
more. My techie friends are starting to move out because it's getting less
affordable for even them, or because the only people left of their circles are
other techies.

Seattle's going the same way, rapidly. I hope nobody who works for Amazon or
Microsoft decides to follow me when I leave this town for the place I grew up,
because tech money sure does not trickle down very far and I would like to be
able to pay my freakin' rent without whimpering every time I do.

~~~
tasubotadas
Well, that's how the cookie crumbles. If you can't afford the place where you
currently live, you move somewhere else.

~~~
egypturnash
I wonder if SF will get bad enough that it's simply not worth the commute for
anyone who's not a techie to live there. No more fast-food workers. Nobody to
clean the toilets. Nobody who isn't a software zillionaire in a perfect,
shining Galt's Gulch on the ocean.

~~~
tasubotadas
> No more fast-food workers. Nobody to clean the toilets.

If anybody paid attention to how a market works, one would realise, that these
workers would start getting SWdev-like salaries.

------
ummonk
The boomers did everything they could to construct the housing supply and
ensure their children would be unable to afford to live near them. Hope they
enjoy their blessed property values!

~~~
jtms
Did you mean constrict? So you feel that an entire generation of humans
conspired against the well being of yours deliberately... just because? I
think you might want to consider developing a more nuanced and less reductive
view of things.

~~~
ummonk
Yeah, meant constrict. Darn phone keyboard. They didn't conspire against my
generation just because. They conspired to increase property values. The fact
that my generation (excepting the few of us with elite tech company
compensation) can't afford those increased property values is just an
inevitable side effect of that.

------
markbnj
> I visited Seattle for the first time a month ago and was warned someone
> might throw a bottle at my car for my California plates.

This same crap was literally in the air almost 30 years ago when I lived in LA
and traveled to Seattle and Portland regularly on business. Californians were
responsible for the traffic on the 5, and not being able to get into
restaurants, etc. etc.

Also...

> There is an apocalyptic amount of people moving into California, and no one
> blames them for the overcrowding and the shifting culture.

Really?

------
tasubotadas
The current state of journalism - Red Herring and The Texas Sharpshooter just
in the title.

------
gesman
In short:

Cost of living + abusive taxes

------
rblion
I loved my week in the Bay Area. But...I prefer living around mountains and
trees instead of that many people and buildings.

Remote work is the way to go.

------
phillipamann
I rarely post here but fuck it. I was born in Redwood City. I went to school
briefly at UCB and graduated from UCD. I spent the entirety of my life in this
small stretch of land. I immediately started working as an engineer in tech as
soon as I graduated but now had to deal with this new reality the author
describes. I was involved in the music and art scene in the Bay Area and
almost everyone has left. The few that remained kind of despised me for
working in technology. It was also a weird disconnect to hang out with people
and everyone knows that I easily make four times the amount they make while
living at my Mom's house. I just didn't feel myself around them anymore. I
didn't really care to make friends with tons of engineers. I spent my day with
engineers (albeit with very few even born in America let alone the Bay Area)
and I wasn't rushing to spend time with tons of more engineers on my free
time. The shows and parties dried up and I became more and more depressed
wondering what am I going to do with my life?

Everyone here is posting in the typical Hacker News way of trying to
rationalize the situation. If only we build or built more housing, etc. It
doesn't matter. More housing wasn't built and even if more housing comes
quickly (which it won't), the area has changed and there isn't really an
artistic or cultural zeitgeist to attract artists like there used to be here.
Of course, there is Oakland but unfortunately I didn't fit in there because
politics and identity seemed to be everything people cared about with their
art and it wasn't interesting or fun. I have no idea if Oakland continues to
change or not.

I ended up leaving. I sold almost everything I owned and moved to Israel. I
wanted to go somewhere radically different than California. My only other
options were LA and NYC. I wanted to be near a Jewish population because that
is important to me. It's nice to see how different life is outside of the Bay
Area. While Tel Aviv definitely has it's fair share of technology, I still see
people walking on the street with guitars and there is a vibrant night life
here which is nice.

There are of course drawbacks too. The Bay Area really is a special place. I
understand what the author is getting at in the piece. There is an implicit
cost to these people. If your entire area becomes engineers, data scientists,
and product managers, I am sorry but the area is fucking boring and
uninspiring. It also becomes a bubble where no one is actually solving
anything anymore or creating anything inspiring.

Edit: Another huge thing I forgot to mention is the commute. The commute here
is fucking INSANE. We make an obscene amount of money and ride on these
screeching subways with junkies and schizophrenics. We get off and walk over
corpses on the street to get to our beautiful offices that all look similar
with reclaimed wood and steel and program. I couldn't rationalize the
absurdity of it all anymore. I couldn't deal with the time and energy cost of
commuting. I lived in Redwood City and drove to BART and then BARTed into SF.
When I lived in Berkeley, the commute was just as bad. If I was lucky to stand
on a Transbay bus, it was tolerable but BART took so long. If I decided to
move to Oakland, I would have to deal with an even longer BART where we are
packed in like cattle. It is insane to me. The first thing I did was get a
sublet where I could walk to work.

