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Comment by slenk | Hacker News Reader

I feel like they are projecting SF's problem on the rest of the US.

In my city, affordable housing isn't available downtown, but it's not more than a 10 minute bus ride away.

Aren’t you possibly doing the reverse with your anecdote?

The points raised: higher interests rates, higher construction costs, flat home building stats, slower price growth, and historically low homeownership rates are countrywide facts, not specific to San Fran.

But none of those indicate a lack of affordability, except home ownership rates. In most states (31 of 50), the median household income can more than afford a median mortgage.

http://time.com/money/5355518/home-price-salary-every-state/

So I agree with the OP, the author of this article is unjustifiably projecting the SF housing crisis onto the rest of the country.

Did you get that backwards?

Also, this map looks a lot like a population density map - it’s great housing is cheap in Nebraska. But there’s just not many people there. I would say Pennsylvania and Ohio might be worth looking at though.

> Indeed, only 19 states have an actual median income that tops the amount needed to buy a home: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.

Yes I did. Oops.

Pennsylvania and Ohio are interesting in that they contain many rust belt towns devastated by de-industrialization. You can buy an affordable house in Erie, PA or Youngstown, OH because the populations of those towns have fallen as the jobs have left.

Doing this type of analysis state-by-state doesn't really tell the story as you can't really live in Youngstown and work in Cleveland or live in Erie and work in Pittsburgh.

FWIW, there are also plenty of affordable options that are in the Cleveland metro area, too.

> Doing this type of analysis state-by-state doesn't really tell the story

Yeah. For example, that map does an average of property taxes, which is not super great. Property taxes in some of the suburbs in Cleveland can be higher than your mortgage.

If you look at the referenced map, the affordable states aren't exactly hotbeds of opportunity. Anecdotally,I had to move from one of those to one of the not affordable ones to have a decent career (by my standards). On a less anecdotal note, they are also less populous states,so they don't represent the condition experienced by most Americans. If trading off "quality of life" for the ability to participate in a high productivity industry like tech is a common experience, what is the aggregate effect on those industries?

If it's a problem that will follow anywhere experiencing strong economic growth, that's a problem that can affect everyone indirectly. It probably hurts young opportunity-seekers most though.

In my metropolitan area being 10 minutes from downtown via bus is much different than being in downtown. Our public transit system is such that going from downtown to any other location serviced by the transit system is easy. But if don’t start from downtown then you first, usually, have to go downtown and then catch the bus to the location you want. This makes using the public transit system a burden for anyone who doesn’t live downtown.

Which city? New York has the same problem.

I would argue most cities outside of a handful of the largest metropolises. I would argue that outside of the LA, San Francisco, New York, Seattle, DC, Boston, and maybe one or two more cities, affordable housing is well within the 10 minute radius posed by the above commenter is pretty common.

Obviously that list of cities makes up a large group of Americans, but it still isn't really representative of the country as a whole.

That said, at least in my field, the vast majority of jobs are in those cities, and so it becomes problematic when from an employment perspective, it is difficult to avoid those areas, while from a livability perspective, it is financially difficult to get by (at least, without the torturous commutes).

I was curious on the actual numbers here so I summed it up based on census data. Between greater LA, the Bay Area, San Diego, NY metro, Seattle, Boston, Austin, and DC there are just under 54 million people, or somewhere between 16-17% of the total US population and significantly higher than that for working age population. Also as you said, the vast majority of high-paying jobs in many fields (excluding Oil & Gas and a few others) are going to be in one of those places.

The author is the Chief Economist for Moody’s Analytics, I believe he’s located in New York. Your point still stands but I’m hoping someone with such an influential position is skilled at taking a broader perspective.

In my city (DC), housing is expensive everywhere unless you're willing to drive 2 hours each way to work.

Move to slenk's city!

ha.

I guess I do live in a smaller city (Grand Rapids, MI). We do have housing issues downtown that's for sure, but just a little outside it seems better.

Maybe I am turning my opinion around

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