Hacker News Reader

Comment by gleenn | Hacker News Reader

As one of the 20-something's making cell phone apps, I have to laugh a little bit about how much we get bashed. I feel bad when people get kicked out of their houses, and I wonder how terrible we really are. But I'm not walking around trying to hurt anybody. And I'm reading this article right after the one about the school teacher who showed up drunk and pants-less on her first day of school, but I doubt countless people are going to show up to her house (straw-man, I know).

I feel like this is a classic problem of economic conservatism/liberalism: how should money be allocated to people. It's just really exacerbated by a lot of young people making a lot of money and pulling the divide apart.

View on HN

Let's try to see it from another human perspective.

You've been living in Oakland for the last 10 years. You work at a local place making $15/hr. You have built up a lot of friends and enjoy your life. Suddenly the tech boom hits. A year later your landlord decides to sell the house. You go out and try to find a new place but its twice what your last place was and over half your income. But that doesn't matter because the market is so competitive the new landlord wouldn't rent to you anyway. So now you go into a desperate struggle to save the life you've built for the last 10 years. Calling and emailing everywhere trying to find a place. You have 20 days left. 10 days left. You have an old friend in Oklahoma City. He says you can crash for a couple weeks and that there's plenty of jobs and cheap rent. You know you have to go and leave behind your life. You know that if the tech boom didn't show up none of that would have happened. Sure you're not going to die on the streets. But I would probably be pretty pissed.

> You've been living in Oakland for the last 10 years. You work at a local place making $15/hr. You have built up a lot of friends and enjoy your life. Suddenly the tech boom hits. A year later your landlord decides to sell the house. You go out and try to find a new place but its twice what your last place was and over half your income.

> You know that if the tech boom didn't show up none of that would have happened.

The tech boom has obviously not hurt the real estate market in the Bay Area, but it's a common misconception that the tech boom is the primary driver.

There is a substantial amount of money coming into the Bay Area real estate market from overseas and a significant amount (perhaps most) of the domestic home buyers are not newly-minted tech millionaires.

The truth of the matter is that a lot of the well-paid tech workers cannot afford to buy in the Bay Area. This has impacted the rental market more than it has the home market, but the rental trend is one seen nationally.

The really important part of my quote you missed was

> But that doesn't matter because the market is so competitive the new landlord wouldn't rent to you anyway.

As I noted, the rental trend is one seen nationally. In the wake of the Great Recession, which destroyed the finances and credit scores of millions of Americans, many folks have found themselves unable to obtain a mortgage. Even for those who are able to obtain financing to buy a home, in many metropolitan areas, rebounding home prices have pushed many out of the market. Furthermore, in many areas it is exceedingly difficult to find and close on a purchase as a non-cash buyer.

Around the country, millions of would-be home buyers have become renters and there is not enough apartment supply. Rents are rising nationally and lots of people are struggling to cope, including in cities where there is no tech boom to blame. In short, the dearth of affordable rentals is not the result of the tech industry. It's the result of a broader supply and demand imbalance.

Yes, that is absolutely true and valid. Indeed the rental push is national and a great point. That said, to compare the rental increase in Oakland, or the Bay in general, is a far stretch from the national average. And the reason for that is obvious to most who have lived in both situations.

You seem to be assuming that the Bay Area has experienced the greatest increase in rents. Looking at the actual numbers is more useful.

Recently, Seattle has experienced the greatest percentage increase in rents[1]. San Francisco and San Jose were up there, but the recent percentage increases in the Bay Area have, for instance, been on par with the increases seen in 2012-2013 in cities like Houston, Miami, San Diego and Boston[2].

It's a tough market out there for lots of people and while it's convenient to think that the Bay Area is always special because of the tech industry, this simply isn't the case.

[1] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230488710...

[2] http://realestate.msn.com/massive-rent-increases-to-continue

Considering that I currently live in Seattle, have lived in SF and Oakland recently, grew up around Boston and work with a group out of Miami, I probably have pretty good idea of how warped it is in the Bay Area. Nice charts tho.

