S.F. population fell 6.3%, most in nation, to lowest level since 2010
sfchronicle.com
sfchronicle.com
The article also says that CA's estimate of the population decline is much smaller, and arguably CA itself would have more accurate data for this particular metric (residency and voter rolls).
So while I'm sure the gist of the argument is true, there is probably a larger margin of error on the calculation than you'd think at first glance. I'm not quite going to say the article is sensationalist, but if you look at the totality of the data (house prices, rental prices, CA's population estimates, etc), I'm not sure the "SF is in freefall" narrative holds up.
In some cases, especially with volatile/vulnerable populations living in apartments and what not, we'd revisit the same residence at least 3 times if we don't get it done the first time.
The less than 20% number in some neighborhoods seems like it'd be possible, especially if it's very dangerous, but unlikely, though I don't know the U.S system.
What's your source for this claim?
As far as I could find for people who aren’t counted by either census workers or themselves like you mentioned, the Census Bureau tries to get their information through other methods.
This can be proxies, like other people who live in the neighborhood, other government data sets like social security records and postal service data, or through "imputation" which leverages statistical modeling based on the data they do know.
All of the sources I can find suggest that the census is extremely accurate at the large city level, and only obfuscated at lower levels because of the data privacy protections they've put into place.
https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/san-francisco-ca
https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/new-york-ny
https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/los-angeles-ca
You'll notice a huge difference between in SF and the other cities. Rent prices still hasn't gone back to pre pandemic level.
https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/palo-alto-ca
https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/los-altos-ca
https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/sunnyvale-ca
https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/san-jose-ca
https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/santa-clara-ca
https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/walnut-creek-ca
https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/fremont-ca
https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/dublin-ca
nitpick: Rent prices in many neighborhoods are back up. It's specific areas in and near downtown that draw down the average.
Available rental inventory is almost nonexistent right now, vacancy rates are at the floor. Much of our new development is exactly the kind of new amenity building that folks in the high-earning tech remote worker crowd often seek, but its still not managing to keep pace with demand. There's a shortage of inventory for virtually everyone except the billionaire class (not that they occupy much of the market in absolute terms).
I've been in NYC about a decade an even in pre-pandemic years that most folks agree were much more stereotypically booming and I can't ever remember a housing market that was so frothy.
Sure many headlines and news segments make it seem that it's the crime, the high rent, and all these super visible indicators and while I'm sure that factored into the decisions of some, for many it was that they just wanted a change and got the golden opportunity to do so.
EDIT: It's not even that one may even "want a change", it's when you're presented with the opportunity to make a change, the gears in your head start turning as to what options you have at your disposal. I would imagine many people that moved had previously no intention to but just got the opportunity and decided to take it while it lasted.
I am not in the Bay Area myself, but about half of my friends there have relocated in the last couple years. A bunch to Washington or Oregon, some to Texas, one to Nashville, and a few others to places mostly in the northeast. All of them cited cost of living as the primary reason ... but all also mentioned full time remote work is what finally made it possible to move.
When you aren't chained to a physical location by your job, lots of things become possible.
They both work in industries where face to face communication is a competitive advantage. It’s easy to forget that not every job is naturally compatible with remote work like it is for those of us who type on computers all day.
It's not one or the other (moving in or out), it's about getting what you (the individual) wants, and being smart about timing and using world events to your advantage, not disadvantage.
Some people wanted to move away from SF, some wanted to move in. It was an opportunity for either.
But even in the most desirable neighborhoods, rents are still down about 10-15% compared to pre-COVID
Rents have gone up since then from my understanding, but they're still below what they were several years ago. https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/san-francisco-ca
Rents are still significantly less around here than before the pandemic.
Curious, Why aren't properly prices droping to reflect the loss in population.
Housing prices have been out of whack with fundamentals (cash flow) since at least ‘12-‘13.
They aren't betting the market will come roaring back, they are betting that they can corner the market and housing will be a subscription just like everything else they sell.
Rent seekers aren't going anywhere, and the cost is really immaterial to them for the most part. They don't need cashflow, they need a monopoly.
It's also difficult to imagine demand increasing again and prices falling or even staying level. The issue with SF, NYC, London, etc. is sqr miles are effectively fixed and zoning limits how many residential units you can add to the market.
My money is on either this census data or property value data simply being wrong. Housing is a famously inelastic market and a 6.4 % drop in demand should lead to a double-digit decrease in rents and values.
I’d also assume people who bought a place are less likely to sell and leave than someone renting.
Having roommates certainly helps save money, but it remains true that you and your roommates are paying for some of the most expensive housing in the country.
