
The San Francisco Exodus - blackjack48
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/7205/
======
crazygringo
> _To subsidize affordable homes for 100,000 people would cost $25 billion. So
> yes, we should build as much subsidized affordable housing as we can._

What?! Why on earth would I want my tax dollars subsidizing your rent? I mean,
charity to the poor, homeless, etc. is one thing (it's good), but subsidizing
your rent so you can be closer to boutique coffee shops? Instead of, you know,
helping the truly needy get health care? Or investing in education? Gimme a
break.

> _If we want to actually make the city affordable for most people—a place
> where a young person or an immigrant can move to pursue their dreams_

Why does San Fran specifically have to be that place? The Bay Area's a big
place.

By the end of the article, the author's right about needing a more integrated
metropolitan policy, but this attitude that "everyone deserves to live in San
Francisco, even people with no money" gets tiring after a while. Neighborhoods
and cities gentrify. People move elsewhere, to the new-and-upcoming-and-more-
interesting neighborhoods/cities. Places change. That's just how it is.

~~~
mbreese
Any thriving city needs a mix of people. If for no other reason, then think
out support staff. What about waitresses, cooks, cleaning staff, janitors, bus
drivers or any number of low-paying/skill but absolutely needed workers. Where
should they live? Why can't they live close to work? And if they need to
commute into the city to work, how far out can they get pushed before it's not
worth it any more?

Thinking that an entire city could consist of highly paid tech workers is a
fantasy.

And what about families? It's next to impossible to afford to have a family in
the city. What will those tech workers do when they want to start a family? Do
you really want them all moving to the east bay instead of helping to grow the
city?

~~~
crazygringo
> _waitresses, cooks, cleaning staff, janitors, bus drivers_... _Where should
> they live? Why can 't they live close to work?_

Why _should_ they? Of course they can commute, just like many highly-paid
professionals choose to commute too. Nobody considers a short commute a
fundamental human right.

> _how far out can they get pushed before it 's not worth it any more?_

They won't, that's the magic of a free market. Wages/salaries will go up in
the city so that it's always still "worth it".

> _Do you really want them all [families] moving to the east bay instead of
> helping to grow the city?_

I mean, why not? I live in NYC. Plenty of people I know leave NYC when they
want to start a family. Or at a minimum, they leave Manhattan to move out to
Brooklyn or Queens.

You can see how ridiculous the argument is, by the fact that its polar
opposite sounds the same: "do you really want all the families who would be
helping to grow the east bay, moving into downtown SF?"

Look, there are certainly coordination, transit, etc. problems with the Bay
Area. And there are income-disparity problems nationwide. But people seem to
confuse those with just being afraid of change/gentrification, and that
doesn't help.

~~~
EricaJoy
You live in NYC. You have a 24-hr public transportation system going between
the boroughs that is a flat fare, per ride, no matter where you go. This makes
commuting a very feasible and affordable option for those that can't afford to
live in Manhattan.

Things are a bit different in SF. While you have 468 stations, we have 44.
Expansion of our public transportation system has been hampered by NIMBY
homeowners who have done all they can to prevent it. Rents in areas that
surround BART stations
([http://www.bart.gov/stations/)are](http://www.bart.gov/stations/\)are) still
quite high, except around some of the further out stops
([http://rentheatmap.com/sanfrancisco.html](http://rentheatmap.com/sanfrancisco.html)).
Unfortunately, the further you live from the city, the more it costs to
commute to the city
([http://www.bart.gov/tickets/calculator/](http://www.bart.gov/tickets/calculator/)).

So while everyone moving away from the city like folks in Manhattan do would
be nice, it's not that easy here.

(Aside: I miss New York public transportation.)

~~~
dragonwriter
> So while everyone moving away from the city like folks in Manhattan do would
> be nice, it's not that easy here.