So your personal perceptions trump hard numbers from businesses that get paid to track real estate data? Cool beans.

http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/

soooo many charts

Plenty of tech workers left everything behind and moved thousands of km across borders and oceans to work in SF in precarious visa situations and make a decent living. If they lose their jobs they don't get to go to OKC, they're deported back to India or China in 10 days.

It's harder to empathize with US citizens who've managed to squander their enormous advantages and have to suffer the relatively mild indignity of moving to a different US city.

"Squander"... many US citizens see the actions of Silicon Valley and the entire tech VC culture as grossly immoral and unethical. Maybe you have yet to realize that all your actions in the US will only make rich families richer and hurt and damage the lives of those beneath you, but many Americans decide to do work that helps individuals directly as opposed to help investors become even richer.

It's fun to think poor Americans are lazy, but when you realize that helping people in America is one of the lowest paid(often volunteer) positions, how warped the reality of the US dollar is.

To many "dignity" as you described it, is not working like a slave to enrich the evil that is destroying our country. And if you are moving here to contribute to that you are not much more than a paid mercenary.

EDIT: Look, I get it that you are possibly coming from a fucked situation wherever you might come from. And I can't blame you for it. But realize that few people in the US actually will benefit from it, and it will actually make their lives worse. It's what you have to do, but it really isn't something that many Americans would think is good. We already learned about imperialism in High School and prefer not to repeat it.

What're you talking about here? How is software development going to 'contribute to the evil that is destroying our country'? Snapchat and Instagram are stupid apps, sure, but they're far from destroying america. And a lot of new technology which is built: smartphones, medical devices, robotics, all those things are going to save lives and be a tremendous boost to the economy.

Money is obviously an imperfect proxy for how much someone contributes to society but it's the only fair way to ration housing or any other limited resource. "My parents lived in this city and I grew up here" does not and should not trump "I moved here to work and be productive".

Are you seriously arguing that "to work and be productive" overrides the rights of native inhabitants of a region?

It's better for society as a whole to distribute limited resources based on some kind of merit rather than "I was here first".

Loyalty is merit. Would you rather a civilization that simply discarded you when you have lost utility?

This is poor long term planning that undermines the nation for short term intrest. Unless you have pledged your allegiance, your contributions and loyalty is short term.

So obviously we are going to prioratize someone who has our back. If you have the education it is likely because you come from a privileged family. There is also strong corrupting ingrained into the system. Unless my last red envelope was given to me in error.

There are men and women in your country of greater merit who are not given the opportunity. If we were truely acting on merit they would be hear, and not you.

They would have been given the scholarship and the resources in childhood to succeed. I have met way too many entitled princelings lacking any of the virtues of a gentleman.

What rights are you talking about that "native inhabitants of a region" possess exactly?

They deserve the loyalty of their representatives. Policy should be made in thier best intrest.

A VISA is a privilege not a right. That is apples and oranges.

Not saying you are wrong, but you have to consider this - people who left everything behind to come to the US to work in tech field (even with all the visa problems etc) are typically more educated, have marketable skills than the people pointed out by your parent comment. While their lives aren't easy - it is better compared to those working for minimum wage (or slightly above minimum wage). If the engineers are sent back to India/China, their chances of getting a job is higher (because of their marketable skills) than people with no valuable skills moving from one US city to another.

Also "mild indignity of moving to a different US city" - how would you feel if you lived in a city for 40 years, and suddenly find yourself priced out of your home?

This is a more complex problem.

> If the engineers are sent back to India/China, their chances of getting a job is higher (because of their marketable skills) than people with no valuable skills moving from one US city to another.

Maybe so but the engineers there make less than the baristas in the US. Hell, an engineer in Canada makes less than a bartender in SF.