It would be nice if people who are OK sharing common spaces were able to have housing built specifically with them in mind.
any locally optimized strategy within the overall context of renting is still a failing proposition imo.
I live an hour away, and I make the painful, tedious drive up in rush-hour traffic at least once a week to meet up with some group or another in person. The alternative is the dreary, sleep-inducing vendor teleconferences that double as "meetups" on the Peninsula.
I'm strongly considering ditching the Peninsula and moving to SF for better networking and more diverse hangouts and career opportunities.
> Experts have said the Bay Area’s high housing costs and remote work policies, particularly for the tech industry, fueled out-migration during the pandemic, as residents sought cheaper homes and more space. Almost all California coastal cities lost population, while the more affordable Central Valley and Inland Empire saw gains.
My observation from the discussion here is that there are a lot of people here still raving about city life (especially as pandemic tapers down) and how people are moving back in, etc. I think it's suffice to say everyone has a different living preference, and remote work enabled people who otherwise didn't want to live here, to move away, which in turn also opened up some spaces for people who wanted to live here but found it too expensive, to move in. The real question is probably how the numbers work out. Are there a lot more people who wanted to move away and are doing so now? If so, home prices and rents would drop. If the opposite is true or the numbers are about even, then prices wouldn't drop or would drop less.
My friends seem to be moving to Washington, Florida, and other parts of California (away from main cities)
Cities grew organically for different reasons, we kept them because they serve a purpose. Before the pandemic it wast like we all hated living in cities.
They are Democrats, but not the kind you'd think. It's a very small world in local politics.
But I agree with your basic point. If you no longer have to live in an area for work, you definitely start thinking about where you want to live.
It would be better if people were able to choose where they want to live rather than being pushed into certain living situations that aren't what they'd choose. There are plenty of techies that feel pushed to living in SF for their job. There are plenty of LGBT people that feel pushed out (or kept out) of SF due to economics even though they want to be there. It's not that any group is right or wrong. I just think that people get resentful when they're kept away from the things they want in life. Place is one of the biggest parts of our lives. "I want to live in X, but I can't really because..." is just a recipe for unhappiness.
To each their own, but I think it's important for people to get out of their headspace and see things from a more general perspective as well. There are very good reasons why people don't like SF and unless people who love the city acknowledge those things, change is likely impossible.
Obviously SF has problems and no one loves SF who doesn't want to improve the homeless issue. It doesn't make them wrong to love the city.
The correct response of leaders is to ignore wealthy citizens attempting to prop up their multi-million dollar 3bed4bath properties and let them know, "We're going to zone more areas for residential development, sorry. 2500 square foot homes shouldn't be $3 million in any area in America."
And all these rich liberals - and they are liberals - use the same bullshit line over and over, "I'm all FOR affordable housing... I'm just afraid it'll change the character of our neighborhood."
Bull. Shit. You. Lying. Fuck.
You thought you'd be able to set up your grandchildren for life because you chose what was a relatively sleepy, and honestly kinda shitty, city back in the 1970s. Fuck you and fuck off.
What they're really afraid of is that some politician who really does give a shit about the city will come along and upend their apple cart and their 50 year old brownstone will only be worth $1 million instead of $7 million when they die.
What makes you think those of us who enjoy living in the area haven't made the conscious choice? There are good reasons I chose to live in the urban parts of the SFBA, just like I presume there are good reasons several of my friends are happily running a household in Seattle, Austin, Chicago, Brooklyn, Columbus, or pretty much any other part of the US.
Then there's people like you who prefer the fair and balanced look. Like San Francisco is a city that has some problems just like any other city.
Are there really, truly any factually bad places to live in the world? Or is everything just a matter of opinion? Nothing is bad or good it's what each individual makes of it.
When is it that enough people believe in something that it's no longer an opinion but a fact? Some people may enjoy being punched in the face but enough people hate being punched in the face that this situation is considered to be factually just a shitty situation to be in, completely independent of opinion.
I'm saying enough people are talking shit about SF that SF is pretty much in the zone of being factually categorized as a shitty place to live. If it's not there yet, it's close enough where people need to acknowledge some big problems here that no other 1st world city has.
I agree that remote work allows more workers to live where they want.
You claim that workers left SF not because of any attribute of the city, but because they wanted a change.
You imply that SF is desirable place to live, however it's population declined only because of a desire for change.
However, there are more remote workers outside of SF than in it. If SF was in-fact desirable, and remote workers simply want 'change', then SF's population would increase. Because a greater number of remote workers would move to desirable SF for their change, than would leave it.
Reality is this: Remote work allows workers choose desirable places to live regardless of office location.
