In Bay Area, six-figure salaries are “low income”
mercurynews.com
mercurynews.com
I was approached on LinkedIn to take a job with matching pay but that was fully remote. I could live anywhere I wanted in the entire country. I jumped at the chance and felt like I became rich overnight! I miss working at Apple, and would definitely jump at the chance to work remotely for them, but I don't think I could ever afford to move back to California.
It can be such a rat race down there, it is refreshing to remember that it doesn't have to be that way. Life exists outside of The Valley, and it happens to be a pretty darn good one (and affordable!) :)
How much carbon is emitted cooling and heating an 8k sq ft home in Utah? How far do you have to drive to do things?
Overall, the valley we live in has pretty much everything we could want, from a retail perspective.
A nice small-town grocery store about 3 mins away, and larger national chains further down the road.
Does that make Luton, St Albans etc. the 'suburbs' of London?
A good rule of thumb is (or was): Does it have black cabs?
When the kids have moved out, you can downsize to that retirement place in Spain... except that may not work as well after the UK leaves the EU.
Edit: duh, it's really 800 sqm.
I grew up in a fairly large house (I don't recall the size, but two floors, 6 bedrooms, kitchen, formal dining room, living room, family room, 3 bathrooms, basement filled with junk; so, fairly large -- semi-rural Maryland, where space was cheap in the 80s/90s). My parents weren't hoarders, though they did accumulate stuff. After my sister and I moved out and my mom passed away, my dad lived in a giant house by himself, couldn't maintain it, and also felt like he couldn't move because the house wasn't in good enough shape to sell.
I just don't get this need for more and more space. It just encourages you to buy more stuff that you don't need, and takes more time/effort/money to maintain. I hesitate to "tell people how to live", but this keeping up with the Joneses attitude is a component of what causes cost of living to rise and is ultimately a zero-sum game.
Space is wonderful for doing things like dancing, hosting guests, exercise, communal/family cooking (sprouting many kilograms of chickpeas, fermenting 40+qt of kimchi).
Also, as the commenter below mentioned, we do enjoy hosting people for parties and family get-togethers. We spend a good amount of energy and time and money on these activities that are for the enjoyment of other people.
Wealthy people often build massive palaces to honor their own greatness and inflate their egos, I can assure you this is not one of those homes :).
It's a pattern I found recurring as we were looking at houses: unless you wanted a 100 year-old house (which could be a good or bad idea), there was simply nothing under 3,000 sq ft on the lot sizes we were looking at.
> Utah is becoming quite diverse
Was curious about this, as it didn't seem to fit my limited observation from my last few trips to Utah (which is again, a lovely place). The Census bureau government says Utah is >91% "white only":
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045216/49
Which is likely more diverse than Utah was in the past, but could not be fairly compared to California as "quite diverse" given the same number for California is 73%:
Metro-SLC is pretty liberal and tolerant. The further out you go, the more ignorance you'll encounter.
My bigger issue is the beer. 2.5% whatttttt?
One counter-point: not sure if this is still the case, but a few years ago Provo, Utah (just south of SLC) used to have the highest per capita usage of anti-depressants. Interpret that how you will :P
I have considered doing the same but seems like you almost have to buy a house that big or live in a non-desirable area.
Not sure if it will be helpful to you but I hope so. :)
With one kid or wife per bedroom and 1000sqft for kitchen/dining/whatever, you have room for 28. (4 wives, 6 kids each) Making the non-bedroom part of the house more luxurious and adding a bathroom to each bedroom, you have room for about 16. You can hit that even without polygamy.
He may be counting a large garage. That could be 1000sqft by itself, so knock off 3 or 4 bedrooms.
Fundamentalist Mormons are still Mormon, and yes, 10,000 to 30,000 of them are in plural marriages.
Also, note that I didn't mean it as an insult, and I quite like large families. Even the mainstream Mormons tend to have large families.
I never ventured outside of the metro area and no one was ever overtly racist but boy if you are not a white Mormon you will stick out, you will be judged and questioned. Most Utah Mormons are conditioned to be nice so on the surface they appear so but they do judge and single out people who don’t belong.
I visited SF over a weekend and was instantly surprised about how accepting everyone was. It just seemed like I fit in and belonged. I’d tolerate much worse conditions than “low income in SF” than be “rich” in Utah.
If anyone's up here visiting, I'll happily buy you a beer - or whatever you prefer, but... there's lots of beer here.
So long as you and your partner are both making 6 figures you should be able to afford any of the following cities:
- Seattle
- Portland
- Austin
- Denver
That's a pretty high bar for cost of living. Here in Charlotte, NC, I make half of that, and could support two people without any difficulty.
I wouldn't consider legal marijuana worth $100k a year, personally.
Rents in Portland are skyrocketing (I had friends whose landlords were pulling out 30% rent increases). I went from Portland to Oakland and my rent isn't that much more.
I lived in Portland for six years and never once heard this expression and yet I know exactly what you mean.
10 years ago = 82nd is bad
Now = 122nd is bad
I count myself lucky to live West of 82nd.
Not impressed.
In SF/SV, the high housing prices extend far enough out from SF to cover almost everything that is in reasonable commute distance. Same for Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, and San Jose.
In Seattle, prices are high or getting there in Seattle, Redmond, and Bellevue, but there is still reasonable housing between Seattle and Tacoma, and across the Sound over in Kitsap county. If you can get a work schedule that lets you miss the heavy commute hours it should be reasonably possible to get affordable housing without too bad a commute.
1) no state income tax,
2) public schools in my neighborhood are equivalent to a private school in sf [i]
4) weather is great 8 months out of year,
5) beaches you can swim in,
6) rent is ~1/4 of what it was in SF,
7) cuban food,
8) as a resident, kids have year round disney passes
[i] http://school-ratings.com/Florida/schools/Carillon_Elementar...
WARNING: The tech job market is pretty much non-existent. "more challenging" is an understatement. I would be prepared to answer 'can you lift 50 lbs' in your 'tech' interview. I am a remote dev.
Basically the difference between a real/good colada and what you described is whipping and creation of a paste in the beginning before the pull.
Remain open minded
Salaries aren't going to be the same as the west coast though (obviously), and most of the senior developer roles I've seen cap out at around the $100k-ish mark. With the far cheaper cost of living though, it goes a lot further.
The major market for tech jobs come from health care.
Not a very progressive or interesting market.
Its mostly the typical Windows/VMWare, Microsoft stuff.
A little bit of Devops here and there, and a smattering of low level development/coding work.
As a tooling and process consultant focused on Atlassian's tools, there's very little for me.
Edit: Some tips for visitors.
Most beaches are beautiful and most have free access. Enjoy, but wear sunscreen (and keep reapplying). Oh and bring lots of water; playing at the beach dehydrates you fast. If you pick a Gulf Coast beach (Clearwater is nice), as you enter the water, skoot your feet on the sand. That flutter you feel across the top of your foot is a minor stingray. Won't hurt you unless you step on it.
Don't bring an umbrella. The lightning here will kill you. Just plan on not being outside in the summer during the hours of 2pm - 6pm.
