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Thanks for starting this thread up - I feel the employment situation in California is completely hosed right now. I have a friend bailing to another state because -three jobs- isn't enough to make rent where he lives and he does not want roomates at all. The guy I am currently seeing wants to become a K-12 teacher but not in this state. He feels California fucks the good teachers while giving horrid teachers permanent paying tenure, that government pensions to retires is killing the state, high taxes are a loving crime because the job creators will leave, etc. He also is pissed off at Unions in general and that takes some serious deprogramming to get that kind of hate down. Doesn't help that he was raised by AnCap household and yet his family are all government employees bringing home like 7k a month. I dunno what to tell him because I honestly don't know what's to be done. I have a lot of childhood friends leaving en masse and it sucks. I know I am going to have to follow suit soon.  A bit E/N but there you have it.
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May 2, 2014 08:13
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CalPERS isn't really a 'government pension' the way most folks envision it; while it's administered by the state the only funding it gets is in the form of employer contributions from agencies to particular employees as part of their compensation exactly like the private sector and its operating budget comes from just being a gigantic investment firm. CalPERS would work fine if it was opened up to allow private sector employees/employers to invest in it but then we'd be ruining the business of those fanciful unicorns* that are honest mutual funds. *because they don't exist
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May 2, 2014 08:25
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Armani posted:Thanks for starting this thread up - I feel the employment situation in California is completely hosed right now. I have a friend bailing to another state because -three jobs- isn't enough to make rent where he lives and he does not want roomates at all. Good god, where do you live? Outside of 2009 pretty much my entire peer group held down steady, reasonably well paying jobs from then until now.
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May 2, 2014 09:13
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Bastard Tetris posted:Good god, where do you live? Outside of 2009 pretty much my entire peer group held down steady, reasonably well paying jobs from then until now. I live in SoCal with my family. Most of my friends are graduates with 4-year degrees and their respective fields either closed up shop for other states or there has been layoffs. It's in fields I can barely comprehend because I am a dumb motherfucker with genius friends - Engineering, Biology, Maths, Computer Sciences. One of them can do complex math directly in his head, draw drat near perfect geometric 3D shapes without the use of rulers or software, and makes circuits for fun and no one will trust him to do anything but push a cart and steam milk, it loving sucks.
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May 2, 2014 10:17
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I'm a history major, though I've no idea what I'll do with that. Perhaps I'll end up asking my uncle to find a job for me.
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May 2, 2014 15:01
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Does anyone know the current status on the high-speed rail project?
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May 2, 2014 20:10
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Bizarro Watt posted:Does anyone know the current status on the high-speed rail project? Going nowhere quickly!  Seriously, It hasn't even passed a planning stage at this point. It won't even start construction until 2018 at best, maybe completed by 2025. My children might get to use it one day.
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May 2, 2014 20:23
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Kobayashi posted:Eh, there's a difference between SF proper and the surrounding Bay Area. And I don't know, my understanding of the area is that SF was kinda-sorta analogous to Manhattan's East Side, in that it really didn't start to heavily gentrify until recently. Unlike the dot com spike, SF's latest wave of change started during the housing crisis and continues to this day. That's how I read it, anyway. Not really, it's been steadily gentrifying for 20-30 years now, basically since the start of the tech industry. Every time a tech bubble bursts, there is a brief lull, but the current trend is no different than the pre-DotCom trend. That's why most of that Techcrunch article on the housing crisis posted earlier just comes across as vapid. It attributes all of these national trends that are really just manifestations of income inequality to some unique SF Bay Area experience or local political atmosphere, when really the same thing is happening in every thriving city in the country. It may be happening more quickly here because of how crazy the tech boom is, but it's not like low-skill workers getting priced out or people wanting to preserve historic architecture at the cost of redevelopment are unique San Francisco phenomena.