Without the advantage of office location, SF stops being desirable. It stops being desirable because the benefits it supplies (culture, etc) are less than the costs it demands (crime, rent, etc).
One might argue that MANY cities are going to experience similar declines and that SF isn't unique. So this can't be seen as people voting with their feet against SF.
That's fine. Then people are voting with their feet against MANY cities and cities are simply not desirable.
It's not the 1960s anymore as people fled to SF because of flower power, hippies or the gay movement. Sadly it's become a very different town.
As soon as jobs didn't require people to live in SF (thanks to Covid induced remote work) people moved out. Not everyone! Of course. But more people moved out than moved in, showing that the desirability of SF isn't as strong as you think it is.
Even people that don't have high paying tech jobs are lining up to pay these kinds of insane prices. They don't want to pay the prices, but it's worth it to live in an area like SF.
One of the only places on the planet in human history that people put this much energy and money into just living somewhere.
But the factor really driving up rent and real estate prices is the massive resistance in SF and the Bay Area in general to building new housing.
I’m not sure how big of a factor that is/was though. I know plenty of people in their 20s who worked in the peninsula or east bay but deliberately took on the high costs (and long commutes!) of living in SF for the usual reasons related to SF being a cultural center.
I think it would be fairer to apply your claim to the reason many people live in the entire Bay Area, but not specifically in SF.
It's even more likely that part of that 6 percent had family obligations, and some just realized they wouldn't buy a house even if they loved the city, and some just hated it.
The influx of techies, however, changed the city. And SF soon became what it is today.
Sf became techietown in 2000.
Instead of primarily being an alt culture capital.
It became "a place to work".
Prior to 2010 and a little after it was more than a place to work. It was a place where all techies wanted to live; but not because of work. Because they loved the city. That's why those shuttles from SF to mountain view google exist. Too many googlers wanted to live in SF and work in MTV.
I answered the exact same no to that question, moving out of NYC when my job went permanently remote since the pandemic. I moved to semi-rural Virginia where my family is, and bought a house with far more space and a pool than I could have dreamed of within commuting distance of NYC.
Typically for a group that got tired of a city and moved out, there would be a new group that is ready to fill their place. Thing is no one wants to move to SF given the situation (crime, COL, homeless, etc). Now for all the folks that will say "it's not that bad" I say that it doesn't really matter. If you're moving to a city, your opinion and view of the city is largely dictated by what you see/hear from friends, relatives, on the news, etc. Even if SF wasn't "that bad", it still doesn't matter, because the perception is more important for gaining residents than the actual situation IMO.
The issue is that Gen X is small, so they don't have a lot of leverage if the only other two generations in the market just leave town. Unless it's their opinion that Californians are just better, but of course, now we're back to the shrinking schools problem. It's difficult for me to imagine how California rebounds without losing a lot more ground first. Probably the best thing that could happen for people from the part of the country I grew up in, if we're actually concerned with equity though.
It doesn't make financial sense to stay in SF if you're salary stays the same in Texas and your company is remote. Unless there is some specific reason to live there - you like the vibe, or it's where you were born, or some other reason (weather).
I think it's good that we have this shakeup. Change is a good thing, and I think a lot of cities need some change.
Nobody complains about the homeless people who live under the Las Vegas Strip because they are unseen, but per capita, some studies imply Las Vegas has a much worse problem than SF.
SOMA was always pretty clean, Civic Center a bit more hit or miss, 16th Street was generally a bit dirtier and rougher.
The number of times I encountered human feces though was very low, like not even a monthly occurrence. Now I'm sure there's parts of San Francisco that are worse than others, and the walk from 16th Street BART to Potrero Hill would take me past plenty of homeless people camped out on the sidewalks, but I rarely if ever encountered human feces.
But every. single. time. San Francisco comes up, it's the same tired line, "Oh I couldn't deal with the absolute deluge of human feces" which like cool, neither could I and it was fine because what the heck is everyone talking about. I'm not going to claim that every sidewalk and roadway is completely free of poo, but as someone that managed a team of people and would frequently go for walking meetings all around San Francisco, it was never my experience.
Edit: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=b6fab72091...
"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
That said, a lot of people that worked in SF didn't live in SF even back then. They may live in Oakland, Redwood City, Mountain View, all the way from Walnut Creek to Los Gatos or Milpitas. Now they can just avoid the multi-hour commute - and I think that's a win.
Many people, when given the chance to not work at all, leave their residence or make a decision to split their time between their old home and a new home in a location with a better lifestyle, friends, family, whatever.
