California's skyrocketing housing costs, taxes prompt exodus of residents
mercurynews.com
mercurynews.com
Of course, I just moved to a farm in the country so I wouldn't have to deal with all that nonsense :P
I'm making do in Ithaca just fine. More restaurants per person than New York City, a rush hour that only lasts 10 minutes on 5 roads, and a bunch of really nice people for a place this cold and gray make Ithaca the most good enough place in the world for me.
As far as big cities go, you take the great with the terrible.
The weather, the geological features, the schools, the meetups, the job opportunities... all factors.
But the biggest is that the people are truly interested in intellectual matters in a way that was not extant in the other places I've lived. My son is a programmer and nobody had a clue what he was talking about--which is fine--but they also couldn't care less to even try to understand.
And also, there is a lot of prejudice that I am glad my kids will not grow up in the milieu of.
Ideally you'd be near Melbourne, preferably closer to the beach. Suitable towns: Melbourne Beach, Indialantic, Satellite Beach
After leaving school ( she stopped at a Master's ) she left anything related to academia behind but she's still roughly able to exploit the degree as a credential .
But South Fl is a completely different thing. I once declined a job offer there simply because more than half of the rental property on offer appeared to be phone-drop scams.
And I agree about other industries but I happen to be in tech.
That seems like it used to be true more than it is now. I live in Austin, and you can't go to a downtown coffee shop without hearing a spirited discussion about programming languages, frameworks or even conversion rates (I heard that last one standing in line at a taco place the other day.)
It's partially, I think, because programming and computers are more ingrained in the culture at large, and mostly because SF got too expensive and so places like Austin, Seattle, and Portland have a significant number of tech startups now.
This is the way I feel in Boston. The cost of living (mainly housing prices) gets more ridiculous every year, but the intellectual and cultural environment make me want to stay. Most of my friends back home (deep South) are easily able to afford to buy decent homes, while I'm stuck renting a tiny apt. Still, this feels like a worthwhile material sacrifice given the culture of this city. Then again, if I had kids, I might feel differently ...
Then again, in another year or so I should be able to buy a place near a T stop.
I'm really unsure if this environment is so great for children as i'd rather be able to get them in an environment where big ideas are discussed. I've been doing my best for the past few years by organizing meetups/events or supporting others who do likewise, but at this point I question if that is enough compared to just moving to a place where these things are just the norm.
NB Not being snarky - I live in Edinburgh which is overflowing with geological features [hence arguably being the birthplace of geology as a science] and I love that factor but the main geological feature of the Bay Area would appear to be a major disadvantage rather than a feature?
I'd also count being in a place where the mountains meet the ocean as a plus, as well as the golden gate (the waterway, not the bridge, though the bridge ain't half bad, either). And a few hours away you've got Big Sur and Yosemite.
I didn't find housing costs to be that far out of whack with the increased salary when I moved to the Bay Area, though.
And I found the soul crushingly bad traffic at the time to be worse in Seattle than in the Bay. My #1 reason was the weather, though. I just couldn't take the lack of sunshine. My mood changed so much when I moved down here. I'm sure it doesn't bother some people, and more power to them. I really miss the northwest when I visit. It reminds me of what I've missed out on, things have changed so much. Then again, I would have missed out on things that happened down here. And I've missed out on everything that happened in Omaha and Denver and...
I believe they may be talking about the Sierra Nevada range, with mountaineering matched only by places in the Andes, Himalayas or Alps. Yosemite is the climbing capital of the world and the birthplace of modern rock climbing. Sure, it's not right in the Bay area, but you can easily drive to a trail head within a half day or less.
Little known secret: the East side of the Sierras is where all the best action is at and the real estate is cheaper (although still overpriced). The downside is the tech jobs are few and far between and if you like urban environments, there aren't really any.
The philosopher kings of SiVa are as much the Medici as they are intellectuals.
"All mankind's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room." - Blaise Pascal.
Guidance can help, tools can help, but it's not like those will replace just doing the work.
Even as the internet makes geography less relevant, the competition for living in cities keeps growing.
I'm not convinced it's not the Internet. Google "FOMO" for a possible mechanism. The Internet makes it easy for large cities, by sheer social mass, to send out a louder cultural signal and convince everyone else they are missing something by not being there. Talk to a young midwesterner and you will hear many whose ambition is to "get to NY," with this vague sense that magic will happen when they do. This draws more young ambitious people, which amplifies the effect. Eventually if you are not in SF or NYC you are nobody.