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May 2, 2014 22:15
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Papercut posted:Not really, it's been steadily gentrifying for 20-30 years now, basically since the start of the tech industry. Every time a tech bubble bursts, there is a brief lull, but the current trend is no different than the pre-DotCom trend. It is a national trend (look at Boston for example), but for decades the system in SF has allowed NIMBYs to have more power to block projects than in most other big US cities, and it's definitely killed and slowed the construction of a lot of much-needed housing, and has contributed to rising prices in a market that was already tight on housing/somewhat expensive to begin with. There's a large minority of wealthy residents in SF who have a "gently caress you, got mine" attitude, have political connections, and block development to preserve their views and property values, and so they can attempt to mold the city into what they personally think it should be (they apparently view this major city as a quaint European fishing village or some poo poo). For example:  That graphic greatly exaggerates the size of the building being opposed ("fact" huh?), because the freeway should be more than twice as tall as they've depicted it (it's the now gone and much-hated Embarcadero freeway). The campaign to kill that building was dubbed "no wall on the waterfront", as if that tiny building were such a thing, or would be the first of a wave of skyscrapers lining the entire waterfront (and what about the existing taller buildings right next to it, that many NIMBYS live and work in? Why no complaints about them?). Much of the money for the petition to get it on the ballot came from a single wealthy couple living on the lower floors of a neighboring building that's twice as tall as it, and lots more money for it also came from Boston Properties, a developer which owns the neighboring Embarcadero center skyscraper complex (and is currently building the tallest tower in SF). Boston properties and that wealthy couple clearly didn't want to lose views and property value, and used their vast reserves of money to fund a high profile, lie-filled, anti-development propaganda campaign/ballot measure, and got their way...and in the process bypassed city agencies and elected officials that had already approved the building (why do we even have elected officials, a planning dept. full of trained workers etc, if we just negate them with dumb poo poo like this?). Other people who contributed money to the campaign were many members of the "Telegraph Hill Dwellers" neighborhood association, a bunch of wealthy people who try to block basically any construction in the northeast corner of the city. New subway? No not here! New luxury housing? No, not here! New affordable housing? Nope! Etc, etc. Honestly it might not have passed, but tons of people don't seem to pay attention and never vote (voter turn out for that election was at a record low, if i remember right)...except for the NIMBYs of course! They always turn out in full force during elections. Other made-up bullshit reasons to oppose the building were: 1. Oh no, the city will lose a tennis club and parking lot! (that's in prime downtown real estate, and which only the wealthy can afford) 2. Oh no, it's taking the place of affordable housing! (affordable housing would NEVER get built in such an expensive spot) 3. Oh no, it will cast massive shadows on a neighboring park! (nope, this is the northern hemisphere, the sun is in the wrong side of the sky for that  )4. Oh no, it'll overwhelm the sewage system! (complete BS) 5. Oh no, developers will make money off of it! (uh, that's how our capitalist economy works, dummies.) 6. Oh no, it'll increase traffic to apocalyptic levels! (no, the traffic added by a couple hundred new units in downtown will be a drop in the bucket) And a new anti-development ballot measure is expected to pass soon, that will subject any new building on port land (waterfront parking lots and such) to approval by voters (who are largely ignorant on the topic of development, and aside from NIMBYs often don't vote), which will likely kill thousands of proposed housing units that the city desperately needs. Here's another example of shameless NIMBYism from San Francisco: The ultra wealthy people living in the top floors of this 430' building:  Want to block or shorten a proposal for a neighboring 510' tower that would not only add much needed housing, but would also be home to the city's new Mexican Museum:  Its quite obvious that what they really want is to protect their views and thus property values, but they claim their reasoning is increased traffic and shadows on Union Square...never mind the fact that this is literally one of the busiest spots in SF and will always have huge amounts of traffic (why live there if you hate traffic?), and never mind the fact that the NIMBYs' own building is closer to Union Square than the proposed one, and already casts shadows on union square (as it has been doing since 2000). And never mind the fact that the amount of shadows cast by the new building on union square would be negligible, and for a short amount of time on any day. And I'm pretty sure that during certain times of the year it won't cast any shadows at all. The NIMBYs also claimed that the building was out of scale with the surrounding historic buildings (but their own building isn't of course!), despite the fact that there are already multiple skyscrapers within half a block of the proposal, and despite the fact that the Historical Preservation Commission already approved it. I'm pretty sure that they also claimed that if don't get their way with the building being killed or shortened to under 400', they'll take the fight to the ballot, and it wouldn't be surprising if they use their large amounts of money to circulate all kinds of misleading anti-development propaganda around the city, pay for TV commercials, etc. No doubt they'd frame it as the "evil/greedy developers, corrupt politicians, and the 1% vs. affordability for normal San Franciscans and the natural beauty of SF!", just like the other rich NIMBYs did with their "no wall on the waterfront" campaign. And a large number of ignorant SF residents will eat it up, not realizing that by opposing development in such a manner they're actually contributing to rising housing prices, and not realizing that the people who started these anti-development campaigns are the type of selfish, manipulative, wealthy assholes they think they're protecting the city from by supporting said campaigns. Yet another recent example I remember is the case of the renovation of a neighborhood park. It's been held up by a single resident, who keeps appealing it because the construction will disturb her peace and quiet or something. Rah! fucked around with this message at 23:41 on May 2, 2014 |
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May 2, 2014 23:35
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I just don't think any of those events is unique to SF, either politically or culturally. They're the same fights that every city goes through with development, just with slightly different particulars. Portland had a massive conflict over a new Trader Joe's in a lovely lot in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, and face constant battles with Intel and Nike millionaires fighting new trail construction in parts of Forest Park that the city owns (simply because the millionaires don't want people in their area).
