As a European visitor, I had similar feelings about SF.
One moment I'm in Twitter HQ, enjoying free food from around the world, place is buzzing with techies. Next moment we wander around a bit and there's a whole park where the homeless are living in the bushes.
I was literally in a place where one guy I met was designing self driving cars, and another guy was wandering the street with no shoes on, fighting with his invisible friend.
I also thought the natural surroundings were a contrast with what people have built. Minus the bridge and a few landmarks, the city looks kinda bland. Too low-rise for such a popular place. But there's hills and natural features that are quite spectacular.
> Minus the bridge and a few landmarks, the city looks kinda bland. Too low-rise for such a popular place. But there's hills and natural features that are quite spectacular.
Victorian houses on hills make SF one of the most beautiful city in the US in my opinion. It has decent transit (which should be better !), walking around is pleasant in most neighbourhoods, the parks are amazing (ever been to Glen Canyon ? Land's end ?)
> Victorian houses on hills make SF one of the most beautiful city in the US in my opinion.
From a distance, they look beautiful. Up close, most are sort of gross looking and not well maintained. You’d think the cost of taking care of a little house would be negligible compared to the price of the house itself.
Home owners should still maintain the homes. If you have a leaking window and you don't fix it you might need to eventually replace an entire wall. Not cheap, especially in San Francisco where good contractors are on a wait list.
>There is no rent control for single family homes anywhere in CA.
"Rent control is in effect for all San Francisco renters who reside in buildings constructed before June 1979. This means your rent can only increase by a governmentally mandated percentage each year, based on the cost of living index, and with a 30-day notice. If your landlord has improved the facilities in your building, he can petition for an additional increase, but the Rent Board must approve his request, which can't exceed 10 percent. If a landlord is negligent in his maintenance of the building or units, you can make application for a rent decrease to the Rent Board."
Costa Hawkins is a state wide law. Under Costa Hawkins rent control does not apply to single family homes, or homes constructed after 1995, or individually owned condos.
Many of those Victorians were actually converted into units back in the day and rent control applies. Some are being converted back into single family homes now.
I don’t have a stat to back this up, but many Victorian houses in SF (especially the areas that a tourist would visit) have been split into multiple units and are not single family homes.
There is a huge shortage of good contractors in San Francisco. They probably make more money than most Software Engineers at this point. Good earthquake retrofitters are even more costly, I know of people spending $2000 for someone to come by and look at their house for an hour.
It's definitely not cheap to own a Victorian in San Francisco even with renters.
If it's not a huge reno, you could always do things yourself. I'm pretty scrawny and renovation-illiterate but I've manage to rent and use one of those huge ass insulation blowing machine from Home Depot before, and on top of saving money - despite having to rent a van - I got a better job done than most commercial contractors would do, because they are known to skimp on both material quantity and quality to minimize costs (source: I was redoing the insulation on top of two existing layers).
Definitely, any small plumbing work or electrical work I've been able to take care of. Beats getting charged hundreds of dollars for a 20 minute job.
I'm also a firm believer in trying to do as much maintenance myself as possible whether it's home/vehicle. If you own something you're going to care about it more and go the extra mile to make sure the work is done correctly. There are some jobs though where I know it's over my head.
> You’d think the cost of taking care of a little house would be negligible compared to the price of the house itself.
Why would you think that? Sure, SF has high real estate costs, but it also has high labor costs (including, for most people who can afford to live there through work, high opportunity costs of diverting personal labor to maintenance.)
> Up close, most are sort of gross looking and not well maintained
Up close a lot of the USA looks unmaintained compared to Europe/Australia.
Every time a foreign friend visit me there it would only take a couple of hours for them to say something like "...everything looks kind of half finished" , or "wow, this place is falling apart"
I wouldn't consider Glen Canyon or Land's End to be part of the attractions of San Francisco. Yes, you're closer to them than you are in New York. No, you're not close to them. If you want to be close to them, go to Salt Lake or Phoenix.
Unfortunately Twitter HQ is pretty much ground zero for more or less the worst part of the city in terms of homelessness, etc. But, really, a lot of visitors don't get a great look of SF given that most of the Moscone area isn't great. There is actually some nice architecture scattered around the financial district but you mostly want to go north or northwest to get to Nob Hill, Coit Tower, areas with a lot of Victorians, etc.
Last time I was in SF I went on one of the City Guides walking tours that focused on Victorians. I'm pretty sure it was Pacific Heights area--certainly over that way.
When I first flew in to San Francisco, I thought it looked like Mexico City.
After a while, I came to believe that lots of attached housing up and down hills is actually a pretty charming street form. On a flat plain, it would be claustrophobic, but the relief creates views that open up the dense landscape. Lots of San Francisco photography emphasizes this.
It makes me wonder why new developments today are always built in the flattest places -- the flatness practically forces us to include a lot of empty space, usually in the form of lawns.
I think your mixing the cause and effect here. Development in Flatland middle America is not constrained by coast line. It’s much easier to build out than up, and land is on average cheaper than coastal cities. This means developments include large open spaces, because it’s affordable. A lawn in a Mid West city starts at 100k instead of 10mil like in San Francisco.
That’s totally reasonable. The 100k quote was for inside a city, where prices are a bit more but still reasonable. But once you get into the burbs it’s more about finding a good neighborhood than an affordable price.
Source: Grew up and lived in Indiana, now live in SF.
It's much easier to design and build on flat ground, especially at scale. Things like road grids make sense, and designs can be spatially translated without custom geotechnical work per site. It also makes it MUCH easier to stage construction equipment and materials.
There are people willing to pay the design and construction premiums for a hillside location, but they are not buying developer houses :)
Also, the lawns provide a water buffer that's essential for managing stormwater runoff. The more densely paved a city is, the more likely it is to flood catastrophically when storm sewers overload. Which isn't a problem in SF though
>>It makes me wonder why new developments today are always built in the flattest places -- the flatness practically forces us to include a lot of empty space, usually in the form of lawns.
Generally speaking, it's more expensive to build on land with a significant slope. I heartily agree, however, that it results in a much more interesting built environment.
> It makes me wonder why new developments today are always built in the flattest places -- the flatness practically forces us to include a lot of empty space, usually in the form of lawns.
I think you've got the causality backwards there. A lot of people still want lawns and flat land is easier to build on. There's nothing about building in a plain that prevents building dense.
To be fair where Twitter is located, and that Sixth street corridor has literally been one of the worst ares of the city for years. Because of that there's a large number of drug rehabilitation, mental health, and community services that are in that area to be close to the population they serve and to take advantage of some lower rents. The flip side being that it also draws in a large population of the homeless seeking those services.
TLDR - Twitter chose to put their HQ in one of the worst parts of town.
Other interesting note, San Francisco has always distributed their low income housing and services across the city unlike some city's with concentrated neighborhoods of low income housing/projects.
One note about the twitter choice to put their HQ at mid-market. The city wanted it, they incentivized businesses moving to the mid-market area with tax breaks.
Definitely one of the worst parts, although I think some corners of the Tenderloin are worse.
My office is also in that area (6th and Market), I would argue it's even worse there compared to Twitter. However, it has been getting better in the last year or so, and that trend is likely going to hold up. For example, the city is investing a lot of resources and capital to make it better: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-ge...
Having said that, I rarely feel unsafe walking around that area.
They did. SF wanted someone, anyone to take over the abandoned former mall and do something that wouldn't be adding to the blight of the area. Twitter was otherwise about to leave SF for somewhere on the peninsula.
Not wanting to pave over some of the green spaces sounds laudable, but the same people fight against growing 'in' and 'up', which is the only thing you can do to add to supply if you won't go out.
I'm aware of that particular case and think it's certainly representative of some peoples' goals in the area but it's not universal. I think it's helpful to shine a light on things like this. The parent comment I was replying to, however, just assigns a view to a grand, ambiguous They and implies that anybody arguing for preservation has ulterior motives. Not helpful.
I think you're in the minority with that view of GDPR being well-implemented judging by previous threads, and secondly that website (news org) is really is for/about a specific city and it's not really relevant if they are required to block some foreigners halfway across the world because of their foreign laws.
" it will have come as no surprise when Romanian authorities attempted to use the GDPR’s wide powers to threaten journalists investigating corruption in the country. "
There are other ways to dehoardify prime land that don't require tearing up nature. Raising property taxes (i.e. shredding prop 13) would help.
The NIMBYs would be less motivated if rising land values were captured by taxes rather than winners of the homeowner lottery (and who likes SF NIMBYs?)
A lot of people sitting on inefficiently used land would also be driven to sell (and their bungalow could be demolished and replaced with apartments, increasing supply).
>A lot of people sitting on inefficiently used land would also be driven to sell (and their bungalow could be demolished and replaced with apartments, increasing supply).
One problem with this is that a lot of land owners have been in the city for decades and their property tax rates are protected under Prop 13 [0]. Basically their tax rates get adjusted for inflation but aren't reassessed unless ownership changes or there's significant construction. Raising tax rates won't touch these people.