This isn't new, but I do wonder if the net is amplifying it.
I also wonder if wealth stratification is playing a role. Opportunity clusters in cities where there is capital available, and those tend to be the big cities where the most rich people live.
Which, in 2016, is kinda crazy. One would think with the internet being geographically close to capital wouldn't matter as much. Now it matters more than ever before it seems.
It's sad that the young midwesterner (hey that was me once!) has to try to "get to NYC" for the best opportunities instead of modern communications making those opportunities available in places like Chicago, or Indy, or that person's small hometown. That person shouldn't have to choose between sharing a one bedroom apartment in Bushwick with 4 other people or remain jobless/stuck at one job in whatever middle of the country place that person resides in.
We're doing it wrong :)
My perception is that it's much harder to get trusted and valued as a remote worker, unless you have the luck to be in a very meritocratic company (and I don't think it's possible to be 100% meritocratic).
Social interactions are key for all but the most technical of positions (and even then, there's social dynamics at work, only through papers or mailing lists or whatever).
I don't know about amplifying it, but it's certainly revealing that there are much better opportunities out there. Working in the midwest and reading about the coasts is depressing as hell.
Speaking as a late-20's midwesterner, I don't think it's about success or "FOMO" as much as it is about lifestyle.
The Midwest doesn't have real cities (except for Chicago). You really can't have an urban lifestyle in the Midwest. The cities here simply aren't developed enough to support it, and likely never will be.
Someone from Indianapolis / Cincinnati / Milwaukee / etc might respond to try to argue that you can, or that they do. But realistically, they're kidding and everyone knows it -- it's doesn't even remotely compare to somewhere like Boston or NYC or DC or Philadelphia or San Francisco or Seattle.
That doesn't make those places bad, it's not a slight against people who want suburban or rural lifestyles. But if your the kind of person who wants an urban lifestyle, you probably won't be satisfied by anything Midwestern (sans Chicago) because that type of lifestyle simply doesn't exist here.
This is where the "get to NYC" ambition comes from, far more than any idea of success or "FOMO", in my opinion.
The benefits fall off pretty quickly after NYC, Chicago, LA, and San Francisco. As a Midwesterner who has long considered a move for exactly the reasons you mentioned, my reaction to a move to Philadelphia or Seattle or Austin (or whatever) is basically, "why bother?" I can live an "urban enough by comparison" lifestyle right here.
But, that's not true of the Big Four.
Prime example: two decades ago, Boston's MBTA T (subway/tram/light rail stuff) had technology that San Francisco's MUNI still can't manage.
LA is a sprawl. Chicago is a war zone. Well, LA is that too. This may be city life, but it doesn't count if we're considering positive attributes!
"If you aren't in SF or NYC you are nobody..." Whew. Okay then.
"Wealth stratification" is, IMO, largely an artifact of 1) increasingly abstract wealth and 2) low interest rates. This is oh so very much because of the tax code and because of Fed policy.
Large, cheap: Detroit, Houston, Atlanta
Small, expensive: Key West, Honolulu
Depending on how you count "small", add in any of: Palo Alto, Malibu, Summerville
I don't see him asserting that millions of people are that way.. Simply that he witnessed several instances of this or that it may have been common for him to see this.
Similarly, I did the right thing by moving out of the Northwest to the Bay Area where my quality of life is vastly better.
Also we have Feinstein so that's... that's a joy.
PS: I love it how there's a desperate need for cheap housing, and developments are approved - but always priced for big-earners.
And that's not even accounting for the massive economic boom going on here, or the surrounding municipalities which are largely doing worse on construction (cough cough Palo Alto).
A worldwide markets for these homes now exists, which means the number of people who both want and can afford them is huge, and therefore the price will rise until that condition is no longer true.
Also, I believe we are again seeing signs of loan company shenanigans which, if so, will allow easy-to-game capital to continue to chase prices upwards as well.
It's a self-perpetuating cycle¹: people invest in real estate; prices go up; it becomes a more attractive investment.
¹Sometimes known as a “bubble”
Getting around is a royal pain. After living in Vienna, I was amazed at people who thought Bart was great. Really? I found it dirty, slow, and crazy expensive.
