83 percent of Bay Area renters plan to leave, says survey

https://sf.curbed.com/2017/8/15/16150828/survey-bay-area-leave-sf-renters

by jseliger • 9 years ago

176 215 9 years ago

sf.curbed.com

rhombocombus• 9 years ago

...and come to Portland. (I kid, I kid. It's a neverending joke here)

seanmcdirmid3• 9 years ago

...on their way to Seattle.

(The Californian invasion has always been a thing in the PnW)

snuxoll2• 9 years ago

Don't forget us down here in Boise. The constant influx of people from other regions is straining our housing market, especially since the vast majority of employment options still left (after HP split and Micron downsized) are in the service industry. My mom paid $900/mo for a 4 bedroom house in a south-Boise subdivision in 2010, I'm now paying $1200/mo for a 3 bedroom house 5 miles further out in Meridian. Our housing costs aren't SF-crazy, but when you consider the lack of public transport necessitating vehicle ownership and depressed wages (lots of people making under $10/hr at call centers) it's becoming unaffordable for the masses.

Danihan• 9 years ago

Wow, great idea, thanks!

S_A_P• 9 years ago

From my outside looking in perspective, it seems the gold rush is waning in the Bay Area. There will always be a pretty healthy tech industry there but anecdotal evidence tells me that fewer people are heading west to make it big in startups. This is probably a good thing for everyone except real estate speculators though.

regularfry• 9 years ago

I'd be intrigued to know how much of that is because of remote working, and how much is because of traditional jobs growing in other places (and, of course, how much is people not doing startups). My gut says that remote working isn't big enough to cause this sort of shift, but I'd love to know if I'm wrong.

delphinius81• 9 years ago

Other cities with much better cost of living are gaining reputation in tech / start-ups and attracting talent (or just keeping the talent that went to school there).

juandg• 9 years ago

The Bay Area has a pretty bad remote work culture. The vast majority of companies prefer if you’re physically here. Sure you can work from home or work remote while traveling for a few weeks, but for some insane reason most companies insist on your home base being here in the Bay Area. I’m sure there are notable exceptions and some people will disagree with me, but after 5 years here I’ve experienced first hand the aversion to remote work suffered by most Bay Area companies.

stevenwoo• 9 years ago

I own and am considering selling to retire (versus going to work to finish paying off the mortgage), it's kind of crazy real estate wise out here - the amount that zillow/redfin reports as positive home appreciation every month feels like more than the last bubble. Maybe the bubble is about to burst, but I don't know how to determine that.

gozur882• 9 years ago

Bubbles always take far longer to burst than you'd think, but when it happens, it happens fast.

sjg0072• 9 years ago

I look at median salary, median home price, median rent and debt levels. Then again Google and Facebook print money...

nfriedly2• 9 years ago

First, congratulations!

Second, don't try to "time the bubble". Instead think about your goals. What do you actually want, and what is best for you (and your family if applicable). What's going to make your life more meaningful? What would make it a better story if someone were to tell it?

If cashing in now and moving someplace cheaper is in line with your goals, then do it!

If staying put and finishing off the mortgage is a better match, then so be it.

Lastly, financial independence doesn't have to mean not working. I'm still 10-15 years away from that point, but I certainly plan to keep working well after I have enough to retire. I'll just have a bit more flexibility in what I choose to work on.

cal5k• 9 years ago

To what degree is this reflected by actions? Has anybody checked past survey results?

It could just be that renters in SF are the grumpiest ;-)

alexandercrohde• 9 years ago

Well for context, having lived in SF for 5 years before leaving, yes 80% probably plan to leave, probably 80% do leave, but only after many career years.

It's where I cut my chops because I could get a 6 figure engineering job without a relevant degree. Very few people expect to stay in a city permanently, and remember many of those workers aren't even citizens, so many of them plan to return "home" at some point.

This doesn't mean anything unless the influx is less than the outflux.

robbyking• 9 years ago

I've lived in SF for close to 20 years, and I completely agree.

That said, I'm part of the 83% who are planning on leaving, but there are two main problems:

• If I leave, where will I go? As many faults as SF has, it's still a beautiful, world class city, rich with culture. Walkability is huge for me, and I don't want to live someplace where I'm tied to my car.

• Salary. Usually the cost of living follows the pay scale of a local economy, but that doesn't help you when you want to buy things priced at a national level: computers, cars, bikes, etc. If you earn $160k/yr, buy a new MacBook Pro isn't a big deal; if you make $60k/yr, you have to put a little more thought into it.

vonmoltke• 9 years ago

Salary. Usually the cost of living follows the pay scale of a local economy, but that doesn't help you when you want to buy things priced at a national level: computers, cars, bikes, etc. If you earn $160k/yr, buy a new MacBook Pro isn't a big deal; if you make $60k/yr, you have to put a little more thought into it.