Georgia drivers ... can't. I jest. But seriously...
UF and FSU football... you will get so tired of seeing those school colors.
:)
Triggered Atlantan
We have no patience for slow or dumb drivers in Atlanta.
Go Dawgs.
The panhandle has nice beaches as well.
If you feel a tingly sensation on the back of your neck or detect a sharp ozone-like smell, crouch down and cover your ears. Don't play golf or baseball in the rain. If you hear thunder or see lightning, go inside.
Football is the unhealthy sports obsession of the South. You would think that in February, after the pro season ends, you would get a reprieve from it, but no, you don't. Baseball is the alternate sport. Basketball is a legend from a distant land, and nobody even knows what a hockey is. Stanley Cup playoffs are happening right now, and local television news would rather air a 10-minute story about some high school football team practicing for next year's season instead of 10 seconds just saying that the Senators beat the Bruins. If you don't love football, you will get so sick of football.
Sure it would be great to have both a high income (relative to local costs) and a job you love and plenty of other options, but if one must choose... I choose to trade away the upper-middle-class lifestyle in order to have enjoyable and impactful work in my chosen field of software engineering.
It amazes me how many people in tech can't do simple math.
Hint: The Detroit area job market is on fire, but you will pass it over if your idea of compensation doesn't take into account cost of living. I'm sure there are several other cities that can say the same.
In any case, somebody who thinks this represents a significant slice of the Silicon Valley workforce is living in a bubble. For every engineer making >$500k, there are many thousands making <$200k, at the thousands of other tech companies in the Bay Area that aren't Google/Amazon/Facebook/Apple. While the $500k engineer has every incentive to stay in SV, that has no bearing on the vast majority of engineers.
I have heard that at FB and Google, a very small percentage of engineers got special stock awards a couple years ago that could put them in that range. But most top performers at these places at the senior/staff level are more in the 175-350 range.
Other than that, the only engineers making that kind of money got lucky in a startup lottery.
I doubt Apple, Amazon, or even Facebook pay that much on any regular basis, but I wouldn't rule out someone getting an outsized offer during a machine learning (or other flavor of the month) hiring frenzy.
[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Staff-Software-Engin...
There seems to be ample [1] data [2] about [3] this.
1: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-senior-soft...
2: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Senior_Software_Engi...
3: http://www1.salary.com/CA/San-Francisco/Software-Engineer-II...
If you want to raise a big family, you're better off elsewhere. Even with a really reduced total comp, say ~300k, you could have a 6-bedroom house on the beach or on a 30-acre lot. You could have a guest house and servant's quarters.
Definitely has something to do with it. I'm a software engineer in the Detroit area and the last time I switched jobs (4ish years ago), it took less than 2 weeks from the time I updated and posted my resume to signing an offer letter. With the number of calls and emails I get daily for different positions in the area, I have a feeling it would go just as quickly the next time I decide to make a move.
What? Surely you pay for those?
Also what about the humidity? Every time I've been there it's like a sauna.
I spend my high-school years in Oviedo but I had trouble finding jobs around the area.
I had my first job in downtown Orlando which was 40-50 min commute, and I recently moved to Tampa Bay area.
Oviedo is a decent area -- good air quality, close to nature but at the same time close to urban areas.
Weather is actually terrible about 8 months of the year. It's too humid and hot. The climate is perfect for mosquitos, forcing you to wear long sleeve clothing at night during this humid weather (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis). Insects and arachnids thrive in FL's swampy climate. People who aren't from either that or a jungle need to take time to adjust. Imagine being sweaty after walking outside for a few feet. AC is a must and you will pay around $200-300/month (maybe more) for electricity without an EV (on the bright side your house is 2-3 times larger than the Bay Area). Great place for solar. When I think about it, FL is probably the Australia of the US; there are a lot of things there that will kill you. (Almost every Floridian knows not to let their children play near water when it gets dark. The ones that don't end up on the news.) The good part is that it's easy to grow avocado and mango trees. Also unlike earthquakes, hurricanes are easier to forecast.
Other than water and the beaches, there's nothing to do compared to the SF Bay Area. Yes you can swim and surf in the beaches but due to decades of pollution, 'sea lice' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_louse) has been prevalent since I was a kid. Also due to erosion, most beach sand is now crushed rock. That said, the water is way nicer than anywhere in the SF Bay Area. If you like diving or snorkeling, you can hunt for lobsters yourself. Unfortunately, due to damage to the eco system, sharks are also a lot more aggressive, and they've been known to attack surfers as well for years now. Still, in some parts the water is so clear that you can see fish below while on a boat.
Florida is primarily a giant retirement community for northerners, making it mostly a nice giant boring, suburb unless you are attending a party college in the far north. Miami has a club scene but it gets old. It's not NYC or LA. Cuban food is amazing though and even if it is available in another state; it's not the same.
Forgot to add that there's less diversity in FL compared to other metros, even if you just compare it to other metros in the South it's still less. Maybe things have changed since I left?
Add flying cockroaches the size of tri-folded dollar bill to chaostheory's accurate depiction (that when I sent to my wife had her saying, "I could have written that word for word!").
9) Greater thought diversity and tolerance for opposing viewpoints.
When I lived in the Bay Area it seemed that too many people I interacted with were of similar backgrounds: very educated, high income and similar political and social values. While I loved my years there, at times I felt like I was in a cultural bubble insulated from the real world. Worse, I saw people professionally shunned for expressing opinions that fell outside the mainstream. People here in the Orlando area are all types and they seem to love to discuss their differences and even try to learn from them. I can't begin to imagine someone suffering professionally only for their opinions here. It's very refreshing.
I have not lived in enough places to guess if this is a Florida vs California thing, or an Orlando area vs Bay Area thing, or a Bay Area vs everywhere else thing, but I think it's certainly a positive difference.
I think this is one of the most important things as a whole. I am in Iowa (a red except for the counties holding the ~5 largest cities) and have a friend who is in DC. She said she mentioned having a couple friends from high school who were conservative and that made her weird in her friend group. The rest were in the DC bubble, effectively not knowing people from "the other side" on a personal level.
The political polarization is really bad for the country. The concept that you can agree with the left on some issues and the right on others isn't popular. Personally I take the position that the "true, objective best" (if there was such a thing) solution is closer to the middle than the far right or far left.
People often mistake critical thinking skills with close-mindedness. Just because someone uses thought and reason to reject an idea doesn't mean they are close-minded. Not all ideas deserve acceptance. I'm as open-minded as it gets, but if you tell me that vaccines cause autism then you will go down several notches in my book. (Ironically, there are many anti-vax people in the Bay Area!)
I don't know about Oviedo specifically (maybe it's a liberal haven in the middle of a conservative sea, like Austin TX), but I've known several Floridans from the more conservative parts of the state, and they were either naive and gullible as hell, or actually close-minded. I don't say that to stereotype the entire state, but it's worth remembering that conservatism is about the preservation of the status quo, and by definition it's not nearly as accepting of new (and valid) ideas and perspectives as liberalism is. That's not meant to be a value judgment, but rather a descriptive statement.
