Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

It's ironic that the same people who want to prevent gentrification are the actual "bootlickers" after all. I ended up leaving San Francisco over this sort of stuff to go to my hometown with a cheaper cost of living.

Here in Louisville, we have fewer things going on than most metros. Yet every time a new apartment complex comes up a good amount of people scream bloody murder that it will raise rents unless 30% of it is marked "below market rate". This causes developers to spend their time building elsewhere, so that new options don't emerge to drive down rents. The city is objectively less wealthy than most other metros in the USA.

Nobody has ever said "stop farming, all that food is allowing more people to live, and now food is more expensive", yet they will repeat it time and time again with housing. Instead they correctly think, "farm more, if we get more people on Earth they can help us farm even more food. Also we can finally have enough people to have doctors."

Funny enough my state has 80% of the doctors per capita that California has, and 60% of the doctors per capita that New York has[1].

It's very frustrating to see people here fighting to stunt growth, and force their own young out to nearby cities with more open minds that let people make choices. For example, the state is debating between prioritizing poorly allocated pensions and lowering our tax rate. We're currently committed to lowering the income tax from 5% to 0% over 10 years but it's continually framed as theft to benefit the wealthy by opponents. Meanwhile Tennessee and Texas continue to have a 0% income tax and take our children and new businesses. The limited job market + wages and new business formations here reflect this. Everyone thinks of Kentucky as a poor state - people don't know we have one of the higher tax rates as well.

The only thing these anti-growthers are accomplishing is making sure the same elites who made these people's lives meek stay relatively powerful by upholding the very structures that enrich the elites. Maybe the elites are the ones driving the conversation?

I know I'm soapboxing here but wealth, a clean environment, ample jobs, and the ability for your own children to make a living in your region is as much a choice as anything else in this life. I'm thankful that San Francisco chose to let jobs develop there, but sad they chose not to allow me to settle there. I proudly work remotely for a CA company, and hope other states can copy the choices CA made to allow businesses and workers to flourish, and learn from their mistakes which are currently sending them away.

If you choose to stop chaining your neighbor good things will flow.

[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/this-state-h...

No one was promised that the zoning laws wouldn't someday change.

Maybe what's really needed is a complete repeal of proposition 13. If homeowners want to block local development leading to increasing housing costs, they can at least pay for it in their taxes.

If you're trying to keep it the same, keep it the same

It’s long been coasting off its past success.

People want to live in SF because of the effective social networks that develop there and access to it's labor market. Cities are essentially representations of different labor markets, and labor markets in specific places develop because there is something unique about the place, or they seed crystal into a form of 'labor black hole' as a new industry develops.

The way this is framed is so insidious. The "change" that "poor established renters" don't want is more expensive housing that they can't afford that will incentivize their current landlords to raise the rent on the properties they have and also change the local businesses to also raise prices.

It's not the same change.

The Valley must maintain some level of competitiveness with other city hubs, else the techxodus worsens and California loses a large portion of their economy and tax revenue. This is an existential threat to California, and the residents of the valley will lose out in the long run.

[0] https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/renter-voting-prefere...

* do San Francisco renters turn out to Town Hall meetings, local elections, pester their representatives and put in as much #not-bribery as landowners?

It makes sense, renters who are politically engaged and organized are more likely to be long-term residents, and being able to preserve your tenancy/community is a different thing from being able to easily move or upgrade.

They aren't the best but when thy do vote they've somehow managed to link voting for housing to being a form a racist gentrification.

This transient population generally does not involve itself too much in local issues because it is not attached to city. That is why SF mayoral candidates and city council candidates spend a lot more time discussing how they will fight global warming and white supremacy rather than discussing local zoning. Because the transient population cares about these general non-local issues and generally don't bother too much with details of local issues. This has some hilarious consequences, for example, one rich family whose view would get blocked by new development managed to put on the ballot a measure to block the development, and got it to pass in the name of "Save our Waterfront From Greedy Corporations". That's why SF has a large parking lot and tennis courts on prime waterfront real estate. There is no one easier to manipulate than the uninformed do-gooders that is the SF voting population -- just link more housing development to "greedy corporations" or "gentrification" or "large carbon footprint" or complain about lack of diversity in the construction crew or administrative staff, or new residents, etc. So many ways to kill a project.

The result is that control over local issues -- e.g. what the city council actually does -- is handed over to a small core of residents that do care and have put down roots -- e.g. to homeowners. And homeowners want house prices to rise and for neighborhoods to not change radically. Therefore the SF city council and mayor are very conservative about things like zoning, even as they spend a lot of time espousing radical positions on generic lefty issues.

