Is the Bay Area pushing people to the breaking point? | Hacker News Reader

Is the Bay Area pushing people to the breaking point?

mercurynews.com

25 pointssverige32 comments

Rightly or wrongly we live in a world where corporations lobby for all kinds of things. But the response from Bay Area companies to this growing problem over the past decade seems to be invisible if it exists.

Do the big Bay Area companies not see this as a threat? Why aren’t they busy lobbying local and state government on the issue? You hear about Google vs Mountain View, and small things like that. But there’s no big sustained campaign to raise awareness of the problem, it’s causes, and it’s solutions. Heck put up some billboards at least.

most of the people with some political leverage to initiate changes are also financially vested to the rising prices?

5 out of the 6 top reasons are housing related. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/opinion/california-home-p...

If you have an average tech job and you are single/partnered (w/ dual income) with no kids, you are probably relatively fine as far as affordability goes.

If you have kids or living on a single income for 2 people, then it gets harder because presumably you'll want to find a more permanent living situation than renting a bedroom in a larger home with roommates or a small studio/1 bedroom.

My guess is that the existential crisis/breaking point happens for those in transition periods in their lives, the most notable those in their 20s/30s who have recently gotten married and thinking of having their first kid. At that point, if you haven't been fortunate enough to make enough to afford at least a small 2 bedroom in a good school area for $1.5m-$2m + school + daycare it isn't going to very sustainable to keep living here. Plus, many people want help from their parents to help raise their kids while they continue working, and unless you're in a situation where your parents are already living here that would be difficult to accommodate as well.

>> If you have kids or living on a single income for 2 people

Does anyone still live with that kind of family-model? '2 people + kids / 2 incomes' is pretty much standard where I live, no one can afford otherwise -- not even the higher-earning income bracket.

Some, but right almost certainly a lot less than in previously generations...

If one partner made enough to support the whole family and you had kids, then I imagine there are some families who would want a full-time parent caring for their kids vs relying on daycare/parents/nanny.

If you aren't making at least $40k a year (with a low-stress job), you will mostly just be treading water covering the cost of daycare, and might as well stay home with the child. Unless you have other reasons to keep working besides cash flow.

>> If you aren't making at least $40k a year (with a low-stress job), you will mostly just be treading water covering the cost of daycare

Ahh, I see... That's actually a rational argument in favour of it. I sometimes tend to take conditions on this side of the Atlantic for granted -- like 90 € / month [+reduction for lower-income parents] for daycare / Kindergarten.

It might vary by region. It's fairly standard among my circle of friends. For most of us, doing the math revealed that, with both parents working, child care expenses and the like would eat up all or most of what the lesser-earning parent was bringing home after taxes.

Some of that is about how the tax system works in the US, too - the way that "married filing jointly" works was designed under the assumption that married women are homemakers, and so treating two-income families fairly wasn't a priority.

I know people doing this in the Bay Area, but likely a) they have reduced rental/property cost b) they watch their budget like a hawk.

Absolutely, but not usually in a place like the Bay Area. It is easy and normal all over the USA.

When a 3-bedroom house can be had for $150,000 or less, you can get by on a single unimpressive income. It looks like that income could be just $40,000.

If you are higher earning, then you can go well beyond that. You can get acres of land, a dozen kids (my choice), a McMansion, and so on. This is how it is for my coworkers and I, living along the Florida coast.

I just accepted a job in santa rosa for a third of what I would have been making in san fracisco.

I did so, for many reasons, some of which:

* At 44, I experience a hell of a lot of ageism now

* I am burnt out on my previous role - and I had litterly zero passion for the only thing I had pretty much done my entire career

* After spending more than 6 months interviewing with tons of companies, I could literally feel my skills atrophy. My professional vocabulary was starting to fail. I was forgetting really basic things that were previously innate

* Housing sucks in the bay area

* mass transit is an evil joke which punishes anyone who wants to take it

* I am pretty much done with the bay area, and even moving outside it - and not wanting to do what I have done for 20 years will require effectively building up a new path for myself.

Now, I am working in cannabis tech. And I like it way better than ops tech for what I did before, regardless of the pay.

Living in the bay area was good as long as you were single with no stuff, no attachments, no desire to run home to your spouse/kids. It's very easy to live with roommates who you don't care about.

As soon as those come in, the 1.5 hour commute + parking + prices starts biting. There are entire areas of bay area that are so weirdly connected (because of geography and no public transit) that makes some jobs brutal. Eg: Living in east bay but working in mountain view-san jose-cupertino. Or living in San Jose and working in mid-center SF

Are there any park-n-rides in the areas that are a long commute from city centers? Basically, where you can have cheap housing (because it is far away), then drive to a large parking structure to pick up a bus, light rail, or commuter train (or all three)? Also, is it common enough that if you are using public transportation, where you can VPN in via cellular, and start your day early (and have that "count" as part of you work day), so that 2 hour total commute means only 6 hours at the office? Or do most employers frown on that?