> One problem with this is that a lot of land owners have been in the city for decades and their property tax rates are protected under Prop 13 [0]. Basically their tax rates get adjusted for inflation but aren't reassessed unless ownership changes or there's significant construction.
No, they don't. The tax basis value is adjusted annually to the lesser of the actual value or 2% greater than the previous year’s tax basis value in the absence of an event allowing unrestricted full-market assessment (most sales, for instance.)
The 1% maximum increase does not (except when inflation happens to be unusually low) amount to adjusting for inflation, and it's not done without reassessment (value drops—rare in the Bay but still can happen—are immediately reflected, but increases are capped.)
> Raising tax rates won't touch these people.
Plus, the same thing that creates the limit on basis increases also puts a hard cap on rates.
Ah, missed that in your comment. I don't imagine you could get enough support to drop it altogether but I wonder if they could get exceptions passed in counties that could benefit the most. I believe Prop 13 already has a few nuances for specific counties.
Creating more density would greatly impact nature though. Having grown up not too far from Manhattan I can attest that for the most part the nature has been bulldozed over and polluted. SF is not so extreme and many people don’t want it to be more due to the unique natural environment it is in.
>But when you go home after work, also be prepared to see the dystopia that your industry has created as a by-product.
Has this actually been concluded? That it is the "tech industry's fault?" Because I feel like I could fence off any claims as such by asking, "well, why didn't the government do anything about it?"
Based on my experience in multiple major metropolitan areas, the "tech industry" here in SF seems to be the most engaged in "doing something about it" than anywhere else. Is it because the problem is bigger? Maybe they're just better at marketing than the companies in other cities? Fair questions. Maybe.
I remember reading in the local papers when I lived in Mountain View that Google was going to assign some # of a new housing project they wanted to be low income housing - at my understanding, to be a total loss to them. They were going to build bridges, footpaths, and parks to "offset" the burden of the increased number of residents in Mountain View. I have seen similar from other companies.
In Houston, BP nuked the gulf of mexico and then fought everyone over how "responsible" they are for it. Chevron donated some fossils to the Museum of Natural Science. I dunno, I just feel like people are being unduly critical of the tech industry in SF, as if some homeless people poop on the streets because rich engineers ride buses paid for by google. Why isn't there better public transit, so the buses aren't necessary? Why block the proliferation of scooters and bicycles, so people are far more motivated to take Lyft or Uber? Why aren't there more public, 24/7 restrooms? And why isn't the Oil industry taking more flack for turning Houston into a 75x75 mile square of choking freeways? Because poop is grosser? Grosser than runaway climate change? Poop happens in Houston, too.
I just feel like SF is a big giant target, the go-to punching bag, because Big Tech, and yet meanwhile Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Finance, Big Ag gets away with dramatically worse in cost and human suffering.
See the Prop C campaign (e.g. Marc Benioff) for more insight in this issue. SF tech didn’t invent homelessness but it has clearly exacerbated it, simply by generating a lot of demand for housing.
In a nutshell, the tech industry generally tries to point the finger at lack of supply and blame NIMBYS for obstructing housing construction. But this can be seen as a defensive strategy: it’s pretty clear that a sudden, massive surge of high income earners into a constrained area in the top of a peninsula with weak tenant protections will push a lot of poorer people out of their housing.
It’s not only the fault of the city not to build housing fast enough. We’ve even seen “strange” effects in other boomtowns (Seattle) where building doesn’t solve the problem.[1]
It’s not that strange if you truly understand economics 101. It contains the concept of price inelasticity, which one might see under boomtown conditions (insatiable demand for a necessity, essentially). But to even engage in a real economics discussion kind of misses the point. Mostly the tech industry wants to deflect blame for the problem.
It's not morally wrong to move to a city and purchase housing at a market rate. Nor is it the moral duty of any individual to provide or preserve affordable housing for his or her neighbors. That's the government's job.
The government (and the voters) of San Francisco has reacted very badly to the influx of new people, which is happening in the context of decades of poor zoning and housing policy.
I also don't buy the argument in the article you linked, because there are many other cities in the world that have successfully solved increased demand by building more housing. For example, the Tokyo metropolitan area has a population nearly the size of California's in a fairly small area but rent is cheaper than in San Francisco and it's more affordable for working-class people.
You say it’s exclusively the government’s job to preserve affordable housing, not the tech industry. Ok. We just passed Prop C, a comprehensive measure to prevent homelessness. Guess who opposed it?
> You say it’s exclusively the government’s job to preserve affordable housing, not the tech industry. Ok. We just passed Prop C, a comprehensive measure to prevent homelessness. Guess who opposed it?
The mayor of San Francisco and a bunch of other individuals and businesses, including tech companies, who don't want to throw more money away pursuing the same bad policies as before.
There were also major tech CEOs in favor of the measure, including Benioff who pushed hard for it.
I predict that it will have very little impact on the homelessness problem or housing affordability in San Francisco.
My understanding was that most of the tech opposition came from 'lower' margin businesses as it's a tax on gross receipts (revenue) vs profit so it disproportionally hurts high volume low margin businesses (like stripe, square, lyft) vs high margin software businesses (like salesforce). I think it's a little unfair to demonize Dorsey and others who do seem to genuinely want to help solve the issue, but took issue with the specifics of this measure.
Dorsey campaigned for the gross receipts tax in 2012. In his capacity as Square CEO. Here’s a video of him doing it.[1] He had no problem with the gross receipts structure for a low margin business. He only flipped his position when it became about helping the homeless.
Again this is just another superficially plausible sounding argument (along with “no accountability”, etc.) that’s just cover for opposing anything suggesting the tech industry bears some responsibility for exacerbating the homelessness situation and should pay to help.
He was for it in 2012 and opposed it in 2018 because he thought that the 2018 prop was out of whack vs. the 2012 one. It had nothing to do with "because it was helping homelessness" in 2018.
> I love how you think it’s the government’s job to solve homelessness but then don’t want to fund the government.
That's an uncharitable interpretation of my views and I don't think you're arguing in good faith.
I have no problem funding good government policies. San Francisco's policies are not good. The homeless services are a total administrative and bureaucratic disaster and pumping more money into that system is not going to help homeless people.
There are already more 70 agencies and other organizations spending over $200 million per year of city money with little to no accountability for their spending or their results. That's before the Prop C tax takes effect. That will add another $300 million or so.
Prop C has extensive accountability mechanisms and is directly overseen by the mayor:
OVERSIGHT & ACCOUNTABILITY
This initiative requires an Oversight Committee comprised of nine experts on homelessness, supportive housing, mental illness, substance use disorder, and development, who will recommend funding priorities, promote transparency and cultural competence, and produce regular reports about who has been served by this fund and what still needs to be done for the Board of Supervisors. The body will also conduct a needs assessment to direct recommendations. Four seats will be appointed by the Board of Supervisors, four seats appointed by the Mayor, and one seat by the Controller’s office.
Funding will be allocated into three City agencies: the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, the Mayor’s Office on Housing and Community Development, and the Department of Public Health. That funding contracted out to non-profits will be carefully overseen by contracting managers in said department. Contract managers will carefully scrutinize budgets, check receipts, payroll records, perform audits and ensure funding is spent appropriately. They will also review units of service, types of services rendered, and review client satisfaction surveys. Contracting organizations will only get paid for actual services rendered. Funding for programs that are city run will have similar oversight and accountability measures.[1]
I will not accuse you of making a bad faith argument, but it’s pretty clear to anyone who actually looks that there are accountability mechanisms. The root problem is that SF spends a fraction of what other major cities do per homeless person, because budgets are stretched thin keeping people housed. SF spends just $3.8K per homeless person.[2] “No accountability” is a political lie calculated to appeal to people’s biases about government.
I don't mean to be so repetitive, I've just heard the line "SF government is inefficient" many times but have yet to come across the kind of evidence I could take to a city council meeting and demand change with.
Thanks for adding a link. It's from 2016 and its author, Heather Knight, is in favor of Prop C.
In the years since she wrote that she has investigated SF homelessness deeply. She's detailed how very little is actually spent on the SF homeless population ($3.8K per homeless person).[1] Because it turns out the cost of keeping at-risk people from losing their housing is high due to.. you guessed it, skyrocketing costs due to the tech boom.
Prop C addresses this fundamental funding problem and details specific accountability measures, which I've quoted upthread.
> simply by generating a lot of demand for housing.
Oh for fucks sake. You realize this is what happens when a city becomes successful right?
If you want to blame someone, its the NIMBYs: scuttling housing projects that would have eased the bubble and helped house a lot more people for reasonable prices, while benefiting from the economic successes of the companies and people moving in.