The majority of them think that YIMBY is useless or counterproductive because only luxury apartments are being built. There have even been protests against this [1]. The main problem is that most housing advocacy is focused on taxing tech workers and using that to subsidize rents, which of course does nothing for housing costs, but does help landlords.

[1] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/7/20759029/excelsior-protest-65...

The Mission is probably a decent example. It used to be more or less like Noe Valley many decades back. Then people moved out and was settled by people looking for affordability --then decades later, as housing in Noe Valley etc., was exhausted the Mission was "gentrified" in a slow cycle and people again complain.

The whole area is incredibly classically liberal and not socialist leaning at all... After all - becoming a tycoon is everyone's wet dream there.

Consider every time you have moved into a new place to live. What kind of research did you do and what factors did you consider when prioritizing multiple option down to the final selection?

It's possible you might say (since I don't know you) that you only look at price per square foot and do a sort based on that and take the cheapest option and that's that.

Most people don't do that though. They consider the neighborhood as a whole, nearby facilities, the character of the location (e.g. lots of 24hr pubs or quiet tree-lined street, etc). So the surroundings matter a whole lot to a lot of people. So people don't often want to go through the whole process of researching, selecting a place and moving to it, just to have the whole neighborhood torn down and redone in a different way a few months later. Might be better, but it's still different, so it doesn't check the same boxes they so painstakingly researched before moving.

So when you say you don't get the "why", it's just human nature. A lot of people want to settle into a stable-ish home, where things around it change slowly, not at a hectic pace that makes it seem not-home anymore.

Yes, but also no. Keep in mind the popularity of Westerns in the 1930’s-1950’s and the ease with which you can get to desert/mountain/beach/city/forest/etc settings within a relatively short drive from L.A.

That said, I generally agree with your point.

Best you can do is make one network gradually shrink and another one gradually grow somewhere else.

It includes two of the world's top ten universities, incredible natural beauty there and nearby, excellent weather (locals complain, as locals do, but it's wonderful), and all the resources and people are gathered there. It's hard to imagine the return on investment of moving.

First, yes, yes there is something magic about SF's geography, it's the closest major city to the largest VC hub in the world. These companies thrive on young talent that prefers to live in a city. It's not dissimilar to the gold rush 170 years ago when you think about it.

Second, what do you mean "San Francisco is just not suitable any more"? The tech companies and their employees are the least impacted by rising housing costs. By and large they are doing alright, so what is their incentive to uproot everything and randomly go roll the dice somewhere else which would A) not have a critical mass of VC in their backyard and B) will offer no guarantee of not reacting exactly the same as SF.

Keep in mind, 20 years ago there was barely any tech in San Francisco proper. Sure there tech employees who chose to live there and suffer the commute to the peninsula, as is their prerogative being free individuals residing in the US. The reason tech moved in was because SF offered tax breaks—they wanted their piece of the tax revenue and daily spending from well-to-do tech workers. If the city really felt tech being there was the problem they have a lot of levers (eg. raise taxes, zoning changes, etc) to push it out. Of course they don't want to do that because it would cause far more economic harm than good. NIMBYs are of course willing to entertain the charade of successful tech companies as the scapegoat because it keeps their home values sky high while deflecting to the amorphous "tech companies", who in fact they have zero control over policy and at best marginal interest in addressing the issue at all.

Good to keep in mind that San Francisco never was part of Silicon Valley, until this past decade where the mindshare of being SV migrated north to include SF.

This should be easy to answer once the city starts cutting its budget.

Visiting Georgetown is a glimpse into the Seattle of 20 years ago IMO. It has it's charm.

Amazon is definitely a turn and burn, threadbare employer that doesn't understand how to value talent and internal resources they develop. Low and mid-level employees are like chewing gum to them, lasting a year or two before Amazon spits them out.

Many of their workers embrace this mentality, making decisions based around their ephemeral stay in Seattle that normal Seattleites find off-putting.

The people moving in will have their own experiences. Places change. If you don't like your place, work to make it better or find one you like more. Maybe not everyone in your city is into the arts and "scene" as much as you are, and the changes are a net benefit to them.

Story as old as time. There were people 30 years ago who wanted to keep out the people you're celebrating as the old-timers. If the older-old timers had their way your preferred old-timers would never have been allowed to move there. And there were even older-than-the-older-old timers who wanted to keep out the older-old-timers. And on and on and on.