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May 3, 2014 00:01
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Papercut posted:I just don't think any of those events is unique to SF, either politically or culturally. They're the same fights that every city goes through with development, just with slightly different particulars. Portland had a massive conflict over a new Trader Joe's in a lovely lot in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, and face constant battles with Intel and Nike millionaires fighting new trail construction in parts of Forest Park that the city owns (simply because the millionaires don't want people in their area). Like I said, it's not unique to SF, but based on what I've observed after many years of following development news around the US (and confirmed by most others I've encountered who also follow it, as well as those involved in development here), and what I've learned reading about the history of development in SF over the past several decades, compared to many big US cities (Chicago, NYC, Miami, LA, Houston, Austin, Seattle, etc), NIMBYs in SF seem to more often be successful at blocking or delaying stuff. All the constant restrictions, appeals, lawsuits, etc really does slow things down and unnecessarily strangles housing development, and it also increases the cost of construction, which of course leads to even higher rents and home prices.
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May 3, 2014 00:11
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Mayor Dave posted:I don't know what this is about, since it's a lot cheaper to live in San Jose than in the city proper and it's closer to the mothership for most tech employees. Google and Apple can't make that area more appealing than The City, no matter what type of housing is available in San Jose.
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May 3, 2014 00:40
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Papercut posted:Not really, it's been steadily gentrifying for 20-30 years now, basically since the start of the tech industry. Every time a tech bubble bursts, there is a brief lull, but the current trend is no different than the pre-DotCom trend. What a weird criticism. The second bullet point in the article is literally about how the tech migration is happening to big cities all over the place. All the author is doing is looking at this trend through the experiences and history of San Francisco because she lives there and knows a lot about the place.
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May 3, 2014 02:33
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While it is lovely in a lot of ways I really love the reverse '50s that is SF where people actively move to urban centers and commute to the suburbs. Part of the overall "Cult of Sanity" that I get here, since suburbs are loving shitholes and should die.
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May 3, 2014 10:21
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Shbobdb posted:I really love the reverse '50s that is SF where people actively move to urban centers and commute to the suburbs. While it certainly does happen, it's a myth that there's a huge amount of reverse city-to-suburb commuting in SF (I've heard more than a few people claim that "everyone in SF reverse commutes to Silicon valley now!"). The most recent census stats show that 85% of employed San Franciscans work in San Francisco (and another 200,000+ workers from the suburbs come into SF every weekday). To be fair, there probably are more reverse commuters in SF now than in the past, and they have been in the spotlight due to the whole tech worker shuttle bus drama...but they make up a small fraction of SF residents. Same with tech workers for that matter. The tech industry is the fastest growing part of SF's economy and has gotten tons of attention, but the majority of people who work in SF have nothing to do with it.
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May 3, 2014 10:49
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Rah! posted:While it certainly does happen, it's a myth that there's a huge amount of reverse city-to-suburb commuting in SF (I've heard more than a few people claim that "everyone in SF reverse commutes to Silicon valley now!"). The most recent census stats show that 85% of employed San Franciscans work in San Francisco (and another 200,000+ workers from the suburbs come into SF every weekday). To be fair, there probably are more reverse commuters in SF now than in the past, and they have been in the spotlight due to the whole tech worker shuttle bus drama...but they make up a small fraction of SF residents. Same with tech workers for that matter. The tech industry is the fastest growing part of SF's economy and has gotten tons of attention, but the majority of people who work in SF have nothing to do with it. On the topic of the tech buses, activists have filed lawsuits against all involved in the recent agreement, seeking to halt implementation as no environmental study was performed. In the off-chance that that sounds odd to you, the intent of the activists is to use the "displacement of citizens" criterion of the report to attack (and, one would assume, "hopefully" block) the decision for its gentrifying effects.
