Escaping San Francisco

City slickers man. Wouldn't recognize a black mold if it was poisoning them every day for 4 years.

The doorbell story made me stop and question the article.

You can get a digital door bell on Amazon for $15. It didn’t occur to the author to do so for 9 months?

Edit: I didn’t want to imply that the author is lying. Hopefully he is able to get healthy again. But when someone is asking for money and their story has some odd holes in it, I think it’s only natural to be skeptical.

To be honest i'm not impressed at all, is $3700 per month super expensive? In any major city people pay as much or more.

Here in Limassol (not a major city by any measure), a single bedroom is about 1/3 as much (EUR 1000, i'm paying 1100 for bit nicer one), but tech salaries are 3000-5000 net, and 5000 is very rare. Seems to be about same level of affordability: a mediocre developer pays 1/3 salary for a 1-bdr. And nobody is upset with housing costs here, things look just fine.

In Paris, Frankfurt, and Munich you easily pay same amount (3400 EUR a month) for a 1-bdr an no one complains. And tech salaries are completely nowhere like Valley's, in fact it's pretty common to pay the entirety of a mediocre developer's (net) salary for 1-bdr rent. They can't afford living in cities and commute for hours.

That's kind of the point. The mould can cause psychological problems. Initially, you think it's merely unsightly so you develop health problems. And then you don't have the ability to understand it clearly.

(Which is not to say I necessarily believe the story, but it's not completely implausible.)

Currently paying $4200 for a 3 Bedroom 3 Bath fully detached single family house West of Twin Peaks (Midtown Terrace.) Giving up walkability for completing errands, I gain a private locking front porch where packages are never stolen, and lots of mold from living on fog laden Twin Peaks. On the whole, San Francisco is fairly damp; ensuring good ventilation is key - along with weekly maintenance to alleviate mold and keep things “clean.”

I don’t expect to have everything done for me either; there’s lots of un-fun tasks to complete around here. While deferred maintenance issues are a landlord’s responsibility to correct; the tenants could have taken a more proactive approach to remediation of the mold; or any other nonissue complaint lodged against San Francisco.

As a QA Engineer, I have an unfair advantage when it comes to understanding the need to mitigate risk. Seems this couple makes decisions without any regard to future consequences.

1. Didn’t mention whether or not they discussed the condition of the property with the current tenants in the building or any neighbors prior to signing the lease. 2. Clearly no understanding of tenant rights and responsibilities; would have known that rent can be withheld for fixing things. 3. Didn’t get mold coverage riders on renters insurance; yet has lived in a damp city for much of their lives. 4. Orders packages to an apartment without any way to safely store them; taking into account any/all edge cases 5. Didn’t do homework / ask questions to landlord regarding package delivery best practices for tenants back before lease signed in ‘15. 6. Didn’t see if other alternatives existed for broken doorbell. 7. Cancels health insurance because they couldn’t help with costs from the mold situation; forgets that a multitude of other accidents, trauma, and sickness still occur in the present and future.

All of their complaints seem to come back to being unprepared for handling problems that appear in life.

Mold can definitely cause long-term medical symptoms. People not realizing this is happening because they're cheaping out is also not that rare.

How long do you wait for medical stuff? In Poland wait is sometimes >1 year

This might be, to be fair, because you’re likely a SWE and €800 a month in Bratislava gets you a three bedroom flat.

Yes, the U.S. healthcare system is an international embarrassment. I hope it gets fixed in my lifetime.

It is the legal obligation of the landlord to fix the bell, but sometimes you've got to threaten to sue / ruffle a few feathers to get shit done. Or do it yourself.

Guy's allegedly been building and selling since '01.

Where's the money gone?

American houses are made with cheap wood most of the time. Especially when you live in an older home, these are highly attractive to moulds when the building isn't maintained.

Survival bias in many cases means that a building that is still standing from 1908 is better quality than many built in 2008.

Lead paint and knob and tube wiring are the most common problems you find with houses of that vintage, if they've not been updated. They are largely before asbestos, which is the massive problem with mid-century construction.