> scuttling housing projects that would have eased the bubble and helped house a lot more people for reasonable prices
Exactly this. In and around Amsterdam, housing prices are booming. The number of homeless people on the street has hardly increased, because we spend massive amounts of public funds to keep the homeless off the street and also to help them get a home. The biggest issue is graduates, that have to share houses or move out of the city. Also, it's nearly impossible to buy when you're alone.
It sounds like you’re saying something a little different though. You’re saying Amsterdam “spent massive amounts of public funds to keep homeless off the street,” not that they were able to lower market rates through more liberal building.
Prop C is all about doing that. It passed recently. Against the will of much of the tech industry, notably. (Benioff a major exception of course.)
> Prop C is all about doing that. It passed recently. Against the will of much of the tech industry, notably. (Benioff a major exception of course.)
The mayor of San Francisco also opposed it. Pumping more money into a broken social services system is a pretty problematic idea and it's not like it was only tech companies opposing it.
It was mostly the tech industry putting in the money against it: Stripe, Lyft, Jack Dorsey. Arguably the mayor of SF is a puppet of the tech industry. It passed with 60%.
I predicted this response, right? Boomtown economics are tricky. There is just an extraordinary amount of demand that appeared in a very short time. The velocity and magnitude of the surge in demand matters.
When you have an entire global population of techies that suddenly want to move to the heart of their industry, you may experience price inelasticity, which basically means you won’t see much downward movement in price.
Think of it: before prices come down to affordable levels for the people you see on the street, or even service industry workers and teachers and whatnot, they would first be dirt cheap for tech. How many more tech workers would move to SF or start their companies here if they heard it was cheap now? That’s how deep the demand goes. That’s all the demand that needs to be satiated before market rates come down to where they could reverse homelessness.
That’s why tech can’t just pass the buck to NIMBYS or pretend like this is any other city. We are creating some of the most valuable companies in the world here right now and it generally helps your prospects to co-locate. That creates very exceptional demand conditions.
You have good points. In a hypothetical scenario where the housing market was highly elastic, it would certainly lead to a huge movement of tech labor force to the Bay Area.
But I feel like that is the way SFBA will grow. Every city has its secret sauce, for SFBA it is tech. Instead of fighting it, I can imagine a scenario where the concentration of Tech leads to a transformation of the area to be more like NYC. Or maybe it will take a different direction.
As naive as it sounds, I still believe in Tech as a force for good (not Big Tech necessarily). I moved here from Austin, and folks there talk about how the tech industry is growing, but its still Satellite offices for Big Tech. The kind of talent I see in SFBA is staggering.
Do you really feel that Prop C is “fighting” tech growth, though? Not sure if that is your position.
I think a big reason Benioff came around is that he’s taking a long view. Perhaps you could even draw a connection with the maturity of Salesforce as a company vs young startups whose current teams might exit in under 10 years. Benioff got his whole team on board not only out of altruism, but by noting that homelessness was seriously threatening Saleforce’s future in the city.
Benioff didn't come around. He is from SF, unlike a lot of other Tech CEO's. His company has made significant investments in the City proper. He's been playing the long game for a while now.
I don't have an opinion on Prop C. The thrust of my argument was more around prop 13.
The tech people are not going to live in the shitty apartments you should be building. People are not fooled, they see whats happening in SF. You need to stop playing games and build more apartments. This is not difficult.
If I had a $2 million mortgage in SF I'd probably be a NIMBY too. Pretty much anything that increases supply of housing could wipe a million off my net worth.
Low property taxes and Howard Jarvis's "taxpayer foundation" are the ultimate villains here by fighting to create this exact situation.
The people who are fighting to escape being in $1 mil negative equity by going to town halls and kicking up a fuss arent necessarily deserving but they're simply reacting to incentives put in place by others.
The low property tax thing is another favorite of the tech industry to target, to deflect blame from the elephant in the room (massive insatiable demand). There is a lot of validity here: there are cases where rich property owners are not paying their fair share in taxes. But it’s often a disingenuous argument meant just to deflect responsibility.
The property tax rules were originally passed to protect senior citizens from losing their homes because they couldn’t afford to pay surging tax rates. A boom happens, their house values go up, but they’re still living in fixed incomes.
I literally just read a Twitter exec, on Twitter, openly say that well seniors could just sell their homes. Nice! Great solution. Just leave, old people!
Or, they could just do a reverse mortgage. Sweet. Those are totally unproblematic for seniors, right?!
I just watched Hell or High Water which is about two guys that become bank robbers because their mom was going to lose their home to a reverse mortgage.
> openly say that well seniors could just sell their homes. Nice! Great solution. Just leave, old people!
Or...sell to a condo complex developer, get some cash + a unit in the new building + housing while it's being built. Win-win. An condo unit is less maintenance to deal with, which is a plus for a senior. They also get to unlock some of the value of their property, and turn it into cash they can use now, without having to move away from their existing networks of friends and family.
I agree this can be a good outcome, but there’s a big difference between forcing seniors to do this versus letting them opt into it. Especially when hiking taxes does not guarantee that the “magic of the market” will provide a good solution in each case. There is a lot of intangible value built up in a home you’ve lived in for decades with the goal of retiring in it.
"intangible value" is the type of thing I'm less sympathetic to. People are living on the streets because they can't afford housing, because there isn't enough being built. Emotional attachments to a piece of property are not more important than solving the human misery caused by the current state of affairs.
It's not just emotional attachment. There's a lot of investment that goes into building community relationships and the living space itself that doesn't translate into market value.
> People are living on the streets because they can't afford housing, because there isn't enough being built.
So you're making an ethical appeal that old people should be forced to sell their homes to solve homelessness. Ok, I'll take you up on that.
You've only cited the supply side of the problem. You could just as well say "People are living on the streets because they can't afford housing, because too many techies are moving into town. Young people living in a fun adult playground is not more important than solving human misery cause by the current state of affairs."
Now which is more important: helping wealthier people live in a funner city or keeping seniors in their homes? What's the first priority here?
> There's a lot of investment that goes into building community relationships and the living space itself that doesn't translate into market value.
My proposed solution preserves community relationships.
> So you're making an ethical appeal that old people should be forced to sell their homes to solve homelessness
Nope. I'm arguing that people shouldn't be able to use zoning to wield power over other people's property to the unreasonable extent we're seeing now. That they can do so is a result of laws like Prop 13 - there's no personal cost to being anti-development.
> People are living on the streets because they can't afford housing, because too many techies are moving into town
You're literally arguing that no city should ever increase in population - it should stay frozen forever because god forbid, otherwise the neighborhood might change.
> Young people living in a fun adult playground
What does that have to do with higher rent and property prices? Or anything else?
> Now which is more important: helping wealthier people live in a funner city or keeping seniors in their homes? What's the first priority here?
You can do both and have no homelessness. Oppressive zoning laws prevent it.
How about we change state property tax law so that anyone can automatically get their property taxes converted to liens? With penalties for people who can afford to pay, and no penalties for those who cannot. Coupled with basing taxes on something like actual market value, obviously.
Then absolutely nobody will ever be thrown out of their home because of owing taxes, and there's still enough property tax income to pay for services. Everybody wins and grandma with the multi-million-dollar ancestral pile in SF can stay!
I'm honestly not seeing any significant downside to an approach like this. Do you?
I can't believe you're actually arguing that prop 13 was for the seniors so they could afford their houses and that it wasn't a massive fucking cash grab by realtors in california. This makes me think you're entire line of arguing here is disingenuous.
"The property tax rules were originally passed to protect senior citizens from losing their homes"
FWIW that was the sales pitch not the reason. The same people who got prop 13 passed on that basis also demonstrate their concern for the elderly by lobbying to slash public pensions in California:
"A boom happens, their house values go up, but they’re still living in fixed incomes. I literally just read a Twitter exec, on Twitter, openly say that well seniors could just sell their homes. Nice! Great solution. Just leave, old people!"
The additional free money capital gains ought to take the sting out of having to move. Renting pensioners don't get that. They also don't get 1%'er lobbies pretending to care about them.
Prop 13 was passed in 1978. That post on pensions is from 2010. You’re going to need a stronger connection than that to support the charge that helping seniors stay housed is made up.
> The additional free money capital gains ought to take the sting out of having to move.
Well, there you go. Openly arguing for forcing grandparents out of the homes they’ve lived in for decades. This is an amazingly callous line of argument to me.
Or seniors could be allowed to defer their property taxes and convert them into a tax lien on their property, to be dealt with by the estate. You know, a simple and obvious solution. But of course, the two guys in Hell or High Water would still ultimately be SOL. That's what privilege (owning a house sitting on highly-desirable land that's probably worth millions of dollars) looks like in real life. Privilege and greed.
Did you see the movie? It was a poor family that put all their money into a house, then lost it through a reverse mortgage. “Privilege and greed” is a slapdash accusation here.
Some families struggle to put their life savings into a home and don’t have anything left over for other investments. What you’re proposing is still going to place pressure on seniors to move lest they lose a lot of estate value.