It's actually quite easy for people to not live in the central city, which is
why of the 7.15 million people in the SF Bay Area metropolitan area, only a
little over 800,000 live in the City and County of San Francisco. The ratio
between the population of San Francisco and that of the whole metro area isn't
really all that different than the ratio of Manhattan's population to that of
the New York Metro Area.

~~~
EricaJoy
> It's actually quite easy for people to not live in the central city, which
> is why of the 7.15 million people in the SF Bay Area metropolitan area, only
> a little over 800,000 live in the City and County of San Francisco.

I thought the article proved that people don't live in the city because there
isn't enough housing and/or it's too expensive, not because it's easy to live
outside the city.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I thought the article proved that people don't live in the city because
> there isn't enough housing and/or it's too expensive, not because it's easy
> to live outside the city.

The article didn't prove anything, it started with mistaking anecdote for
data, and proceeded to tell a just-so story to explain the anecdote, and then
make a series of value claims about what needs to be done based on that just-
so story, explicitly grounding those claims in at least one false fact claim
(that the three high population bay area cities are the places with "the
space" in the bay area to accept a disproportionate share of the region's
growth.)

------
bronbron
I've long thought that the bay area's major problem is not necessarily
problems with San Francisco proper (though the strong aversion to high-rises
while complaining about the increasingly cut-throat and expensive real estate
market is hilarious to me), but that the "outer boroughs" are so incredibly
unattractive because the transit system is incredibly inadequate.

Living in Queens, Brooklyn, hell even Jersey is an incredibly reasonable
option if you live in New York. You trade some commuting time for lower
prices, and certainly Flushing doesn't have the same appeal as SoHo. But it's
never a question of "oh my god it's after midnight how am I going to get
home?" like I experienced when living in the bay area.

It almost seems like San Francisco has a huge aversion to becoming a
metropolis, but the problem is that the city really doesn't have a choice in
the matter.

~~~
habosa
This. Transportation in the bay area is awful. I lived in San Jose and it
would take me 2+ hours to get to SF by public transit, even at peak times. If
I was in SF after midnight, I was literally stuck for the night. One time I
had to take an airport SuperShuttle back to SJC just to get anywhere near my
apt. because I tried to leave SF at 11pm on a Sunday. I can't even imagine
what would happen if it was that hard to get between Newark and NYC.

~~~
jowiar
San Jose to SF is, by East Coast standards, a pretty long ways. Newark to New
York is about 10 miles. SF to San Jose is about 50 - more comparable to New
York to New Brunswick or Trenton or Stamford.

Find me a 50-ish-mile distance in the US that is easier to cover by public
transit than SF/San Jose. Boston/Providence? DC/Baltimore?
Philadelphia/Wilmington? New York/Trenton? Comparable at best, but in all
cases, you're generally talking the absolute far edge of regional rail that
runs hourly at best.

~~~
jlgreco
The far-end (~50 miles) of the mainline regional rail line in Philly (used to
be the R5, I forget what it's called after they renamed it) has half-hour
coverage in the mornings for commutes, settling back on hourly during the day.
To be fair that is unusually good coverage, but it is certainly possible to do
elsewhere.

~~~
Apocryphon
Certainly with the wealth of the Bay Area, it be a shame if we didn't at least
try to create such a system for convenience.

~~~
jlgreco
Part of the difference may be that several of the communities along the R5
near Philly are affluent for the area (or in general, in some cases
(Gladwyne)). Transit to poorer areas like Upper Darby isn't quite as nice.

------
ghshephard
I lived in Oakland (17th, on Lake Merritt) back in 97/98, coming in from
Canada and attracted by the low rent. I got the hell out of there as quickly
as possible (moved to Sunnyvale) - Every night consisted me of taking my life
into my own hands as I tried to walk the 5 or so blocks from Bart to my
apartment.

A week ago, after not having visited for about 10 years, I toured the old
neighborhood and was _astonished_ at how much it had changed - it was after
dark on a friday night - and there were actually a _lot_ of people out,
walking around the lake, restaurants open.

HUGE shift in gentrification of the area. This is a very positive impact of
the San Francisco housing situation.

~~~
auctiontheory
Still not quite safe enough for me to consider a nightly walk home from BART.

Looking for a place in Oakland a few months ago, I was amazed how blasé people
were about being assaulted, mugged or having their car stolen. Much as I
prefer the EB vibe, I think living under constant threat of violence would
stress me out.

~~~
gmjosack
About a year ago I was at a dinner party with some friends that live in
Oakland, off Lake Merritt. They were all recalling stories about times when
they'd been mugged like it was normal!

Another friend of mine tells me about shootings she's seen outside her window
as recently as a few weeks ago. She's only a few blocks South of Lake Merritt
around 18th and 5th.

I'm sorry but I wouldn't feel at all safe living in that area.

~~~
staunch
I've been made to seem like crazy person more than once for suggesting that
people in the bay area live in intolerably crime-ridden/filthy conditions.

~~~
mc32
People used to put up with the same violence in NYC, till they got sick of it
and elected mayors who cared about fighting crime more (messrs giuliani and
bloomberg). Back in the messrs koch and dinkins eras, NYC was a dump, by and
large.

San Jose takes crime seriously and it's constantly up there among the safest
large cities in the US.

One can only wish The EB will take crime more seriously. SF is slowly taking
crime more seriously. Maybe the EB can lear from SJ and SF a bit.

Undoubtedly some people will raise the issue of profiling criminal
behavior[1]. If I had to choose between simmering street violence and
occasional police excess (where one can seek redress), I'd choose the latter.
Not sure why the EB is so anti-police so much as to spite their own safety.
The good of being better policed vastly outweighs, to me, the occasional bad
cop. But to each their own.