I laughed a little at how hard the wording here is trying not to say "The homeless and druggies". Anyway, this explanation might have some grounding in reality but I don't know that it's actually saying anything useful since people and businesses choose remote work for a reason and they choose to displace themselves to embrace it for a reason. There are essentially two components in this scenario. There are the people who leave because want to work remotely and the companies that want to leave to hire remote workers (or move their current workers). The people want to work remotely because of the crime, toxic local culture, and costs. Companies want to leave because of the crime, incompetent governance, and costs. In either case, the fraction of people/businesses leaving because remote work is just so awesome and it's fun to get out and see new places is miniscule.
Tl;dr: People and businesses choose to work remotely for reasons and there's little evidence to show that a primary or even significant motivator of this is simply a desire for a change of scenery. Even if it was, the question still becomes what is the scenery being escaped from.
But I just checked my apartment's website and it seems like if anything the rents have slightly increased compared to the price I renewed at last year!? Obviously this is a sample size of 1 and doesn't reflect the overall market.
Curious if anyone else has real data on rent price trends. Is it just my apartment or is this a case of the market staying irrational for longer than I'd have hoped?
EDIT: data was provided in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31533492
Furthermore, it would seem as though rental inventory is quite low or at least demand is through the roof (typically one needs to be ready to sign on the spot) with little to no room to shop-around. Prices are also quite high, I understand we have been in a recent high inflation regime but I just can't help but think the apartment rental market isn't as transparent as it was say, 3+ years ago.
Unfortunately the people came back all at the same time, seemingly.
The state is booming with low vacancy, that's the present state
In the end the tenant still gets screwed when the lease comes up to be renewed, unless they are willing to move out over negotiating another free month in the next cycle.
My guess is that as those leases come to an end and some of those people move, the rent situation may get less crazy. But who knows.
But this year, people came roaring back. The average rent increase in my neighborhood was over 20%. The competition for rental units in some buildings is intense enough that potential tenants either sign a rental agreement on the spot or lose the unit to someone else willing to sign, and at least one of the apartment buildings on my block has a waitlist.
(Also interesting to note that the city of LA was not one of the top cities in terms of population loss per the Census, but several suburban cities in LA County, like Torrance, were on the list.)
Just throwing a thought out there, but your anecdote might say a bit more about inflation than about a returning population.
See also LAT article on this phenomenon, but across the metro area as a whole. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-05-17/california...
Is that compared to the pre-pandemic value, or to an artificially low value during a pandemic year?
Also consider inflation: if everything is up 8% in a year, the real increase is only 12% in real terms.
For example: https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/sa... https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2022/05/02/san-francisc...
https://www.rent.com/california/san-francisco-apartments/ren...
Avg. Rent Annual Change
Studio $2,911 +17%
1 Bed $3,520 +12%
2 Beds $4,593 +6%
3 Beds $5,701 +8%https://www.rent.com/research/average-rent-price-report/
36% increase in Portland, 112% increase in Austin, 36% in Miami.
But please, feel free to down vote me for using data.
For point of comparison: at two of the apartment buildings on my block, a 1 BR 540 sq ft studio will rent for about $2800. This is up 16% from pre-COVID rates of approximately $2400 for those same units ($2200 during COVID, which is where the >20% increase comes from).
EDIT: At one of those buildings, a 1BR is listed for $3600, which is what a 2BR used to rent for at that same building pre-COVID. I can't say what the 2BR rates are right now because there aren't any listed.
You can have rental prices increase and that doesn't necessarily mean an increase in demand...there are many external factors (supply shrinking, adjustments to account for lost rent in the pandemic, inflation, etc).
As I've pointed out many times, the apartment buildings in my neighborhood have waitlists for potential renters, and that's despite 20% YoY rent increases (or 16% rent increases, comparing pre- and post-COVID). Average vacancy is less than 1%, and that is true of all of the desirable neighborhoods in LA (of which there are too many to mention). Your own citation supports the rent increase.
These rent increases are not due to supply shrinking (there are thousands more rental units on the market now than before COVID), adjustments for lost rent in the pandemic (that's not how rental pricing works, landlords always charge market rate), and inflation (rent in these neighborhoods increased more than twice as much as inflation).
At this point, having been confronted by data showing that your understanding is wrong, you need to point to actual concrete evidence that your understanding is reasonable and not just vague insinuations.
I didn't see any of your data to show 16% increases of pre/post COVID...and the article is talking about SF which is 12% YoY.
Landlords absolutely charge market rate...which includes baseline costs for running rentals and they had much higher than normal non-payment over the last 2 years which means their costs are up, therefore rents are up.
