SF landlords are greedy – hard for startups
$1600 rent for a single room. $900 or more for a couch to couch-surf on.
Supply and Demand is the problem. There's a lot of demand. Supply must be too low.
OR IS IT?
In 2011, there were 31,000 rental units in San Francisco purposely taken off the market. http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/05/because-of-rent-control-sf-has-31000.html
When the city leaders REDUCE THE SUPPLY OF LANDLORDS, with a correspondingly amplified reduction of available units, rents MUST go up, because too many people want that rare apartment that's come available in SF, and City Leaders have unwittingly (or purposely?) reduced the supply of Landlords.
We looked at that dynamic. When you're a business person, you MUST understand Supply and Demand.
It's been much easier to hire in San Jose for that reason.
NOTE: We're all for affordable housing. If there are 10,000 rent controlled apartments in San Francisco (for example) -- and the first person to get that apartment knows his rent cannot be raised much, for YEARS -- that person is NOT MOVING OUT.
And that's what happened in San Francisco. All those rent controlled apartments got taken very quickly. And very few give them up.
So the supply of rent control units dropped precipitously when rent control was introduced.
Paradoxically, rent control - cut the supply of Landlords and their units - reduced the supply of cheap (rent controlled) apartments to near zero.
"Do you know the way to San Jose?"
With today's emphasis on "the Frugal Startup", we had no choice but to locate our stealth-mode startup in the South Bay.