One phenomenon I don't understand so well. In NYC I'd see people dress us as
(wannabe) mobsters (acquire their style), but they were no mobsters, tho maybe
they idolized them in some way --they would complain that they'd get flack
from the police. Maybe if they didn't try to pretend to be toughs the police
wouldn't think they were toughs. I can see some similarities in the
'anarchists' in the EB.

~~~
sbierwagen

      and elected mayors who cared about fighting crime more
    

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

It's not at all clear that the drop in the crime rate since the 90s can be
solely attributed to greater policing.

~~~
mc32
No but it doesn't exacerbate the issue. See Detroit and Chicago for their
experience with crime in 'a time of declining crime rates'.

------
blackjack48
If any SF residents agree with the sentiment of this article, I'd recommend
voting in the upcoming election. Props B & C will allow a project with new
housing, retail, and open space to be built downtown. I support the project
not because it's perfectly designed, but because it would set a terrible
precedent for future development in the city if opponents successfully use the
referendum process to block it. Ironically, many of the same people opposed to
the project are the ones who are complaining the most about rising rents. Even
though the project certainly isn't low- or middle-income housing, it will
relieve some of the demand that would otherwise be placed on housing for lower
incomes.

~~~
cylinder
I'm not anti-development but your last statement is not necessarily
guaranteed. These days new units are being sold off-plan before construction
to wealthy international non-residents who simply want to park their money.
They will remain empty. Unless there are provisions in the permits to prevent
this, but it's difficult to enforce.

~~~
jvm
That is bad if true but if the alternative is for those investors to buy some
other units elsewhere it's still useful to build this to prevent them from
doing that.

~~~
makomk
Foreign investors seem to be biased towards new-build property, I'm not sure
why. "Elsewhere" could easily mean an entirely different country.

~~~
cylinder
New builds involve dozens of units coming to market at once. Thus, sales and
marketing teams can be employed to market the property overseas to these
wealthy individuals. It's also far more predictable and doesn't require
inspection and such. In some markets, such as Australia (possibly UK, I'm not
sure), you don't pay property tax but you do have an upfront stamp duty. This
duty is waived for purchases of new developments (another way foreign
investors get to pilfer commonwealth countries and take advantage of so many
of the benefits of living there without paying much tax at all).

------
ajiang
I've always wondered why more people don't live in Oakland or Berkeley, which
are both a relatively short commute to downtown SF. The housing prices are
significantly cheaper, and especially in Berkeley, there seems to be a strong
tech community.

Without going into all of my guesses as to why this hasn't happened in droves,
I think one of the larger reasons is the access to cheap transportation back
to those areas at night. BART stops too early, so for the younger crowd that
likes to stay out, it's too expensive to constantly take a $40-60 ride out of
SF. Without the advent of additionally public transportation, would it be
economically viable to provide a paid shuttle service to and from SF /
Berkeley / Oakland?

~~~
nicholas73
I've never considered Easy Bay because of its much higher crime rate. There is
a reason it's cheaper. Maybe things are different now, but I wouldn't know,
because I've never considered it.

~~~
rgbrgb
That's some very poor circular logic. You've never considered it because of
the crime rate that you don't know because you've never considered it.

~~~
nicholas73
It was high enough to demotivate me from checking again.

------
integraton
The whole western side of the city could really use some development. Nothing
there is particularly nice as it is now. A lot of units don't even have
laundry machines in the buildings, so people end up spending thousands per
month on rent while still using laundromats. The location, however, is amazing
given the proximity to the parks and beaches, and there are solid commercial
arteries. There's not much character there, and almost everything is
relatively new, built within the past century.

~~~
Fluxx
There does seem to be a "center of gravity" in SF that is incredibly bizarre
to me. For a lot of people, if you live west of Divis or south of 24th st, you
might as well be, for all intents and purposes, in Oakland. Seems like a lot
of the complacent crowd of SF lives in the Mission/SOMA/Pacific
Height/Marina/Russian Hill bubble and never gets out of it.

Yet there is a whole 3/4 of the city that isn't encompassed by that part that
is really, really awesome. It may not be "trendy" or anything, but they're
full of great neighborhood places and "real" people. I think it's easy for
everyone analyzing this situation to forget those places exist.

~~~
malyk
This comes back to transportation a bit. Living in the outer sunset or outer
richmond and commuting to soma or the financial district is either a really
long bus ride on packed buses or an N/T/etc fraught with delays getting onto
and down market street. It takes me 35 minutes to get from my house in north
oakland to work off the embarcadero station. When my wife and I lived in the
inner richmond (6th and fulton) it took her 55 minutes to get to her office
near 16th and bryant.

I think transit here generally gets a bad rap (my wife and I used the muni
basically without issue for 5 years living in the city and loved it), but when
considering where to live the commute from (and the colder weather of) the
western neighborhoods is a big deal.