~~~
throwaway98121
What I understood from your post is you don’t want an area full of product
managers, data scientists, and software people, but you’re very content in an
area that replaces them with Jewish people?

I think everything you said is entirely subjective. I would personally rather
be surrounded by techies than people of a particular race or religion, as long
as these people come from different genders, races, ethnicities, or beliefs.
To me, that’s much better than being near a large Jewish population or Arab
population or white population or people of ${preferred_religion} here.

~~~
dang
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
throwaway98121
What was the stronger or weaker one? Op posted his opinions as being objective
truths, which I pointed are subjective.

Enlighten me.

------
purplezooey
At least you can go to a local CC two years for (almost) free.

------
rdiddly
She says the ones coming in to California _"...flock here for gold and glory,
ready to hustle and disrupt, hammering to hit the motherlode and laughing at
the odds"_ while the ones leaving _"...leave their families and communities
behind on the chance they will, ironically, strike gold."_

In other words they are the same. In both cases they're de-prioritizing more
traditional values (home, family, friends, community) to pursue wealth and
fortune. To put it bluntly and somewhat negatively (although I'll make a
disclaimer in a sec), they're coming for greed, and they're leaving for greed.
There's no contradiction.

Here's that disclaimer and a bit of a tangent: Greed has a good side, like
Gordon Gekko's speech in the ancient movie Wall Street -- "Greed is good.
Greed works." Basically greed is just a thing; the desire for more ___. And
keep in mind that all things have dual nature dark/light just like the
yin/yang symbol shows. Dark and light are not only coiled intimately around
each other, but there is also a spot of the one inside the very heart of the
other. It's really a brilliant piece of symbology and a good reminder about
the world, that participants in fruitless and polarized political debates
would do well to pay attention to. (Though nobody wants to hear there's as
much evil in them as in their opponents, or that there's as much good in their
opponents as themselves... especially when it's true.)

Anyway, with that in mind, you can state something like "Steve Jobs was
greedy" and see what a perfect statement it is. It captures both sides. But
yeah so in that case let's not fail to call out the aspects of the Silicon
Valley "dream" that are inherently materialistic. Or opportunistic, might be a
better word. Should we really be surprised that such a place, through its own
success, begins to crowd out other uses/priorities/values including both
traditional ones (home, family) and non-traditional-but-non-materialistic ones
(art)?

Also what of these other towns where life is cheaper? They are filled with
people who stayed put, who chose "home and family" above "gold and glory."
Granted some of them had the _luxury of choosing_ let's say "being an artist"
because the town is cheap enough to do so. Others had _no choice_ but to be
pretty-much without gold or glory because of a general dearth of opportunity.
But don't let either one of those things distract you: People in these places,
especially people who grew up there, value the things they value. I'd imagine
you'd find "home and family" are ranked as higher priorities, as well as
"creativity," while "fame and fortune" would be ranked lower. Materialism and
opportunism would be lower. Restlessness, shallowness all would be lower. If
you could measure things like that.

So again, should we be surprised that when people steeped in the Silicon
Valley go-go-get-'em environment -- either the ones who already traded "home"
for "success" once in order to go there, or the ones who, like the author's
friend, are doing it for the first time -- land in those other places, and end
up standing out unwelcomely like the proverbial sore thumb? Try to blend in(0)
and you might find less "hate." The "angry locals of Portland, Seattle,
Denver, New Orleans, Kansas City, Phoenix, Austin, and elsewhere" aren't
pissed because they think you're rich snobs (though those do stand out more,
in part because of their disproportionate ability to influence the actual
physical architecture of a place, more on that in a minute); they're mad
because by virtue of your very relocations, you display a verifiable history
of being at least greedy/opportunistic enough (again, in both good/bad senses)
to do so in the first place, and of embracing the values the Valley/Bay is
famous for, and of actively disdaining the (apparently now contrary) values
these people adhere to, which are ironically the ones whose loss is being
lamented in this piece.

(0) I shouldn't have said "blend in." "Blending in" sounds too much like
fascism. "Harmonize" would be better. Because like people in a band, you might
all be playing different instruments and parts, but you sort of have to be
playing the same song, don't you.

Architecture provides a good metaphor here. An ostentatious new ultra-modern
house that makes no effort whatsoever to harmonize with the surrounding
architecture -- there are now plenty of those in these towns. If you say you
don't like them, people will disingenuously say it's because you're an ass-
backwards hick who hates modernity, but that's not the reason. It's because
it's artless, jarring and tone-deaf, like someone who joins a band while it's
playing and starts playing a different song.

------
eli_gottlieb
>Several months ago, she had made the difficult decision to move back onto a
small corner of her parents beach-town property, after her urban East Bay
house became waterlogged during the rainstorms of 2016. We had to move her out
over a weekend, after the mold took half the furniture and gave her roommate
pneumonia in both lungs. I touched swollen blisters of stagnant rainwater
pulsing on her walls. After emailing the landlord about the issues, the
housemates abandoned the property. He then successfully sued them in
accordance with California tenant laws.

What the actual fuck is wrong with California and its tenant laws?