Basically I think you’ll find support for doing this go to rich who can afford it. But a blanket shift to liens on cash-poor seniors’ homes could end up disproportionately hurting the less fortunate.
Housing prices don’t necessarily go down if a place increases in density. It depends on the location. Take a look at 5th ave in Manhattan - as large single family homes were being replaced by skyscrapers, the value of land went up.
Exactly. I just don't get the logic behind wanting to drive up the entire market beyond the reach of most buyers. I'm guessing most folks just don't sell precisely because of this and instead opt to rent out instead.
This is probably fine except when they actually need to sell the house for whatever reason.
But what they did was what companies are supposed to do - be extraordinarily successful. So successful that they can afford to pay their employees shitloads of money. So successful that they need to hire more and more to grow bigger and bigger.
They didn't dump oil in the gulf. They didn't use shady laws to buy majority shares in a public Telecom utility. they didn't exploit the land with unsustainable crops. They sold ads on websites.
So hence my theory - any issues caused by companies doing well without even being evil while doing well, is solely the fault of the government for failing to legislate properly.
Tech is a much smaller part of the SF economy than most would like to believe, and only part of why the city is prosperous. Finance, healthcare, education, government, professional services, and hospitality are all growing faster than the average in SF.
That Knock LA article misunderstands Seattle housing, cherry-picking facts to suit its argument. The core problem is that over 80% of Seattle residential zoning is single-family, and much of the new development is concentrated where people are reluctant to live.
E.g., article cites claim that two-thirds of downtown new housing development is vacant, yet ignores the source article's immediate next sentence: "thousands of new workers... are choosing to live in other neighborhoods." Most Seattleites don't want to live downtown; they prefer to live in surrounding neighborhoods: Capitol Hill, Fremont, Ballard, the Central District, etc. But those neighborhoods are mostly single-family zoning, so existing residents are either being displaced or seeing huge property tax increases (if they're lucky). A more distributed growth plan would alleviate this.
Also re: "insatiable demand for a necessity". My demand for housing is one apartment and I'm fortunately sated. How many apartments do you need?
> In a nutshell, the tech industry generally tries to point the finger at lack of supply and blame NIMBYS for obstructing housing construction. But this can be seen as a defensive strategy
Is it perhaps possible that there might be a distinction to be made between things that are defensive strategies and things that are factually incorrect?
> Has this actually been concluded? That it is the "tech industry's fault?"
A lot of people believe it. The idea that this dystopia is the tech industry's sole fault has common currency, especially in young-and-progressive circles.
Among other things, it means not really having to come to terms with decades of policy failure. It also means not having to examine how local government seems to keep failing, such as with public transit or public restrooms.
Tech is an excellent newcomer and outsider. This makes it collectively an ideal scapegoat. Which is not to say the tech industry is innocent! But it is to say the way blame is apportioned could be better aligned with reality.
The implied solution is that companies should not start businesses in cities, and if they do, not become very successful businesses. They should self throttle.
What other solution could be surmised from your claim?
I'd lay the blame at the feet of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Foundation.
Tech brought wealth into the city. Prop 13 is the law that made that wealth toxic to the people that lived in it by enacting a titanic perpetual wealth transfer from community to homeowners (and creating a class of freeloading NIMBYs).
You're right that the tech industry is by no means uniquely guilty for creating negative externalities or for the negative effects of capitalism in general. And while the other industries you mention have taken plenty of criticism over the past century or so (and continue to get it- it should be easy to find the equivalent negative take on Houston you're asking for, it just won't show up on the front of HN) there is a simple explanation the tech industry seems to be the biggest target: As the fastest growing segment of the US economy over the past decade, it's both the easiest to glorify and in turn the biggest target for condemnation.
There are maybe a few of other factors (some touched on in the article) that amplify the criticism if they aren't causal. The rate of change brought about by tech feels faster than others before it. Houston grew into a square of choking freeways with the oil industry; while SV has old roots the explosion happened in a couple of decades. The other factor is the concentration of the industry makes it a more tangible issue to the people effected. You can understand Big Oil is destroying the world but it's harder to picture than a Google bus in front of you in traffic.
I'm also from Toronto living in SF. This is pretty spot on.
Some other things that struck me about living here.
- SF is cold! (yes, this coming from a canadian) In Toronto you get "real" seasons and snow during winter, but SF (especially in the areas closer to the ocean) is blasted with cold wind and fog year-round so there's really never a hot season. In addition to that, SF has its infamous micro-weathers: it might be foggy on one patch of the city, rain on another and be sunny (but still windy) on yet another part of town, all at the same time.
- Food scene: SF does a lot of spins on food. If I were to describe food here, I'd have to say it's generally "gimmicky". It's very common to see people lining up for unique eye-catching things like asian+mexican fusion, dashi-broth ramen and taiyaki ice cream, but finding good traditional chinese or greek or korean food or even a half-decent shawarma is tough. Also, having to wait in line for 30+ mins almost everywhere detracts a lot from dining experiences. Many places are also ridiculously cramped. I've never had to walk _through the kitchen_ to get to a restroom anywhere else before.
- LGBT community: Toronto has a large LGBT community and one of the largest parades in North America, but people generally don't try to be too outrageous. In the one year I've been to SF, I've ran into butt-naked people numerous times (in contexts ranging from them just walking down the street to them running the Bay-to-Breakers marathon). Also ran into a leather fetish gear festival around costco a while back. Nothing really against that sort of stuff, but can be awkward to inadvertently run into it when you're just out and about with the kids on a random weekend.
- Geography and nature: Within SF, there are gorgeous places scattered throughout the city (e.g. views from Russian Hill, around Randall museum, presidio area). If you have a car, there are also a ton of amazing state parks in the surrounding areas, from redwood forests to beaches. You can see wild sea life up close at fitzgerald marine reserve and even spot whales at pigeon point.
Stop going to restaurants based on pictures and yelp reviews then. Also Michelen Stars are horrible unless you want over priced small plates that try to be art first and food second. If you do want to go to those places, get a reservation. Either OpenTable or just call them like it’s the 90s.
It takes a while, but exploring neighborhoods can be really rewarding. I rarely wait for a table, and if you do have to wait there is usually another place right next door. Not every place is spectacular, but the overall food quality here is decent. Finally, avoid anywhere with more than 20-30 items on a menu (Thank you Gordon Ramsey).
There is another (realer imo) Asian area on Clement and Geary over in the Richmond that has authentic food all over. Japan town is good, but stay away from most of the tourist trap that is the Grant street Chinatown.
It has nothing to do with waiting for tables and everything to do with the food being both more expensive and less tasty than the kind of food you get from holes in the wall.
Honestly, I'd even take an everyday American Chinese restaurant over one of those yuppie restaurants that sell overpriced Chinese-ish food aimed at white yuppies (the Americanization bothers me less than the catering to the yuppie community... regular old working-class American Chinese food is actually pretty tasty, even if it's not my favorite, which is more than I can say for Yuppie Chinese).
I think we need one that applies generically. My hotel in SF fit this to a T. Trendy concrete walls and industrial design that photographed well. But also shitty single pane windows that didn't close properly over a loud street, two-ply toilet paper thinner than a single ply on decent TP and no where to properly sit and do work.
Thank you for calling out the restaurant issue in SF. Everyone seems to think it's normal and perfectly fine to wait 30+ minutes (My average is closer to 1.5 hrs at 'trendy' or 'gimmicky' places) for a table. Also the postage-stamp sized restaurants with like 4 tables. This is a uniquely SF setup for restaurants and it drives me nuts.
I generally love the taste and diversity of food in SF, but I feel like restaurant owners don't value their customers, nor their customer's time when they open a restaurant like this.
My new rule is: if the wait is 30 minutes or more, I go somewhere else. No exceptions. Honestly, I've fallen out of touch with many friends because of this rule, but my time is worth more than that. I actively try to patronize the "critically underrated" places that are good, but have no line down the block.
> I generally love the taste and diversity of food in SF, but I feel like restaurant owners don't value their customers, nor their customer's time when they open a restaurant like this.
the only real solution for the "too popular" problem is to raise the prices, which might satisfy you but enrage others who are then priced out.
More optimistically, I believe the solution is for people to start seeking out the "critically underrated" ~3 star restaurants and start realizing that these supposed "trendy" places were never that great beyond their gimmick.
> More optimistically, I believe the solution is for people to start seeking out the "critically underrated" ~3 star restaurants and start realizing that these supposed "trendy" places were never that great beyond their gimmick.
Here's how that plays out: if enough people start to do that, someone will start a system for sharing information to support them, the discovered places will become trendy and either crowded or expensive, rinse, and repeat (actually, you are already in that cycle—that’s how lots of trendy places happen now.) As long as the Bay Area is awash in money, the same process driving real estate prices through the roof is going to do the same thing to dining prices wherever there is quality except where obscurity creates hidden bargains. But to exploit that you'll need to spend more time than you'd spend waiting in line at known places finding the hidden gems, and then finding new ones as other people discover the one you've found and the obscurity you've been exploiting is replaced with visibility and success.
