If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?

This article was originally published on November 8. (I knew I'd read it before; it was probably linked to and discussed here.)

https://medium.com/s/story/if-san-francisco-is-so-great-why-...

After recently getting back from Portland, it couldn't be more painfully obvious that the entire problem comes down to housing. They are building new (affordable!) apartments there like nothing I've ever seen. You literally can't walk two or three blocks without seeing a construction crane. And the local culture reflects that. So many business that simply could not exist in SF were thriving due to the cheap labor and plentiful customer base of 20 somethings that can actually afford to live on their own in the city.

> It’s not my fault she’s gone, that all 12 of them are gone. Normal. People move all the time. Nothing I could have done.

Except allow building more homes. Vote for politicians who'd have allowed building more homes. My guess is, the author has voted against her own interests.

Which one is more important, keeping the "charm" of houses and neighborhoods where you cannot afford to live anyway, or keeping those 12 your closest childhood friends, even if that means allowing to build apartment buildings for them to live in? You choose.

> There is an apocalyptic amount of people moving into California, and no one blames them for the overcrowding and the shifting culture. But when too many Californians leave California and settle in, say, Portland, they are blamed for ruining the place by way of simply being themselves.

Part of this is where the money comes from.

Poorer/lower-middle-class people (mostly) move into California, to work these jobs under varying amounts of duress. It's hard to complain about the kid who moved from Iowa/Wisconsin/Tennessee/etc, and is hoping their first real tech job at Uber or Facebook or Netflix justifies the move. That's why discussion moves to hating the companies, not the people.

But when Californians leave, they leave wealthy (in comparison). Even if they were poor-ish in California, just the act of selling their home (or condo, or any unit, anywhere in the state) instantly propels them straight to the upper-class or upper-middle-class when they move to places like Idaho or Nebraska or Michigan.

So, when they move here, and say things like "$200k for a beat up old house? That's nothing! A downpayment in California would be $200k!" -- it gets easy to hate the coastal person for their money. Because you sure as hell aren't earning that cash local -- Our hometown Gordon Foods corporate jobs aren't paying even 33% of the wages a corporate Uber Eats job does. Our local housing prices are no longer driven by local wages, they're driven largely by what percentage of coastal people are cashing out their wealth and dumping it into our hometowns (or what percent of coastal private equity funds are buying up our cities to rent back to us at inflated rates)

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That's not to defend these actions, I am not saying this is right (no one should hate anyone over this). But it does at least help understand why the blame goes where it does. The blame follows the money. In California, that money comes from the companies. But in flyover-USA, that money is coming from the Californians (or NYC/Boston/DC/Seattle/Denver transplants), because you sure as hell aren't ever earning that much money from any local company here.

Unfortunately this is the circle of life in high cost living areas. The NYC area has been expensive for a long period of time. SF now has become even more expensive and this phenomenon is newer to the area than NYC. The people I grew up with had the following outcomes:

* Got a high paying job and stayed (not many)

* Tried to make it here, but ended up moving to NC or FL

* Work lower paying jobs dual income and struggle

* Got a job in the area they went to university

SF was not super expensive 10-15 years ago. I mean it was not like living in a Midwest city but you could still get by on a reasonable income.

Central Fl and many areas in NC have a large amount of New Yorkers. This trend is going to accelerate as top tier cities become more popular and affluent, and costs will spiral. Unfortunately cities like Orlando that take in a lot of fleeing New Yorkers do not build the same density and downtowns as older cities so it is less likely that they will become as desirable for higher paying jobs. They are more suburban in nature and are car dependent.

What needs to be done is to make high density cities from the start somewhere else. Make a high speed rail link from SF to some area outside and start new with affordable high density in mind. Then people will initially commute to SF but the new area can then flourish. Otherwise old high density cities will continue to explode in popularity with post 1950s sprawl cities taking in mid income people.

> But what this “native” Bay Area kid won’t do is start blaming the guy from North Carolina or Wisconsin or Boston—basically every other person in the bar—for propelling the rents into the sky and inadvertently forcing the “locals” to flee.