I see this brought up a lot, but these expenses are such a small portion of my outlay that it barely moves the needle. Maybe I'm just weird.

Also, cars do vary across geographical areas. The MSRP may be the same nationally, but the drive-off price is pretty variable.

tmh793• 9 years ago

IMO this is a terrible outcome, and its exactly what the NIMBY landowning class in the SFBA wants to happen.

dasil003• 9 years ago

Is it really what they want? Do they expect property values to keep going up even when people decide it's not worth it anymore?

matt_wulfeck2• 9 years ago

If you talk to them, they really do want that. They care a lot less about their properties values than they do about the amount of cars parked on their street and their daily commute times.

You would think that they would simply sell their million-dollar bungalow and move to greener pastures, but that's just not what happens.

schnevets3• 9 years ago

I'm noticing similar sentiments among friends in New York City. Everyone came here for jobs/culture/friends after graduating, but the mad-rush of millennials is making the city more and more unlivable. Nobody wants to spend their thirties in a cramped, overpriced studio, but nobody is ready to leave their hip, startup lofts for the drudgery of a Westchester office complex (let alone endure an hour commute into the city every day).

Smaller cities (the Portlands, New Havens, and Columbuses of the country) will continue to inherit the overflow, with those cities that have the lowest cultural cachet taking the lowliest remnants. Given the demand for urban environments by businesses and consumers, it seems like the only thing holding back any city from heavy growth is incompetence or negative reputations.

tmh793• 9 years ago

but the mad-rush of millennials is making the city more and more unlivable

IMO, the problem is the policies of the city that are unfriendly to growth and make housing a zero sum game, the problem isn't than people expressing their preferences.

sliverstorm3• 9 years ago

It may not be a zero sum game, but it at least approximates/approaches zero sum. How exactly would you change downtown Manhattan such that anyone & everyone who wanted to live there could?

hinkley• 9 years ago

About 8 years ago I went to OSCon in Portland and someone told me it was currently employing some ridiculous percentage of all of the construction cranes available.

And about this time three years ago I was standing in an office in downtown Seattle and we could count fourteen cranes. There's still a lot of space for midrise buildings. I'm just not sure transportation is keeping up.

scarmig• 9 years ago

NYC is not SF. It's not perfect, but it's not anti-growth.

cptskippy• 9 years ago

the problem is the policies of the city

That's more like a symptom.

Policies are shaped by people and people are motivated by forces. The motivating force in this case is probably money. There are lots of people who make money off real-estate and they're motivated to keep supply down to drive up costs. What better way than by influencing public policy to suit their agenda.

If you try to change city policy to make housing affordable then you're basically declaring war on a very influential portion of the population that has a lot to lose.

nugget• 9 years ago

Is there a way to measure which cities are benefiting, and by how much?

rayiner• 9 years ago

Not really, because yuppie employment doesn't move the needle in most places. Pittsburgh is having a real renaissance with a tech scene built around CMU. There are new restaurants where you can get a bone marrow whatever. [But the city is on pace to post another double-digit percentage population loss this decade.]

Edit: I can't read. Pittsburgh has only lost 0.7% since 2010: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/pittsburghcityp....

overcast5• 9 years ago

I've seen quite a few New Yorkers moving Upstate to Western, NY. Rochester has been having quite a renaissance in the last 5-6 years. Especially in the food/cocktail scene. Outside of NYC, it's probably the best in the Northeast as far as I'm concerned. RIT, University of Rochester, and other top schools. Easy commutes, short rush hours, Fingerlakes, Great Lakes. There's multiple festivals nearly every week during the summer months. The Public Market is the second oldest in the entire country, and amazing. Far, and away the best grocery chain in the country (Wegmans). Also recently received $600 million in funds for photonics research.

Also cost of living is LOW, any decent wage here, especially in tech. You'll live like a king.

jrjarrett• 9 years ago

I left Rochester in 2004, before the Kodak plane completely augered into the ground next to the Xerox, B&L, etc.

I'd moved there after college because it seemed to be the last Upstate place with any life in it but that all drained away.

What's changed in the intervening time? What's drawing people there, specifically for jobs?

dcole29292• 9 years ago

I went to RIT and Rochester is definitely a city trying to recreate itself, but it runs into the same problem that most every other north eastern city outside of NYC and Boston do. The weather sucks 6-8 months a year and there's not enough there to make up for that fact. I think it's a much more attractive option for families because it's so cheap and the schools are good. Still I think for a lot of personality types the lack of nightlife and comparatively small demo of post grad but pre middle aged people (what do we even call that age range) kills it.