The best house I've ever lived in was built in 1850. As a sibling comment points out, this is definitely survivorship bias, since only the "good" wooden houses survive this long.

It depends on where in the city the building was built. 1908 is just a few years after the great quake of 1906. Houses and buildings were built very quickly during an era of non-existent building codes.

I lived in one in the Tenderloin for a few years. It needed a lot of TLC and was horribly maintained. Nobody wanted no spend the money to keep it looking nice. That's one of the downsides to the architecture of the era. The building was gorgeous, but even just properly cleaning it took an extra effort the landlord wasn't willing to pay for.

There’s a craftsmanship to a certain kind of old home, that in my opinion — if well maintained — can be superior to a lot of new construction. The trend towards making new homes super “tight” created all sorts of ventilation issues that took a while for the industry to sort out. Nicely designed old homes breath. That’s key to keeping mold away. What often messes up old homes is some crappy renovation work that negatively impacts the building’s envelope.

regarding bleach and mold - tldr don't use bleach on drywall

https://homeguides.sfgate.com/bleach-thing-clean-mold-off-wa...

You would hope with how hard we make it to build and rent housing that they would be.

Even if they are it's USA, everybody have to pay their lawyer bills. It's not like in UK or many other countries where the side that looses pays up all costs. So if you have to choose between paying for healthcare and paying for the lawyers you'll obviously choose your health.

The first thing you'll notice when you get to San Francisco proper is how many homeless people there and how dirty it is (google "sidewalk poop"). My recommendation would be to visit before you move.

I would recommend spending a week or two there first. I was astonished how many crazy and homeless people are on the streets and theft/crime levels (broken windows on cars is now nothing uncommon). Do you want to actually live directly in SF or somewhere in the surrounding cities?

It is highly dependent on where in the city you live. Your experience will be drastically different, but then again, so will your rent.

I wouldn't move without visiting first, I found the place incredibly depressing.

Dire poverty, brutal injustice, and blatant dysfunction at every corner, in one of the most moneyed cities in the world. A human centipede of grift at city scale. Nice bridge tho.

All the "SF is a dystopian nightmare" posts are referring to a few downtown neighborhoods which represent probably less than 5% of the city by land area. It's a huge problem and it sucks if you have to go to those areas regularly, but most of the city isn't like that. I live in the Inner Richmond and it's one of the nicest neighborhoods I've ever lived in (I've lived in a bunch all over). The combination of natural beauty, urban amenities, walkability, laid back vibe, etc. is amazing. There are dozens of other neighborhoods with similar qualities to choose from.

One of the cliche transplants from SF to NYC: The lack of concrete jungle, and that desire from people both who predated the tech deluge and those who arrived because of it (like you are planning to be) is precisely why it has become as bad as the blogs make it to be.

I think some things are not as bad as the blogs make it be, and many things a lot worse. In the latter category:

- there is now a "fire season". Yes, those precious outdoors, swathes of it gets burned and the beautiful CA air gets filled with smoke from burnt forests, houses and people

- the city is politically paralyzed. Everyone now treats their SF stay as even more temporary (moreso than the natives already complained about before, because now it's crappy to live in for everyone, not just the poor people) = limited investment in political future

- diversity shrinks every year. It gets more white/asian, more male, more single/childless, more tech, and more techie-centric entertainment, and less everything else everyday

- offline businesses are narrowing operation. Not merely "local" and "small" businesses dying, but even chain stores are not able to find staff or attract enough foot traffic because...the city simply doesn't have that many people out and about anymore. Business hours are shrinking, stores are receding to the downtown center streets, and service staff is disappearing. There are hardly 50 stores left in all of SF that are open 24 hours, even my podunk hometown in Oman, Middle East has more.

- the tourist industry is dying. People used to visit and fall in love with SF. Now, they get embarrassed about the state of the city (the more obvious stuff like homelessness, cost of living, filth) and leave trying to forget about this city.