> My new rule is: if the wait is 30 minutes or more, I go somewhere else. No exceptions.
Eh, that seems pretty generous to me still. I won't wait more than five minutes or so. (i.e. if a table has already asked for bills and I'm just waiting for them to pay and clear out.) I'll give a bit more leeway if there's a seated area where my friends and I can get served drinks while we wait.
> This is a uniquely SF setup for restaurants and it drives me nuts.
I waited in line in Paris at both Obermama (pizza & cocktails) and Kotteri Naritake (butter ramen with very few seats). I've been told to come back in an hour at a favorite spot (corsican food with very few seats).
Fair enough. I'm sure it's happening in nearly all large metro areas in developed nations. I only said that because I hadn't noticed this trend (at least not to this extreme degree) in the course of visiting other large metro areas in the US.
It happens in smaller metro areas in the US; restaurants are notoriously marginal businesses in general, and the two basic success formulas for traditional full-service establishments seem to be “be completely full in a wide window around peak times—which tends to also mean have long waits at peak times” and “attract a very rich clientele and charge very high prices which don't require you to be constantly crowded to make a profit”.
There's also obviously the separate fast-food and fast-casual markets that focus on rapidly cycling customers with minimal delay and much lower service levels; they still try to be full as much as possible which still means queuing at peak times, but the queues tend to be shorter in time or just as deep (or deeper), and tend to involve actual physical, rather than merely logical, queues.
Japan has a long, long history of tiny restaurants and food carts. Most areas in Tokyo have many times more [0] restaurants than worldwide cities, just for this reason. There might be 20 small 8-seat ramen places in the same alleyway, whereas in other cities you'd have 2 or 3 larger restaurants spread out further.
For food scene, yes there are a lot fancy restaurants with long queues, but there are also many authentic Chinese / Korean restaurants here. It's just these restaurants are not well known and mostly serve local people, and usually you cannot find them easily on Yelp due to low ratings / reviews.
> you cannot find them easily on Yelp due to low ratings / reviews
I know right! There was one time I went to one restaurant with a good rating, and the line up was so long we ended up just waddling over to an inconspicuous Japanese place next door, to discover some pretty decent traditional style service and food.
I did find a number of chinese/korean restaurants that clearly cater to actual chinese/koreans, but the cultural density is so low that unfortunately they've mostly fell short compared to the quality you can get in the various chinese/korean neighbourhoods in Toronto.
Ive been toying with the idea of doing like some period of time of only eating at 3 start and under restaurants on yelp and seeing how it goes. i thought it it would be interesting to write about it
> In the one year I've been to SF, I've ran into butt-naked people numerous times (in contexts ranging from them just walking down the street to them running the Bay-to-Breakers marathon).
During B2B a couple years ago I actually asked an officer about that. Apparently it's 100% legal to be naked in SF, as long as you're not being too sexual... I don't know what the actual line is legally, but that's what I was told.
> SF (especially in the areas closer to the ocean) is blasted with cold wind and fog year-round so there's really never a hot season.
You've forgotten the few weeks in the spring and fall where the Central Valley-powered air conditioning turns off and suddenly SF becomes Palo Alto. :)
TBH, reading pretty much your entire post reminds me why I love living in Dallas and am dead set against ever moving to SF or SV (and if I ever had to move, it would be to Vegas).
> SF is cold! (yes, this coming from a canadian)
It's kind of interesting that as much as I love cold weather, I wouldn't want to live any place where it's actually cold as a matter of course. Why? Air conditioning. In warm places like Dallas and Vegas, air con is everywhere. Central A/C is in all the houses, and every business is air conditioned. In cooler places, that doesn't exist. I've heard horror stories from friends who moved to SF/SV and can't find a place to live with air conditioning. And people will say you don't need it, but a) heatwaves still exist, and one heatwave will fuck up your entire week, and b) they underestimate my lack of tolerance for heat. I blast my air con at 60°F even in the winter :)
> It's very common to see people lining up for unique eye-catching things like asian+mexican fusion, dashi-broth ramen and taiyaki ice cream, but finding good traditional chinese or greek or korean food or even a half-decent shawarma is tough
Honestly, I've been put off of SF a very long time ago, but if I hadn't already, this would do it.
The older I get, the more I find white people's spins on ethnic food to be just plain annoying. It's both more expensive and not as tasty as the real thing.
Here's a pretty recent example for me: in a suburb of Dallas, they recently opened an upscale food hall called Legacy Hall. I was really excited about it when it first opened, and I tried it a few times. Every time I ate there, I ended up leaving unsatisfied for the most part. Why? Because so much of their food was some kind of ethnic or regional food all gussied up by and for white yuppies. Case in point, they had one Asian-style noodle joint there called the Monkey King Noodle Company. I ordered the dan dan noodles, because I love dan dan noodles, and I've ordered it several times at hole-in-the-wall Sichuan restaurants. What I got was some white guy's idea of what dan dan noodles are. It was awful. And it was way more expensive than it should have been. And that's not the only kind of this thing I've encountered at Legacy Hall... I've had a few similar experiences there, but this is just the one I picked as an example.
But of course Dallas is a wonderful city, and there are hole-in-the-wall restaurants of every ethnicity here. I have one coworker, of Filipina descent, who I go out to lunch with once a week or so, and we mostly go to all different kinds of hole-in-the-wall Asian places of pretty much every ethnicity we can find. And while we're in the car, we talk so much smack about overpriced "Asian" restaurants that cater to white yuppies... it's so cathartic to have someone to talk to about how frustrating this is (TBH, I'm a Jew who grew up on Chinese food, understands Japanese well enough to translate as a hobby, and has never identified with white people).
> LGBT community: Toronto has a large LGBT community and one of the largest parades in North America, but people generally don't try to be too outrageous. In the one year I've been to SF, I've ran into butt-naked people numerous times (in contexts ranging from them just walking down the street to them running the Bay-to-Breakers marathon). Also ran into a leather fetish gear festival around costco a while back. Nothing really against that sort of stuff, but can be awkward to inadvertently run into it when you're just out and about with the kids on a random weekend.
I'm a transgender lesbian, and my main goal in life is to assimilate into ordinary life as a girl and maybe play around with a few chicks here and there. I've felt out of place in a lot of online LGBT communities because so many of them are dominated by those who... well, who aren't like me. People with radical political beliefs, very distinct "alternative" looks, who are thoroughly immersed in queer culture, etc. Now, I don't have a problem with those people existing (and in fact one good way to get on my bad side is to tell me they make the community "look bad"), but I do feel alone because so few people in the community are like me. And then I started getting involved in my local LGBT community and became a regular at a trans support group. And most of the people I met there are a lot like me, and it felt great to finally be part of a community I identify with. Going to that group felt like coming home, and I've since pulled out of most online trans communities in favor of becoming more involved with my local community.
Again, I don't have a problem with the queerer or more alternative parts of the community, and I'd never say they make the community look bad, and I certainly won't invalidate their identities, but I don't identify with them, and I just feel isolated when I'm surrounded by them, which is what's happened in most online communities, and I'm more comfortable when I'm with people who share my sensibilities and life goals.
From what I understand, SF is filled with the segments of the community that I don't identify with, and so I probably wouldn't get involved with the LGBT community there.
> I find white people's spins on ethnic food to be just plain annoying
I read an article a while back about a couple of americans who went to china and opened a "chinese" food restaurant because real chinese food looked nothing like the americanized "chinese" delivery food and they missed their sweet-&-sour chicken balls and fortune cookies. It flopped hard... until they rebranded and called it "american comfort food". It's always amusing to learn about the quirky dissonances between expectation of people from different cultures.
> SF is filled with the segments of the community that I don't identify with
I'm married and straight so I don't have much contact with the LGBT community in SF, but for some reason the few times have always been somewhat awkward. Imagine looking at marathon runners with funny costumes and then having to explain to your 5/yo not to be pointing and yelling at the naked guy with the rainbow cape. Another time my wife took my daughter to what she thought was a generic kids activity at a library and it turned out to be a transgender seminar, dumbed down to kids vocab level.
I've also found the gay parade in particular to be a bit surreal: the SF parade seemed more like a corporate sponsorship show and had a distinct "spectacle" feel, nothing like the communal street party feel of the Toronto Pride parade.
It almost feels like the culture here is that LGBT identity is this unusual curious thing to be on display on a similar level to the animal shows at the library. Just feels very weird, coming from Toronto, where people are generally nonchalant/indifferent towards sexual orientation.
The housing scarcity and high rents are caused by politics, by zoning, by not allowing to build enough new homes. It's sad that techies are blamed for the problem created by the politicians and, ultimately, by the voters.
Especially foreign tech workers, such as the author, bear no blame, as they cannot even vote in any US elections.
Personally I can emphasize with the sentiment. Even though I don’t think that 20-something programmers in Google buses are personally responsible for the disparity, but the brandless tinted Google buses are a powerful symbol for new class system.