That's one option. The other option would be to blame all the Bay Area natives who are seemingly happy to build massive employment centers but are completely fucking allergic to building apartment buildings.

But what do I know, I just live in New York, which really does share a lot of the dynamic described in the article as well and has it's share of problems with migration and gentrification, but where we also know how to actually build housing.

It helps.

Taking a macro view on it and ignoring individual circumstances, I believe San Francisco is slowly bleeding itself out which may be a net positive for society (and I would apply this to my home NYC as well).

I don’t believe it’s a good idea for our society long term to have ALL of the nation’s leading X (technologists, bankers, engineers) in one city or state. As painful as it is to see your community leave, taking a perhaps heartless view on this, these talented people are going to other places and will revitalize communities.

I live in NYC and it pains me to bump into people who are enslaved by their paycheck commuting 3 hours (no exaggeration) a day. Moms and dads never seeing their kids dealing with crumbling infrastructure. I believe they could cut that paycheck in half, live in Charlotte or any number of good cities and lead a much happier life.

I guess I’m saying that while I wouldn’t wish being priced out of your community to anyone, for people on the trajectory of being priced out, the sooner perhaps the better to a happier life somewhere else.

Every so often one of these articles comes along and someone writes at length about the struggle of living in the bay area. I've been here over 13 years now and these articles are a constant.

First, the Bay Area never promised to be anything to anyone. It had its roots in the gold rush and then the military, followed by the semiconductor rush and today the internet. At each iteration, people flooded into the region to work in lucrative jobs and push out the farmers that lived here for generations.

There may have been a larger creative scene in SF, but it never was as rich and diverse as people think they remember it to be. 13 years ago, the entire eastern 1/2 of SF was abandoned warehouses and homeless encampments. I mean, potrero hill was where you could go buy your coke, it was full of drug dealers! Now look at that neighborhood.

But ultimately, SF is a small city, not that diverse and lacks many of the things that make paying NYC prices worth it for NYers. That has been true for its entire history and I don't think that will change.

However, if creative industries are your thing, and what you crave, move to LA or NYC. That's where you'll find all of that, from amazing artists to bands that are amazing, even if they're playing at your local pub.

I think this experience is very different for gay men (speaking as one living in SF). Because gay men are more likely to not want kids (and probably still less likely to be married at a certain age), there is less a need to be able to afford a 3 bedroom home and in my experience there is no late 20/early 30 exodus from SF that I see with some of my straight friends. Then there’s the extra benefit of SF and other major urban centers like NYC and LA in just having a large LGBT population, which many “second tier” cities that are cheaper do not have and would be a major downside to moving out.

SF isn’t so great anymore. It’s like New York, but with more junkies and no cheaper boroughs.

It has more drug addicts than people enrolled in public high schools. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/02/sa...

This article is really spot on. It feels like we're in a big speculative mess in Bay Area. The home-price-to-income ratio in SJ is about 20x [1] Anything over 3x used to be considered "risky". Let's say in Costal Areas it was be allowed to double, then you have 6x. That's good, not great, but ok. And that's about what pricy DC and NY cost. SJ is 20x. How is this possibly sustainable? Not even going to get into the dual income trap that only makes it marginally more realistic.

How is this good for average folks, like the ones that keep society running? How will this work in the long run? There will basically be two classes of people, the rich and the ultra poor who barely survive. I suspect poor don't have the money or the knowledge about elsewhere or they would be moving out in droves.

[1] - https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/where-the-house-price... * I should note peak home prices in the last 12 mo were in mid july and houses have fallen by about 5%, so this ratio might actually be lower.

These two statements seem to conflict a bit. Anybody else think so?

> are flooding their home, driving up rents, installing yoga studios, polluting the local vibe with new technology, and generally making everything suck while sipping kale juice.

> These people want to be artists, teachers, blacksmiths, therapists, mechanics, and musicians. They want to have children, open bakeries, own a house ...they aren't techies; they had the audacity to want something besides tech.