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May 3, 2014 17:50
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Armani posted:I live in SoCal with my family. Well in somewhat recent new Toyota is moving their US corporate headquarters out of state from CA to Plano TX: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/toyota-moving-us-base-california-texas-23508449
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May 3, 2014 18:00
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ComradeCosmobot posted:On the topic of the tech buses, activists have filed lawsuits against all involved in the recent agreement, seeking to halt implementation as no environmental study was performed. Another fine misuse of CEQA! I really hope they manage to get a reform of that law through. It's really just turned into a political weapon, rather than something designed to preserve the environment. The tech buses help keep cars off the roads by providing mass transit along a route not adequately served by public transit.
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May 5, 2014 02:19
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Dead Last posted:The tech buses help keep cars off the roads by providing mass transit along a route not adequately served by public transit. Technically true, but it's not like there is room for everyone at Google and Facebook who lives in SF to just hop in their cars and drive to and from work tomorrow if the shuttles disappear. There needs to be a way to shift the actual costs of this ridiculous commute onto the businesses and SV cities who insist on keeping their situation so unsustainable.
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May 5, 2014 03:09
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Dead Last posted:Another fine misuse of CEQA! I really hope they manage to get a reform of that law through. It's really just turned into a political weapon, rather than something designed to preserve the environment. Actual legal systems aside - the arguments are not really strange.
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May 5, 2014 03:15
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FRINGE posted:The meta-argument "tell all the Apple drones to go live in Apple land instead of ruining our city" does have some ground-level sanity to it. If the coffee-pourers cant afford to live in SF then it makes sense that there will be a backlash against the Apple drones driving rents up "because they can". (Telling low-wage workers to commute in and out of SF is ridiculous. Adjusting the system to make it less attractive to bigger-money vultures makes political sense from a local perspective.) But the buses are only the most visible part of the issue. Even if the Apple and Googleites moved to the South Bay tomorrow, you'd still have the same gentrifying effects caused by the startup culture that now infests Downtown (e.g. Twitter). And of course, what would happen if these South Bay companies said they were moving to San Francisco? Now the buses are gone, and you've fixed the mismatch between the employee's place of work and place of play, but you've only served to aggravate the gentrification problem. While you are right that the meta-argument is indeed sound, it's only a thin veneer over the fundamental issue caused by high housing demand and low housing supply (as are the debates over the Ellis Act). That software companies happen to have the money to throw around to get their employees into the few openings for housing that exist only highlights who the haves are, and attacking them won't fundamentally change supply, even if demand slackens somewhat.
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May 5, 2014 06:18
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ComradeCosmobot posted:While you are right that the meta-argument is indeed sound, it's only a thin veneer over the fundamental issue caused by high housing demand and low housing supply (as are the debates over the Ellis Act). That software companies happen to have the money to throw around to get their employees into the few openings for housing that exist only highlights who the haves are, and attacking them won't fundamentally change supply, even if demand slackens somewhat. The drive to play the "I like what you have so I am taking it from you" game is definitely a more fundamental issue, but addressing that is essentially addressing American capitalism as a whole. The locals are not likely to tackle that regarding this issue. (Well then again it is The Bay so...)
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May 5, 2014 06:52
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While there isn't much actual land, the land itself isn't well developed. The Bay Area is not vertically developed at all. It's time to start building up. It will never be a Manhattan because a lot of the ground isn't suitable for skyscrapers and earthquakes limit the maximum height but there is plenty of room for taller buildings. Everyday it seems like there is another petition to prevent another high rise from getting built. Mandate that X% (civil engineers can figure that part out) are affordable housing units and you've gone a long way towards relieving the pressure that the housing market is feelings. There needs to be more done about gentrification but making the housing market less of a complete gently caress-up is a good start. SF needs to stop pretending it is a quaint little city with nice old houses. It needs to build up like a proper city.