Anecdotal obviously but after graduation everyone I know left, and those who couldn't still mostly want to. And to me that's the difference between say a city like Philly that's growing because people want to stay there after graduating.

ende• 9 years ago

We call it Western NY. Upstate NY is the Adirondacks.

tomkinstinch• 9 years ago

I'll second the endorsement of Rochester. The quality of life for the cost can't be beat. I have (affordable) gigabit fiber running to my house thanks to a local ISP. Rochester punches above its weight for culture, thanks to the philanthropic history of Eastman, Bausch & Lomb, etc. The orchestra is world-class and affordable, and the music scene in general is quite good, perhaps owing to the Eastman School of Music at UofR, which alternates with Juilliard as one of the best conservatories in the country. Geva, the local stage theater is enjoyable, and the independent movie theater, The Little is great ($3 student tickets, anyone?), and there are fun museums. It takes 20 minutes to drive anywhere. But you can bike if you don't want to drive, most of the year. Housing is actually affordable. Imagine beautiful Victorian homes for <$250k, or even <$150k. I rented a single room in the Boston area last year, and the cost for a month was 150% of my monthly mortgage in Rochester for 10% of the space. The UofR Medical Center is a heavyweight research hospital.

Rochester and Monroe County have an amazing system of public parks and green space, and they're always well-kept. If you golf, there are many nice public courses. Bike trails abound for transit, and you can hop on the Erie Canal towpath trail and ride from Buffalo to Albany. Irondequoit Bay has sailing, and people row on the Erie canal and Genesee river. Club sports take advantage of the parks. Parks nearby have hiking, though not tall mountains.

The Public Market is an amazing resource as you mention. Vendors at "farmers' markets" in big cities have realized they can charge inflated yuppie prices, while the Public Market has farmers from the local area selling directly at wholesale rates, as well as third-party vendors selling overstock/ugly produce from local supermarkets. Wegmans is the best, for consumers and their employees.

The Rochester city government is (mostly) functional and well-meaning, and citizens generally have a sense of civic pride and interest in their communities. The tax base is not what it once was, but the city makes the most of what it can, with new experimental initiatives and impeccable maintenance of public services. Rochester weathered the recession well.

A downside is of course the grey skys of winter, but that is counterbalanced by four distinct seasons with a beautiful summer. When I lived in California I missed having four seasons.

It's a fairly future-proof place to live; Western NY is not prone to natural disasters like earthquakes, droughts, wildfires, volcanos, tornados, or hurricanes. Most areas are high enough where flooding is not a concern. Climate change will have less of an impact than many other areas. Blizzards are likely the most probable "natural disaster", but you can wait them out: snow melts.

If VCs were willing to take more risk, they could bankroll startups in cheaper areas like Rochester and spread their resources across larger portfolios.

Buffalo is having a similar resurgence, or so I've heard. Western NY is cheap enough to take risks, and people are. New restaurants; cocktail joints; art, dance, meditation, and yoga studios are opening all the time. Startups could be next; take a look at Rochester for your next company and lower your burn rate.

notadoc2• 9 years ago

Most of NY state is amazing, beautiful, great outdoors and scenery, lakes, rivers, tons of nice little towns and smaller cities. And aside from NYC, it's also dirt cheap.

ghaff5• 9 years ago

You're pretty much describing how Manhattan has been for many decades. New grads go into finance and they just have to live where the action is. Fast forward a few years and the vast majority of them take jobs elsewhere or move out to the burbs.

winter_blue• 9 years ago

but nobody is ready to leave their hip, startup lofts for the drudgery of a Westchester office complex (let alone endure an hour commute into the city every day)

I live in New York City, and I can certainly empathize with the no one wanting to do endure a long daily commute in a crowed, cramped, subway full of people where you likely might not get a seat. (LIRR/MNR/NJT are great in comparison (but terrible in frequency).)

But I dissent on your comment on living and working in Westchester (or really any suburbia in general). I understand people think the city is hip and all, but I really like greenery, nature, having a lot of space, being able to get to places in the comfort of your car, reasonable/low cost to own a home, generally low cost of living, the lack of noise, clean air, etc, etc. What's so dull about it?

MarchHare• 9 years ago

Getting to use a car quickly becomes having to use a car in much of the U.S.

There is a lot of middle room between suburbia and NYC for build environments.

Sleeep3• 9 years ago

I'm not familiar with Westchester specifically but, to me, suburbia isn't good for any of those things you mentioned. To me suburbia feels like a giant mass produced parking lot and is an incredibly depressing display of concrete! Nature is nowhere to be found in the suburbs. The real estate is very expensive in desirable suburbs and traffic is still bad in the suburbs, just bad in a different way than in a bigger city.

Right now I live in what I guess would be described as a town. Its ~100 miles from any major urban area and it's much more effective at providing the majority of the things you mentioned plus amazingly short commute times! It also has some sorts of benefits you would associate with the city as well - for example, I can walk to at least 10 establishments as well as 2 parks whereas when I lived in a suburb the street I lived off of was 4 lanes 45 MPH and didn't even have a sidewalk. Even if it did have a sidewalk the noise of a mass of neverending SUVs buzzing past is unpleasant.