Of course everything is just crazy expensive. A beer garden opened up nearby, with a few nice tables and some decent beers. 2 beers will cost you about $16. It's like the entire economy is about paying rent. I remember going to heuriger in Vienna and grabbing a bottle of totally decent wine for about 8 EUR.
I'm not sure 64k people out of 38 million counts as an exodus, though. There's a whole lot of immigration going on.
To make things even more depressing one could feel the omnipresence of a rampantly ignorant / myopic tech monoculture.
I remember that I felt very relieved when I got back to Vienna.. :/
But then I stopped by the California Historical Radio Society booth (Radio Day is July 23 in Alameda!), and spoke with them abuot their "KSAN Live Jive CD Project", and all the good memories came flooding back.
If you're curious about the Bay Area, read David Talbot's wonderful history, "Season of the Witch".
To be more precise, paying for real estate. You can't buy a decent home anywhere for less $1 million and property taxes are crazy.
Its an interesting set of factors that lets me buy a Ferrari far easier than a house. First lifestyle money, then tech money, now foreign investment.
And there are a lot of subtle changes neighboorhood to neighboorhood. Mission was once the most expensive in SF, now Berkeley is surpassing even them. Hayes Valley becomes hip, and Precedio Heights becomes more affordable because of the lack of public transit.
For the most part i've surmised that the city is full of smaller town transplants who graduate and think their 120k offer is the greatest opportunity of their lives. They shortly find out it barely gets them a toilet with two roommates and end up leaving for Seattle, Portland, etc while staying with their company. This cycle repeats over and over
Meanwhile, this engine extends the SFBay problem to the B and C cities -- leaving fewer places to run to.
"California has seen negative outward migration to other states for 22 of the last 25 years."
Obviously the Bay Area does not have negative outward migration, or the traffic and housing issues would be solved.
Another interesting quote cites a man inexplicably commuting from SF to the East Bay which is not something you'd do if you were trying to optimize your housing costs.
A third cites a woman and her sister moving from The Villages in SJ to Dayton, Ohio. Not mentioned is the fact that The Villages is a retirement community on a golf course (you have to be over 55 to live there).
According to census estimates, California had a natural population increase of 1,332,394 (births - deaths) from April 2010 -- August 2015. In that same period it had a net immigration of 568,884 people, consisting of +834,999 international and -266,115 domestic.
On the other hand, when you look at the San Francisco bay area metropolitan region, you'll see that there's no domestic exodus and a net immigration of 274,598 people over the last five years.
[http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/PEP/2015/PEPT...]
So, yeah, with a little over ~90,000 new people per year in the region, the picture looks very different than the one the article was trying to paint.
Public sector unions are strongly against that sort of arrangement. They prefer that the taxpayer guarantee them a defined level of pension benefit (no matter what the investment markets do).
In other words, it seems that public sector unions want the taxpayer to insulate them from the real world shocks which the other 80% of people have to endure. It's a very valuable benefit and it's understandable that they fight for it. But it is super expensive for the cities and states.
In LA there was an attempt about 5 years ago to gather signatures just to put a measure on the ballot to transition city workers from defined benefit to a 401K style defined contribution pension plan.
But certain public sector unions made it known that they planned to send their people out to sign those petitions with unverifiable, fake names and addresses. This would increase the likelihood of a failed signature verification process, meaning that the petition would probably not succeed at getting the measure on the ballot. So they dropped the whole effort.
A pension is the only chance you have of a decent life when you get old. There is nothing else.
You won't see any of that cash unless you're involved in the building industry.
And don't most most jobs still include a pension as a standard benefit? I'd say you were in the minority if you're a full time tech worker and have no pension at all.
In the private sector, pensions have been going away -- I've worked for about nine employers in the last 20 years or so, only one had a pension plan, a public school district. (I wasn't eligible to participate because I held a part time position)
Many (most?) private sector employers offer participation in defined contribution retirement plans such as 401(k), some with employer contributions -- those are much simpler to manage, today's work gets paid for today. There are some government plans of this type, and taxpayers don't get upset about them, generally.
A 401k and other defined contribution pensions are still a pension.
Assuring that the people who serve society don't spend their final years in poverty is the least we can do.
Also, the reason you assure pension to government employees is because they tend to be stable and dependable workers over the long term.