I still love SF, and would love to move back if they can turn the ship around. As a non-US citizen I cannot even vote, and felt utterly helpless in the face of rampant NIMBYism preventing any development, upzoning, housing reform, transit reform, tax reform, homelessness relief, police retraining, non-tech subsidies, etc. But over the course of the 6-7 years I lived there, it went from a "this city is wonderful" love to the kind of love you have for a drug-addled suicidal family member.

It is incredibly relieving to see NYC being run extremely competently in contrast, and while I vaguely miss the weather, imo the summers here are better, the winters perfectly tolerable, seasons are a nice way to keep track of the passage of time, and I can enjoy nature more every time I go out of town.

Look, everyone who’s happy (like me) with their loving conditions in SF isn’t going to write a blog post about how their apartment is fine.

I’ll echo what other happy SF residents have said - it’s pretty great if you’re able to put yourself in a good part of town. Look I’ll be honest - your experience in SF is going to correlate with your ability to afford living here (I hate to say it but it’s true). If you’re up for spending $3-$5k/month on an apartment, you can live in a nice area (Hayes Valley, Marina, Cow Hollow, Pacific Heights, etc.) and life there is pretty darn good.

There’s access to some of the most spectacularly beautiful cycling on earth (just across the Golden Gate Bridge), the Presidio is a beautiful, Marina Green/Chrissy Field is beautiful, Golden Gate Park is beautiful, the food is amazing and there are wonderful new restaurants popping up all the time, the Mexican food (cheap!) is some of the best you’ll find.

There’s plenty of access to shared bikes and scooters (you don’t need to own a car), the CalTrain makes it reasonably easy to get down to the peninsula, and the competition between Uber and Lyft keeps ridesharing costs relatively low (for now - that’ll change).

It takes only 20-30 minutes to get to SFO, United has pretty good coverage of the whole world from there, so if you like to travel it’s easy to get away.

And, if you’re in tech, there’s plenty of other like-minded people around so there’s always a group of folks to nerd out with. And in general I’ve found people are very welcoming of newcomers (but of course this depends on the social circle you find yourself in - I perhaps got lucky).

I know this isn’t the “popular” opinion because it’s easy to hate on SF for the various PR things you read about (it’s expensive, there really is a bad homelessness/street encampment problem, and the NIMBYism/old coots voting in their own interest can be annoying), but if you happen to fit one of the molds this city is well-suited to handling, it’s quite lovely here.

That ALL being said - there are days where I look at how much I spend in rent and how much it would cost to own an apartment and I do daydream about moving to Vietnam and living like a king....

It surely depends on what you consider "the outdoors" and what your baseline for proximity is, but speaking as someone whose definition of outdoor recreation skews towards mountain sports in both summer and winter I would not consider SF to be proximate to the outdoors and would recommend looking further north (Portland, Seattle, Vancouver) if you want to live somewhere urban-ish and have quick, regular access to the backcountry.

You can buy test kits, which either provide a growing medium and you'll see if airborne spores cause something to grow, which you then can get tested for what it is exactly, or let you take air samples that you mail to a lab.

Ideally you’d do air sampling over a period of weeks, multiple times across the entire year. Reliable testing is hundreds of dollars. No, those little test kits don’t count.

God, unfortunately, yes.

When I was self employed I paid for my own health insurance. When I’ve worked for companies they had very affordable health insurance plans.

I think the problem probably exists for people with part time jobs that don’t make enough to pay for private insurance. However, I have family in that situation and they still were able to acquire insurance.

Some medical expenses are not covered by insurance and that is a problem. Even when I had my own insurance, while self employed, I did end up with appendicitis. After insurance paid up the amount I was covered for I was left with a pretty big bill. Nothing compared to what people with longer term issues end up paying though.

> Just clean the damn thing.

I think the current (my) generation was never taught that things need to be cleaned and maintained regularly to stay in proper operating condition.

Knives need sharpening, boots need waxing, buttons need reinforcing etc.

>Mold is easy to remove from my experience. Just clean the damn thing.

External mold is, mold inside the walls is not. And if you have mold inside the walls then no amount of cleaning outside the walls will fix the situation.