In my case, for example, I've thought about an issue and have drawn a conclusion based on the facts at hand. I'm very open to new perspectives and new ideas and often challenge people on their own preconceptions because I think it's valuable that people are challenged. But again, I'm not "close-minded", I've just drawn a different conclusion. People need to understand the difference and they largely don't.
I like your definition of critical thinking, it also allows me to highlight why I agree with sideband. In the bay area there tends to be less acceptance for differing premises.
I am a conservative Christian and certain premises I bring to the conversation automatically make me "hateful" or "bigoted". While I have seen this most prominently in the religious/moral realm I see it in politics as well.
In the bay area there is a right set of premises and a wrong set. If you start with the wrong set it is acceptable to wholly reject the conclusions without engaging critically with why the premises are wrong.
Of course, people can reason incorrectly, too. I think there's a set of people that disagree with the values, but there's another set of people that object to conclusions that appear inconsistent when compared to the premises/values they purportedly rest upon.
I am not saying that you are this way, but I have had interactions that lead me to believe that reasoning allows some to wholly reject values I hold dear as "intolerant" without consideration, all in the name of tolerance. It comes across as comical in a tragic way.
On the flip side, I have had interactions where I was able have a disagreement and work backward to the differing values which we were able to agree to disagree on.
The question of how or whether to limit some kinds of speech... I honestly think this is one of the great philosophical struggles of this generation. I am not sure why it has come up again when it seemed largely settled in the past. On the liberal side, you see people like Howard Dean and Elizabeth Warren disagree on it, which is a weird experience.
I think the question is, is there some set of underlying values where we can appropriately justify excluding someone entirely?
If the answer is yes, then how do you draw the line, and how do you protect against arbitrary lines being drawn against you in return? If the answer is no, then there's a whole host of other questions, like how do you deal with trolls?
I remember there was a great deal of consternation about Bill Nye debating Ken Ham, for instance. So many voices thought it was inappropriate. I thought the debate was a good thing.
On the other hand, I have a hard time accepting that trolling is protected speech. Heartfelt offensive speech I'm fine with, but trolling feels like a close cousin of fighting words, with intent only to destroy. On the other hand, I'm not sure how to tell the difference between trolling and heartfelt ignorance.
I find people who are truly open don't hold so desperately to facts, because they tend to change over time.
The truth is generally not up for interpretation by any person who feels it should be. Critical thinking is actually a thing, and the lack of it does actually result in believing false things. If someone told me that I'm not applying critical thinking, then my response would be to ask for specific details on what aspect of critical thinking I'm not applying and exactly where I'm getting things wrong. What I would not do is respond by criticizing the idea of critical thinking itself or tell them that they need to consider alternative facts.
500 years from now I have absolutely no doubt that there are things we absolutely believe to be truth to be proven wrong. (Maybe light isn't both a wave and a particle?)
Heck, maybe antibiotics do contribute to autism some how. I very much doubt it. But it would be hubris to assume I know absolutely everything there is to know about the human body, antibiotics, and all their interactions. So I disagree with anti-vaxxers, based on current evidence. But I won't dismiss them and consider them less intelligent.
We knew this 500 years ago too, but even if we didn't it would not have been rational to pretend to know the shape of our entire world without having evidence to back it up. All we would know is that it appears to be flat from our limited vantage point, and we were free to investigate further using various methods.
500 years from now I have absolutely no doubt that there are things we absolutely believe to be truth to be proven wrong. (Maybe light isn't both a wave and a particle?)
500 years from now it will still be the case that light can behave like a particle and a wave depending on how you're measuring it. We may have better, more accurate models to explain the behavior of light in 500 years.
So I disagree with anti-vaxxers, based on current evidence. But I won't dismiss them and consider them less intelligent.
The reason that many people believe vaccines cause autism is because of a fraudulent study by Andrew Wakefield. Believing in a claim based an a proven fraud is not rational regardless of what is discovered in the future.
To put it generally, if you believe in claim X for bad reasons, and it later is discovered that X is true, it does not mean that you were retroactively acting rational for previously believing in claim X for bad reasons.
That is true. Isn't it equally as true that if one goes around telling people they are wrong, and then it turns out that one is wrong (based on new evidence), one has been wrong AND a hypocrite? The temptation is to say "ahh, but THIS TIME we have better science!". That's always been the case.
My point isn't about truth and error as much as hubris, humility, and respect.
There is a difference between saying that a belief in a claim is not rationally justified and saying that a claim is false. Both sides of these debates can make mistakes. Those against believing in the claim can make the counterclaim that it is false, and they might not actually have justification for that. On the other hand, often those that believe in the claim misinterpret the other side as making the counterclaim when they are in fact not doing so.
In the case of autism there has been extensive research since the moral panic began, and no evidence for a link has been found where it was expected to be found, thereby bringing increased justification for the counterclaim. I think this is also true with many other unsupported claims out there that are popular enough to have been exposed to systematic scrutiny.
The division of our society into ideological camps that point fingers at each other and can't see the others as basically-sensible human beings drives me crazy.
I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but have you researched this? My assumption is "no they don't" but it's actually an area I know very little about.
Looking at the whole discussion currently happening around glyphosate / Roundup, where extensive lobbying has been done by Monsanto to block out any negative reports from the public domain, I (personally) think a lot of things shouldn't just be disregarded as absolute nonsense (even if they, eventually are). Pharma companies are also not above extensive lobbying (look at Mylan and their EpiPen).
Autism rates have gone up during the last 20+ years. Why is this? It would be interesting to at least be able to figure out why, so you are able to rule out other things.
Until such time as reputable scientists start saying there is more than a tangential relationship between vaccination and autism, it's a pretty untenable position to have.
> Autism rates have gone up during the last 20+ years. Why is this?
Autism rates increasing doesn't mean there's more autism, it means there's more diagnosed autism. It could be that it was under-diagnosed in the past. It could be that it's actually increasing. It could be that it's simply being over-diagnosed now. I'm bracing for the backlash but I've met a dozen or so diagnosed autistic children and more than a few of them are just assholes or have parents looking for an easy way to not discipline their children.
Yes and same with ADHD, gluten intolerance and other 'diseases' that have gone up in the past 20 years while your annoying, anti social, always crying and shouting, only likes sugar child is just the result of lazy parenting and a general lack of tolerance to suffering at large.
2) Possibly a gem in the rough, but having family who teach in OCPS I'm skeptical
4) Quite subjective; I personally don't enjoy 100% humidity and 100 degree temperatures 8 months out of the year in which one is constantly assaulted by mosquitoes and "love bugs"
5) again, subjective, although it's hard to argue that the Bay Area isn't laughable by comparison
6) I doubt you're going to find a 1500 sq ft. 3 bedroom town home for $1k per month (1/4 of what I pay 20 miles south of SF), and you're leaving out other costs, hidden costs, including commute and items related to the lack of public services and much higher utilities costs; the cost of living is lower, but not 75% lower
7) there is much, much greater diversity of food (including Cuban food) in the Bay Area
8) This isn't cheap, even for residents. Last I looked, years ago, it was more expensive than a family pass for the Exploratorium and other far more enriching and entertaining things for kids to.