I bet you would lose your shit if government employees in your town had the turnover of a McDonald's. Higher turnover costs mean higher taxes and much worse/less dependable service.
I'm unconvinced. I believe they get special treatment only because they are a large lobby group.
In 2014 federal civilian workers had an average wage of $84,153, according the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis [1].5 By comparison, the average wage for the nation's 111 million private-sector workers was $56,350.
In Las Vegas, the average salary and benefits package for firefighter union employees was $199,678 (in 2009, I think) [2]. The average salary alone was $128,026.
Please also note that federal government pensions are in a league of its own - 80% of your last year salary - and there are stories in newspapers every year about, for example, street cops working overtime and making $120K+ in their last year.
[1] http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?ReqID=9&step=1#reqid=9&...
[2] http://lasvegassun.com/news/2009/dec/30/cost-cutting-ideas-c...
You are also wrong about federal pensions, they aren't as a rule 80% of your final year salary. The normal FERS formula is 0.01 * high-3 * years of service (full months of service less than a year count as fractional years). The "high-3" is the highest annual pay of any 3 consecutive years of service. To get 80% of the high-3 (which, with increasing salary, is still less than 80% of last service year) you'd have to have 80 years of service.
This was under the old retirement system called CSRS. If you entered service after 1987 you are under FERS where 20 years of service gets you 20% pension, and you get additional 1% for every additional year. So 40 years you get 40% pension, not great.
Also, pensions are not controlled by the individual. The money is pooled and managed by the pension fund. This is of course subject to corruption and bloated fees as we have seen. The 401k program is not perfect, and in fact needs to be totally reformed, but they at least offer more choice and competition and do not promise guaranteed returns.
"It was intended to allow taxpayers a break on taxes on deferred income. In 1980, a benefits consultant named Ted Benna took note of the previously obscure provision and figured out that it could be used to create a simple, tax-advantaged way to save for retirement. The client for whom he was working at the time chose not to create a 401(k) plan."
Government doesn't even pay a reasonable salary + benefits for many positions including pensions, in overall monetary value, and the public and politicians aren't generally interested in fixing that.
Now, if we think government employees should pay into and get social security when they retired thats a debate that might be worthwhile to have. However, in the meantime the trade off has been lower salary and no social security in the public sector vs private sector but you do get a pension in the end.
Governments tend not to go out of business, or get acquired. Governments rarely have the finances to buy out a pension (if they did, they would fund their pension obligations). Governments have a much harder time implementing a dual class workforce where newer employees don't get a pension, because they will often see public pressure when terms of employment are unequal -- a private employer may get pressured too, it can ignore it.
Likewise... homeless assistance: More a matter of how money is spent, not how much. Either way, it's something the city needs to budget for. Most of the homeless are San Francisco natives priced out of their homes, with nowhere else to go. The city redirecting resources that might mitigate their plight will not make the problem go away.
California used to be a progressive place and we are still living off that investment. But like any extractive economy we are unsustainably mining the investments of the late 1940s to the early 1970s.
I must say I really enjoy tech so the Valley is the only place for me to work. It was fun living in SF but the companies up there aren't tech focused to the same degree.
'Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.'
But the cost of living is completely insane. It doesn't help that I moved from one of the cheapest places to live (Gainesville, FL), but my salary just about tripled when I made the move, and it's still a struggle. My $650/mo mortgage for a 1200 square foot house that seemed expensive and kinda small at the time is replaced by a $3k/mo rent for 930 square feet. Then state income taxes take a huge chunk where FL had none, yet FL's sales tax is the same or lower...
CA is roundly better than FL in just about every other way so it's worth paying a premium for now to be out here but it's pretty clear that it's not sustainable long term. I'm also happy to be paying much higher taxes if the money is being used responsibily but it is incredibly frustrating to see the government continually make no progress on solving the affordability and traffic problems of the area.
Tons of people have already popped up in these threads saying things like "But Austin!" And "What about Raleigh-Durham?" etc. While there might be greater than 1 tech company in these areas, they still don't hold a candle to the Bay Area when it comes to where you best mitigate the risk of job loss.
A doctor is one of the jobs that is expected to pay top dollar in American society.
If a doctor can't make it in the Bay Area, who's going to cut your hair, serve your beer, or mow your lawn?
If wages don't rise in line with skyrocketing living costs, then the only alternative is a permenantly impoverished underclass.
