San Francisco renters paying $1,100 a month to live in converted living rooms | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco renters paying $1,100 a month to live in converted living rooms

businessinsider.com

12 pointsSirLJ19 comments

SF startups appear to be a fascinating way for landlords to extract money from VCs. I wonder if the landlords give away plausible ideas to young hackers to pitch to the VCs? Perhaps landlords run all the incubators?

The employees of startups are working very hard to channel money from one very rich person, to another very rich person, in the vain hope of having an imperceptible chance of becoming a very rich person themselves.

Georgism, a tremendously popular school of economic thought in the US at one point that has been memory holed by the powers that be, advocated taxing rents at very high rates:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

Brannan's Maxim: During a gold rush, sell shovels.

https://www.flexport.com/blog/trade-merchants-rich-californi...

There is a huge market (i.e., base of buyers) for affordable housing for people who just want safe, private, convenient shelter. Maybe there's a surplus of luxury housing in SF, but I think a luxury building is an amenity that needlessly adds to the cost.

Incidentally, I was thinking about opening a hacker founder community somewhere affordable, like Detroit. But Detroit is cold.

Then again, there are some amenities I'd like if I'm paying SF rent. For instance, I was recently in SF and looked in into a one-bedroom non-luxury apartment that I could easily have afforded back home. It was 3k a month and didn't even have an in unit washer and dryer.

I can't do laundry ever again. I have fully bought into wash and fold. It's a total no brainer. For $25 I just got an entire hamper worth of mixed laundry washed and folded for me. The time and economics make it totally worth it.

I would definitely want to offer wash and fold service.

Privacy is important. I don't know that an "upholstered partition" (http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5a501548c32ae61e008...), which honestly reminds me of the doors of American bathroom stalls, offers enough of a sense of privacy, especially because of sound.

If you have a salaried job how do you justify spending that money when you can’t earn more money outside of your salary?

I don't have a salaried job currently. I have a software consulting business, link in profile.

The rest of the article title is significant: "...is so dire that renters are paying $1,100 a month to live in converted living rooms."

"Converted living rooms" is critical. My initial reaction to the HN headline was "what a great deal!" as I pay $1200 for a three bedroom, two bath house in central Florida. SF suddenly looked a lot more appealing!

Sound like something out of Hong Kong...

When/if the revolution comes, I really hope it comes with a 100% land value tax.

When/if the revolution comes, think constant IED's and slaughter like in Iraq. Guilt or innocence has nothing to do with the target either.

Revolutions rarely result in something "better," at least for the majority of the citizenry. I can't think of one other than the US 1776 and the French in 1799 that turned out better for the citizens, and these were both a special case during a special time that probably will never be repeated. The result of revolutions also last generations.

No, revolutions are when the citizens are convinced that "burning it down" will result in a better outcome. Most of the time, it just creates a power vacuum tyrants have an uncanny ability to fill that vacuum because they are ruthless and unscrupulous.

Think Iran circa 1979, Cuba circa 1959, Egypt fairly recently, Russia circa 1917 etc.

We are better positioned than ever to create an organized revolution. Look at YCombinator is doing, they are prototyping Basic Income. Keeps the masses loyal, it's totally disruptive and 100x better than our current welfare systems. Add housing, healthcare, and it's only a matter of time before they aggressively invest in weapons programs (I would be surprised if there are no current cyber warfare/espionage investments).

The revolution is happening, we're here on the ground floor, and we have a voice in this forum.

Oh, I was thinking armed revolution, not political revolution.

Yes, the political revolution is absolutely happening and has started in earnest. With the popularity of Trump and Sanders, it's as significant since probably Carter and possibly earlier.

Trump was the first attempt. I'm not sure how it will turn out though. It (the revolution) will either run out of steam for a while, or the D's might have a turn at it. I don't see the D's running much of an outsider platform though. It seems they are mostly keeping to the same strategy and platform they've employed since the 90s. Business as usual.

Who's paying for that UBI again? Still have no clear answer in years...

Why can't it be financed from the returns on the YC portfolio?

I was thinking more like FDR in the 1930s.

I was thinking armed revolution. As far as political revolution, I think TR of the late 1800s would be a better start. FDR took a dramatic event (depression). We would probably need to have one of those. I think if 2008 was allowed to play out like some of the GOP was suggesting (let the market fix it), we would have gotten some FDR like programs.

Really the problem is congress. They have the power to make laws. Anything a president can do independently can be undone by the next office holder.

> Revolutions rarely result in something "better," at least for the majority of the citizenry. I can't think of one other than the US 1776 and the French in 1799 that turned out better for the citizens,

America in 1776 was more of a regional separatist movement than a revolution (despite the popular name), and there are plenty of regional separatist movements that worked out well for the separatists.

France didn't have a revolution in 1799; if you mean 1789, I'm not sure I'd call that a win in any direct sense, despite laying groundwork for distant future progress, both in France and elsewhere.

> No, revolutions are when the citizens are convinced that "burning it down" will result in a better outcome.

More often, they happen when citizens think that absent a revolution, all will be imminently and certainly lost, and that burning it all down offers at least an outside chance of less than total loss.

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