You would also have no problem driving almost everywhere in a smaller city.

dpflan• 9 years ago

It would be nice to see the visualization of the inflow-outflow: the people eagerly coming in to the city, then then gradual spreading out to adjacent metro areas as the city gets more crowded and unlivable. This style of growth would probably benefit from efficient, affordable, convenient transit options, like the high-speed rail teasers that pop-up every now and then in the news about connecting the east coast's major cities.

Taking hints from the likes of Japan to support this growth; and other examples and ideas would be cool for discussion here as a solution to this metro-area-growth.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/sep/30/-sp-shinkanse...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Dkaid%C5%8D_Shinkansen

Tokkemon• 9 years ago

True facts, I just moved to Westchester after living in NYC for almost 20 years. An opportunity came to buy a lovely house overlooking the Hudson and I leapt at it. Brooklyn really had started to grate on me even though I was used to the "lifestyle" of living in New York.

chaosbutters314• 9 years ago

What is wrong with westchester? It doesn't smell as bad, you can get a place for the same price as nyc with 4x the space and you're only a 1 hr drive away if you don't try to go during rush hours.

A big problem I see with going to westchester to nyc is the parking costs in nyc. Like $50/day is wayyyyyyyy too high to be sustainable. And the trains are just too slow, it is faster to drive from where I am in westchester than take the train.

schnevets3• 9 years ago

I meant the Westchester comment as a bit tongue-in-cheek. More of the stereotypical opinion among my generation, rather than my own opinion. I'm actually shopping around in the Hudson Valley with my fiance atm.

Regardless, the "corporate campus" will need to go through a reimagining if it wants to appeal to city-weary knowledge workers. This will require some more lateral thinking beyond replicating Facebook's Headquarters in White Plains, NY.

Ologn• 9 years ago

Nobody wants to spend their thirties in a cramped, overpriced studio, but nobody is ready to leave their hip, startup lofts

Well I think this is it. I was born in New York City, and while it may be more expensive than some town in the Midwest, the housing problem is not like it is in San Francisco. On the other hand, if you insist on living in Greenwich Village or Williamsburg then you will have to pay. If you're OK with living in a slightly older, not super exciting, middle class neighborhood that has a half hour commute to the city, then you have plenty of affordable options. Another thing about New York affordability is rent in some towns in the Midwest is cheaper but you need a car, in New York City you can get around pretty well without a car.

Also a commute into Manhattan does not have to be an hour. You can make a map of the rent prices of apartments in boring but decent neighborhoods that are within 10 minutes commute of Manhattan, then 20 minutes, then 30. Plenty of options. For myself, I can walk out my door and in less than thirty minutes walk out of a train in Penn Station. I used to live in another part of the city and my apartment door to office desk commute was less than 30 minutes.

sjg0072• 9 years ago

It's probably in one's interest to be an early adopter in the tech migration (or wait for a collapse) unless you win the IPO lottery. You can get something nicer closer to work in a trendy area before prices go through the roof.

Spooky232• 9 years ago

This is just the normal migration pattern. Once you have kids and get married, the advantages of living in a big city start to go away.

Those fun bars and restaurant become generators of noise and parking problems. The fun diverse neighborhood translates into a school district where the legacy of desegregations means your kid will be dragged across the city for school. The list goes on.

RealityNow2• 9 years ago

NYC is a pretty terrible city to live in by first world standards unless you're wealthy. Crappy shoeboxes in tenement buildings that used to house servants go for outrageous prices, overcramped, awful subway (though Americans think it's amazing because they're not used to big cities that don't require a car). People put up with it because of the jobs, the people, the cosmopolitan nature of it, not needing a car, and because there aren't any comparable cities in the U.S. in terms of size, density, and significance. Millennials don't seem to be as fond as suburbs as the boomers (I personally hate suburbs).

NYC used to be a city where artists and writers could live, but it's become a city of trust fund kids, corporate shmucks, and tourists. Everybody works all the time - not because they're working on groundbreaking stuff - but to make a buck.

Personally my plan is to work remotely and go somewhere else, most likely outside the country because nothing in the car-obsessed suburban sprawl-infested U.S. compels me.

cylinder4• 9 years ago

Mostly true, but they have built new highrise towers in Brooklyn. I am probably living in the most convenient building in the US right now, with lots of amenities in a very comfortable 1bdrm. The problem is it's still $3400/mo+ and all the buildings are rentals, no buying, and most of all this is not sustainable for us as a couple who plan to have kids so we have to jump ship.