People of the Bay Area: are you ok with that?
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/124476/dispossessed-land-dre...
[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/the-plac...
[3] https://www.thenation.com/article/bridging-silicon-valleys-w...
[4] http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/25/news/economy/middle-class-si...
I agree that this is the right answer in theory. The challenge is that, in practice, by the time the critically important rail line or subway or high speed bus lane (or whatever) is built and put into operation, you're halfway to retirement and your kids are out of high school.
So, practically speaking, a lot of people conclude that the only effective voting is the kind done with the feet.
Too often state and local governments are not capable of doing their jobs quickly enough to solve the problems.
If wages don't rise, people will migrate further reducing the supply to a point it won't easy for normal people to live their normal lives. Then the next round of migration will happen and so on.. until there won't be enough people to rent to and then the rents will come down.
The worse, the better. Let the rents go up until it all collapses on itself.
And yes, forced municipality amalgamation should take place. Enough with all the small villages that want to be their own city with their own rules to keep others out. Take a look at what Sydney is doing right now with council amalgamations to override NIMBY power. Melbourne did this a long time ago and as a result has been able to effect a lot more urban planning.
However by virtue of living here I basically force all of my children to do the same or move away. it's simply too hard to live here unless you're working in tech.
Moving from the Bay Area to Portland, my salary increased by 8%, but I can afford my own apartment and s brand new car, middle class hallmarks that were way out of my league in Sunnyvale or Fremont.
Granted, the level of income you'd need for this is still hard to achieve without a tech job. But you don't need six figures.
Unless by the Bay Area you meant living in San Francisco. Then all bets are off.
But anyways, $3500/month (what I mentioned above) is 42k/year in take home pay. Doing some very rough back-of-the-envelope math, that would be a pre-tax salary of about 50k. Obviously that's not reality, but 60k is definitely livable around here. You'd drive a cheap used car and you wouldn't save anything, but you'd be comfortable and wouldn't have to worry too much about frugality.
Someone making 85k would be more than okay.
Local income tax is more or less nonexistent in California (and the US in general, really). Property taxes are some of the lowest in the country. We do have a high state income tax compared to other states, but it's still negligible compared to federal income taxes.
I guess your federal income taxes will be higher in California because you'll make more money here than in most other states.
https://www.tsheets.com/living-in-boise/
(I don't work at T-Sheets but they have a great page on living in Boise.)
Also in Boise: Micron, HP's laser printer division.
The question is do they expect to?
But holly cow was it expensive! My rent was around $2000/month. I had a co-worker living in SF proper who's apartment was $4500/month. And that was 4-5 years ago, it's probably gone up by now.
After a year, we moved back to Ohio - I now have a good-sized house on nearly an acre of land, and my 15-year mortgage is just over $1000/month.
The difference is going into my retirement savings: I'm on track to have enough to retire at around age 45.
The secret killer behind these prices is that only newcomers pay them. Most renters who have been in SF for more than 5 years are in a rent-controlled building, which means their rent is basically locked in, which is good on one hand but on the other, you can never move out. Black mold? Leaking roof? Rat infestation? Illegal units stealing your electricity? It creates a situation where people will deal with any and all hazards and illegal situations just to maintain their low rent because they know if they move they have nowhere else to go.
I moved to the bay area about 8 years ago. In that time, the house in Seattle that I lived in doubled in value, the equivalent of about 50k/year. Since I have lived here, the rents have also doubled, the equivalent of about 25k/year. I'm actually paying about the same (mortgage there vs rent here). I could have parked everything in AAPL and made about 5x. There are opportunity costs everywhere.
Money is only part of the equation but I'm making more than that difference in salary and I'm a LOT happier in SF. Being closer to friends and family and having a better work/life balance, being able to ride my bike to work, makes a big difference for me in overall happiness score. YMMV of course.
The building I live in used to be a terrible slum situation, and the new owners have renovated it (of course, living here during the renovation wasn't fun). I feel lucky there. Friends of mine have also been evicted and moved to other cities or other countries as a result of not being able to afford anything.
But if you wanted to retire where you're working, yeah, it ain't gonna happen at 45 in the Bay Area.
Did you do the comparison at the time? Just curious. Part of what makes it work out here for me is that the cost of living means savings scale that much faster. But I have no idea where I'm going to retire.
