Ask HN: How do you feel about people who say “Techies” are raising the rent? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you feel about people who say “Techies” are raising the rent?

I was talking to my girlfriend the other day about rent prices and such here in the Bay Area, and she said (Knowing that im a programmer/"techie"), that, and I quote "All these fucking techies keep moving here and are making it harder for the rest of us normal people." What's your thoughts on it, HN?

Personally, I think people need to stop blaming the techies that are moving out here for all the work that there is that needs to be done, and start blaming the shitty ass landlords and such that keep raising rent, because they know they can. We don't want to pay higher rent either, you know.

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It's your girlfriend telling you this, so there are a lot of ways to win that argument and harm your interests.

If it were a stock San Franciscan, you'd be well advised to open with something like "Do you think immigrants should be allowed in SF?" "Me, too! I think everyone should have the opportunity to live in SF, because SF is awesome. Sadly, not all SFians agree with us -- they'd prefer to put a maximum quota on the number of people who get to live here. The mechanism for this is our building process, which they exert de-facto control over. It's like building a wall around the city made up of the houses they won't allow to be built.

The existence of the cap on housing guarantees anyone over the SF Resident Cap gets screwed. Sometimes they're immigrants; sometimes they're tech people; sometimes they're immigrant tech people. I don't care who is getting screwed, because no one should be without a house. That's why I support building more housing."

It's happening in Seattle.

A building might be 3 floors and have 12 units per floor, built 50-70 years ago. Each of these units rents for $800-900.

Now that Amazon is building 70,000 units of office space, people are predicting that another 70,000 people are going to be moving nearby for work. And so landlords are seeing a lot of people willing to pay a higher rate for these apartments. This requires evicting the ~24 people who live there, 2 of which (on average) will become homeless.

These landlords can either make the same amount of money, or they can make more money by raising the rent and forcing out the "average" people, confident that an Amazonian or other Techie will pay $1200 a month for the same apartment. And so the traditional residents of Seattle are being pushed out - to surrounding communities, to other areas, and out of the city they love.

A more drastic option is to evict all 24 people, demolish the building, and rebuild with twice the units at twice the rate.

Is this the fault of landlords for being capitalists?

It is not the fault of the landlords. Almost anyone would do the same given the same situation and ability to make a large amount of money. The problem is that the City of Seattle allows for the creation of new housing without the creation of enough affordable housing.

It would also be reasonable to index the level of income for new city-mandated apartments to the minimum wage. So if we have someone working for $15/hr (minimum wage) and 30k/yr who takes home $1939.26 monthly they should only be paying maximum 40% after-tax income into rent, which is 1939.26 * 0.4 = $775.70. Someone making $85k/yr will have a take home of $4997.46/mo, and can afford $1998.

So someone making minimum wage would not be able to afford their own apartment...

This is where the city government should take control, and mandate more low to medium income housing, and more micro apartments. South Seattle along the light rail would be a great area to build up, as it allows for easy access to downtown & Seatac jobs, and would finally stop some of the problems that we have seen here. The U-district/Ravenna could also be redeveloped more, although that is already happening.

> This is where the city government should take control, and mandate more low to medium income housing, and more micro apartments.

And where will the money to build these dwellings come from?

The popular suggestion is to tax (land) developers. The unpopular suggestion is rent control.

I think people will always have sour grapes when the tides of the market shift against them.

I know just as many "techies" constantly bemoaning that the housing market is insane in the Bay Area and they can't buy here because of all the NIMBY's and the fact that Prop 13 screws up all the market dynamics that would normally be self-correcting.

Everyone wants someone to blame when things don't go their way. I've largely stopped listening to people who blame "techies" vs. taking a more critical look at underlying dynamics of the market.

Also, everyone wants to blame the techies because it makes it a more expensive area to live, but they don't want to thank them when schools improve, cities get more tax dollars for improvements, etc. as a direct result of the inflated prices and reset property taxes. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

>and start blaming the shitty ass landlords

Blaming the landlord doesn't really solve the problem. If every landlord decided to charge 50% under market rent, it would just mean that apartments would be very over-subscribed and you'd need to be quite lucky to get an apartment. There are various causes to the problem, but a more reasonable one is the unwillingness of the government (in large part due to NIMBY types) to allow for more development, which would increase the housing stock and decrease the pressure on rents. I'm not flat-out advocating for that, but I don't think it's reasonable to just blame every landlord either.

Bubble pops, techies leave, rent goes down, businesses of all sorts close, non-techies lose their jobs in droves. Are they happy about the rent now? Anyone here from the first bubble to confirm?

It is what it is. We're all making decisions which are in our own best interest.

Tech people want to live close to work and can afford it. Is it wrong to make a high salary and spend your money at your own discretion?

Landlords can charge more because there's greater demand. Charging less leaves money on the table unless you refuse to rent to people in tech. Are landlords really being greedy in this situation?

Are we part of the problem? In a sense, yes. But is it wrong to act in our own best interest? I'd argue no - it's the government's job to ensure that society still functions despite people being inherently selfish.

That said, your girlfriend has completely legitimate frustrations and I'd definitely try to empathize with her a little instead of trying to be right or point blame at something.

> Tech people want to live close to work and can afford it.

Aren't much of the complaints about tech people who don't want to live close to work? E.g., the large number who work in Menlo Park (Facebook), Mountain View (Google), and Cupertino (Apple) but live in San Francisco?

At least that's the impression I got from the brouhaha a few months ago over the buses those companies run between SF and their aforementioned offices.

Rent control and other government instituted economic controls are what is creating the housing shortages in these popular 'tech' cities. People in general are ignorant of basic economic principals which leads to quotes like the one spouted off by your girlfriend.

Uh, No. NIMBYism and lack of policies to ensure enough low-income housing is planned and built.

Techies can't rent low-income housing under normal circumstances.

There must be low-income housing available in a city to ensure that there are places for low income folks with jobs to have shelter. Without these people, the city could not function properly.

Rent control may be necessary in extreme situations where there is a lack of housing for low-income families, but only as a last resort.

Disclosure: I'm a landlord and derive part of my income from rental property I own.

I'm not saying it's a good idea, but low income workers can and do commute.

>keep raising rent, because they know they can.

What is bad about this? It's a scarce resource so they charge more. Ideally they charge enough to keep 100% occupancy and make the most amount of money possible.

I feel that people who are saying that are ignorant.

Even though technically they are partially correct: techies are pushing prices up.

But, of course, that's the SF voters who are mostly at fault here: it's them who limit new housing.

"Normal people"? "Fucking techies" while she knows you're one? Dude she seems nice.

another huge problem is that buildings are being sold to international holding/investment firms at current market value, which will not allow them to keep the existing tenants at $1000 - $1500 per unit when the new mortgage for the new owners requires a minimum of 4k per unit per month.

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