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May 5, 2014 08:44
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Shbobdb posted:While there isn't much actual land, the land itself isn't well developed. The Bay Area is not vertically developed at all. It's time to start building up. It will never be a Manhattan because a lot of the ground isn't suitable for skyscrapers and earthquakes limit the maximum height but there is plenty of room for taller buildings. Everyday it seems like there is another petition to prevent another high rise from getting built. Mandate that X% (civil engineers can figure that part out) are affordable housing units and you've gone a long way towards relieving the pressure that the housing market is feelings. There needs to be more done about gentrification but making the housing market less of a complete gently caress-up is a good start. The "stop pretending it is a quaint little city with nice old houses" is a huge hurdle to accepting any sort of rational solution. Also, the people who hate the highly-educated tech workers are probably going to feel pretty miffed if a bunch of highly-educated planners and civil engineers start objectively re-engineering the city.
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May 5, 2014 09:25
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on the left posted:Also, the people who hate the highly-educated tech workers are That is just trying to paint non-computer specialists as lesser people.
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May 5, 2014 09:58
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FRINGE posted:A BS in CS or CE doesnt really make you "highly educated" in that part of CA. Having a huge concentration of Stanford grads, tons of PhDs, and non-tech companies like Genentech/Abbot Labs that employ said PhDs makes the area pretty highly educated.
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May 5, 2014 10:32
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on the left posted:Having a huge concentration of Stanford grads, tons of PhDs, and non-tech companies like Genentech/Abbot Labs that employ said PhDs makes the area pretty highly educated. Its been a while, I guess we're about due for another round of: "Well I guess they should have all been programmers  "
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May 5, 2014 11:35
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FRINGE posted:Thats what I meant. Addressing the average Apple/Google worker as particularly "highly educated" because ooh! technology! does not do justice to how highly educated the area is in general. (And those other highly educated people are getting squeezed as well by the tech money.) I'm not saying they should have been programmers, i'm saying that all of those other groups are lumped in with the techies: a bunch of highly educated people moving into San Francisco. They may not make the same money as Google or Twitter hires, but they have the ability to make that kind of money in the future, and are displacing the preexisting working-class as they move in.
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May 5, 2014 12:04
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on the left posted:The "stop pretending it is a quaint little city with nice old houses" is a huge hurdle to accepting any sort of rational solution. Also, the people who hate the highly-educated tech workers are probably going to feel pretty miffed if a bunch of highly-educated planners and civil engineers start objectively re-engineering the city. This sentiment is hilarious though. Leftist locals are rejecting central planning! They should just admit they are rear end in a top hat regionalists and are no better than Southerners complaining of Yankees, etc.
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May 5, 2014 16:06
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Slobjob Zizek posted:This sentiment is hilarious though. Leftist locals are rejecting central planning! On top of that, tons of people complaining about this are outsiders who flocked to San Francisco as a counter-culture mecca. I know quite a few people from bumfuck areas of the US who moved to SF right after college, and they quickly started complaining about all the tech money.
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May 5, 2014 16:25
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Shbobdb posted:a lot of the ground isn't suitable for skyscrapers and earthquakes limit the maximum height This isn't true. When the ground is comprised of landfill (like much of downtown SF), all you need to do is anchor the building to the bedrock below the landfill. There's currently a 1,070' building and 802' building under construction in downtown SF, in landfill areas that used to be part of the bay. They both have huge, nearly 300' foot deep pilings anchoring them to the bedrock there. Modern skyscrapers are some of the safest buildings to be in during an earthquake due to modern construction techniques and building codes. The only thing limiting building heights in SF are NIMBYs, who have many times fought for height restrictions over the decades, and often won. It's the reason why much of SF has a ridiculously low 40' height limit, and it's the reason that until recently the maximum height limit in downtown was only 550', with the majority of it being zoned lower than that (which went into effect after the city's 1970s/1980s skyscraper boom). Shbobdb posted:SF needs to stop pretending it is a quaint little city with nice old houses. It needs to build up like a proper city. The frustrating thing is that SF is already built up like a big city. It's the second most densely populated big city in the US, and already has around 500 highrise buildings within city limits, putting it within the top 5 cities or so for highrises in the US. It also has the largest amount of downtown office space of any US city aside from NYC, Chicago, and Washington DC, and is a primary city of the nation's 5th largest metro area. Of course it's adding more people all the time, and needs to build a lot more, or else the end result will be that only the wealthy will live here. Yet you have these delusional NIMBY types who insist SF is a "city of quaint villages", or a "small European-style city", etc, etc, many of which seem to oppose anything taller than 3 or 4 stories as being "out of character". I've lived in SF my entire life, and never understood how some people can be so absorbed in their own little worlds and ideals that they fail to see what SF really is: A big loving city.