I see no data to support your "thousands more rental units now"...in Portland they saw supply shrink over the past few years, and that was pre-COVID. With the recent increase in home values and 24+ months of potential non-payment a lot of small time landlords opted to sell (and we have a shit ton of people from California moving up here). https://assets.noviams.com/novi-file-uploads/mfnw/Files/arti...
- For sale and empty.
- Full renovations. Guessing more than half are flipping them, given the speed which construction started after sale.
- Investors buying homes and keeping them empty.
The trends as I see them are:
1) An increasing number of increasingly wealthy people with connections to SF that choose to domicile elsewhere while keeping a home in the city that is used a few months a year (to your point of empty homes being kept empty).
2) The temporary shut-off of a massive pipeline of recent college grads who fill the offices of not only start-ups, but also accounting firms, consulting firms, banks, etc.
3) A reduction in appetite for '3 guys in a 2 bedroom where someone sleeps in the dining room' and an increase in appetite for '1 guy in a 2 bedroom/home office set up,' which supports price growth but not population growth.
4) The fact that for the past century, SF has been a city that grows beyond its means and then crashes, only to pick back up again on the next cycle (SF only surpassed its peak 1950 population in 1990)
There are certainly more that I miss, but from a street-level perspective, SF isn't in noticeably worse shape than it was in 2000. Question is "Is post-pandemic lifestyle change similar to the car (which caused that 40 year lull) or is it more temporary?"
This is a good thing. People should vote with their feet.
I’ll quit before hybrid. It’s a great market to change jobs.
Manhattan is a much closer comparable to SF than all of NYC, the lines just happen to be drawn differently.
As a side note, I've been reading a lot of comments like the one below describing SF as a "nightmarish hellscape" and I just want to caution people to not read into things too much. I've spent a lot of time in both SF and Seattle, and while there's specific streets you want to avoid, and you can (rarely) run into weird or disturbed people in other areas (like most major cities) overall they're lovely places if you can afford them.
I lived in Seattle as well & visit frequently -- around when capital+pill hill gentrified again around MS downtown employees (games studios?): the current Amazon-era of the city is closer to SF 5-10 years ago vs today's slide back. It's not all good, to be clear: I'm guessing buying a place just got steadily harder as well, and families pushed further out.
Stockholm syndrome is real here.
Several of my family members and myself have been assaulted/robbed in broad daylight, had cars stolen, and some have been shot by stray bullets due to a local gang fight. When I was in grade school someone brought a gun to class and showed it off by pointing it at me (!!) — all outside of SF.
SF feels incredibly safe compared to my lived experience in the rest of the Bay. I'm not saying there aren't any issues here, but SF is nowhere near as bad as some of the roughest parts of the Bay. Not by a longshot.
I have lived in or visited Boston, Chicago, North Carolina's RTP, and the Bay. Only in SF are there homeless camps with blatant drug abuse and public defecation being tolerated by authorities. Only in SF can you run into, with 100% probability, a mentally deranged person on your daily commute. When "specific streets" cover half the city (Financial district, Tenderloin, SoMA, Mission...) they aren't so specific anymore.
But I think the fair weather of the west coast absolutely hurts the homeless more. In Boston, they have a “right to shelter” law that will house people, even in hotel rooms. SF weather is so nice that people don’t feel bad about letting people stay on the street.
Boston actually has more homeless people (with a similar total population) than SF - but almost all of them are “sheltered” and off the street. Boston has a 97% shelter rate, SF has 40%. NYC has a much bigger population (and more absolute homelessness), and a sheltered rate of 95% - due to similar “right to shelter” laws. Even Chicago has a meager 72% shelter rate.
Maybe there's something to be said for management of tax revenue and prioritization. Also petty theft is prosecuted in these cities.
It’s the lower and middle classes that suffer most from SF’s problems, they can’t afford the rose colored glasses. Until the wealthy are truly inconvenienced they’ll continue with the feel-good ineffective measures.
That’s not specific to SF of course, it’s just becoming more prevalent. I definitely enjoy spending time there, but I’m lucky enough to afford to.
Ironically, that tax revenue can be used to reduce these very issues, a secondary effect not brought up often.
Are there better places to hang out for rich people/people in the know? Random walks are rarely fruitful for me here in SF compared to other large cities I’ve been to.
Also, for what it’s worth, I’m not sure people who live in the city have noticed the decline from its prepandemic “peak”. As someone who visits a few times a year, the changes are far more dramatic.
When population goes up: positive - the area is vibrant economically; negative - rent is spiraling upwards out of control
When population goes down: positive - rent is finally affordable; negative - the area is falling apart existentially
I think the media in general has found the negative spin sells better.