I grew up in Toronto and lived there for 17 years but the tech jobs are so bad I can't really afford to stay. Not without living with my parents or spending 65% of my net income on rent and transportation. I don't feel entitled to stay, nobody owes me anything. I can either move or figure out a way to earn more money.

The disruption that people experience due to sudden price changes certainly has a negative affect on them, but this is simply the reality of demand for these resources.

It would be nice if the government or private industry could insure people against this kind of disruption, but I don't see it happening soon.

In the meantime, people are constantly affected by all sorts of circumstances out of their control.

Unless you don't believe in the free market at all, I don't see how the case of renters is any different.

So you don't think that people will become less motivated to work if they know that at any time the rug can be pulled out beneath them?

I don't follow your logic.

The more you work, the more you get paid and the less affected you will be by this sort of thing, so I would assume this sort of risk motivated people to work harder.

Wow, just wow.

You challenged my point not by saying that "pulling the rug from under people" was unethical, but that it would remove people's motivation.

When I directly answer why it wouldn't, you act as if I was supposed to be explaining addressing the ethics, and that my answer betrays me as callous and uncaring.

But you didn't make the argument that society should avoid "pulling the rug from under people" for its own sake, regardless of its affect on motivation to work. So I didn't address that point.

I did, however, explain precisely the ethics of my viewpoint in my original post, you just chose not to address this, and took the easy way out by focusing on a technical issue (the effect on people's motivation to work) and then pretending I had failed to address a moral issue that you raised.

That circumstance is contextual. If (E)ffort includes [ social skills, network, seed resources, correct strategy, training, health (physical + mental), support structure, opportunity] then hardwork +1

It is a conditional system of reward. The equation is not equal for everyone.

Edit* Just found and article on the subject randomly

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/08/07/335285098/rich-kid-po...

All the hubbub about tech workers gentrifying the bay area is just misguided and ignorant. It's not your fault that the Government has given homeowners significant incentives to try to block the construction of new housing. It's not your fault that the government has manipulated the rental market to keep people in their homes far longer than they should have been there. It's not your fault that local governments can't figure out a way to ensure that every city in the bay area has roughly the same capacity for housing as it does for jobs. And it's not your fault that there's high demand for your skills.

Rather than protesting in front of Google buses (which would have been significantly smaller if they had limited participation to only people who've never used a Google product or service), they should be protesting in front of City Hall to allow the building of new housing. The only thing that will keep them in the city is to lower the cost of housing to a level where they can afford to live there and that can't happen if there's no new development.

I don't even really think it's about money allocation. Sure there are a lot of 20-somethings making 6-figures, but the thing about young people is they tend to spend their money. There are really a lot of things going well for not just tech in the bay area: bar tips are up, sketch comedy shows are sold out on Monday nights, unemployment is down across the board.

Really the only problem we have is a housing shortage. Granted there to some extent a fixed amount of land (although Treasure Island and Foster City testify somewhat to the contrary). But we could definitely build higher.

Maybe it would change the aesthetics of the City some. But I'm more concerned about losing the character of the City of welcoming all types of people, no matter where you came from or what you like to do than I am about the way our buildings look.

I think most people have an intuitive understanding of free market principals. If a person can pay more for an apartment, they not only have the legal right, but the moral right, to outbid someone else.

In order to deal with inequality, we have progressive income tax and welfare. These mechanisms are the fairest, because they don't favor people based on their individual preferences.

Now a poor person who lived their whole life in SF doesn't really have an inherent preference for living in SF. And they probably are made worse off by the tech industry. But it is still the government, if anyone, who should compensate such people for their changed circumstance, and it's also practically impossible to figure out if that person is really worse off than, say, a person with the same income who lived in Detroit their whole life.

So there is no valid principal by which people should hate people in tech, and I think most people actually understand this.

However, people dislike nerds, and they like to rationalize their beliefs. I remember people called me arrogant in school, not because I was, but because that way they could enjoy the moral indignation. I think something similar is happening here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com