I’ve never seen so much poverty and homelessness before. There’s many major streets where wearing open shoes would be a big no-no, because of used needles lying around in plain sight. Seeing people shooting up on Market Street is pretty normal.
This is a political decision, or set of decisions: https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/. Anytime we want to, we can build as much housing as people want to live in; we just make doing so illegal right now.
> You can't build housing cheap enough for chronic drug users to afford.
You certainly easily can: effectively free (subsidized by tax payers).
The house-the-homeless programs run during the Bush and Obama administrations dramatically reduced chronic homelessness in most of the US, pushing it to a record low per capita.
San Francisco is one of the wealthiest places on earth. They intentionally choose to allow the human rights violation of mass, particularly chaotic homelessness to continue in the city. Morally they own it, period. There are obvious, highly effective solutions that have been used elsewhere.
Does the city have the infrastructure needed to support more housing? Water, sewer, electric grid, schools, trash service, parking, transit? You can’t just replace a few blocks of single family homes with high rises and call it a day.
Where do you put all this new infrastructure and who pays for it? Existing residents?
Yes. That's how urban living works. Current residents pay taxes, those taxes are used to rebuild/enhance the city infrastructure, which brings in more residents and more tax revenue.
And I think increasing the capacity of the sewer system is sort of an assumed point when it's literally a requirement for increased high-density housing.
I don’t think it’s assumed at all. People just come into these conversations with overly-simplistic solutions (Just Add Housing™) and if anyone disagrees or points out that it’s actually a complicated, multi-faceted problem, they’re wrong and a NIMBY. Who pays for it all is a huge issue, and I don’t think there is an obvious universally agreeable answer. If there was it wouldn’t be fought over so fiercely.
But don’t point that out here! It’s not enough to agree that the area needs more housing—you aparently have to also profess that it’s obviously the only solution, and that there are no trade offs or complexity to consider.
Everyone likes a scapegoat, this is just anti-immigrant sentiment. Hating migration from within the country is only different from hating immigration from outisde the country in that the former has a class component and the latter has a race component.
So true. I find it hilarious that the same people who want open borders want techies out of the Bay Area. They’re literally arguing for immigration in the form of open borders while simultaneously arguing against it by demanding techies (aka immigrants) leave their city.
That phrase particularly bothers me because in reality, the queers are likely to be techies.
It's pretty widely known with in the transgender community that trans women are overwhelmingly more likely to be software engineers than have pretty much any other profession.
SF and the Bay Area are two very distinct places. The Bay Area is literally a series of midwestern towns dotted by dot com campuses. SF is a cesspool of homelessness and vanity. I love the bay, hate SF.
Also San Diego has tons of homeless too, and it has none of the tech scene. People are homeless in California because A) It has weather you can be outside in year round, especially in SoCal B) Our government is corrupt and is the cause of a serious housing crisis to keep prices inflated C) Cost of living is inflated by the housing crisis.
I'm from the midwest and feel completely at home in the Bay, and no where else in Cali. It's full of transplants, lots of small towns sort of strung together, with a totally middle class feel despite the money in the area.
The kind of person who moves from the mid west and then feels at home in is not representative of the average midwesterner. The cultural values are very different and that's before you even get into politics.
There's a pretty big difference between midwesterners that grew up in rural areas and ones that grew up in cities. The cultural values might not be that different depending on where you're actually from.
Yeah, my description would have been more along the lines of a long line of pretty generic suburban sprawl punctuated by a few walkable town centers, a university campus, and so forth. But mostly congested sprawl.
The only “real” city in the USA is Manhattan. SF does not come close to qualifying as one. Let me know when I can get dinner reservations at more the 2 places at midnight. The streets roll up at around 10pm. Just for perspective I would argue the only real city in the world is Tokyo.
Very few cities in the world have the sort of late night options you talk about. London sure doesn't. And you start excluding cities like London from a list of "real cities" and you have to wonder if your criteria need to be adjusted a bit.
As someone who frequently flies into London relatively late at night, it's not easy to get a decent meal at 11pm, Of course, I'm not sure the options for a decent meal in Manhattan at that hour are great either. The number of fast food restaurants open don't really count and London is better if you know where some of the ethnic enclaves are.
NYC is definitely more of a "city that never sleeps" than most but its hours are not the norm for most major world cities.
They are cities. San Mateo is a city. San Jose is a city. Hayward is a city. Redwood City is... a city. Union City is... a city. Oakland isn't just a city, it's the eighth most populated city in the whole of California!
You're taking this way to literally. Union City isn't a city. It's a small town at best. Redwood City is like a bigger town. Fremont is also town sized. San Carlos is literally a town I've visited in Indiana. None of these places are worthy of being called cities except for Oakland and maybe San Jose.
Since San Jose is the 10th largest city in the US by population, perhaps you aren't the best gatekeeper when it comes to what constitutes a city, and what does not.
CA does not legally acknowledge any distinction between towns and cities. However, many states require a "town" to have fewer than 1,000, 2,000, 6,000, etc., residents (the bound varying by state). Union City has ~75,000 people, which would prevent it from being considered a small town in the majority of states that distinguish rigorously between towns and cities.
Assuming you aren't being sarcastic we have incredibly different definitions of small towns. My rule of thumb is when it becomes difficult to quickly count all the stoplights in a town in your head it often isn't a "small town" anymore. For example my wife grew up in a quinessential "small town" and it only has three stoplights.
A three-stoplight "town" is a village at best, more like a crossroads or a couple of junctions :)
Cities are urban. They have congestion, nightlife with noticeable quantities people on the streets in the evening, chance encounters as you walk around, and a general feeling of lots of stuff happening within a walkable distance.
As someone who is living there right now, I don't think that is an accurate depiction of Ohio unless you are way outside of a city. Columbus for example is basically a 10 mile circle of sprawling suburbia centered by a relatively small downtown. Your statement is analogous to saying California is just hundreds of miles of hills and mountains and forests while discounting the major epicenters that exist.
This is what I meant. For example, the entire corridor from Cleveland to Canton is a sprawling series of small towns with no beginning or ending. Reminds me of driving down the 101.
Calling them "Midwestern towns" is really weird as they are more dense than many Midwestern cities. If you go to Des Moines (which is the most populous city in Iowa) you'll find the population significantly less dense than somewhere like Sunnyvale.
Berkeley is pretty great. I actually preferred it to SF when I lived there. Lots of Oakland is fantastic too.
But I agree with you for the most part. Basically all of the bay built in the last 70 years is garbage. As the writer of "Ghostride the Volvo" put it, Fremont's just a parking lot with a mayor.
D) Unlike many states, California has the equivalent of a "citizen advocate" for someone who is involuntarily placed in a mental health facility.
This is good in that those without voice are not simply trampled over. This is bad in that you probably cannot hold someone long enough for effective treatment if they continuously express the desire to leave.
Most people who talk about "homelessness" in SF as an issue don't really have a beef with the homeless themselves; it comes up as complaints about clear behavioral problems such as harassment, disorderly conduct and the like. It's surprising that even when mental health is an issue, that these don't lead to some sort of court-ordered treatment.
> It's surprising that even when mental health is an issue, that these don't lead to some sort of court-ordered treatment.
Involuntarily restraining someone has a very high bar--harm to self or others. Rightfully, "being a nuisance" doesn't really cross that bar.
Someone with Alzheimer's and no family is a good test--when do you force them into a facility? And what kind of facility? And how do you pay for that? And is that actually an improvement to their life?
Disturbing the peace is more than simply "being a nuisance" to someone else - it's a recognized infraction, that may well lead to being detained in jail or being ordered to do some community service. Isn't that a sort of "involuntary restraint", too? Potayto, potahto.
Software development is a relatively new job compared to others, but thinking about the politics of the bay area highlights to me how weak politically the "institution" of software / information technology is as a special interest group.
You can definitely think of a senator or congressmen who is "for the banks" or "for pharmaceuticals" even those who are "pro steel union" or "pro teachers union" but you really can't find any of note who promote an interest that can be specifically tied to what developers want. This is taking to account that developers are not a monolith and probably span a wide variety of political ideology, but I can't think of a single issue, whether or not it's in the majority opinion that is being advocated for in government.
San Francisco in general is an interesting beacon, the city itself is not that large, and I would expect that there are enough full time developers in the city who live there who can at least get someone on the city council, and yet.. it really does not seem to be the case that there is someone who you can readily point to as an advocate. Am I drastically mistaken? Would love to hear further perspectives from folks in the bay.
The most effective form of government is the one that is most local to you, when will developers put their weight on the scale?
> when will developers put their weight on the scale?
In my experience, amongst software developers, contempt for politics is common and the politics that is most popular tends to be hyper-individualistic and unacquainted with the idea of common interest. It's almost as if it were optimized to make developers happy well-paid cogs in a machine that is transforming society without their direction.