~~~
Fluxx
Yeah that's totally fair. I live at Geary and Stanyan, and made liberal use of
the 38L and 38[A,B]X busses, which cut that time down a lot. I used to go to
the gym every morning before work and could be door to door on the 38BX in
about 25 minutes most days. If you can get a seat on the busses, I kinda
enjoyed the time on my phone or with a book, but that's not always possible
too.

I commute by bike now, which is certainly the fastest way to get around the
city - perhaps just not the safest or least-sweaty way.

------
bluedino
>> If we want to actually make the city affordable for most people—a place
where a young person or an immigrant can move to pursue their dreams, >> a
place a parent can raise kids and not have to spend every minute at work—we
have to fix the supply problem.

Why? Why can't it stay the playground of the rich and people who are trying to
pursue their dreams can live in <insert name of nearby city>

>> Subsidizing affordable homes for 10,000 families comes at a price of tag of
$2.5 billion. >> So yes, we should build as much subsidized affordable housing
as we can.

No. While I am for subsidized housing, I don't feel it should be done in
extremely rich areas just for the heck of it. I'm not saying to start housing
projects where nobody wants to live, but there's no sense in burning money to
build them where costs are extraordinary.

~~~
netcan
I totally agree with you on subsdization. Subsidizing a few thousand people so
they people can live someplace expensive is insane.

OTOH, this and other manifestations of what feels like a binary income
distribution is a tricky thing. Rich neighbourhoods are one thing. Rich
schools. Rich cities is a new thing. It creates feedback.

------
r0h1n
Related: NYT just a few days back on "London's Great Exodus" \-
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/londons-
gre...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/londons-great-
exodus.html?_r=0)

>> The gap between London prices and those of the rest of the country is now
at a historic high, and there is only one way to explain it. London houses and
apartments are a form of money.

~~~
rmk2
I'm not sure that is in the US, but I'd wager the very British notion of the
"housing ladder" has much to do with the skyrocketing prices in London. The
idea, in essence, is that you buy a house (ideally under market value, but
that won't happen, so you buy _at_ value). However, since everything spins
around moving _up_ (wherever that may lead you), you now need to move into a
_better_ property (or, at least, a property/area that is _perceived_ to be
better). Thus, in order to be able to afford that, everybody now tries to "add
value" to their places.

This leads to a number of things:

1) The very British sport of "extending" and, really, slapping extensions on
absolutely everything.

2) Avoidance of any actual, structural work. Completely modernising a flat
(or, worse even, a house) is _expensive_ , i.e. you risk spending a lot of
money without the certainty that you will get all of it (and, ideally, more)
back.

3) In connection with the point above, this means "adding value" usually
really means painting things over, plastering things over and superficially
"fixing" (i.e. covering up) the most obvious flaws.

All of the above leads to an _upward_ spiral, where everybody tries to sell
essentially the same places for more and more money. Give it two or three
rounds on the spiral, and a house that used to be, say, £300,000 is now
£400,000, with nicer visible features but the same rotten core.

The other problem with London property prices is that they influence the
prices of most of the South-East of England, with certain places (within
commutable distance) experiencing the same price-hikes.

------
steven2012
My wife and I are blessed to be bottom-end 1%-ers, and even we could not
afford to live in SF, so we moved down into the peninsula. Well, we might be
able to afford it if we got a crippling mortgage, but then we couldn't afford
day care for our kids, and the 1hr+ commutes would have wreaked havoc on our
lives.

You can't raise a family in SF without making enough money to afford a $1.4M
house, and spending $2000/month on private school per kid because the SF
schools have become really horrible (due to SF political stupidity).

~~~
geebee
Here's a link to API scores for SF elementary schools.

[http://www.greatschools.org/california/san-
francisco/schools...](http://www.greatschools.org/california/san-
francisco/schools/?gradeLevels=e&st=public)

Test scores don't tell the whole story, and I'll agree that there is some
political stupidity, but think it's fair to say that the blanket statement "SF
schools have become really horrible (due to SF political stupidity)" is
incorrect.

For an urban district, I believe SFUSD has an unusually high number of
extremely high performing schools. There are some very bad ones too. You'll
see this pattern in the surrounding areas as well. The difference is that
owning a house in a high-rent district doesn't get you priority access to that
school, they way it does in the burbs. As a result, a lot of people who can
afford a 1.4 mil house leave SF if they don't get their top school choice,
because in Marin, your high mortgage guarantees you priority access to the
good school.

Of course, a lot of people stay in SF precisely because they _can_ get their
kid into a 9 or 10 school even though they can't afford the 1.4mil house.