Sometime people wave their hands towards sad homeowners who are ( maybe ) seeing their home prices go down but I own a pricy home in a pricy neighborhood and as far as I'm concerned it's funny money. Whatever profit I'd make from selling my home only matters if I move to a place where home prices haven't gone up at the same rate. There's no lower COL city that I'm interested in living in so it's all the same to me.
I love SF too. We moved north over the bridge 8 years ago (working from home) but are in the city all the time. It was spectacularly deteriorating pre pandemic (when we left the Castro area the local library had just employed an armed guard to keep the transients out for example) and is now arguably in crisis due to the collapse of foot traffic retail, rampant crime and due to the city being a welcoming destination for transients who often have serious mental illness (SMI) and substance abuse issues. The city - and California generally - does not have the resources to triage their needs but it does have a huge 'non profit' homeless industry and more worryingly some areas are crowded with cartel drug sellers.
Driving European visitor friends around a few weeks ago was the first time I'd really been to all the neighborhoods in a leisurely way since the pandemic abated. The wealthier areas (Noe Valley etc) are relatively unchanged apart from a lot of empty storefronts, but a lot of the city looks very beaten up despite the gorgeous vistas, light and climate (perfect weather during out tour).
We are at a typical west coast boom/bust cross roads for California cities...
( I'm old enough to remember when the media treated LA and California as one and the same and the SFers would snottily gripe that they're not 'that' California )
Still I don't know of any SF problems that will be made worse by the population going down. Seems to me that the couch surfers, renters, etc. benefit from the lower population.
What's endlessly infuriating is population going up in a city should be an almost unmitigated positive. It's just our unwillingness to allow building new housing turning it into a zero sum game that makes it a mixed bag.
(I don't have an opinion on this; the closest I ever got to city planning was playing Sim City)
Definitely has its problems, but the availability heuristic makes things seem worse than they are.
I live in semi-rural America, and I have literally never in my life even seen a gun fire before. I used to live in DC, for six years, and I was never robbed, accosted, or even made to feel unsafe, and I had on multiple occasions walked miles home from a bar after closing. It was a downright pleasant way to get home if I didn’t need to be up the next morning.
America the country is basically nothing like America shown on TV. It’s just too big and complex to explain in a soundbyte.
"the number of rental applications by people who fall into Gen Z (defined as those born between 1997 and 2012) have increased by 21% in the past year. Meanwhile, as we just discussed, rental applications from every single other generation have been lessening. Millennials, for instance, saw an 8% decrease in rental activity...
Between 2020 and 2021, people who fall into Generation Z were filling out 21% more leases nationwide, as compared with the year before. When that search is narrowed to San Francisco, Rentcafé says those 20-somethings had a 101% increase in rental applications. They now make up more than a fifth of all people looking to lease in SF."
https://sfist.com/2022/03/22/san-francisco-is-getting-younge...
More than likely, the ones that "made it" are staying where they are, having bought whatever property they've been able to and are now renting it out to the Gen Z'ers to pay it off. The older generation, wisely, realizes there's no future there and have ended their rental terms to go elsewhere where they can actually afford to buy something, not having gained any real estate ownership of their own.
Calling Gen Z'es "hungry" in this instance is, God bless their hearts, insulting to common sense and rationality of things at play here.
There's a good chunk of millennials that are settled. They aren't moving in or out. an 8% drop for a generation that is about to turn 40 during a 2.5% interest rates seems a lot like a few people collected the cash to buy the homes and aren't renting any longer. But we'll never know because this is a single stat in a whole sea of stats regarding housing by generation.
*edit, I mean, we could know, we could go out there and find meaningful data to get a full picture of what's going on but I don't really care that much. Just saying that looking at one stat and crafting a wonderful narrative is pointless.
Wise > No Future > Makes biggest investment there anyway.
Does not compute.
Is this surprising or useful? Most folks get their first apartment around age 21. Right now, that means there's roughly four years of Gen Z renting apartments. If the oldest members of Gen Z are 25, an increase of 21% is... pretty much exactly how many people you'd expect to be getting old enough to lease their first apartment in one year.
> Between 2020 and 2021, people who fall into Generation Z were filling out 21% more leases nationwide, as compared with the year before.
And this is less than you'd expect. If the oldest Gen Z is 25, two years ago they'd be 23. One new year of college grads should yield a 30-50% bump. But the pandemic happened.
> When that search is narrowed to San Francisco, Rentcafé says those 20-somethings had a 101% increase in rental applications.
Again, not super useful. Most 20-somethings leasing apartments during those years are definitionally millennials (and probably still are!). The pandemic changed who was looking for housing and who they lived with, and the change as it affects SF in 2020 is probably not a usual trend.