As money movies in prices inflate and returns are good. This attracts more money. However, it's the flow of money which is generating above market returns which requires exponential increases to keep returns up. Exponential growth is never sustainable so eventually new money can't keep up which lowers the returns. This further reduces the influx of money, further depressing returns. This pops the bubble.
Of note, the 401k system did similar things to the stock market which ended up reducing returns. In the end exponential returns are only viable when the outflow of money is greater than the inflow enabling a steady state. Eventually returns will end up averaging out as if that influx never happened, but it's going to take decades.
EX: A farm get's a fixed amount of sunlight, it can increase efficiency up to a point, but in the end it's going to output a fixed amount of food <= some constant * amounts of land. Investing more money can't push past that limit (diminishing returns), so eventually you just have more money chasing a lower return. On the other hand if you don't invest more money then the dividend continues indefinitely.
A huge range of things have increased in value because other parts of the economy improve. But, this is limited by overall economic growth. Also of note long term market manipulations are counter productive. You can prop up housing prices by reducing future returns.
Traffic in the Bay Area has gotten quite bad of late, but I know Seattle has done the same.
I live 7mi from work so it hardly phases me. Particularly when I bike in.
There was a metro / subway there but it never seemed to go where we wanted to go.
Also it depends on which way you are going. The 405 north of Sunset is a disaster if you (in general) are going from West LA to the Valley after work but if you travel the opposite ways, traffic is generally fine...
The light rail is actually a huge success story in LA right now.
Before: 100k / 12k ($1k/month) = 88k After: 150k / 48k ($4k/month) = 102k
Sure, you say to yourself that you ended up with an extra 14k, but then you need to still factor in the rest of your increased costs. And you should probably recalculate everything as an hourly equivalent since you'll likely add 2 or more hours to your daily commute in exchange for keeping that house cost bump at a mere 4x.
The numbers shift based on where you are and how much you make. The point is that a large number of people don't properly factor in all the actual and implicit cost and quality of life changes.
California is trying so hard to go full Venezuela, and the only buffer they have are the three or so major industries that are doing well (agriculture, entertainment, and tech). If there's a contraction in those sectors, expect a death spiral.
Key aspects that make it work for me are the following:
* Accept a long commute to a more family-friendly community with good schools.
* Live near BART and use it everyday.
* Work in the city, not the South Bay.
* Make sure you have two strong professional incomes.
* Pay for good quality child care and/or after school care.
* Pay the high housing costs and accept that you will redirect a good portion of your investments towards housing here. And it won't be as nice.
All in all its been worth it for me. I am working with extremely smart, driven people who I am learning a ton from. I don't have to hide my political views, and everyone has been open and accepting. It has been very easy for us to make great friends in a short time.
This is something being overlooked completely. There aren't a lot of other places that have this concentration of progressive minded bright (tech and non-tech) individuals. Great things will come out of this density. It sucks that the non-techies are being pushed out, but that should accelerate the need for housing reform. This density must be maintained and made widely accessible.
Vote. Call your rep. http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/trailer_bill_language/local_...
I know, this time it's different $BECAUSE_REASONS. No, it's not. Some individuals and companies will leave, but CA will continue to be crowded in some areas, heavily taxed, and costly, just like it's always been.
Also, tax rates are higher today than they were in the 1970s.
One data point: California statewide sales tax base rate was in the 3.75% to 5.0% range in the 1970s. Today it's 6.25%.
A lot of it was for personal and career reasons, a lot wasn't. At a certain point I couldn't justify paying oodles for a dark 1BR in Mountain View when that same money could get a better apartment in the West Village.
I think if people en masse began to reject extortion rent we could have a situation. This never seems to happen but it would be a spectacle: thousands of 160k/yr workers decide to camp in tents until rents subside, all camped out in the streets in a section of Sf.
I wonder if some enterprising landlord will put in a clause into the lease to own your intellectual property and communications while in your residence. Would people sign the lease for a 20% rent discount ?
Even in lower density places like Encinitas, Carlsbad, Buellton, San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles, Half Moon Bay ... Sebastopol.
Consider, for example, San Diego [2], which is considered the worst city for long term wealth accumulation in the entire USA.
1. http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/California/ 2. http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/oct/26/san-die...
Texas on the other hand is hot and flat. Really boring here. Oh and it's too crowded. Yep, if you're from California Texas is worse. Don't want to move here. Please stop moving here, please, oh god please.
