Hacker News Reader

Comment by oarsinsync | Hacker News Reader

> The only place she could find that cost less than the $1,466 she’d be making in a month at Yelp was 30 miles east of San Francisco, in Concord.

You've got that the wrong way round, she was living in Concord, and without a roommate because...

> Her only lead on a roommate had fallen through, and she wanted to take time to find someone who she “wasn’t afraid would murder me, because I don’t really know anyone.”

View on HN

Took me about a week to find some roommates through reddit.com/r/sfbayareahousing when I first moved out here, then about a day to find some new roommates and a decent place to live on craigslist outside of that. Before that I used airbnb.com to find a place and there are a good number that are under $1000 a month outside downtown SF. She could've done something similar.

"Before that I used airbnb.com to find a place and there are a good number that are under $1000 a month outside downtown SF. She could've done something similar."

OK...I just did. I found nothing less than $1500 a month, even expanding my search radius to include Marin, the entire east bay, and all of South San Francisco. The average nightly is $179.

Of all the things in her post that you could choose be self-righteous about, her rent is the one that makes the least sense. Her budget was realistic. She wasn't living in luxury.

People blow my mind. Stand up for something better than poverty, and you get attacked not just from the top, but from the bottom as well.

It's not about "standing up for something better than poverty," it's about having enough sense to not move to one of the expensive cities in the U.S. for an $8/hour job, especially since you can easily become a Lyft or Uber driver and not just make more than that but make enough to commute out here from a place like Concord. Plenty of places in this range in the Concord area:

https://www.airbnb.com/s/Concord?checkin=05%2F01%2F2016&chec...

Yeah, totally. How entitled is it to move to a city where there are jobs, and expect to be paid enough to live within an hour of your full-time job without having to work a second gig as a cab driver? Screw her.

In case you hadn't noticed, there are only 13 listings below $1000 on that AirBnB page. Five of them are bunkbeds at "Casa Hacker". If we expand the search to $1500 a month, we get listings like "Very Comfy Couch for 1-2 People" (omfg) and "Bunk Bed in Shared Room" on page one. The average is $3477 a month.

Again, I draw two conclusions: a non-AirBnB one-bedroom in Concord for $1500 looks like a pretty good deal, and the people who are criticizing this girl's living situation are totally ridiculous.

Again, the point is not that SF has "jobs," the point is that it is stupid expensive and competitive as you have just pointed out to live out here regardless of the job you have, and in a free market society different skills have different demand, value, and pay as a result. It is entitlement to expect to make it out here on the wage she was making without having done some googling and research first, and looked to see if her skillset was enough to be able to live reasonably in SF. Someone with a bit more forthought would get the experience necessary in a more affordable city first before making the jump to SF or NYC.

Those hostels and other rentals available in that price range are a short term solution to finding an ideal roommate situation rather than jumping right into getting a one year lease on your own right off the bat.

I'm curious, do you think someone at a company in charge of updating the twitter feed should make as much as the CEO? Or the sales reps chasing down leads and bringing in business? Or the developers building the platform? How and why is the job she signed up for more valuable than the on-demand cab drivers who help bring people to work each day and are also forced to compete for decent housing situations in a city where one bedroom costs $3000 a month on average to live downtown?

I'm not American so I'm slightly confused by the terminology here. In the article it says she was renting a one bedroom place and looking for a roommate. I've frequently assumed that when Americans say 'roommate' they actually mean somebody they share a house with (what we would call flatmate or housemate in the uk), rather than somebody they share a bedroom with. But in this case it sounds like she was trying to find somebody to actually sleep in the same bedroom, since the place only had one bedroom.

In your comment you say you have 'roommates'. So to be clear, you saying that you share a bedroom with at least two other people? And you consider this normal for an adult in a developed country?

Is this really the situation in SV now? People who are "DevOps Consultants" have to share bedrooms with random strangers just to afford to live?

> Is this really the situation in SV now?

It is in San Francisco. So people commute. Public transportation is awful (the actual rides are fine, frequency and coverage are the main issues), so traffic is terrible.

Edit: despite the name, you don't share bedrooms. You share a home.

How bad is SF traffic for real?

Let's say you lived 10 miles out of the city. How long would it take you get get to your job by car?

In NYC, 10 miles can be a ~1hr commute even by public transport.

By car, it depends. I live 15 miles away in Oakland, and work in SOMA. Without traffic, it will take 30 minutes. This is with toll pass and HOV lane. Without it, it would take more than an hour.

By train, it takes me an hour each way, every day.

Roommate means someone to share an apartment with. Not to share a room.

Sometimes, people will take a one bedroom apartment, hang up a curtain, and fit two people in. Sometimes, it's the only thing you can afford.

Typically roommate does mean flatmate. But a new occurrence (well new for middle class folks) is renting a one bedroom place with a roommate.

You can either share the bedroom, but more commonly, one of you sleeps in the living room. Sometimes you can put up a fake wall--sort of a room divider--to make two bedrooms.

It's not really normal, but it's done in absurd high cost of living cities like SF and Manhattan, NY.

Then again Americans do it during college, so I'm not sure why I think it's so weird a young adult would do it. But I think it's weird.

"DevOps consultants" can probably afford better (I should hope so). She was doing a low-level call center job, something that requires no skills other than basic literacy. It's awful work, and pays little more than minimum wage.

Throw in the uniquely American problem of employee-provided health insurance (with no insurance for low-end employees), and you have a real recipe for suffering. A friend of mine once worked in a call center for a major phone carrier. In order to qualify for health insurance as part of her job, she had to spend six months as a "manager". "Managers" didn't actually manage anyone, and had less authority to solve problems than regular customer service reps. The job consisted of taking the calls of people who screamed "I WANT TO SPEAK TO A MANAGER!!!!", not so much for authority but for a target to yell out their frustrations. Her job, then, was to get yelled at, all day, every day, and not be able to do anything to help the angry people. For a sensitive soul, it was torture.

Welcome to America.

No idea why you were down-voted - it's a reasonable question. And San Francisco confuses matters because of the high cost.

In the US, the only time having a true roommate (two beds, one bedroom) as an adult is normal is in a college dormitory.

Beyond that, when American's say "roommate" they really mean "housemate", just as you suspected.

But, rent has risen to quickly in the Bay area, that it is increasingly common for adults to share rooms, not just houses/flats. It's completely abnormal and indicative of serious problems in the housing market in SF. To my knowledge, this is not a common occurrence anywhere else in the US. When it does happen outside SF, it is usually among the extremely poor, which often includes recent immigrants.

A "roommate" is typically someone who has a separate room each typically. A shared bedroom would be more of a hostel situation. What she should've done is found a two-bedroom roommate situation first or stayed in a hostel as noted above rather than get a one bedroom place.

As far as my affordability goes, I could manage a one bedroom in this city if I wanted to be living month-to-month and live in the Tenderloin. Someone with the similar responsibilities that I have who is more senior in their career likely has more options.

My understanding from reading the article was that the roommate (aka flatmate) fell through before renting an apartment, so she rented the cheapest 1-bedroom apartment she could find with the expectation that she would move when she found a suitable roommate.

> she wanted to take time to find someone who she “wasn’t afraid would murder me, because I don’t really know anyone.”

I'm sorry, but her insecurities are 100% her fault. Are we supposed to feel sorry for her because she moved to SF on her own? Almost everyone I know did that!

She has valid reasons for being insecure about murderers...

You should read the entire thing about what happened to her while she was 10 to understand it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com