> They now make up more than a fifth of all people looking to lease in SF
If we assume teenagers aren't leasing apartments, this is again no surprise. If every decade of people (20-somethings, 30-somethings...) made up an equal share, this is very reasonable up to the average life expectancy. People lease less as they get older, which skews the numbers towards younger generations. I'm sure you could look up the numbers and find out the exact distribution, but 20%+ of renters being in their 20s seems...ordinary. Maybe even a bit low.
We've had a huge number of people move to Santa Cruz, for example, so I've wondered how much of this might be the Bay Area getting broader instead of smaller.
I guess soon it will balance off
This is a vote on if SF's government is great or bad.
What I think we saw is people left SF because there’s no point in doing remote work from a cramped, expensive apartment. So yes, it was a vote on governance. But for all SF’s problems it’s more nuanced than “people are fleeing a sh*t-hole city.”
(And even funnier, I live in Oakland. There was a noticeable surge in people parking bikes with Caltrain tags in the bike room. I’m back to being the only bike with a Caltrain tag now.)
How can SF home prices be justified vs SD or LA in a remote work world?
I don't live in SF or even in a city but, in the abstract, I'd pick SF from that triplet. LA is complete sprawl and a little bit of SoCal beaches goes a long way for me. And San Diego is nice enough but sort of soulless. I like the SF climate even when summer is the coldest winter you ever spent--and there are great recreational options and scenery.
First summer I rented in the area (around that time), I had to use AirBnB to find something halfway affordable, and I was basically using it more as a trust broker.
The unit I paid 1500 a month for, literally a bedroom in a dog dander riddled home with a tiny shared kitchen.
I looked, and within 3 years the same place would have been more like 4500/month.
(This was walkable to Castro street, but so is a lot in that weather.)
Meanwhile, I heard all these tech bros WHINING, literally WHINING. Oh, San Francisco is so cold in temperature, and all this other BULLSHIT.
I had grown up somewhere if you wore a rainbow shirt someone would have killed you, full stop.
We didn't have beer gardens like tied house. You couldn't even walk anywhere, there were no sidewalks, and the township police would have rolled up on you if you tried. (Meanwhile, one of the richest townships in the country to this day has no bus system as a leftover anarchornism from the era of bussing during MLK's time.)
But people talked like El Camino Real and similar stretches of road out in urban Appalachia were interchangable.
The last summer I was out there, Elliot Rodger went on a rampage after the university counseling center sent me off to Mozilla with two refills on a bottle of aloprazolam and zero leads on therapy for the summer.
(You had to go through the counseling center for it to be covered by the student health plan, and if you met someone who seemed to actually be skilled or empathetic, they'd break it to you they can't "poach clients" even if you wanted to do otherwise, or had misunderstood your benefits, or any other edge case)
I ended going back to my college town and venting to my therapist something to the effect that if folks continue down this path of making the world a giant Ikea without the social programs, folks may perceive it's an easier path to a 1BR and a Playstation if they murder an island of children than if they learn to code or whatever.
And then I went down to the gun range, and rented a glock 40 and about fifty rounds.
(The guy who came with me got a bolt action 223 and quietly sent all his downrange about 200 hundred yards)
(Less kick than a 1911, but still a hell of a recoil. You gotta be within about ten feet if you want to actually make use of one without practice)
I hope folks understand how utterly degrading it is to have it rammed down your throat since childhood to "respect women", then have a string of them who have more assets that your entire family make a show of letting you buy them lunch off OkCupid when the only reason you signed up is because you felt so strongly that folks should focus on work at work, having known what it's like to abandon an entire field of study because someone got too handsy. (It's not "nice", you South Park loving sociopoaths)
Anyways, the time the summer of snowden rolled around, I was DONE WITH IT.
I went back to flyover country and told my therapist that I'd read Elliot Rodgers manifesto, and I thought he was a whiny little freak. I told her that despite that I was sincerely worried that folks might melt down like he did, decide to not JUST commit suicide. I tried to show her an essay I got anonymously published about my special education experiences -- she refused to even read it. They had this weird kind of "If you don't like grad school, you can drop out and work at Subway" mentality.
(I wrote this a while back, but left the tab open because I got distracted -- Happy Memorial Day weekend, peace out girl scouts.)
People are leaving because of the decline. I wish San Franciscans would stop defending themselves and admit that things are actually worse and whatever politics they're advocating hasn't worked. This extends more generally to California (and other west coast states).
I voted for Shellenberger for Governor of CA. Felt right.
> I voted for Shellenberger for Governor of CA. Felt right.