Then there are many negatives. The biggest one, in my opinion, is the lack of diversity. Central Florida had a strong Latin American influence but it's still mainly a white monoculture.
Are we talking town homes for rent?
* 3 beds; 2.5 baths; 1,528 sqft; $1,000/mo
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/Crooked-Pine-Trl-Crestvie...
* 3 beds; 2 baths; 1,863 sqft; $900/mo
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1006-Villaway-W-Sebring-F...
...or maybe you'd like to rent a house:
* 3 beds; 2 baths; 1,821 sqft; $975/mo
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5693-Highway-4-Baker-FL-3...
* 4 beds; 4 baths; 1,700 sqft; $975/mo
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/351-Pine-Ave-Cocoa-FL-329...
...or maybe buy a house:
* 3 beds; 2 baths; 1,564 sqft; EST. MORTGAGE $705/mo
https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/FL/fsba,fsbo,fore,new_...
* 3 beds; 2 baths; 1,661 sqft; $464/mo
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2579-Dogwood-Dr-Cottondal...
* 4 beds; 2 baths; 1,541 sqft; EST. MORTGAGE $261/mo
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/362-Palm-Ave-Cocoa-FL-329...
The first item, for example, is just north of I-10, which is northern Florida and even more conservative than the rest of the state.
The "can you lift 50 pounds" thing is so that you can't usefully sue them when they ask you to move your own PC or monitor. Especially at a non-union job site, the nearest available person tends to do that kind of task. Nobody wants to have to schedule a union-approved object-lifter person to show up.
Just a bit to the southeast of you, the tech job market is booming. It sort of focuses on the MLB airport, with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, but there are others too. The area has Thales, Raytheon, Harris, and numerous cyberwar startups. Obviously, you do need to enjoy designing things that cause destruction, and it is mighty hard to pass the background checks if you have foreign relatives.
If that sounds appealing to you and you can do low-level hacking (you won't freak out over assembly language), send a note to acahalan at gmail.
Come and enjoy the outdoors, food, and amazing beer with us.
Huntington/Richmond is a little off the path, but still close if you want more space.
* My health, both physical and mental has increased tremendously.
* Our house is far cheaper in mortgage than our apartment was.
* Schools are far better than anything in California we could afford
* Crime is almost non-existent. Most people don't lock car or house doors.
* It is rare I drive more than 8 miles on any day, no more highways for me unless I'm skiing.
* The air & water are clean, the tap water tastes better than the bottle water I used to drink.For instance, take a look at this:
http://www.greatschools.org/california/san-francisco/schools...
Do you think that your elementary school in Colorado are vastly better than the top three we see here, Chin (John Yehall) Elementary, Clarendon, or Lafayette?
Scroll down a bit. SF has some bad schools, but it's not like these three are isolated one offs. There really are a lot of schools in SF scoring a 9 or 10 here. There is a lottery, but (this is just my experience and impression) it's not shot in the dark level lottery. If you research schools and find some of the ones that fly below the radar rather than just listing the "trophy" schools, and create a balanced list, you have a good chance at a good school. No, not a 100% chance and an excellent school, which you can obtain by leaving SF and moving to a good district where a high rent or mortgage payment locks it in for you (hey, I get it - I'll call it what it is, but I do get it).
There are great reasons to leave SF, and the school situation here is hardly perfect. But I disagree with the general notion that public schools in SF are an across the board failure. I'd even disagree that they are a general failure with a few minor bright spots.
I'd call the situation mixed, with a lot of good, a lot of bad and a lot of in the middle. You can have a very good experience with SFUSD.
Is that on a national or state scale? I find my district in Michigan making all kinds of claims like that about many of our schools, but it's all compared to others in the state. Nationally we're still above average but nothing to get excited about.
Another thing is range. 10/10 is nice, but as you can see, a bunch of SF schools got it. Kind of how the Math GRE (used to?) top out at about 95%ile (ie., 5% of the people taking the test got an 800/800).
So this leaves open the possibility that even the best elementary schools are far behind the other 10/10s in other parts of the state. Kind of doubt it, since Lowell is clearly extremely competitive with top public and private high schools around the country. But I can't make the comparison directly at the elementary school level.
That's why I kind of put it as a question... what's your guess? Are the 10/10 elementary schools in SF notably worse than top elementary schools in Colorado? Like I said, I seriously doubt it, but I can't be sure.
If their problem with California was lack of good schools anyplace they could afford to live in the state, why on Earth would you point to one of the most expensive places in the state and say it has some good schools? To address it, you need to point to someplace affordable in California that has good schools.
I'm mentioning this because people often describe SF as an expensive place with failing schools. That's not quite accurate. SF has a large number of good public schools, though it is uneven and you are at the mercy of the lottery. Your odds aren't horrible but they aren't 100% either.
Since that's the only reason I'm wanting to move, I'm looking for the most Texas-like place I can find. Unfortunately, the closest I can come is Southern California. I dragged my heels like crazy on admitting that SoCal was the only place that has most of what I wanted because the cost of living is so insanely high, but I really have no choice. Everything else either was outside the Sun Belt or not Asian enough. Unfortunately, that means I'm stuck hoping I get a job that pays $140k, because that's what I'll need to make to rent a house in SoCal, and I'll be in a position where if I ever lose my job and end up unemployed, I'll have less than a month to find a new job before I become homeless.
I have a friend of mine trying to sell me on the Vegas area, though. I'm considering it, particularly Spring Valley. But I also have another friend urging me to avoid Vegas because she says there's no tech industry there.
For the record, my main criteria are: must have transgender-inclusive non-discrimination protections at the state level, must be in the Sun Belt, must have high Asian and Hispanic populations (I'm looking for at least 15% of each in the suburb I'm moving to, preferably more), must be a sprawling suburb, must be able to afford to rent a house with central AC on the salary of a software engineer of my experience in the area. The only states that meet the first two criteria are California (and only SoCal, not NorCal), New Mexico, and Nevada. The third criterion eliminates New Mexico (almost no Asian people in the entire state)... and until a few days ago, I thought it eliminated Nevada as well.
I'd try to sell you on Minnesota except for this :-)
Well, we do get tons of sun (similar solar insolation numbers to Houston, TX), but it can be bright and sunny and still -25F
Also, I hate artsy hipsters with a passion. Even though I'm transgender, I'm deeply conservative in most other respects, I specifically want to live in a conservative suburb in a blue state. I don't want independent record stores and third-wave coffee shops. I want shopping malls, strip centers, cookie-cutter housing, and Asian people operating restaurants that serve their traditional food (I especially don't want white people remixing ethnic food that's not theirs). What I want is Plano, TX dug out of the ground and transported into a blue state. This is why I'm looking at Torrance and Orange County in CA.
Which makes sense when it's hard to find somewhere to live alone, in SF, even at 100k. Finding a place big enough for a family of 4 plus all the costs related to 4 humans? Not surprising in the least.