~~~
steven2012
One of my coworkers lives near us, and I believe they were told to list a
dozen schools in order of preference. Given the lottery nature of the system,
they didn't get into a single one of them, which forced them to go the private
school route.

~~~
geebee
This is a long standing and very intense debate in SF. You can reasonably
criticize the "lottery" system, and you can reasonably defend the "school
choice" system.

Kind of funny that Reason magazine, not normally a big cheerleader for SF
politics, kind of likes the approach.

[http://reason.com/archives/2006/04/01/the-agony-of-
american-...](http://reason.com/archives/2006/04/01/the-agony-of-american-
educatio)

Anyway, I think it's perfectly reasonable to defend or criticize the
assignment process, I just don't think you can accurately claim that SF public
schools are horrible.

~~~
steven2012
Many elementary schools are very good to decent. I don't recall any public
high schools being very good, except for Lowell, and that's a charter school.
SOTA is also decent as well, but again, I believe it's a charter school. I
think the claim that SF high schools are on the whole horrible is accurate.

~~~
geebee
Why are you trying to _recall_ when the data is available in the link?

------
peterwwillis
See, this is why I love Baltimore. We've got charm out the ass AND our rents
are low.

Quite frankly i'm disappointed in how cartoonish SF's neighborhoods seem.
Here's the hippie burner neighborhood, and here's the spanish hipster
neighborhood, and here's the rich white boating neighborhood, and here's the
dingy chinese black market neighborhood, and here's the financial district
complete with skyscrapers and shops that close at 6pm. It's like a dirty spicy
version of DC.

~~~
Bahamut
I don't know about charm - I've been to Baltimore a bunch and it's definitely
not a city I would want to live in. Heck, my brother had his car broken into
while living there and he lived in a nice neighborhood!

~~~
driverdan
Car break-ins happen in every city. A single break in is not a good gauge of
crime rates. You don't have to be a genius thief to know nice neighborhoods
are a better place to steal from since that's where the money is.

~~~
Bahamut
I'm pretty sure it has been broken into more than once, and I know plenty of
others who have had their cars broken into while they were living in Baltimore
as well - it is an unusually high anecdotal occurrence that I have not heard
of from my friends living in any other major/semi-major city. One of my
friends even had his apartment broken into and all his video games stolen
(amongst other stuff) - the same friend also had his car broken into and all
his stuff stolen from it, the night before he moved out.

And that doesn't even touch some of the things friends have seen happen,
including killings, outright prostitution, and much more.

It's not a city that gives off good vibes, and I grew up spending plenty of
time in not so good places in the Bronx and Yonkers. I remember 5 years back
or so it was in the top 3 for murders (I want to say #1 or #2, which tended to
juggle between Baltimore and Philly - and this was over NYC, which is a pretty
amazing stat in itself).

~~~
driverdan
I'm not disagreeing about the city, just that the metric was flawed.

------
songzme
I just bought a house in Berkeley. I wanted to buy a condo in SF, but for the
same price of a 2 bedroom condo in SF with 1200 sqft I could buy a house in
berkeley with 6700sq ft lot size with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and a huge
backyard all to myself. Even if I had all the money in the world, I'll buy
rather buy a house in berkeley over a condo in SF. There are plenty of
restaurants around berkeley, and many places to hang out. The only thing I'm
missing out if I live in Berkeley is all the awesome tech events in SF.

------
auctiontheory
The article mentions New York. One difference between SF and NYC is that
public transport in NYC is at least 10X better. Especially as people spread
out, that makes a big difference to quality of life.

------
11001
Given this, and the recent article on "The London exodus", I'll just leave
this new online course here because it may be interesting to some:
[https://www.coursera.org/course/designingcities](https://www.coursera.org/course/designingcities)

------
SurfScore
People keep talking about the rising prices, but what is being done? What CAN
be done? Its supply and demand. San Francisco will always be expensive because
it is a desirable location for certain groups of high-earning people.

Being "progressive" is great, but we live in the real world and if you refuse
to do things to lower prices in the name of culture, prices will keep going
up. Ironically, this will also hurt, if not destroy, the "culture" that
they're trying to protect in the first place.

~~~
rprospero
I find it interesting that everyone sees this as a sliding scale with culture
on one side and rent on the other. There's a third variable that the city
could play with to keep the rent down while not building a single building:

Raise Taxes

If you want to lower prices and you can't/won't increase supply, the obvious
solution is to lower demand. Adding a sharp jump in the local income tax at a
high income level will free up housing space as wealthy citizens leave the
city. The less affluent won't see a tax increase, since it's outside their
bracket, but they will see housing become available, lowering rent prices.