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May 5, 2014 22:06
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FRINGE posted:The meta-argument "tell all the Apple drones to go live in Apple land instead of ruining our city" does have some ground-level sanity to it. If the coffee-pourers cant afford to live in SF then it makes sense that there will be a backlash against the Apple drones driving rents up "because they can". (Telling low-wage workers to commute in and out of SF is ridiculous. Adjusting the system to make it less attractive to bigger-money vultures makes political sense from a local perspective.) They're misusing environmental protection laws (private mass transit is bad for the environment!) to push an unrelated agenda (make it harder for tech employees to live in San Francisco!). It does make a ground level amount of sense in a totally cynical, yet also ineffectual, way. If they manage to kill the tech buses, it's not like tech people will stop living in San Francisco. They'll just start driving more cars. It also undermines public support for environmental laws. It's this kind short sighted politics that's really damaged the progressive movement in the city.
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May 6, 2014 04:18
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Dead Last posted:It's this kind short sighted politics that's really damaged the progressive movement in the city.
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May 6, 2014 04:36
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I don't disagree with you. I'm just willing to throw NIMBYs a bone and start building up in the Mission, Oakland and other areas where people without proper political influence live. Nobody likes Projects but they are a fact of life in urban environments. As long as there is sufficient affordable housing it represents a Faustian choice but one that people have been historically been willing to take. Since this intersects with gentrification, you also have a lot of East Coast transplants (myself included) who value "living up high" so you can build luxury condos/apartments at the sam time (also with affordable housing units). There will be a certain amount of arson in reaction but high end housing can absorb that cost and the city can make that work at the expense of a better public transportation system for the foreseeable future. Ideally, they'd levy extra taxes on the housing developers to make up for the shortfall but HAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHA that isn't happening.
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May 6, 2014 08:41
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Dead Last posted:They're misusing environmental protection laws (private mass transit is bad for the environment!) to push an unrelated agenda (make it harder for tech employees to live in San Francisco!). The issue is made more complex because the very communities where the tech companies locate are also the communities that prevented BART service from reaching those tech jobs. Combine with the legitimately illegal way the buses were operated, and it becomes very easy to see how people can get frustrated at people using resources and not really giving back for them (especially since SF has a payroll tax that companies avoid by remaining down south). Also realize that the environmental impact report that the protesters are suing to have done doesn't just cover natural impacts but also community impact; like disruption to MUNI service caused by these private buses using public bus stops. So not as much an abuse as it is SOP. Unfortunately, I think the people who want to dress like clowns are drowning out a legitimate discussion about a complicated issue and instead turning it into "tech versus not-tech", when really its about the fact that many Bay Area communities refuse to adapt to a denser reality. I'm not talking about SF or Oakland, both these cities are building new and denser developments. Its the cities where the job growth is, and the peninsula in particular, that refuses to adjust to their own changing economics.
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May 6, 2014 08:54
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Shbobdb posted:Dude, STEM students need a union hardcore. Sure, they usually have more money than Liberal Arts but paying someone 20K/year for a 90 hour work week for pretty terrible job prospects is insane. The problem is that most of them embrace that lifestyle as proper and correct. I can guarantee you that this is never happening.
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May 6, 2014 12:46
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Redgrendel2001 posted:I can guarantee you that this is never happening. I'm not sure I agree with this. I'm a STEM graduate student and my experience is that a lot of people are getting pretty dissatisfied with how we are treated, especially when we compare quality of life with friends who went into industry instead of going to graduate school. If GSR unionization became legal in California I think it would stand a pretty good chance of actually happening (which is why it's still illegal).