Televisions were prohibitively priced as to make one even a stretch.
And, travel was prohibitively priced so that only the ultra-rich could afford planes. When cars hit the scene en masse, it brought rise to car trips.
So, I guess you're saying people aren't living within their means? But they weren't necessarily then either... And boy, I sure miss all of the great stuff from the 50s.
It's just astounding how cheap televisions have become. A 32" flatscreen is like $150, and weighs ten pounds.
An internet connection with youtube is $30 which is WAY more variety than "back then".
Can't forget Qubo and Me.tv. Good times, for sure.
Also, I'm suspecting you're not a Spanish speaker, so I guess it's okay to discount a channel that over 10% of the US has utility for.
Cable TV is a relatively recent invention, has quickly declining subscription rates, and has always been billed as premium.
It's possible, I suppose... You'd need to be a one income family at 100k, because there's no way you could cover that and child care. But yeah, a stay at home spouse and a working spouse who brought in 100k might be able to make it work south of 280.
EDIT: just realized you said Bay Area, not San Francisco. That changes things.
(PS, people's spending tends to match their income no matter how high the income, it's called lifestyle inflation)
It seems obvious to move that some tech companies would move away from San Francisco, offer lower wages, but still manage to give their employees a better deal.
In Denmark the following costs are cheaper or entirely nonexistent: Paying for health insurance (for every member of the family), saving for retirement, saving for sending kids to college, kids daycare, kids school fees, and also rent or cost of buying a house is cheaper than in the Bay Area.
The four zip code, with the higher average income also have an average price per square meter of 7000USD, so that's of cause a little less than in the Bay Area, assume the 8000USD per square meters I saw a while back is correct.
I guess in the richer areas in US, $1000 per child is not an unusual monthly fee for daycare. Whereas in Finland, the monthly fee tops at 290€ per child, and I would guess Denmark is more or less similar to Finland.
https://www.aei.org/publication/todays-new-homes-are-1000-sq...
This is it right here. Many municipalities won't even allow them to be built. I would love to live in a small town but such towns are designed around car ownership, total separation of residential and commercial districts, and massive housing lots. If you can't drive, you're stuck living in the big city. And that's only getting more difficult if you're middle income.
I bet living space per person in the bay area, NYC, DC, etc. has gone down over that same period.
- The Brisbane City Council is deciding whether to build 4400 units of housing on 600 acres south of San Francisco, about the same number of units SF built in total last year. The Brisbane Planning Commission recommended building an office park instead. Contact them and ask them to build the housing version of the project.
- The Mountain View City Council is deciding whether to build 2000 units or 8000 units of housing next to Google. They are leaning toward the low end - 2000 units would be tough to support a grocery store or frequent transit. Contact them (or show up to their board meeting - tonight!) and ask them to build the high-housing version of the plan.
- The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering a plan to require 28% of all new developments to be below market rate. When you consider the unit costs to build in SF, that would make it _extremely_ difficult to justify new housing starts here. Please contact your Supervisor and ask them to oppose the Peskin/Kim Prop C plan.
- Call your CA State Assemblymember and ask them to oppose AB 915 (makes it harder to build affordable units)
- Call your CA State Assemblymember and ask them to support AB 71 (higher property taxes on second homes, money goes to affordable housing)
- Call your CA State Senator and ask them to support SB 167, which would put teeth in the state's Housing Accountability Act. (for more on this see carlaef.org)
- Call your CA State Senator and ask them to support SB 35 (would remove the ability of local government to block projects that meet certain criteria - near transit, have a high % of affordable units, use union construction labor)
- Email your VC's and C-level executives and tell them how hard it is to find housing in the area. Tell them about your awful commutes and the difficulty of finding good school districts for your kids. Ask them to get more involved politically in pro-housing causes. Ron Conway is a good example here.
NIMBY's are really well organized and things don't change unless we do something about them. All of these changes listed above will go a long way to support the development of housing in the Bay Area, which should help lower prices, and help keep families here and teachers in our neighborhoods.
Naturally, the SF Sierra Club and some tenants rights groups are trying to block it. It's not a sure thing at all. Please contact your Supervisor about it. http://thebaycitybeacon.com/32740/282282/a/the-sierra-club-f...
Most of the friends are in bay area in tech industry, tells me that tech scene here is amazing and I miss out on the cool dev meetups. I agree, but I think I got used to my life style now. Good work-life balance is hard to achieve.
At some point, there's going to be another inflection point where a lot of people making comfortable upper middle-class incomes move out to, well, anywhere. Basically, someone's going to do the math, and recognize that remote workers are just as productive, and are a little cheaper then having a bunch of 20-somethings in the office physically. And the incentive for anyone who wants to have kids to work remote is just going to be really, really high.
We may also see more software engineers sticking around as engineers instead of becoming managers as well. Because the incentive to grow your income via management may be relieved.
Health care seems to be a big one. Few HR departments are frequently equipped to provide another kind of health-care package, and health care expensive, heavily subsidized by many tech companies, negotiated because of bulk sales, etc.
Depending on the business, the company might actually be subject to massive sales taxes as well if they employ someone out of state. Some states, like CA, have enacted rather byzantine sales tax laws, such that if you were, say, a company in Idaho, and someone wanted to move to CA, you'd all of a sudden have a "presence" in the state and be subject to more taxes.
These are just off the top of my head. So basically, unless the CEO wants it prioritized, I suspect the "finance guys" are actually just identifying real costs. So I wouldn't expect remote work to just jump wholesale nationwide without some real infrastructure in place. In any case, the silicon valley area sure seems to have some pretty stark incentives for prioritizing remote work. I'd expect the issues with remote work to be ironed out faster then say, a massive wage raise or controlled real estate costs.
No car payment, No credit card debt,
130k will let you live and eat with a bit of room to go do things once a month.
If you have a car payment and or credit cards kiss that once a month thing goodbye
150k will let you have a car and do things
Source : I left that area recently
Over the next few years I will travel and see what other areas of the country are like.
I left
OK, sure, rents/real estate are higher. A LOT higher. But other than that, you're not going to pay substantially more for a car, computer, or any other consumer good in CA than anywhere else. Gas and food are somewhat higher, although some of that, based on my visits to and relatives in CA, seems to be based on more picky eating preferences than inherent logistical problems (but you say you don't do that).
It seems outlandish on its face: you know that a $400K household has to be way above the median, even in Oakland. So how is everyone else surviving?
but kid-related costs here are also out of control, accredited infant daycare is insane, and you pretty much have to take what you can get into. same with after school care. this alone is >$3k/mo.
CA self-employment tax is nothing to sneeze at either, especially if you're a contractor in an industry that makes having an s-corp unfeasible.
https://smartasset.com/mortgage/price-to-rent-ratio-in-us-ci...
Ante for renting a standalone place in Manhattan right now is around $2500/month, but I can buy places for as little as $500k (if I don't care about space). Some condos in Manhattan don't even allow rentals.
We just sold our house in Dallas for $220k, and I guarantee we would have been renting it out for a hell of a lot more than $1100/month if it came to that.