Of course, this will be a hit on the economy as all the wealthy individuals
leave the area, but it decreases rent while keeping culture constant.

~~~
driverdan
The ridiculous CA tax rates are already keeping people like myself out. I'd
lose at least 10% of my income if I moved to CA.

------
cmbaus
Subsidizing is NOT the answer. This will drive up prices for everyone living
above subsidies. The problem is demand WAY outstrips housing supply. In my
opinion the one thing that could kill the Bay Area economy is the aversion to
residential construction.

Housing stock on the Geary corridor could be easily increased, and even a
modest improvement to the transit system in that area could make a big
difference.

It is absolutely crazy to artificially restrict residential building in areas
where there is high employment demand. It is almost like we want to prevent
economic growth.

The US is a crazy place. We complain that there isn't enough economic growth,
but when it happens, we put in all kinds of restrictions that limit it.

~~~
gdubs
This is kind of like arguing that the way to fix LA's traffic problem is to
build more freeways. For a time congestion will ease, and then before you know
it there will just be more cars, and the traffic will return. More concrete,
more cars, same problem.

~~~
cmbaus
No it isn't. Building high density housing is nothing like building more
freeways.

Edit: Many people argue in favor of building restrictions on the basis of
environmental concerns, but limiting housing in SF is just pushing more people
out to places like Sacramento, which are suburban waste lands and models of
inefficiency.

~~~
gdubs
I'm not arguing that urban density is less efficient, but that the increased
capacity would simply be filled with more high-paid workers. The city would
have to throw up a _ton_ of housing projects to have an effect on the median
housing costs. IMHO it would be better to spend that money transforming the
transportation and public education systems...

------
bparsons
I am always baffled at how other people are baffled that desirable places to
live are more expensive than less desirable places.

------
vondur
Regarding people moving to Oakland, there has been some people here talking
about how bad the crime was there. Then again to me, San Francisco is a really
dirty city with a ton of homeless people. I'm from Socal, so I'm not
unfamiliar with the homeless, I've just never seen them concentrated like they
are in San Francisco.

~~~
objclxt
SF has a lot of homelessness, which seems to be due to a combination of both
culture (generally liberal, reasonably good provision of social services,
reasonably relaxed attitude to drugs) and climate. As brutal as it sounds,
cities like New York will never have as large or visible a homelessness
problem for the simple reason you're quite likely to die sleeping rough over
the winter.

------
subpixel
I was surprised to learn about the level of disfunction in SF government
(which of course includes zoning):
[http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-12-16/news/the-worst-run-big-
ci...](http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-12-16/news/the-worst-run-big-city-in-the-
u-s/)

------
Futurebot
There are a couple of ways to alleviate this:

1) Build higher. A lot higher.

2) Massively increase supply.

Put in place a regulation that says all new buildings must be X stories high
(20,40,60, whatever.) Along with that, include a regulation that force said
buildings to fit in with the neighbhorhood look. UWS and the West Village here
in NYC have great examples of extremely tall buildings that are not
Jetson's-style eyesores.

Also put in place a regulation that says existing building that can be built
higher (while keeping the existing external facade) should be. Where this
isn't possible, knock it down and replace it with a building that keeps the
old facade.

Change the zoning restrictions and regulations to allow the above, and supply
will go up, prices will (eventually) come down, and the neighbhorhood looks
will remain similar. Everyone gets some of what they want, and the place stays
diverse, vibrant, and does not force local workers to deal with punishing
commutes just so they can do their jobs.

The above applies just as much to NYC or any other large city that is holding
back this kind of development. As per the UN:

"In 1950, one-third of the world’s people lived in cities. Just 50 years
later, this proportion has risen to one-half and will continue to grow to
_two-thirds, or 6 billion people, by 2050_. Cities are now home to half of
humankind." Policies need to change to deal with this new reality.

------
geebee
This article makes an interesting comparison between San Francisco and
Seattle.

"San Francisco has produced an average of 1,500 new housing units per year.
Compare this with Seattle (another 19th century industrial city that now has a
tech economy), which has produced about 3,000 units per year over the same
time period (and remember it's starting from a smaller overall population
base). While Seattle decided to embrace infill development as a way to save
open space at the edge of its region and put more people in neighborhoods
where they could walk, San Francisco decided to push regional population
growth somewhere else."

Interesting point, but are we comparing apples-to-apples? Here's the wikipedia
page for Seattle:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle)

land area is 142 sq miles, current population density is 7,402/sq mi .

For San Francisco, we get:

[https://www.google.com/#q=wikipedia+san+francisco](https://www.google.com/#q=wikipedia+san+francisco)

land area is 46.87 sq mi, population density is 17,620/sq mi.

Now, the article did mention "infill" which sounds more urban, so maybe
there's a difference in the city and county of Seattle? I don't really know
how that works up there. San Francisco is a very rare case where the city and
county are the same. The article doesn't seem clear about this - how are we
defining "Seattle" for the purposes of this article? If we cherry picked a 142
square mile area around SF, I think we could probably substantial construction
and growth. In some ways, the article even goes on to mention this by talking
about how SF and Oakland aren't part of the same city, but that this is where
the growth is starting to happen.

SF is at the point where there isn't much left to be infilled. There certainly
is some, but by and large, you'd have to tear something down to build
something up - at least to a much larger extent than cities that get to be
defined as a 150 square mile area or more.

I don't think there's much to be done here... but I think people are coming
down pretty hard on SF. My guess is that you could easily circle 48 square
miles of most major cities with comparable population density that haven't
allowed much construction in the last 50 years or so, and you could easily
circle 150 square miles around SF that make it look like it has pursued rapid
growth policies. The difference is that because of the way borders work in the
bay area, SF appears to be hostile to development because the new growth
happens elsewhere.