FWIW, people like Newsom openly admit the scale of the problems and the roadblocks which radicalized "progressivism" present to California. Newsom has even openly admitted that some of his own policies as mayor of San Francisco were somewhat foolhardy and naive in retrospect, including his housing and drug policies. (And he did so not as a sound bite to impress voters, but buried in speeches and interviews and backed up by substantive reasons for why they were so.) Mayor Breed has also expressed mea culpas of her own. And both have expressed extreme frustration with many of the (invariably) Democrats they must work with.
Breed's become so frustrated recently she event started swearing--"less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city”--and almost seemed to lose her composure in an interview when asked how she felt about Boudin's policies.[1][2]
My voting strategy is two-fold: 1) Any politician that can admit they were wrong about substantive policy issues deserves my vote, period, especially when such admissions come with potential cost, are unforced, and relate to relatively recent policies. 2) As politics is the art of the possible, I appreciate that I need to vote for someone who knows how to play the game. Newsom and Breed are both savvy players, and they're career players. That turns alot of people off. But that's politics. Being a savvy player is a sine quo non of a good politician. (And by savvy I don't mean being good at soundbites or playing to voter sentiment, but know how to wheel and deal and pull triggers in smoke-filled rooms--palace intrigue type stuff.)
When a candidate demonstrates political savvy while also credibly expressing some honesty and sensibility, then the choice quickly becomes easy. Both Newsom and Breed have done that, IMO. It's difficult for me to expect more out of them at this point. One of my benchmarks for a virtuous politician is Senator Russ Feingold. But Senator Feingold lost Wisconsin in 2010. He couldn't match his virtuousness with his savviness. Both Wisconsin and the U.S. as a whole probably would have better off with a little less virtue and a little more savvy from Feingold.
Ideas are cheap. We don't need people like Shellenberger in office. They'll be ineffective. We need people who are capable of hearing what people like Shellenberger are proposing, and then to the degree its possible (and often it won't be possible at all) translate that not just into effective policy or literal legislation, but a sufficient number of actual legislative votes.
Regarding Newsom's privately sensibilities on energy policy, he's personally far more conservative than you'd think. Circa 2005 Newsom mothballed a donated gas power plant in San Francisco, but that wasn't his first choice. He was coerced into it--coerced by a lawyer friend of mine advocating for the surrounding community and who defly threatend (in person, from across the table) Newsom with a scorched-earth public relations campaign which Newsom knew he couldn't win. Newsom, understanding that politics is the art of the possible, relented. It was battle he could never have won if forced out into the open. By relenting he built capital--environmental policy credibility--that could come in handy one day. Like, for example, today: https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2022-04-29/califor...
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/mayor-breed-orders...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/opinion/sway-kara-swisher...
Now, I don't vote based on character to a certain extent, but Newsom has both: Terrible policies and a terrible character.
Last week I heard on the radio[1] a poem that resonated very strongly me with:
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
[1] The (Mostly Forgotten) Writer Who Changed Literature Forever, Again and Again, On the Media, May 20, 2022, https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/mostly-for...
Same, but note that this was only the primary... it's entirely possible we'll end up with Newsom and some other random Democrat on the actual ballot.
For those who don't know Shellenberger, he is your classic liberal running as an independent. Pro nuclear alone gets a vote from me. But there are so many things he talks about that are just common sense in majority of large cities around the world.
If you're fed up with CA, please look him up.
I had not heard of this before. Is it walkable? It looks like pretty country outside there. I would be curious how you found it.
If you consider SF (the city) weather mild, there are a ton of cities in the US that match what you're looking for. They just don't have the tech orientation and cachet that you associate with living in SF.
Everybody who is saying how horrible it is aren't going to live your life for you. Don't try to live theirs.
There's really no other reason people would put up with an hour (or more) commute each way every day.
To this day, over 2 years later no one from SFPD has ever contacted me or followed up on the bullet. SFPD is a disgrace. The city is not safe for people. You're just once chance encounter away from something horrible happening to you and when it does, no one will take it seriously or do anything about it.
I think if you live further up the hill, there are fewer issues, but I was close enough to Bernal Heights, the J, 38, and BART, and the community garden--which all brought more riff-raff nearby.
Takeaways:
+ The rate of murders in the US has gone up at an alarming rate. But, despite a media narrative to the contrary, this is a problem that afflicts Republican-run cities and states as much or more than the Democratic bastions.
+In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.
+ 8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.
The problem with these types of sources is they are collected by journalists who do not back check their own work. They are trying to make a political point.
Crime statistics are based on reporting which is higher in Red states. Murder areas like Chicago have thousands of incidences of crime that go unreported.