It's also very true that so many Americans are willing to put up with NYC because there's not many other options for proper cities in the US. The public transportation sucks and there's now a divide where everyone I know seems to be grabbing Uber to work which is totally ridiculous and irresponsible.

njarboe• 9 years ago

I would guess that one of the big reasons that there are a "mad-rush of millennials" into select cities is that most of the ambitious, type-A personalities used to try and pick a mate in the high density environment of a selective university. That is not nearly as common now but un-paired people still want/need a high density of potential mates that meet their minimum standards. Choosing what happening city to move to after college is now much more important instead of getting a job(s) and moving directly to a home selected for raising the kids.

matt_wulfeck2• 9 years ago

The Bay Area is only a place of permanence for those lucky enough to buy a house. For the rest of us, it's a place to get fantastic work experience and awesome pay.

Even if you're paying $2k to rent a studio, if your take-home pay goes from $500 to $1500 you're coming out way ahead dealing with the headaches of living here. But you need to move away to truly realize those gains.

autotune2• 9 years ago

Not to mention there are plenty of companies out here who are okay with their employees working remotely, so if you can make a 6 figure salary in a place with more arts and culture and where rent is $1500 for a luxury one bedroom downtown instead of $4500, then it's clear what the better choice would be. Also you'd be stupidly lucky to pay only $2K for a decent studio, personally I pay $2600 and that was a steal for the location (not getting stabbed at night, no homeless tents, close to MUNI), and amenities (washer/dryer).

sebbecai• 9 years ago

And then there's roommates... I used to pay $600 a month for an SF house, and did this by having 2 roommates and a live-in girlfriend. Saved enough for a house. Much comes down to delayed gratification.

fapjacks• 9 years ago

Right. I work remote for an SF startup and I live on the beach in southern California. Literally in a house on the beach, five minutes walk to the little beachtown downtown area with bars and restaurants. And I pay a hell of a lot less than I paid when I lived in SF.

Still love that city, though.

dmode• 9 years ago

I would take this survey with a heavy grain of salt. From the article

"The two-question survey (“Do you plan on settling down in another city?” and “What’s your biggest reason for leaving?”) covered 24,000 respondents nationwide."

If I was living in SF and someone asked me "Do you plan on settling down in another city?" - my answer would be yes, somewhere in the Bay Area suburb like Palo Alto. I think very few people are looking to "settle" in SF.

cbtacy• 9 years ago

Speaking as a 20+ year resident - thank god.

WD-42• 9 years ago

Speaking as someone who grew up in the Bay and then left: Thank god. Maybe I'll be able to move back someday.

kevinburke7• 9 years ago

I'm a 20+ year resident - I grew up here. My friends and family are slowly leaving, and it's really sad.

caseysoftware• 9 years ago

I think the key question I don't see answered here is "When?"

Most people want to move at some point and often do for jobs, kids, spouse's job, etc. But whether this is impending (this year) or "an acknowledged desire" is a big difference.

pfooti• 9 years ago

I have lived here since 2010, so somewhat early in the current bubble. I am lucky enough to rent a place that's fairly large (most of a house) but also rent controlled, so I can afford to live here. If my landlord sold the house and I had to find a new place, I'd have to leave. So: plan to leave? Probably. Want to? Nope. I love the outer sunset. I just foresee a time when I won't be able to afford to live here anymore.

dsfyu404ed4• 9 years ago

If you had to pay market price you'd probably want to leave.

leggomylibro2• 9 years ago

Too expensive, too crowded, too stifling, and nowadays sometimes even too bland.

Without roots in the city, there doesn't seem to be much to recommend it these days besides the weather and the massive, insane availability of liquid capital compared to the extensive dearth in other markets. But as long as the money is there, and other sources of investment capital remain locked away, that's not a bad recommendation.

SV VCs may be getting more cautious, but investors in other markets don't seem particularly eager to loosen the purse strings. So they may say they plan to leave, but I just finished a comic fantasy novel called 'Thud!', and this (lightly edited) passage comes to mind:

"I'd wonder...you know, if I were a king...I'd wonder why people were happier living in squalor in [the city] than staying back home. ...

"There's dwarf bars all over, and they've got mining tools wired to the wall, and there's dwarfs in 'em every night quaffing beer and singing sad songs about how they wish they were back in the mountains digging for gold. But if you said to them fine, the gate's open, off you go and send us a postcard, they'd say, 'Oh, well, yeah, I'd love to, but we've just got the new workshop finished...maybe NEXT year we'll go back home.'"

klipt• 9 years ago

The great thing about Discworld is that it's just like the real world - only funnier.

dv_dt• 9 years ago

SV VCs may be getting more cautious, but investors in other markets don't seem particularly eager to loosen the purse strings.