Are the people who left California and who apparently are driving up rents and sipping kale juice in wherever they ended up artists, mechanics, musicians, and blacksmiths? California rents have gone up apparently because technology companies pay workers enough they can afford $3000/mo rents for an apartment. Is the effect of an influx of bakers, musicians, artists (who I'm assuming probably can't afford high rents) sufficient to inflate rents enough to complain about? I would have said the "californians" people complain about are employed by technology companies (or other high paying companies).

It's funny to see Californians complain about folks moving to California and driving up housing costs. I grew up in Bend, Oregon where housing was driven up by tons of Californians moving there. Bay area folks only have themselves to blame for their "I got mine" attitude and not allowing anyone to build more housing. I fly every week to Santa Clara because there is no way I am moving there -- my home here in WA is almost paid off.

There’s a lot of discussion in this thread of restrictions on building, but an equally big problem in San Francisco is constructions costs. Even if all limits on building were liberalized tomorrow, housing would still be extremely expensive because of the high cost of construction. There are many causes, including the accumulation of well-meaning environmental regulations over the last 10 years. The Terner center at Berkeley put together a great focus group with developers and contractors where they discuss these causes:

https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/San_Francisco_Cons...

Because of exclusionary zoning and prop 13, both of which are supported by middle-aged and retired homeowners, a dominant political force in California.

Its not. The quality of life is terrible here for what you are paying for. I pay $3000 for a one bedroom and constantly have homeless people in my garage or camping next to my building. My car has been broken into several times. Cops don’t walk a beat or do anything whatsoever to prevent crime. If you call the cops they basically shrug it off unless there’s actual violence happening. The traffic is terrible, public transportation is terrible (mostly because BART and Muni let on people who don’t pay). There are piles of feces and needles all over the city center. I honestly love the weather, but there are just so many negatives to your daily experience here. If I could move, I would.

> I can’t change the rent.

This ending is poignant and obviously true. However, it's also true that individuals can support the YIMBY movement in whatever manner they are comfortable, which as a unified force is the best means to reducing rents that we have. Campaign to reform zoning to allow denser residential buildings; reform building regulations to encourage development; abolish Proposition 13 to bolster market dynamism; eliminate the mortgage income tax deduction to counter price lift; allow ADUs on single-family housing zones; do whatever you can to encourage increasing housing supply.

As aphextron pointed out elsewhere in this thread, it's all about housing. And the housing problem is solved by supply. Demand is what it is, and as long as there is a cultural and employment nexus, demand isn't going down appreciably any time soon.

For me, the key is knocking off any concerns about gentrification or the loss of a community's "character." These are selfish blankets that are comfort for NIMBYs. Yeah, I might jokingly jab at hipsters and their ways. But I absolutely do not want them regulated out of the area by way of restrictive zoning, building regulations, and other thinly veiled exclusion in the form of constrained property rights.

A lot of people only see gross salary and forget the only thing that matters is how much money you net at the end of the year.

For most in the middle class if you compare the cost of living index to a less desirable place to live, even with the much reduced wages, it makes fiscal sense leave.

The article is all qualitative, but the quantitative numbers bear it out, at a state level at least. In 2016, the state had rough 150,000 more internal emigrants then immigrants (from census data) This is a continuation or acceleration of a trend that has been occurring for 30 years- see https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/great-california-ex.... If my back of the envelope calculation is right, California had a net outflow of 10% of its current population over 30 years. Of course that is made up for by births and external migration, but matches the authors observation.

It's not great. Everything interesting has moved to the East Bay or out of state. All that left is high rents. I've already got plans to leave in April. The only thing good that remains is a lot of the most interesting tech jobs at the larger companies like Facebook, Google, Uber, AirBnB, etc. However even those have a shelf-life because it's only a matter of time (5-10 years is my guess) because those are no longer the exciting companies anymore. If SF starts losing the future unicorns to other markets, it's only a matter of time until the golden goose dies.

Word on the street is that several unicorns are planning more and more engineering growth outside the SF Bay Area in 2019 and beyond.