~~~
beamatronic
I don’t get this part. I’ve been led to believe tenants have all the power
over landlords.

~~~
njarboe
Of course the housing crisis has many factors contributing to it. This is a
major one. If a place has a majority of renters, has a prevailing political
culture of socialism and activism, and the rents start going up fast, you
likely end up with an erosion of property rights with rent control and other
restrictions on landlords. Tyranny of the majority. If landlords are seen by
the local culture as bad people this quickly this becomes true. Only assholes
and faceless corporations looking for maximum ROI are going to buck the social
stigma and be an evil landlord.

Oakland used to at least let small landowners who lived at a multiple unit
building they owed not to be under the strong tenet laws. Last election cycle
a proposition changed that. Now a landowner can't refuse to renew a month-to-
month rental contract that is a standard after a year lease. These small
landlords were the last refuge for people in many cases. You actually had a
relationship with the owner and they would often keep rents way below market
because they liked you, enjoyed living next to you, didn't need the extra cash
as they bought the property many years ago, and didn't want to try and find
somebody else to move in.

It is too bad that being a landlord has become so onerous in the Bay area. The
state passed a law that forces cities to allow small 600sqft mother-in-law
units to be built on properties, if the lot is not too small. This could
really help with the housing crisis. As the rents in Oakland have doubled over
the last 4 years or so, myself and other people I know were thinking about
investing the 150-200k that it takes in the high cost Bay Area to build one of
these units or convert a large house into a duplex/triplex. People are not
much less interested in doing so now that this new law has passed. Oh well.
Maybe cash out and go elsewhere? Who would have thought that Carl's juniors $6
burger would have to be discontinued so soon due to the fact that they would
have to charge more than six bucks for it. Now it would be called the $19
burger.

~~~
malandrew
This. I would also add that renters with such strong rights as they have in SF
also constitute a mutex on a property. When so many of the units have these
mutexes, it makes it basically impossible to develop property in San
Francisco. The other policies such as minimum parking requirements, CEQA
lawsuits and "you'll block my view" lawsuits, etc. are all basically mutexes
on a property held by everyone but the property owner, which is the only
person with an incentive to develop their property for profit. And by
"develop" I mean build more housing that would help alleviate the shortage.