There is some sort of irony in SV VCs being at a keystone of the internet and yet somehow being unable to invest outside of SV.

leggomylibro2• 9 years ago

It does make a sort of sense - VCs in the bay area seem to congregate there because software companies can promise (if things go just right) stratospheric return rates. Those glitzy home-runs can fund a lot of flops, and the investors still win out.

If you want to make something physical, you can't hand-wave and make wild assumptions about growth rates and user acquisition and ARPUs. You have a Bill of Materials, distribution costs, a slim margin, and rapid competition from cheaper and often outright dangerous knock-offs with little recourse. Look what happened with hoverboards.

So in a market that is as jaw-droppingly risk averse as this, but people still want to grow their huge hoards of capital, the money takes the path of least resistance and follows the only available market that can theoretically produce an exponential growth curve more than once every few decades.

mullen2• 9 years ago

High Speed Rail helps fix this issue. You can live an hour out of the city, where housing prices are much lower and the schools can be much better and then commute via HSR to the city. Unfortunately, there are too many short term voters and residents in California to see the vision of high speed public transportation to solve many of the housing ills that plague this state.

compiler-guy• 9 years ago

Even if all the municipalities suddenly jumped on board, even in the best case high-speed rail is a decade and a half off. It isn't a realistic solution.

mullen2• 9 years ago

SF to Gilroy could be done in under a decade, which then would be connected to LA once that track was done.

California is messing up the HSR project by not getting SF to Gilroy and LA to San Diego completed first. Sacramento to Nowhere is a PR blunder for the state.

thebrettd• 9 years ago

It is not a realistic short-term solution, but maybe a good long term move? Your comment makes it sound like it isn't a reasonable investment at all because it won't return in the desired timeframe.

x2202• 9 years ago

The only reason it could not be realistic is that California is politically dysfunctional and unable to solve problems. Nearly every other industrialized country has a rail system that connects cities and helps commuters. It is totally possible to accomplish.

ghaff5• 9 years ago

In addition to the long timeframe, HSR is also mostly not a commuter solution even in places like Japan. And commuter rail is already a thing in many places and widely used (including the Bay Area). I live about 40 miles west of Boston and I can get into the city by rail today in about 90 minutes.

dsfyu404ed4• 9 years ago

And in other news nobody can afford to live in Fitchburg anymore.

gnahckire• 9 years ago

Didn't live in SF but, I lived in the south bay and recently moved away. I'm glad I did. I'm making more & saving more living somewhere else.

That being said, I do think the bay area is a great place to start one's career.

dinedal• 9 years ago

Where'd you go to?

arcaster• 9 years ago

Please don't come to Austin. All you Californians do is complain about the heat!

ausjke2• 9 years ago

Yes please go anywhere else but Austin, enough is enough.

hpguy• 9 years ago

Alright, since this is not the first time I see this: what the deal about people from Austin trying to shoo people away? As if Austin was really that great and everybody wanted to come there? And isn't it the case that the more tech people go live in the Austin, the better the tech scene and thus benefit tech people like you (I assume you're in tech)?

I had lived in the Bay Area, moved to Austin just to move to another place within a year. Austin has many nice things, but definitely not one of the top US cities I would consider building a family in. I can list out tons of things about Austin that would be deal breakers for many people and there are better cities out there in many aspects.

I'm truly puzzled by this sentiment from Austin people.

ausjke2• 9 years ago

Most people came from CA are too liberal that is out of touch with reality, they ruined CA then came to TX for its next victim. I suggest them moving to North Korea directly instead. Without them Austin will be a much better place for sane people.

I can not wait for CA to become independent from the states.

HumbleGamer• 9 years ago

Not a lot of reasons to stay if you will never own a home here. Stay in the bay so you can pay someones mortgage for the rest of your life or share an apartment? Meanwhile the cost of a shared room is more than people are paying for a mortgage in other areas not too far from here.

kevinburke7• 9 years ago

If you grew up here, you'd like to stay here or start a company here, please get involved politically in electing candidates and pushing for policies that help lower the price of housing.

- AB 71 would raise $300 million a year for affordable housing, call your CA Assemblymember.

- SB 35 would take power from local NIMBY's for projects that meet affordable housing targets. Call your CA Assemblymember.

- Email baylands@ci.brisbane.ca.us and ask them to build 4400 units of housing on the Baylands, just south of San Francisco. They are waffling but the local residents want to build an office park.

- Email your C level employees and VC's and tell them about your struggles to continue staying here, afford a babysitter or find a good school, and ask them to get involved in developing better housing policy for the Bay Area.

celdon25• 9 years ago

How will more housing do anything other than make the traffic congestion even worse? More people will move here, prices will be close to the same, and traffic will be way worse. More VCs need to start supporting the idea of satellite offices and remote cultures for anything more than a dent to be made.

blackguardx• 9 years ago

Traffic congestion mainly exists when people don't live close to work. By building more housing all over the Bay Area, people will be more able to live close to work and thus reduce congestion.