~~~
baddox
The land area and population density differences are huge, but they're not
really relevant unless they are the physical bottlenecks for housing
construction in SF, which I presume they are not. Politics (namely, zoning)
seems to be SF's bottleneck.

~~~
mjn
The amount of space impacts the politics as well, though. Seattle's new
construction is largely converting ex-industrial zones to residential, not
redeveloping existing residential zones, which is much easier to do
politically. SF has had that kind of development too: much of SoMA is ex-
industrial converted to residential. But there is not nearly as much ex-
industrial land in SF compared to Seattle (or Oakland, for that matter).

~~~
bcbrown
I disagree, I think there's plenty of redevelopment. Just look at the
controversies over allowing development on separate tax parcels, leading to
new houses being built in side yards and back yards. There's also (on Capitol
Hill at least) plenty of cases where single-family homes are being torn down
for townhouses and apartments.

------
stevewilber
It's really refreshing to see some intelligent commentary on the issues SF is
facing, as opposed to the mindless tech-bashing that has been going on in the
local media.

The only way to have a meaningful impact on housing prices is to increase
supply.

------
pconf
This is typical real-estate developer rhetoric "we can continue growing
forever". Don't look behind the curtain, though, at the real reason
redeveloped neighborhoods are sometimes more affordable i.e., you get what you
pay for. IMO not every city is well served by demolishing large tracts of
historic buildings for the glass-facade utilitarian apartment buildings
predicated on Quonset hut structural engineering principles (cheap, fast,
profitable, not to be confused with architecture). Let the developers work
where they're needed, Brisbane, Millbrae, SSF, etc. but leave San Francisco's
character and beautiful neighborhoods to those who appreciate _living_ in them
(vs profiting off of them).

The Examiner did a great article on the damage done to the City by
redevelopment of the type this article advocates, in the 50s and 60s. Seems
now to be available at USA Today:
[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-11-09-245099...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-11-09-2450995649_x.htm)
IMO, if you want to see exactly what Gabriel Metcalf is talking about go to
the City's Western Addition and while there ask yourself if it was worth it.

------
CalRobert
Perhaps if the cities to the south of SF weren't so stultifyingly boring,
people wouldn't feel so compelled to live in the city. Imagine you're 25 and
single, do you really want to live in low density single-family housing?
Hellholes like Fremont? Unfortunately zoning laws and nimbys prevent the
construction of livable, high density housing in favor of more suburban
prisons.

------
sAuronas
I used to build mixed-income housing (one third subsidizes public housing
units, one third 80% of area median and one third market rate) for a private
partnership to redevelop Chicago's public housing. I can tell you this...fail.
Does not compute. Does not work--socially (as an experiment) or financially.
The best thing to do is to give mayors the ability to build and get city
planners (disclaimer: I'm trained as one) out of the way. Affordable housing
cannot be built new, but is usually created as a side effect when replacement
units come on line and push down prices in existing units. SF will never be
able to accommodate all incomes as long as there is no open-source planning
guidelines that are geared to meeting this demand and give developers that "
by right" to build. On Oakland, I lived there and it is awesome except for
crime and politics and shifty characters. Especially the Quantics [sic].
Oakland can be THAT place, if the above happens here as well. It could,
conceivably be better (yeah, I said it) than SF.

------
sAuronas
I used to build mixed-income housing (one third subsidizes public housing
units, one third 80% of area median and one third market rate) for a private
partnership to redevelop Chicago's public housing. I can tell you this...fail.
Does not compute. Does not work, socially or financially. The best thing to do
is to give mayors the ability to buget city planners

------
bovermyer
This is why I prefer Minneapolis to SF. All the character, none of the
problems.