[1]: This number is not related to my take-home pay, the balance of which is automatically invested and ideally forgotten until retirement. One of the great mysteries of human nature is that the average individual living a perfectly happy life on a salary of X will, upon finding himself earning 1.5X, naturally increase his expenditures to 1.5X as well, and yet find himself no happier than he was when his spending was just X. Don't be the average individual!
That or you live on the streets
70k as a single income won't get you a flat in London in any reasonable time and you'll most certainly be renting forever on that kind if money in London. Even if its triple the average UK wage.
Location means everything.
Doesn't excuse them, but I can understand how they say such things.
In the UK the median pre-tax income is £22,400 with £72,000 putting you in the 95th percentile [1]; £70,000 is in the middle of the pay scale for a salaried GP/family doctor [2]; and MPs receive a base salary of £74,000 [3] (plus a bunch of extra income through a variety of opaque means)
I think you would look pretty out of touch, from the perspective of someone earning £22,400 if you claimed earning £70,000 didn't make you rich.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f... [2] https://www.bma.org.uk/advice/employment/pay/general-practit... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_Members_of_the_Uni...
"Houseold" accounts for children, single income families, and ignore benefits and unemployment. Last but not least, it's scaled for the UK, not London.
If you are a male in your 20-40, living in London, being the source of income for your household. 70k couldn't be further from rich.
The mortgage on that will be using up around half of your income. That's insane.
£70k post-tax is around £48k so £4k/month so the mortgage will take around 30% of your take-home pay which is a fairly standard ratio.
However what mortgage lenders do is "stress test" at 5%-6.5% that means they evaluate if you'd be able to afford to pay the mortgage + cover your essential costs (food, energy, etc.) if rates rose to those levels.
It's essentially a worse-case assumption to ensure you wouldn't be bankrupt if that happened, not whether you'd be comfortably off at that level.
If interest rates were to rise in 5-10 years time don't forget you could also remortgage to a longer time period to significantly reduce monthly payments if you needed to.
Rates aren't going to jump overnight; if they rise it'll likely be a long slow-rise by which point you should have already paid down a meaningful percentage of your mortgage.
Considering that looking at similar 3 bedrooms to those suggested for purchase gives rates of around £1350 / month. Even putting aside another 1/3 of your income (high) still leaves you looking at 5+ years to save a deposit.
60k/(48k*1/3) = 3.75 years
And that's assuming you start from zero savings.
The median cost of a room in a flatshare in Zone 1/2 is just under £700 month, that's £8.4k/year. Let's assume other costs of living to be £10k/year that gives us a total of £18.4k/year.
Let's say you want to save £40k over 4 years, so 10k/year, that would require a take-home salary of £28.4k/year which implies a pre-tax salary of 37k.
37k should be comfortably achievable for a software developer 1-2 years out of uni.
But if you rent in the suburbs you can get a similar discount on rental as you get on purchases.
(Although the 3-bed was just an example obviously you can get a 1-bed for a cheaper price as well)
And you still have to add the expenses on top. Food, transport, council taxes, utilities.
You may say, "but the poor can't afford to move!". Well, if that's the case, the government should subsidize their move instead. It would be way cheaper and would incidentally drive real estate prices closer to the national median.
I'm not trying to cast any blame on people in this situation, as they are likely there through no fault of their own, but this can hardly be the most efficient way to solve the problem.
I feel like economics is screaming a message to people in the Bay Area: "There are too many people here! There's tons of land in the U.S.!", but no one is listening, just casting blame on the techies, gentrification, land policy, or whatever.
And this only for those people who fall in that gap between (approximately) the national low-income line and the local "low-income" line. People who fall below the national low-income line should be given subsidies, regardless of where they live.
I believe in helping people, but not subsidizing irrational behavior that exacerbates an existing problem.
Just think about how this looks to someone like me: the low-income threshold in CA is over twice my household income. And I am not classified as low-income. So to some degree my tax dollars will be transferred to subsidize some terrible decision-making. If this looks bad to me, a liberal, think how it looks to moderates and conservatives!
Let's take this to the logical extreme: suppose I decide to live literally in Hollywood hills, where one of my relatives lives. I make nowhere near enough to survive there. Should I be subsidized anyway? Does it make a difference if I was born in Hollywood and this situation arose subsequently? I think not, when it comes to the question of what should be done about it now, although reasonable minds may differ.
- The diplomatic, covert, and military apparatus which dominates the world to the extent necessary to secure the flow of cheap oil for your car.
- The interstate highways you drive on.
- The stability of the mortgage-lending ecosystem (via bailouts), and FHA subsidies that privilege suburban single family homes over urban condos.
- Welfare so that unemployed people can stay in dead-end towns, instead of moving to where they are needed.
If these costs were instead embedded in the home prices and rents of the low-density regions they enable, those places wouldn't be cheap anymore.
I don't think we need to force everyone in to urban skyscrapers, but I do think the federal government ought to prop up urbanization at the expense of people in cheap areas at least as much as it props up sprawl at the expense of high COL city dwellers.
Well, this is another issue. It's incoherent, honestly, that someone can be considered both rich and poor from the federal perspective. But in the end, a COL adjustment on income tax would be equivalent to the type of subsidy in question.
- The diplomatic, covert, and military apparatus which dominates the world to the extent necessary to secure the flow of cheap oil for your car.
lel. If that was ever true, which I doubt, it isn't any more. If there was ever a point that our military paid for itself (even on the margin) in terms of cheaper oil, I'll eat my hat.
> Welfare so that unemployed people can stay in dead-end towns, instead of moving to where they are needed.
This is really the core of it. If people are really needed, economically and relatively to elsewhere, in supercities, then supercities will pay enough for them to live there. Ergo, you are overstating how much they are needed. This is exactly analogous to employers claiming there is a "shortage" of programmers, but they aren't willing to raise wages.
Besides, am I to believe that there are no unemployed people on welfare in cities? I don't know what the relative rate is. I do agree people should be incentivized to move where they are needed. We may have different views on where that is, exactly. Any kind of welfare distorts economic "need" signals, which is a big downside of it.
Imagining welfare or wealth transfers didn't exist, I'd say that the place where people are most "needed" is a place where benefits of living - COL is highest. I have no data on where that might be, but I doubt SV ranks high on the list unless you are a programmer. By that metric I would imagine that there would be a dynamic equilibrium between urbanization and countryside, as there is now.
In some ways, SV programmers defending subsidies for service workers in SV sounds like "please subsidize my $10 latte and Whole Foods bill".
> the low-density regions they enable
This is pretty creative. If cities had to grow their own food and extract their own natural resources, I think they'd have quite a problem, yes? It may be fair to say cities & countryside are codependent, but the idea that cities are one-sidedly enabling everyone else is not credible.
It is quite likely that there is a net transfer of wealth from cities to the countryside. The reason I would argue this is "fair" is because people in the cities are also the primary beneficiaries of GDP growth.
BTW, I don't live in the country, I live in a medium-sized city. I am limiting my criticisms to cities that have so poorly planned expansion, or are so crowded, that the COL is sky-high, and they want a bailout from everyone else.