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May 6, 2014 19:06
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For a good example of NIMBY and "environmentalist" forces working together here in Berkeley they're working to revise the rules to make it harder to build tall buildings downtown. http://www.berkeleyside.com/2014/05/05/initiative-aims-to-tighten-green-parts-of-downtown-plan/
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May 6, 2014 19:06
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Rah! posted:Of course it's adding more people all the time, and needs to build a lot more, or else the end result will be that only the wealthy will live here. This seems less like a problem and more like the whole point of NIMBY activity.
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May 6, 2014 19:11
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Sword of Chomsky posted:What is hosed up is that if I could get a mortgage it would cost me less per moth than renting. Right now a small two bedroom house (800 square feet) is running 2500 a month or more. The same house would cost me no more than 1800 a month if it was a mortgage payment. I know property taxes would be added to that, but it is still less. If I had 20k in savings I would buy something, but it will take me 5-10 years of savings and no disasters to get enough of a nest egg to purchase something. You are missing more costs in your numbers here. The costs of buying and owning a home include:
There are additional potential costs, depending on where and what you buy:
Finally, if you will ever sell your home, you need to figure in the cost of selling. Typically the seller pays both the buyer and seller's agents commissions, which is a total of 6% of the sale price of the home. Add more costs depending on how negotiations go; often the seller has to fix things discovered during inspection, for example. This cost means that if your home fails to appreciate in value by at least 6% from when you buy it, you have a net loss, and you should account for the net loss in your calculations. UberJew posted:More accurate. I'm 39, and I bought four years ago in the Bay Area (Concord). I was only able to buy a house because of the mortgage crisis, of course, but I could have bought an apartment or condo. And I am not especially well off: I have a decent tech job as a technical writer, but I get paid way, way less than software engineers, and my wife is an artist so she makes very little. My wife takes BART into the city, which is a 45 minute commute, and I work from home. While prices in Concord have recovered, it is still possible to buy a house in reasonable condition in a non-murdery neighborhood here for $300k. Which is of course what all the regular workers with normal salaries who commute into the city do: they buy in Hayward or Richmond or Pittsburgh/Antioch and then take BART. quote:Why does the OP suggest that California has any liberalness to flaunt? We're just Florida with less humidity (e: and some very pretty mountains and forests) and our lovely conservatives have Ds because our Rs are complete lunatics. California still leads the country in a number of liberal causes, including having the strictest environmental regulations (especially for cars), stricter gun control laws, more money for health care for the poor, better support for immigrants, a lockdown on oil drilling especially along our well-protected coastline, and of course, higher taxes on businesses than most states, although with the glaring exception of Proposition 13 and how that affects the property taxes businesses pay. A lot of people in other states assume, wrongly, that California is uniformly liberal, which is of course wrong - we have some of the most staunchly conservative enclaves in the country, most notably in orange county, but basically all of California's rural counties are republican. Mayor Dave posted:The only people I know who have managed that feat (and I only know two) are both engineers whose parents gave them the down payment as a graduation gift. I'm not an engineer and I did not get a gift to help pay my downpayment. Well, I did, but it was from Obama, in the form of an $8k buyer's credit. Thanks Obama! agarjogger posted:I don't even feel like there's any excuse for suffering from this delusion. San Francisco is a major city in the United States, and a finance capitol no less. What chance does it have of being genuinely progressive. Well, you're right of course that there have always been business-friendly interests in SF. But SF also has a history of being a bastion for certain liberal causes, perhaps most notably the gay movement that the Castro is famous for. Gay Pride started here, the effort to pull AIDS out of the shadow and put it at the forefront of American consciousness started here. We elected one of the first openly-gay mayors in the world. On the other hand, San Francisco was a major military town up through the second world war, with naval bases and shipyards all over the place, so it has an industrial history too. It's a unique city with a unique history. I think it's fair to point out that NIMBYism and anti-growth has been the cause of, and certainly exacerbated, the lack of development that's ironically led directly to the current rates of gentrification; if you don't build new housing but demand for housing rises, then the poor people in the Mission, SOMA, etc. get displaced as their homes get bid up to rents they can't afford. But at the same time, it is a city with some charming neighborhoods, some important history (such as the Mission's hispanic heritage and character), and a tourist industry based in no small part on those charms. There's an economic component to the concern over gentrification; if SF's chinatown, mission district, waterfronts, etc. lose