Though we do only have two seasons - winter and construction.

~~~
wyclif
It's also why I prefer Boulder, Austin, Philly, and even Omaha to SF. It's
time for some pioneering spirit, and with location mattering less than ever
because of the maturation of collaboration tools, I'm happy to save money and
let others spend it.

~~~
danenania
I like the concept, but there's so much intangible benefit to being in a
center of gravity. There seems to be some tipping point where the random
possibilities you encounter hit an exponential curve due to so many people
doing so many interesting things in close proximity. Unfortunately, it also
coincides with expense, crime, and high levels of general inconvenience.

~~~
mitchty
This is too true, while I love where I live for certain reasons, its
undeniably true that San Francisco has quite a larger talent pool and chances
for things to occur due to the increase in talented people.

------
legohead
Doesn't NYC have a rent problem as well?

I have lived in Russia, and visited San Francisco once. I have to say, I was
more uncomfortable in SF than I ever was in Russia. Personally, I don't see
the appeal. Reading this article, it makes me feel the author has on rose
colored glasses when it comes to this city.

~~~
chrisgw
Manhattan and the trendier parts of Brooklyn have a rent problem, but most
people commute from the outer boroughs, Long Island, and New Jersey where rent
is much cheaper.

------
thehme
I always thought that public transit in the tri-state area was something you
could not get anywhere else in the country and this article helps enforce that
thought. However, it does bother me that gentrification moves people out of
areas they once called home, and I wish this was not the collateral damage of
what otherwise seems to be a positive trend. I certainly would not like to
have to move because people who can pay more than me move in and force me out
of my town. Then again, if moving to the town next door forces schools and
services to become better, than maybe it's not so bad. It looks to me like no
matter how positive the intentions, supply and demand will always rule along
with their friend $$.

------
jff
I've often thought that while everyone complains about how hard transit is in
the bay area, we're kind of screwed by geography.

The Bay is this big asshole sitting right in the middle of everyone. All of
our development is spread out in a ring around the bay, which inflates the
distance from one place to another. If you took a map and cut out the bay,
then pulled all the shorelines together, it would only be 15 minutes to get
from San Jose to Oakland or San Francisco. But nope, we have to go in a big
damn ring.

------
tomkarlo
An agenda-driven article based on an unsupported anecdote (that lots of his
friends are moving to Oakland) and topped with a click-bait headline.

If there was really any net "exodus" going on, landlords wouldn't be raising
rents 25-30% each year.

~~~
wutbrodo
Nice bait-and-switch. The article isn't "The San Francisco Net Exodus", it's
"The San Francisco Exodus". Just because there's no net outward migration
doesn't mean that the outward migration occurring isn't notable. Note that I'm
taking no position on whether the current overall migration situation is good,
bad, or insignificant, just that migration of a certain part of a population
(in this case, income level) can be worth studying/discussing, even if they're
more than replaced by others.

As an example, if migration between Canada and the US increased a
thousandfold, but the net migration stayed the same, you can be damn sure I
would think it was interesting and worth looking at. Big changes in
demographics and migration patterns are always interesting (for better or
worse), and net migration is never the whole picture.

~~~
tomkarlo
Fair enough, but even then, he has nothing to support the idea that the
current exodus is any different from the normal inflow-outflow of population
that goes on every year in any major city. "People sometimes move out of SF so
they can buy a house elsehwere" is considerably less compelling.

------
n0rb3rt
I just turned down an offer at Apple because, even with the (by any other
standards) generous salary and options, the cost of housing just doesn't leave
any room for saving for college, retirement, no less owning a home.

~~~
gregd
SF makes San Jose, Cupertino, Mountain View, etc., look affordable.

------
fogonthedowns
This title is false. San Francisco's population is increasing and Oakland's is
decreasing. It should be called the San Francisco influx.

~~~
ScottWhigham
I think you're missing part of the point - are the people moving into SF
buying houses/condos or are they renting? I think the point of the article was
that housing prices are so high that people can't buy, thus it's going to
become a city of renters where properties are only owned by the very wealthy.
From a city culture standpoint, I think we would all be in agreement that a
city where people own their own homes results in a better environment (more
people would be politically active within their district, kids go from K-12 at
the same school district thus grow up with a stronger sense of community,
etc). I also think we would be in agreement that it's a stronger country when
the citizens can afford to buy their own homes rather than rent them from the
0.0005% who can afford to own in SF.

------
tsotha
Did I just miss it, or did he really lament the lack of new housing in SF
without even mentioning rent control?

~~~
malyk
What does new housing have to do with rent control? Housing built after 1979
isn't rent controlled.

------
ffrryuu
I'm looking to move to Texas here.