Of course it doesn't pay for itself. Cities with their GDP growth pay for it (financially), and exurbs with their cheap sprawling subdivisions and giant SUVs benefit from it.
People are most needed where they would create the most value, regardless of cost of living.
Let's say your programming labor would be worth $120k/year ($40k in taxes) in San Francisco, but you're stuck making $50k/year ($10k in taxes) in Indianapolis because San Francisco would still be a net less for you.
Your not being in San Francisco costs the government $30k/year. Any subsidy below $30k/year that gets you to that more productive job is profitable for the taxpayer.
Now imagine someone who costs taxpayers $20k/year in Appalachia, but could generate $30k/year ($5k in taxes) as a barista at the Googleplex. It's still worth any price below $25k to get her to Mountain View.
Of course, these subsidies might just arm you (and the barista) to displace other, also productive Bay Area residents, resulting in no net change. There would also have to be a zoning policy intervention to create new units.
I do agree that high and low density regions are codependent, and subsidies are appropriate in both directions. I simply argue that subsidies to get people to high-productivity cities are much less costly (they can even be profitable!) than subsidies to help people stay in low-productivity situations.
I guess I'm with you to the extent this means they "recoup a larger proportion of their losses on these pointless endeavors".
> Your not being in San Francisco costs the government $30k/year. Any subsidy below $30k/year that gets you to that more productive job is profitable for the taxpayer.
With this I agree, although it seems at odds with what I think you were saying earlier, that tax should be COL-adjusted. If this were the case, it would no longer be true.
> People are most needed where they would create the most value, regardless of cost of living.
Nope! True, this would be best from the government's perspective. From the individual's perspective, it is most rational to live where they have the biggest surplus of wages over costs. Doesn't do you much good to make $1M if it's $1.5M for a crappy apartment and basic food.
Unless you are separating the concept of "people are needed most at X" from the concept of "it is most economically rational to live at X".
> imagine someone who costs taxpayers $20k/year in Appalachia, but could generate $30k/year ($5k in taxes) as a barista at the Googleplex
OK, yes, but this sets up a mostly false dichotomy between "employed in SV (etc)" or "unemployed in Appalachia". There are a lot of places in the US that are less dysfunctional than either one of those two places.
> I simply argue that subsidies to get people to high-productivity cities are much less costly (they can even be profitable!) than subsidies to help people stay in low-productivity situations.
It just seems self-contradictory. You say that people in SV pay more tax than people not in SV. That's right. But then you say people in SV should be subsidized, which removes the logical basis you're using to argue they should be there in the first place.
It is helpful to remember that subsidizing someone's COL in a low-cost area is by definition going to cost less than someone in a high-cost area. In short, if we HAVE to subsidize people a lot, then we should subsidize them to live in Appalachia, not SV. But if only a little (i.e., they still pay tax in net), then it could make economic sense to subsidize people in SV. Ironically, by this logic, it makes more sense to subsidize the $90K person in SV than the $30K person.
Not to say things aren't harder here than in most places. Just having in-unit laundry seems like something most non high-COL, urban-dwelling Americans take as a given.
Lack of mobility if you don't have a car, lack of available parking if you do, long lines in general, lots of traffic. Very poor care at many establishments due to overworked and over stressed staff. Miniscule and generally not so great living conditions. For example I lived in a nearly 100 year old house in Oakland with others, which 1 yr later found out had mold problems (a serious health hazard). Also lived in two very modern apartments in the heart of SF both of which had a converted living room bedroom with three roommates. One roommate slept on a couch for a year, paying over $1000/mo. Crime due to homeless situation (witnessed crime frequently during my time, petty crime especially. Side note, didn't a Bart train get robbed just yesterday?). Medical care is another big one (multiple experiences, one for me personally)
Even little things like cooking are very difficult when your entire kitchen is 1/5 the size of what you'd find in a similarly priced suburban home. Little things like this add to stress as I wrote a bit about already.
And sadly the south bay isn't that much better as a "suburb". The home prices in Palo Alto for example are quite outrageous. There are a lot of far nicer suburbs in other parts of the country without the wild price tag.
I was young when I moved, and don't regret the time I spent in the Bay at all. I learned a lot, it was positive for my career and most of all I just had to get it out of my system. The glitz and glamour of it all wore with time, as I suspect it does for many, and ultimately I felt it wasn't where I would want to build my future.
note: I made the assumption you didn't move to a village in a 3rd world country.
Everything's a matter of perspective. Ultimately I want my future kids to have a quality of life similar or greater than I had growing up, and I just didn't think that would be possible in the Bay (at least not without taking on the much higher stress that would likely accompany a much higher income)
When I was driving to work, I felt that the stress would give me chronic stress issues, or make me drop dead one day at 40. That I am not ok with.
Everyone makes a huge deal about the number but shouldn't it be more of a ratio? Like the cost of living to base salary? That should be a better statistic to judge quality of life.
I believe there is a great disparity in NYC between Section 8 housing and regular, rent stabilized, apartments.
Section 8 brings down family income median as the housing is very affordable but cannot be classified as desirable by most standards.
If I am able to save, and I move to make 2x in a place that costs 2x, I am saving 2x as much!
If I am stuck drawing down savings, and I make the opposite move, I have doubled my runway.
If I take home $5000, pay $3500/mo in rent, and spend $500 on everything else, it takes 24 months to save a six month emergency fund.
Yet my monthly net is the same. Ratio matters a great deal. Maybe less so after you've established savings.
Though I might argue, regarding an emergency fund in particular, that establishing and maintaining such would be something that should be accounted as an expense rather than savings.
At one point, I decided that I wanted to track the cost of living of every place, so I started delving into American Community Survey data to find what I needed. I wound up picking three variables to display: median annual income, median monthly housing cost, and median housing cost as a percentage of income.
I had to aggregate a bunch of stuff together for this, as the data was divided up between renters, owners with a mortgage, and owners without a mortgage.
Here's the query I made against the ACS API to pull the data I needed: http://api.census.gov/data/2015/acs5?get=NAME%2CB25106_001E%...
For the purposes of this post, I'll call the pieces of data this gives me by the following names (I don't remember if this is in the same order the API call returns... I'm copying and pasting this from notes I took when I was coming up with my calculations):
housingunits
renters
owners
ownersmortgage
ownersnomortgage
grent
smocmortgage
smocnomortgage
annualincome
First five variables are totals, the next four are all median values. SMOC stands for "selected monthly ownership costs", which is basically mortgage (if applicable) + property taxes + average utility payment. Grent stands for "gross rent" and is rent + average utility payment.