their character, SF may lose its position as one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, almost as famous for its ethnically-diverse dining as it is for having a pretty red bridge. I'm afraid being mad at Google is massively missing the point, though. SF is a desirable place to live, and that means people want to live there, and if they can afford it they'll pay handsomely for the privilege. The only way to stop that would be to make it less desirable, which is obviously counterproductive; so, you need to either make room for more people to move in, or accept that the in-movers are going to displace the poorest of the current residents, and that is of course specifically the people who make the ethnic neighborhoods what they are. Kobayashi posted:Eh, there's a difference between SF proper and the surrounding Bay Area. And I don't know, my understanding of the area is that SF was kinda-sorta analogous to Manhattan's East Side, in that it really didn't start to heavily gentrify until recently. Unlike the dot com spike, SF's latest wave of change started during the housing crisis and continues to this day. That's how I read it, anyway. SF and the surrounding area has been undergoing a process of gentrification since at least the mid-1950s. It's just that people today don't remember as well that this was once one of the biggest naval shipyards and industrial centers in the country. The Port of Oakland is still among the top three on the west coast (after LA and Seattle). During the post-war period, there have been several waves of massive suburbanization. In SF proper, areas such as china basin have been slowly converting from old industrial land into revitalized neighborhoods for decades. In the 1990s, though, we saw a lot of those areas converted into "artist lofts" which actually went in the majority to up-and-coming dotcommers and new wealth businesspeople, many working in SF's financial sector (which has also been growing since the 1950s). The housing crisis did bring about some significant changes, don't get me wrong; a lot of people were displaced through foreclosures, which made it possible for some big redevelopment projects to get started. But poorer immigrant populations and blue collar workers have gone through a process of displacement into the fringe suburbs of the bay area for at least the last 50 years. Armani posted:The guy I am currently seeing wants to become a K-12 teacher but not in this state. He feels California fucks the good teachers while giving horrid teachers permanent paying tenure, that government pensions to retires is killing the state, high taxes are a loving crime because the job creators will leave, etc. He also is pissed off at Unions in general and that takes some serious deprogramming to get that kind of hate down. Sever. FRINGE posted:The meta-argument "tell all the Apple drones to go live in Apple land instead of ruining our city" does have some ground-level sanity to it. If the coffee-pourers cant afford to live in SF then it makes sense that there will be a backlash against the Apple drones driving rents up "because they can". (Telling low-wage workers to commute in and out of SF is ridiculous. Adjusting the system to make it less attractive to bigger-money vultures makes political sense from a local perspective.) But they are based on an apparent failure to know or understand the statistics. The software industry is only something like 15% of the bay area's employment. If Apple, Google and Facebook all left the bay area and took all of their workers with them, it'd be a small blip on the total economy and make very little difference to the housing situation here. Gentrification in San Francisco is driven by a rising population, falling unemployment, and recovering economy creating high demand for housing, with 40+ years of restricted development throttling supply. The tech buses are highly visible tokens that give protestors a way to get the attention of reporters, which is valuable for grabbing media attention to their cause, and maybe that's useful for engendering some kind of change. But it doesn't seem like the protestors are asking for the kinds of changes that will actually give them what they want - which is stabilizing rents so that ordinary wage earners can afford to stay in the city. Trabisnikof posted:Unfortunately, I think the people who want to dress like clowns are drowning out a legitimate discussion about a complicated issue and instead turning it into "tech versus not-tech", when really its about the fact that many Bay Area communities refuse to adapt to a denser reality. I'm not talking about SF or Oakland, both these cities are building new and denser developments. Its the cities where the job growth is, and the peninsula in particular, that refuses to adjust to their own changing economics. This is a really good point and goes to the heart of the matter. The Bay Area communities do not work together to plan for the millions of people we are going to add to our population over the next 20+ years. Too many communities have policies driven by homeowners who are perfectly happy to watch their property values skyrocket while preserving their views of the Bay, and willfully ignoring the traffic nightmares that are caused by the way this inevitably forces people to move farther and farther out into the periphery of the bay area. The decisions not to have BART in Marin or to San Jose back in the 1970s is part of that, and shows how long this kind of attitude has persisted. San Francisco gets the attention in the media, but huge parts of the blame for the current clusterfuck go to peninsula cities, San Jose, communities along the hills of the East Bay, etc.
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May 6, 2014 19:30
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