Cities change. It's natural. You'll like some changes and hate others, but that's what comes with freedom of movement and, well, freedom more generally. At one time Midtown Manhattan was a forest. Then it was farmland. Then a semi-rural village. Eventually, rich New Yorkers started building Mansions up 5th Avenue. But they did this in the old days before powerful people could block change and even they couldn't stop the walk-ups that replaced their estates. Then those walk-ups were mostly lost to taller buildings. And then even taller ones. And now here come the super-tall skinnies that every New Yorker loves to hate.

At every step there were constituencies opposed to the changes, people who thought the newcomers didn't properly understand the true spirit of Midtown Manhattan. And maybe they were right. But on it goes.

As much as you might not like the changes, the alternatives are far worse. Internal migration controls? Way worse. Refusing to build any new housing to spite the newcomers? Just ends up hurting everyone.

You want to live in Seattle and so do lots of other people. And in a free country their claim on the city is equal to yours. They are full citizens the day they move in. They don't have to pass any kind of Authentic Seattleite test. Because what it means to be an Authentic Seattleite will change, too. That's just life in a free society.

I get that you implying that I would feel safer because I'm less likely to be sexually assaulted and that I have a greater chance to defend myself. However, that doesn't prevent me from criticizing other's feelings. It's like a someone who is racist saying "well you don't live with them so you don't understand"

Cleaned? People who are homeless are dirt?

Want more action? Try protesting and demanding solutions that include no questions asked housing, healthcare, food, water, and basic essential communication technology and interconnection.

Unless people want to misery murder homeless people en masse, the above is the solution. Hard stop. Don’t like it? That’s not my problem, I’m not complaining about desperate people from a place of immense privilege.

The second person is very easy to avoid; I've done it many times (maybe the same person!). The first you just keep going.

I do have empathy for these people, who have noplace else to go. Maybe build some public bathrooms - I know when I'm out in the city, it can be hard to find a bathroom, and I don't get stereotyped and rejected by most places (just stereotyped and accepted!).

However, I spend lots and lots of time in cities and hardly ever see these situations, though critics love to describe them. What smells isn't urine (people love to give examples including human waste - the well-used 'human feces' now gets a laugh from a few of us - how could you tell what kind of feces? Did you examine it closely? Take a sample? Tell us your technique!).

What would have "certainly" happened?

> But it also creates a huge incentive to block development on a town level to keep taxes low.

Wouldn't the town as a government entity be incentivized to foster development to raise tax revenue? The only people who I could see might have an incentive against development is property owners in parcels near the ones being developed, since their land value and therefore taxes will go up; but usually those same people will benefit from the additional economic activity that comes from development, so I'm not convinced.

I have no problem with requiring a tenant to rent for a year, to prevent quick turnover and the risk and costs associated with that.

But multiple landlords now have all had the same policy: the lease will never go month-to-month, basically. You can, but e.g., for my current lease, it costs ~60% more to go month to month. This creates bizarre pay-off points, and greatly raises the costs of trying to move. When it's "+$2k/mo to go month-to-month", that's not risk-reduction, that's just greed, trying to make sure I can't move.

IME, it used to be that after you rented for a while (e.g., a year), the lease went month-to-month. You were a long-term stable renter, and you'd paid enough rent at that point to cover the overheads of finding a new tenant and making the necessary touch-ups to the apartment. (Beyond what was covered by security deposit.)

(I recently had this conversation with my parents recently. The previous generation has no idea about some of the provisions that renters of my generation are having to put up with.)

An average price of $18,000 to break lease on a 3+ year old lease is absurd. We need more housing, to drive competition in the rental & housing markets.

If I ever get to buy a house (… if my landlord doesn't first capture any gains I might get…) the first thing I'll have to do is not get to live in it: the most logical course of action would be to rent it short term, until I can get out of my own lease.

I think everyone is incentivized to sit on what they have now and offer cheap leases. I also think that cities are incentivized to bring workers back to the office. Like in NYC, we spent billions of dollars on a new commuter railroad terminal that opens this year, and upgrades to run more trains per hour during rush hour. I don't think the state is going to step in and offer free money to make more housing.

All in all I love the idea of converting offices to housing. Working from home is great, and affording your own home is even better. But, I don't think the economy wants either of them :/

For example, the value of the property is based on the last or current rent they have received. It is better for the property owner to not have a tenant, than it is to accept a lower lease because it impacts their financing agreements and property valuations.

There are people homeless in the US right now because of medical debt due to illness, is that their fault too?