Not having enough housing forces people to commute from further out, which adds congestion all along their path.

wang_li2• 9 years ago

AB 71 would raise $300 million a year for affordable housing, call your CA Assemblymember.

This is just an indirect subsidy of Facebook, Google, etc. By providing low income housing and food assistance to low income workers in high cost of living cities, it simply allows the well to do companies to continue not paying a living wage that corresponds to the situation that they've created by concentrating their businesses in the same area.

kevinburke7• 9 years ago

Believe it or not, not everyone who is poor in the Bay Area works at a tech company.

jtmcmc2• 9 years ago

it's actually subsidizing a portion of residents desire to not densify their various cities

afarrell3• 9 years ago

In the same sense that funding the NHS is an indirect subsidy of Barclays, Rolls-Royce, BAE, Dyson, and Skyscanner. By providing free healthcare to folks living in Britain, it simply allows those well to do companies to continue not providing comprehensive health insurance to their employees.

Any political body that tries to foster the growth of high-paying jobs in an area should also put in place policies so that there is at least 1 bed for every desk. More if they want to allow children, retirees, and manual laborers to live there.

vm• 9 years ago

Right on -- we need more supply and local activism seems to be the only way to make that happen.

NIMBYism cuts supply because existing homes are worth more when there are fewer new homes available. Any economically rational homeowner would want that (even though it sucks for everyone else).

Demand is high because people have gotten rich! Google and Facebook stock prices have increased over 2x in nearly 2 years. That probably made a $1M+ for a few THOUSAND people. Then extrapolate all the other big exits or stock growth in time period... unreal wealth creation for many people. Demand isn't going anywhere. It's a supply issue.

narrator• 9 years ago

The problem with the supply of Bay Area housing isn't that there's not enough money involved. Adding more money to the situation will just make costs go higher. It's like healthcare or education.

The problem is that big tech companies have practically unlimited money at their disposal, but are surrounded by communities that like their low density housing, open space lifestyle, think the traffic is terrible already, and aren't really interested in giving it up for any amount of money.

The reason the big tech companies are there is because these communities are really nice and venture capital people, CEOs and top engineers want to live in these nice neighborhoods. If it was just a cost issue, they'd be located in Fresno.

Of course real estate developers are hungry to build new rental apartments because the rents are so high and frame it as some sort of populist issue. It's really just rich people vs other rich people. There is no way they're ever going to build enough for prices to come down. Every tech company would move their entire workforce here if they could do so affordably.

The best solution, IMHO, is to improve public transit, which would have all other sorts of beneficial side effects. The downside is that it would bring poor people into the area which would cause quality of life issues as far as the existing residents are concerned.

kevinburke7• 9 years ago

are surrounded by communities that like their low density housing

This is changing; Facebook is sponsoring 1500 units, 300 affordable, in Menlo Park, Mountain View also becoming more welcoming of new housing, they recently approved 10,000 units in the North Bayshore area. Cupertino (where Apple is located) continues to distinguish itself in a bad way; they approved 11,000 new office spaces for Apple without any corresponding increase in housing, and routinely send people to San Jose city council meetings in an attempt to block housing on San Jose land.

The best solution, IMHO, is to improve public transit

Again, there are promising developments here. Facebook sponsored a Dumbarton Corridor study, and all of the tech companies are throwing their money behind a new bridge tax ballot measure that would raise money for public transit. http://www.greencaltrain.com/2017/08/dumbarton-corridor-stud...

cynicalkane• 9 years ago

The problem is that there is not enough supply to meet demand, and it's politically trendy to blame demand. Squeezing supply is a surefire way to make sure only Google engineers can afford apartments, and that's a bad thing, but the typical anti-housing activist doesn't think this far ahead. They want to blame wealthy tech people for everything, but don't understand they're creating a world where only wealthy tech people can compete with existing property owners for housing.

Increased supply would boost the American economy and make everyone happy except the NIMBYs. But the NIMBYs have the political power.

Balgair3• 9 years ago

Those are all really nice things for the Bay itself, but they aren't the way to fix things, they are just band-aids.

If you really wan't to fix it, call your legislator and tell them to get rid of Prop 13. It's not commonly known for transplants to the Bay, but property taxes only get re-assessed upon sale of the property in California. They do not get reassessed every 5 years or so, like in most states (read the wiki article for more info, and yes, what I said is not exactly true, things get complicated very quickly, but I think the gist of what I said was true)

My folks in the East Bay paid ~70k for the house in about 1970. Their monthly taxes are under $200 and they paid off the mortgage a few decades ago. Their new neighbors paid ~1 million for the exact same 3 bed/1 bath but just filled with black mold. We estimate they pay ~2.5k/month in taxes, let alone the mortgage (likely ~6.5k/month total with electricity, water, sewer, etc. every month, for the rest of their lives).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...

kevinburke7• 9 years ago

I agree, it's just that there isn't any immediate action you can take to get Prop 13 reform, whereas each of the things above is something concrete you can do right now to help the issue. If and when we get a Prop 13 ballot issue then yeah, I'll do a big call to action on it.

xienze6• 9 years ago

So where are your parents going to move when Prop 13 is repealed and they can't afford to live in their home of 45+ years?

cjensen• 9 years ago

Let me give a clear example of why repealing Prop 13 would be a bad idea: my Mom.