None of my artist friends who were born in SF can afford to live there any more. My techie friends are starting to move out because it's getting less affordable for even them, or because the only people left of their circles are other techies.

Seattle's going the same way, rapidly. I hope nobody who works for Amazon or Microsoft decides to follow me when I leave this town for the place I grew up, because tech money sure does not trickle down very far and I would like to be able to pay my freakin' rent without whimpering every time I do.

The boomers did everything they could to construct the housing supply and ensure their children would be unable to afford to live near them. Hope they enjoy their blessed property values!

> I visited Seattle for the first time a month ago and was warned someone might throw a bottle at my car for my California plates.

This same crap was literally in the air almost 30 years ago when I lived in LA and traveled to Seattle and Portland regularly on business. Californians were responsible for the traffic on the 5, and not being able to get into restaurants, etc. etc.

Also...

> There is an apocalyptic amount of people moving into California, and no one blames them for the overcrowding and the shifting culture.

Really?

The current state of journalism - Red Herring and The Texas Sharpshooter just in the title.

In short:

Cost of living + abusive taxes

I loved my week in the Bay Area. But...I prefer living around mountains and trees instead of that many people and buildings.

Remote work is the way to go.

I rarely post here but fuck it. I was born in Redwood City. I went to school briefly at UCB and graduated from UCD. I spent the entirety of my life in this small stretch of land. I immediately started working as an engineer in tech as soon as I graduated but now had to deal with this new reality the author describes. I was involved in the music and art scene in the Bay Area and almost everyone has left. The few that remained kind of despised me for working in technology. It was also a weird disconnect to hang out with people and everyone knows that I easily make four times the amount they make while living at my Mom's house. I just didn't feel myself around them anymore. I didn't really care to make friends with tons of engineers. I spent my day with engineers (albeit with very few even born in America let alone the Bay Area) and I wasn't rushing to spend time with tons of more engineers on my free time. The shows and parties dried up and I became more and more depressed wondering what am I going to do with my life?

Everyone here is posting in the typical Hacker News way of trying to rationalize the situation. If only we build or built more housing, etc. It doesn't matter. More housing wasn't built and even if more housing comes quickly (which it won't), the area has changed and there isn't really an artistic or cultural zeitgeist to attract artists like there used to be here. Of course, there is Oakland but unfortunately I didn't fit in there because politics and identity seemed to be everything people cared about with their art and it wasn't interesting or fun. I have no idea if Oakland continues to change or not.

I ended up leaving. I sold almost everything I owned and moved to Israel. I wanted to go somewhere radically different than California. My only other options were LA and NYC. I wanted to be near a Jewish population because that is important to me. It's nice to see how different life is outside of the Bay Area. While Tel Aviv definitely has it's fair share of technology, I still see people walking on the street with guitars and there is a vibrant night life here which is nice.

There are of course drawbacks too. The Bay Area really is a special place. I understand what the author is getting at in the piece. There is an implicit cost to these people. If your entire area becomes engineers, data scientists, and product managers, I am sorry but the area is fucking boring and uninspiring. It also becomes a bubble where no one is actually solving anything anymore or creating anything inspiring.

Edit: Another huge thing I forgot to mention is the commute. The commute here is fucking INSANE. We make an obscene amount of money and ride on these screeching subways with junkies and schizophrenics. We get off and walk over corpses on the street to get to our beautiful offices that all look similar with reclaimed wood and steel and program. I couldn't rationalize the absurdity of it all anymore. I couldn't deal with the time and energy cost of commuting. I lived in Redwood City and drove to BART and then BARTed into SF. When I lived in Berkeley, the commute was just as bad. If I was lucky to stand on a Transbay bus, it was tolerable but BART took so long. If I decided to move to Oakland, I would have to deal with an even longer BART where we are packed in like cattle. It is insane to me. The first thing I did was get a sublet where I could walk to work.

At least you can go to a local CC two years for (almost) free.

She says the ones coming in to California "...flock here for gold and glory, ready to hustle and disrupt, hammering to hit the motherlode and laughing at the odds" while the ones leaving "...leave their families and communities behind on the chance they will, ironically, strike gold."