I'm not from the Bay Area, but I think you present an interesting point. Is it possible that we don't have developers in government because they would prefer to focus on developing?
The type of people that end up spearheading campaigns and taking leadership positions tend to be too busy with new priorities to continue previous activities. Managing staff, setting and achieving goals across a variety of disciplines, and ...leading may take the place of the inspiring moments that help justify their existence as a developer, especially overtime. It takes a specific type of person to want to take or make that change.
Though software folk are exploding in numbers (source: am one), perhaps further care and attention is needed in balancing the social skills, creativity, and growth of tenacity of those that are attempting to improve their development abilities. Particularly if we want to create techies that are smart as a whip and can also hold public office effectively.
I think traditionally you're right, but I'm noticing a sea change. With tech companies becoming more diverse I think you're seeing a break in the cultural stereotype of developers: the google walk out regarding sexual harassment is marker to me.
More people who break the stereotypical mold are moving into engineering, I think this trend will lead to the rise of something resembling a union and special interest groups.
> but you really can't find any of note who promote an interest that can be specifically tied to what developers want.
Well, everything you mention are organizations with figureheads you can call up and ask what they think. They can also give you money so you can pursue their ideas. I'm not sure who a politician would talk to if they wanted to be pro developer. I'm not sure who would give you money for being pro developer.
> I'm not sure who a politician would talk to if they wanted to be pro developer.
This is part of my point, I can't think of any organization, no matter the size that is "pro-developer" this can be anything from advocating for the removal of non-competes, codifying some open source things into law, IP law reform, tax write offs for things like accelerators.. anything.
> I'm not sure who would give you money for being pro developer.
Developers would! Being a developer in America puts you firmly in the upper middle class nationwide. I think the nature of most developers is to organize in more decentralized and informal ways. IRC, mailing lists, github orgs, etc. At some point though we will need to realize that we are apart of the mainstream (our companies definitely have) and that there is a voice and mechanism of action to exert that voice to affect things.
I'm a Belgian guy who lived one year (2016-2017) in SF.
It took me a while to admit to myself it really wasn't as awesome as I had envisioned it. In fact I hated it after a year.
Besides what's already in the article (which was definitely the biggest shock) I also felt like:
- Nightlife is boring, not much to do for a city of about a million people and the 2am alcohol limit.
- Uninteresting architecture-wise
- Dating life sucks for a heterosexual male who's used to 50/50 men/women ratio in bars & clubs.
- Being a hipster is the norm.
Admittedly, I did very little research before moving.
And it wasn't all bad, I loved driving my bike in the nearby hills and the work was interesting and well paid.
every time I read stuff like this I get that ol' rise of anger: that the Internet, the great leveler, it will bring us all together regardless of where we happen to be on earth ... at least, unless you want to build it, in which case you need to be in the same small area for 40+ hours a week.
Aren't we tech types obsessed with removing single points of failure?
Aren't we moving past "you must sit in a specific chair so your manager can have specific interactions with you, in person"?
I know there's remote work out there; believe me, I know. But read stuff like this and browse the "who's hiring" threads, laden with ONSITE, and wonder when I'll finally be able to sever the link between the skill in my brain and sitting in that one specific chair in that one specific building in that one specific town.
This is really it. Personally I don't think VC's care, and I don't think most managers really care either. If they could have such a high quality experience remotely, they'd be happy to hire remote talent. This takes dedication, self motivation and creativity on both the manager and the employee.
In person is much easier. There are shared experiences we can have. We can randomly bump into each other and have small reminder-type experiences. It's easier to get a sense of what kind of person we're working with, and that becomes an elevated sense of trust. This all matters and it's difficult to do remotely.
I've done both. I prefer onsite. Currently I'm remote and honestly it's a struggle, and regular onsite visits are a must to maintain those trust bonds.
Well said. I haven't found a better way to transfer complex ideas than huddling around a whiteboard with a small group. A good slide deck will work too, but it takes time/effort to compile, and doesn't allow seamless Q&A.
I've been working remotely for 2.5 years now, and it takes a lot of effort, both from me and from my boss, to keep this going, and even with all that effort I've struggled with interpersonal/communication issues.
Not everyone is willing to invest in that effort.
It would almost certainly be better if I were sitting in a chair at my office, but since I can't, remote work is the next best thing, and as long as both my boss and I are willing to work pretty damn hard to keep it going, it'll keep working.
But I can totally see how some teams would not want to go through the extra effort. I like to think I'm worth it, but my team got to figure that out while I worked on-site for some time before leaving (a year). It's hard to roll the dice on someone you don't know (a new hire).
It hits home that at the end of the day, tech, like all industries, is controlled by money men and managers who are conservative in their business practices and fear change.
Having been in the Bay Area startup scene for 20 years (and now through acquisition working for one of the big tech companies) I think the reason so many startups are here is because they can hire the experienced developers that will make their startup succeed. There is a whole ecosystem here and that can't be duplicated easily (or at all).
The easy answer is there's other factors at play but the biggest is that as much as the dream of the internet was that companies aren't run by the people that have that dream. There's also just additional challenges to running remote employees so companies default to in person because it's easier to monitor and meet with employees in person than remotely. Until they actually start having a hard time finding good enough talent willing to move to where the work is companies would prefer to just hire a slightly worse employee than deal with the additional hassle.
I really enjoy reading content that elicits more questions than answers provided. This is one of those pieces and mirrors my experience as well. I lived/grew up in Columbus, Ohio, before moving to the Bay. Columbus has a very nice tech scene, but also boasts industry diversification. I can code, but my neighbors/friends might be in insurance, healthcare, logistics, retail (L Brands) and have a shared standard of living. I ended up moving back and enjoy my $1.4k apartment in a great, quiet neighborhood and 5-7 minute commute to work downtown. I think the Bay Area could benefit from such diversity.
I found this a really thoughtful read, I've lived here for almost 15 years and have been below the federal poverty line as well as in the 90-something percentile of US wage earners. It's heartbreaking to be surrounded by people struggling and also to know that if you slow down too much, you could pretty easily find yourself on the streets.
I think the author hits an important point that, if nothing else, it's important to be aware of ourselves. It may not be my or your personal fault that things are the way they are, but we're living in a system that substantially rewards what we do over everyone else around us. I would posit that this also harms us, as the author notes - a person making six figures with a busy job can easily feel like money is just going through their fingers like water.
This is part of why I'm going back to school to study economics. I want to live a rich life, which to me doesn't mean having substantially more than other people. I want to live in an enriched community where everyone who plays an important part can live comfortably, raise a family if they want to, have savings, pay a reasonable amount for housing, etc..
> “it takes about 1-2 months to no longer really see the homeless”.
I used to live a couple hours south of SF. Once I went to a conference at Mosconi Center that started early, and got a big shock just driving there a bit after dawn. Right off of the freeway there was a tent city on concrete sidewalks. The filth and poverty were overwhelming to me. I felt like a slack jawed hick, not realizing that this kind of mass naked misery was so nearby. I saw the oft mentioned shit and needles and condoms strewn everywhere. On foot I made the mistake of meeting a homeless guy's eyes, who then chased me while screaming threats for two blocks.
And this was around '95, and the consensus is that it's gotten a lot worse. That people can ignore that after a couple of months of exposure is a testament to human plasticity. I imagine that if it were fresh to everyone every day people would have to either flee or actually do something about it. It's hard to imagine what an individual could do that would be effective.
If only there were a tech solution for reversing the invisibility. Articles like this can help a little but they're probably easier to ignore than the homeless themselves.
I thought this video about one developer's saga trying to build housing where his laundromat currently is explains a lot of the problems SF has with creating new housing:
What's tech's obsession with the bay area?
It's lovely, I've visited - and then left.
I can see why companies would thrive in an area with this excellent skill-pool - but I'd have thought they'd all want to get their employees out of there as soon as possible, once they'd got them.
Chuck them into a new office in the mid-west, let them buy a 5 bedroom mansion for a fraction of their salary, and make potential poaching as painful as possible.
Only possible reasons I can think of for what's happening are:
1) Insanely rich bosses are delusional, want all their staff around them, and the 'prestige' is over-riding sanity.
2) Staff consider Bay Area is "making it" and are happy to flit between local employers, ranking up their salary as they go.
I actually find the majority of the apartments in SF to be quite bad. I love the looks of some of the old buildings but,.. they were often built for single families. They'll have 3-4 bedrooms and one bathroom. For apartments so many are really old with zero sound insulation. Many apartments you have zero privacy and can here everything going at your neighbor's. My SF apartment just walking from one room to another after 11pm would piss off the neighbors. I basically had to tiptoe to bed for 6 years and otherwise stay out of the bedroom as the floors were really thin and the people downstairs would complain. Lots of apartments were single family homes and then split. They'll advertise 2 bedrooms but it will really be just a re-purposed living room or dining room with double doors or a temporary wall.