This is a really nice option where I'm at (Chicago area), where you can drive to one of the closer suburbs to the city, park, and hop on the L to get to the city center.

> Are there any park-n-rides in the areas that are a long commute from city centers?

There are two train lines, Caltrain and Bart. Both have park and ride in stations outside city limits. For people working in the city, they would park in the nearest suburban train station and take the train.

The problem is on the other side in the city. A lot of offices are not close to any train station. Especially if you're coming from the south bay (using caltrain). Caltrain in the city is in a weird corner. You'll need to take a bus/uber after the train which is slower than walking sometimes.

> Also, is it common enough that if you are using public transportation, where you can VPN in via cellular, and start your day early (and have that "count" as part of you work day)

Yes. But the connectivity sucks enough to not be able to vpn often.

> Or do most employers frown on that?

That's between you and the employer. Typically, you'll see many people stay back longer (free dinners and all that) and that does put some peer pressure.

It really comes down to lack of usable land area. When 7 million people are competing for a fixed number of parcels jammed into narrow strips between the ocean, an enormous bay, and development-unfriendly mountains, you end up with skyrocketing land prices and terrible commutes due to traffic choke points.

> competing for a fixed number of parcels

Hmm, what if we changed zoning to allow more people to live on those fixed number of parcels.

Then you run into issues with things like sewer / water / trash disposal, and also funneling those people into and out of those parcels. And you need to take away some of those parcels for increased shopping capacity, parks / recreation (with families, it is good to be able to access baseball / soccer / other sports fields, regular parks, etc).

So yes, you can tear down large parts of the bay area, and replace them with Manhattan, but at that point why not just move to Manhattan which is already built on that model?

Of course, I'm partial to the model that works where I'm at, Chicago area. You have the city and everything it brings to it, yet there is bountiful land surrounding it for having more spread out housing and other development. With good transportation all around, and a tone of both large and small businesses built up all around the city, up to 50 miles from the city core (so many people don't have to commute that far for work).

The root cause seems to be the same as with most of humanity's problems: overpopulation.

lol. if the bay area population was even close to a tipping point, humanity would be gone by a long time now. there are million of places with more population density and happier people.

I'm talking global population, not local. If we reduce the global population (by strict birth control) by a factor 1000, I bet you won't see any of these problems.

This is a local problem, not a global problem. I fail to see how reducing population in Tokyo, Japan would solve a housing crisis that exists in San Francisco...

Reduce the population by a factor 1000, then evenly spread out the human population over the habitable areas.

Also, it is a local solution, if SF had 1000 times fewer people current problems wouldn’t exist either.

Thanos?

You either do not live in the Bay Area or you are wildly misinformed. The Bay Area's housing crisis is caused by a mix of bad zoning laws and rampant NIMBYism that has blocked enough housing construction to keep up with population growth. It has nothing to do with overpopulation.

> The Bay Area's housing crisis is caused by a mix of bad zoning laws and rampant NIMBYism that has blocked enough housing construction to keep up with population growth.

There shouldn't be any population growth to keep up with. The problem is too many people on too little space. Not sure why people seem to want to live in cities that resemble ant-hills if it's shown that it makes them miserable and depressed.

The number of people I know in suburban settings and inner city settings are fairly equally miserable and depressed though. I kinda don't buy that suburbia makes a happy-life theme...

I’m not talking about suburbs, if you’re able to walk to a neighbours house within a day, it’s too crowded.

Seattle has smaller scale of the same problems combined with the same resistance to upzoning and "changing the character of the neighborhood". They bought a house on a sleepy street of Capitol Hill in 1996 and somehow expect to be insulated from any change when twenty years later Amazon dumps a few billion into office space a thirty minute walk away.

By 1996, price inflation for housing in Seattle was in full force, as was NIMBYism. It was unaffordable enough by '92 that I got out then. I have friends who bought around that time and were paying what I considered to be ridiculous prices. I don't blame them for wanting to preserve it. They didn't ask Amazon to start there.

There aren't too many people, just not enough housing. If we allowed denser housing, especially near where people work, we could bring down housing costs massively while reducing commutes.

> If we allowed denser housing, especially near where people work, we could bring down housing costs massively while reducing commutes.

And still be absolutely miserable. Dense housing it part of the problem, humans need space, and lots of it.

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