In other words they are the same. In both cases they're de-prioritizing more traditional values (home, family, friends, community) to pursue wealth and fortune. To put it bluntly and somewhat negatively (although I'll make a disclaimer in a sec), they're coming for greed, and they're leaving for greed. There's no contradiction.

Here's that disclaimer and a bit of a tangent: Greed has a good side, like Gordon Gekko's speech in the ancient movie Wall Street -- "Greed is good. Greed works." Basically greed is just a thing; the desire for more ___. And keep in mind that all things have dual nature dark/light just like the yin/yang symbol shows. Dark and light are not only coiled intimately around each other, but there is also a spot of the one inside the very heart of the other. It's really a brilliant piece of symbology and a good reminder about the world, that participants in fruitless and polarized political debates would do well to pay attention to. (Though nobody wants to hear there's as much evil in them as in their opponents, or that there's as much good in their opponents as themselves... especially when it's true.)

Anyway, with that in mind, you can state something like "Steve Jobs was greedy" and see what a perfect statement it is. It captures both sides. But yeah so in that case let's not fail to call out the aspects of the Silicon Valley "dream" that are inherently materialistic. Or opportunistic, might be a better word. Should we really be surprised that such a place, through its own success, begins to crowd out other uses/priorities/values including both traditional ones (home, family) and non-traditional-but-non-materialistic ones (art)?

Also what of these other towns where life is cheaper? They are filled with people who stayed put, who chose "home and family" above "gold and glory." Granted some of them had the luxury of choosing let's say "being an artist" because the town is cheap enough to do so. Others had no choice but to be pretty-much without gold or glory because of a general dearth of opportunity. But don't let either one of those things distract you: People in these places, especially people who grew up there, value the things they value. I'd imagine you'd find "home and family" are ranked as higher priorities, as well as "creativity," while "fame and fortune" would be ranked lower. Materialism and opportunism would be lower. Restlessness, shallowness all would be lower. If you could measure things like that.

So again, should we be surprised that when people steeped in the Silicon Valley go-go-get-'em environment -- either the ones who already traded "home" for "success" once in order to go there, or the ones who, like the author's friend, are doing it for the first time -- land in those other places, and end up standing out unwelcomely like the proverbial sore thumb? Try to blend in(0) and you might find less "hate." The "angry locals of Portland, Seattle, Denver, New Orleans, Kansas City, Phoenix, Austin, and elsewhere" aren't pissed because they think you're rich snobs (though those do stand out more, in part because of their disproportionate ability to influence the actual physical architecture of a place, more on that in a minute); they're mad because by virtue of your very relocations, you display a verifiable history of being at least greedy/opportunistic enough (again, in both good/bad senses) to do so in the first place, and of embracing the values the Valley/Bay is famous for, and of actively disdaining the (apparently now contrary) values these people adhere to, which are ironically the ones whose loss is being lamented in this piece.

(0) I shouldn't have said "blend in." "Blending in" sounds too much like fascism. "Harmonize" would be better. Because like people in a band, you might all be playing different instruments and parts, but you sort of have to be playing the same song, don't you.

Architecture provides a good metaphor here. An ostentatious new ultra-modern house that makes no effort whatsoever to harmonize with the surrounding architecture -- there are now plenty of those in these towns. If you say you don't like them, people will disingenuously say it's because you're an ass-backwards hick who hates modernity, but that's not the reason. It's because it's artless, jarring and tone-deaf, like someone who joins a band while it's playing and starts playing a different song.

>Several months ago, she had made the difficult decision to move back onto a small corner of her parents beach-town property, after her urban East Bay house became waterlogged during the rainstorms of 2016. We had to move her out over a weekend, after the mold took half the furniture and gave her roommate pneumonia in both lungs. I touched swollen blisters of stagnant rainwater pulsing on her walls. After emailing the landlord about the issues, the housemates abandoned the property. He then successfully sued them in accordance with California tenant laws.

What the actual fuck is wrong with California and its tenant laws?