BTW, there is also a vibrant live music scene. And also a lot of theater and art. Did I mention the food?
The only thing I would say Texas lacks are good beaches. We do have a lot of rivers/lakes though. But for someone who grew up near the ocean...it does suck.
I don't think anyone would want to spend time in a typical CA prison or jail. Overcrowding, violence, gangs, insufficient medical care, etc.
LA County has had some well publicized problems with sheriff's department guards severely beating handcuffed inmates. It's probably not a place you want to visit.
Parts of the state have (what I consider) perfect weather year round; access to the beach and mountains to ski/snowboard, tons of other outdoor activities, etc. You can find most of these in other places, of course, but CA is pretty unique in that it's all in the same state, and easily accessible.
The problem you describe does not get enough attention. The state and local governments have seriously mismanaged growth over the last half a century or so. The individual person's quality of life has truly been diminished in the way you describe.
I grew up (and my parents live) near San Luis Obispo, CA. The central coast has: pockets of perfect weather, proximity to wonderful beaches, proximity to winte rsports, etc. Yet, there's under a quarter of a million people in their gigantic county, and a small apartment or house can be found for a (fairly) reasonable price in parts of the area. SLO even has a fantastic university and a bit of tech has sprung up around it (Amazon has SWE offices, etc).
Much like people who don't live on the coast harp on, there's much more to CA than the popular few cities.
I've heard the saying "California would be great if it wasn't for the people" in literally every state I've spent significant time in when they find out that I lived in the Bay.
Just curious: if you work in the tech industry, is your impression that the tech industry in CA is populated mostly by people who came from outside the state?
Sure, there are significant cultural and political deltas, but I think a lot of the disgust for Californians moving to other states is just the simple fact that people generally don't like change in the form of "outsiders" flooding "their" state and threatening the status quo.
The trick here is that companies that aren't paying top dollar in SF have a lot of trouble getting senior engineers, as the Netflixes and Facebooks of the world pay more and offer RSUs. However, the same salaries that are seen as a bit lacking in SF are good enough to attract top remote talent.
Therefore, the difference is not necessarily about lower salaries by cost of living, but lower salaries by company.
People live in the Bay Area because of: professional opportunities, culture, weather, and social network. If you value those things more than high cost of living then you stay -- you either have the privilege of money or the tolerance of being financially stretched and not have all the nice things.
http://www.ocregister.com/taxdollars/strong-477502-ownership... http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/jun/29/convers...
That may be true. Especially in San Francisco, where grandmas and older gentlemen form a voting bloc that have delayed construction all over the Bay Area. But that doesn’t make it right in my mind to force grandma to either expand her property or get out. Now, zoning laws: That’s another injustice that should be corrected.
Proposition 13 has the additional perversity of discouraging repairs and improvements, because “new construction” [0] triggers a reassessment and a huge jump in property taxes. However, it’s a small step between letting grandma fix her house, and letting her rich developer son replace her house with a 4-story apartment building, pocketing the difference between the market rate rents and the low 1975 property tax, and starving the school district of funds.
If we don’t want to kick out fixed-income people, then we should simply tie the reassessment to the person’s ability to pay the higher tax.
[0] https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/faqs/newconstruction.html
A huge problem is that people move from California to other states in order to escape Californian problems, but once they get to their new state they miss a few things about California, and agitate to make their new state more Californian in those few aspects. Multiply that across all the Californian emmigrants in a state, and suddenly that state has California-style problems again.
The only solution I can see is to amend the Constitution (specifically, the Fourteenth Amendment) to provide that people who move to a state must be naturalised into it rather than immediately gain citizenship. Perhaps a decade-long waiting period would give folks time to acculturate. An advantage of this would be that Californians who have escaped to other states would still be voting in California, even as they are acculturating to a saner state government system: in effect, California would get wiser voters for free.
You can substitute 'New Jersey', 'Massachusetts' or 'New York' for 'California' above and get much the same effect.
But California (like Texas) is large enough that a uniform sampling of Americans from other states injected into California is like adding a drop of water to the ocean.
The Californian exodus to smaller states, OTOH, is more like dumping a #10 can of ketchup into a hot tub.
Well, part of the problem is that on a lot of issues folks are relatively balanced: all it takes is a few to sway an election one way or the other.