I then can do the following intermediate calculations:
rentpct = renters / housingunits
ownerpct = owners / housingunits
mortgagepct = ownersmortgage / owners
nomortgagepct = ownersnomortgage / owners
monthlyincome = annualincome / 12
And get the data points that will be displayed on the model's UI:
housingcost = grent * rentpct + (smocmortgage * mortgagepct + smocnomortgage * nomortgagepct) * ownerpct
housingcostapi = housingcost / monthlyincome
("api" here stands for "as percentage of income", and the acronym is used heavily within the American Community Survey's documentation of their income data, so I picked it up as wlel)
(and I'm displaying annualincome as well, which is just raw data from the ACS and not a calculation)
I've found that nicer places tend to have a lower housingcostapi, but within a narrow range. A wealthy suburb might be around 20%, while the ghetto might be around 30%. But there are tons of exceptions... middle-class suburbs tend to run a really wide gamut all over the 20s, so I wouldn't consider things like "20% housingcostapi = filthy rich people" to be gospel.
I'm not comfortable linking my census tool here because I've yet to set up safeguards to prevent my server from getting hammered by crawlers (my tool has a very large amount of dynamically-generated graphics that are CPU intensive to generate and are then cached... and there are so many possible permutations that a crawler could easily exhaust my disk space), but I might consider sending the link privately to people if I think they won't share it publicly.
One application is looking for places that are up and coming with values below MR.
I get that the article is talking about a family of four, but even if we assume there are no economies of scale, my costs would work out to $60,000 for a family of four.
I also get that I have some privileges: healthy enough to bike rather than drive/take transit, minimal medical expenses, no student loans. But I am surely not the only person in this position.
What's happening here? What are the other major expenses that people have?
(I understand this comment probably comes off as obnoxious, but I'm genuinely trying to understand. This incongruity makes it harder for me to understand/sympathize with others on this issue and I'd like to regain that ability.)
So something is still not adding up.
What do you pay for housing, what kind of housing is it, and is a lease like yours available to newcomers who don't have your grandfathered status or connections?
There seems to be a consensus that enduring long commutes, or just moving away, are preferable to living in those kinds of conditions. I've never heard of someone considering an SRO unless they had been previously homeless or institutionalized.
Even the starving artists seem to prefer sharing apartments (or using former warehouse/factory space as apartments) in the less glamorous parts of the East Bay.
I'd love to to live in a clean, safe, quiet, well-maintained SRO close to work at that price.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/business/how-anti-growth-...
Great place, and I understand not wanting sprawl, but... build up and in?
William Fischel draws some links with environmentalism in Zoning Rules! ( http://amzn.to/2oIKbyM ) which make sense. Not that he's against it, but just that it sometimes gets a bit perverted to further the ends of NIMBYs rather than actually protecting much of anything. Making people drive 15 miles back and forth to Longmont isn't terribly great for the planet in some ways. In any event, both SF and Boulder are both places that do have a strong sense of environmentalism (in a lot of good ways too, I think), so that could well be the connection.
Edit:
Exhibit A: SF's Sierra Club fighting to save... a parking garage.
http://thebaycitybeacon.com/32740/282282/a/the-sierra-club-f...
Edit to add: An image from my balcony [0].
[0] https://storage.googleapis.com/lee-salminen-fileshare/IMG_24...
and it makes you one of the new people who've crowded in and made my grocery store obnoxiously busy. :(
My wife and I both make well into the 6 figures working at boring corporations enjoying a lifestyle where we would have to earn the equivalent of 7 figures in the Bay Area or NYC.
There are a lot of great boring corporations that pay extremely well. They don't provide couches or hammocks and you have to drink regular coffee and sure you have to sit in a cube (no open spaces) but it sure beats having to scrape by on 100k + a year.
I want a garage, a driveway, a dog, the ability to really customize my living space, etc, but I don't think its going to happen here. I'd like to magically move somewhere else but its a somewhat intimidating process.
There's really nothing to add at this point.
All of this is also why I really prefer living in NYC, which actually has the infrastructure for this sort of thing (meaning if you're a lower to middle income earner in the tri-state area you're not totally hosed like you are in the Bay Area).
Hahahahahahahaha, good one. Maybe you're in some alternate dimension Brooklyn, but the one I live in is full on crazygonuts expensive.
Higher up I posted a list of actions we can take today to help make housing more affordable in the Bay Area.
[1] http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/03/02/firefighters-ear...
The figures that the article cites are for a family of four. The thresholds for individuals are noticeably lower.
Great, but please bear in mind that choice comes with real financial consequences to your lifestyle and you should not expect the state to bail you out of it.
The bay needs more housing to meet the needs of all the companies that need employees here.
It's kinda like everyone cheering for Uber and Lyft because medallion rules in SF prevented ever having enough cabs.
There's no real reason and that's the problem.
Also maybe they had those kids in the 1990s when things were a bit more affordable ? The Bay Area wasn't always the most expensive place in the US
Isn't it more about supply and demand? There are many people here making big salaries at the tech companies, so there is not a shortage of people who can pony up $1-1.5M for a 1200 sq. ft. house. If the demand wasn't there, the prices would come down to meet it.
There were additional sums added for those who died in the Iraq War, with a range from 250K to 800K that varied depending upon the rank and dependent family members. http://articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/05/news/war-benefits5
In practice, will they? Probably not. But weirder things have happened.
Just because they can do it at any time doesn't mean they ever will. We have a large and expensive professional army and people reacted badly to the draft in 1960s I can only imagine what today's kids would do if they were drafted. It would be political suicide to enact a draft.
So technically yes the state can forcefully draft any male between 18-28 to go fight in a war. But practically no, it will never happen again.
The state pays death benefits.
Plus SGLI is around half a million dollars, last I knew. Plus ongoing payments to surviving spouses, I don't know about parents though. There's a small premium for SGLI though, around ~$300/year I think
I'm not sure what "holding people accountable" means to you. What it means to the Valley is that these companies have basically colonized the region and created an environment where you need to be single or dink. They like that because it means it's easier to make you work more without a family.
In my case, it means my services aren't available to those companies at any price. No big deal individually, but there are many people like me.
Nobody owes you a house and a comfortable lifestyle with a large family in the Bay Area without you providing enough value to the market to live in the most expensive place in the country.
There are many other states in the US where you could live, and many other places even in CA that you could move to. If you want to live comfortably right in the eye of the storm, that's your personal choice and the market won't bend over backwards for you.
There may not be conclusive evidence, but there is fairly suggestive evidence given known correlates of intelligence.
> The average Bay Area resident may be slightly more educated but that doesn't necessarily prove anything about their level of heritable intelligence.
It doesn't necessarily prove that, but both access to and success in higher education is gated by selective filters for, among other factors, intelligence, so a region with higher average level of education would, itself, suggest (though not necessarily prove) higher average intelligence.
Of course the solution is to have a massive increase in the supply of housing. That will never happen. The next best option is to have mass exodus of people leaving the bay area.
That's flagrantly false, and a dog whistle. If anything, the existence of Section 8 should encourage more housing supply, since there's more money for rent.
NIMBY's have an unusually large say in the approval process here, and we've been underbuilding for decades. NIMBY's are very well organized and they have huge incentives to invest tons of money in their homes due to Prop 13, and to block new housing development so existing property values keep going up. CEQA gives NIMBY's and environmental groups wide latitude to file lawsuits to block projects they don't like, and they succeed in about half the lawsuits they file. Cities prioritize office building over residential due to Prop 13.
Let them eat cake!