I get the impression 30% to 50% of the city is that way (way old) and most of the rest is like 70s-80s stuff that really needs to be torn down and rebuilt. Some of the more modern buildings say down in China Basin might be more sound proof and energy efficient? No idea.
> But when you go home after work, also be prepared to see the dystopia that your industry has created as a by-product.
I think it's a bit narcissistic to believe that tech has somehow caused all of SF's problems and unique qualities. Healthcare is a bigger and faster growing industry, and the homeless situation is caused by lots of factors both supply (zoning/regulation) and demand (tech/finance/healthcare workers).
There is a veneer of tech-induced culture in SF, but the true character and complexity of the city is caused by much, much more.
Detroit is quintessentially the city that has the worst outcome from an economic boom. From 1940 through to about the mid 1960s the city the top, or near the top for household income, similar to SF now.
"be prepared to see the dystopia that your industry has created as a by-product." - that's an assumption that is not based on fact. The software industry is not the only factor.
When I make a sandwich, I do not become a bread baker first...
It is perfectly reasonable to state as fact that the predominant economic paradigm of the city has caused dystopia, despite there being other causal factors or caveats baked in.
It's more or less the only factor. I don't blame city council for not foreseeing this after the Dotcom bubble. They would have to have built a city wall to keep low skill labor out to protect the low wage workers in the city from a never ending stream of dreamers who don't understand they will not make it in the long run working in restaurants, stores, car maintenance or what ever.
Internet money is displacing ordinary people, i.e. children of house owning residents who can't land a well paid job, and people in rental units.
If you have a family you can't expect all children to get well paid jobs, you can't expect your parents to be around being good grandparents after they retire and if you are born in the area you can't expect your childhood/teen/20s friends to stay around for the same reason - not everyone can get high paying jobs.
I mean, it's not a nice community if the people you grow up with have to move because they can't stay competitive enough.
When I worked in Palo Alto (as a high paid tech worker displacing old folks ...), I didn't think about this at all. It was first afterwards I realized that ordinary people were missing and there were very few children over all.
The real experience is living in the south bay in a giant apartment complex with a pool, driving everywhere, working on a tech campus, shopping at Fry's and Valley Fair. I may move back.
This is in the back of my mind when I think about one day working in the Bay Area. Given that the cost of living has increased to match the high salaries, there is little to draw me there other than cool problems to work on, which Silicon Valley does not have a monopoly on.
Career growth and networking opportunities is unprecedented there. Plus, if the salaries are higher in proportion to the costs of living, then your 10% (or whatever) savings you put aside will be much bigger.
I crunched the numbers before we moved to SF and even paying 10x more rent for 3x more salary worked out ok.
People tend to forget that if you contribute 10% of your salary to a retirement account, that 10% in CA is massively bigger than the same 10% anywhere else. Even if you technically lose on cost of living, you can win with proper savings strategies.
That’s true mathematically. But, after we get finished paying for our son’s college, out of free cash flow, we will easily be able to save 20% of my income and enjoy our five bedroom, 3-1/2 bath, 3000 square foot home in the burbs for which we pay around $2100 a month...
Did I mention, that we should also be able to save most of my wife’s income or just fritter it away on vacations? I’m no special snowflake any senior developer who lives in my metro area could easily do the same thing.
Win with proper savings strategies? This all assumes that you can't get the same pay (or at least close enough) elsewhere, which is an OK rule of thumb, but not true in all cases.
How about trying those saving strategies outside of the bay while still on a very good tech salary?
My current apartment would also be incomprehensible in the Bay Area.
Luxury 1 bd, new construction, walking distance to the office, pool, Friday night car service, 24/7 concierge, pet friendly, on-site maintenance, and more for under $2k. They also threw in a free month of rent, no deposit... I'm stashing away plenty in savings too.
Big tech has expanded beyond the Bay and will continue to do so. They've realized they can pay the same or a bit less and the employees can keep more. They also get to attract people that don't want to live in SF, the Bay, or CA in general. Not to mention state tax incentives that states are handing out.
They're literally offering for people to move out of our non-Bay office with the same package. Those staying are paying a die-hard Californian tax and it is an expensive one.
I don't think 10% flat rate is a safe assumption... I've been working in a different market for about 10 years. I have owned my house outright for the last four, leaving me with about 5 years of salary in savings + retirement, so i guess that'd be about 50% per year overall, not 10%.
“if” is the issue. Most people won’t contribute 10%, and that too has a tax ceiling. I contribute 15%, and I still hit the 18k limit, moving into after tax. Make too much to contribute to a Roth also. I’m in a flyover state, and tech salaries in SF are going to be even more limited. I just save it as cash for my kids college.
Agreed. Just iterating that 10% easily hits the limit of traditional retirement savings, and one has to use different avenues to have equivalent retirement income of a tech salary.
The housing crisis, high prices, and even homelessness is inevitable in such a great place (climate, nature, jobs). The corrupt political system and some people's attitude is just another indirect consequence. You can't fight the laws of supply and demand.
"...the only reason Silicon Valley and the Bay Area has been so prosperous is because it’s in a country where generally people are comfortable with having so much wealth, while having so many people live under the poverty line."
Objectively not true, it is run by the same people who complained about it and who's solution is to increase taxes and regulations which only worsens the problem.
The Working Class is moving into states like Texas for a reason despite California being progressive
Imagine this:
Fantastic weather.
Ski on Saturday, bike on Sunday, go to the beach on Monday, if you feel like it.
Regional parks, state park, national park all within 15min to a few hours distance.
Lots of cultural events due to closeness of San Francisco.
Huge variety of restaurants.
2 nearby international airports that will get me anywhere quickly.
The high chance of finding a new, interesting job if the need ever arises.
And, yes, incredibly interesting and well paying job that has set me up for retirement long before I hit 65 now matter where I'll end up (not that I'd want to retire soon because... interesting job.)
When you're part of the group who got lucky, living in the Bay Area is really not so bad.
> “On the way I noticed that the billboards next to the highways were directly targetting developers.”
Funny, this was the first thing I also noticed about the Bay Area when I moved out here years ago: the billboards. Where I came from (Deep South, Florida panhandle), all the billboards said things like “Homeschoolers for Jesus” and “Remember not to shake your baby,” and when I landed in SFO I was greeted by billboards for Portal 2, some Java framework, and the unbiquitous iPhone billboards. Definitely felt more in my element here!
Practically every open space in Seattle hosts an unauthorized homeless encampment.
Many downtown workers (including me) have to step over or around garbage, feces, used needles, tents, sleeping bags, passed out junkies/drunks, and so on, every time they come to work or leave their office. Not to mention the odors.
I came from a similar place to yourself and agree with your comments.
When I came to SF, I couldn't help but stare at stark poverty. I came from a much smaller place that lacked all of these problems. But what you described is true; after a few months your brain normalizes to the dystopia, and that in itself is scary.
I've been in the bay area 12 years now, and can't imagine moving out of California, but at the same time feel that things here are out of balance and somehow 'wrong'. But I also feel like I don't know where I'd go. We talk about Vancouver, or San Diego, but realistically I don't even know what I'd do in those cities.
Just tired of hearing about SF (and NY or Seattle for that matter), It is run by the same people who complain about the conditions there. You can make a good living as a SE in other cities like Austin, Houston, or even Denver which are a lot more affordable and doesn't have the sheer concentration of homelessness and poverty.
> I can’t help wondering though that the only reason Silicon Valley and the Bay Area has been so prosperous is because it’s in a country where generally people are comfortable with having so much wealth, while having so many people live under the poverty line.
I lived in the South Bay for ~5 years while I was going to university there. I liked it, but also hated it.
People everywhere, bad drivers, lots of arrogance etc, but now looking back there many great moments that I kind of miss.
One of them is that I loved travelling and exploring in the US. There is just always something to do. Also you meet nice people almost everywhere. So it was quite easy to make friends instantly.
If the visa situation wasn't so bad, I think I'd go back now that I took a break from the Bay Area Craziness.
To me living in Europe makes more sense (more stable and secure), but life in the US is somehow more fun. That is until you run out of money (be it because of medical bills or because you got sued...)
> To me living in Europe makes more sense (more stable and secure), but life in the US is somehow more fun. That is until you run out of money (be it because of medical bills or because you got sued...)
yes, European countries tend to have much better safety nets, but they also come with significantly higher taxes. as a software engineer in the states, you can also expect to get paid about twice as much for the same work. there may be some good reasons to prefer Europe, but they probably aren't economic.
One moment I'm in Twitter HQ, enjoying free food from around the world, place is buzzing with techies. Next moment we wander around a bit and there's a whole park where the homeless are living in the bushes.
I was literally in a place where one guy I met was designing self driving cars, and another guy was wandering the street with no shoes on, fighting with his invisible friend.
I also thought the natural surroundings were a contrast with what people have built. Minus the bridge and a few landmarks, the city looks kinda bland. Too low-rise for such a popular place. But there's hills and natural features that are quite spectacular.