My Mom has a fixed income and owns her home. Plenty of savings for retirement like a responsible person. My Dad retired in 1986. This is in Fremont, California. Since then, prices have skyrocketed. In your example, she would have to pay $30K/year in taxes.

So here's the problem: how do you plan for retirement if reassessments are a thing? Depending on luck, you may live for 40 years or more past retirement. Must one move away from family that serves as a support system?

Some states do reassess, but recognize that that is a policy choice. California has made a choice which results in predictable tax consequences which can be planned for. It's not a perfect policy choice, but it is a legitimate choice that results in predictable outcomes.

nostrademons2• 9 years ago

Holy selection bias, batman. The data is taken from an Internet survey by ApartmentList. Why would you ever go on ApartmentList? Because you're looking for a new apartment. Why would you go on ApartmentList particularly, vs. a more common rental site like Craigslist? Because it's organized by city - the front page has glossy photos of major metropolitan areas - and so you can easily browse through other cities without knowing much about what neighborhoods exist in that city.

Title should be "83 percent of ApartmentList visitors in the Bay Area plan to leave". While anecdotally I know a lot of people that are considering moving away, it's nowhere close to 83 percent, and the way the data was collected for this PR piece doesn't support that conclusion either.

beambot• 9 years ago

Questioning the sampling methodology is fine... but why would you expect the percentage (83%) to be higher on ApartmentList than, say, Craigslist?

As long as we're sharing anecdata... 83% sounds about right based on my friend cohort.

nostrademons2• 9 years ago

Craigslist is organized primarily by neighborhood: if you go to sfbay.craigslist.com and visit apts/housing, the first level filter is by region (east bay, north bay, SF, peninsula, etc), and then before you even get to the type of housing, the next-level filter is by neighborhood (Mission, Potrero, Sunset, etc.) These regional filters are virtually useless for someone moving out of state; if I go to portland.craigslist.com and the top-level filters are clark/clackamas/multnomah/etc, I have no idea what these even mean. Even getting to another metro area's Craigslist is a challenge; if I hit www.craigslist.com, it defaults to sfbay.craigslist.com, and to go elsewhere requires finding the tiny "other US cities" link on the front page (the default is "Nearby", which gives other California cities) and selecting a metro area.

All this facilitates within-region moves at the expense of between-region moves.

If I go to ApartmentList.com, it defaults to San Francisco, but right underneath the three local metro areas (ironically, it doesn't have San Jose, where I am) are glossy photographs of Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, and 12 other metro areas. And if I click on one of them, the first filters that come up are by price, size, and amenities. Everything is located on a map, and I don't need to know anything about local neighborhoods.

ApartmentList is clearly using "people who are looking to move between cities" as their market segmentation and features for them as a differentiator, which is great, but also means that their data is suspect if generalized to the population as a whole.

(As for anecdata; I'd say that among my friends and acquaintances close enough to keep tabs on their life, maybe 50% are looking to move out of the Bay Area at some point, including myself & my wife. But only three - out of a sample size of several dozen, perhaps close to a hundred - have actually done it, and two of those moved back to their hometown to be close to family when kids arrived. Moving cities is a big commitment; people dream of it, but few do it.)

chrischen• 9 years ago

In the article:

Back in March, some 40 percent of locals responded to an annual phone survey saying they want to live elsewhere. But that was a survey of all residents, not just renters alone.

tritium• 9 years ago

  an annual phone survey saying they want to live elsewhere

If you were to ask me if I'd rather live elsewhere, in absolute terms, according to the purest form of truth, the answer is Yes. That question, taken as a bald query, with no specifically enforced context is often true for many, if not most, people. I would prefer to live in Shangri-la, or perhaps any tropical paradise, if possible.

Does that mean I want to live elsewhere within the intended interpretation for the context of that particular survey?

abalashov4• 9 years ago

This smacks of the folk threatening to move to Canada every time a Republican president gets elected (although with this particular one, they may really be onto something). If the Bay area's hold were this fragile, it wouldn't have got this way to begin with. Clearly, living within driving distance of 90% of the world's tech giants outweighs a great many other considerations, despite the rent pressure cooker.

Disclaimer: don't live in the Bay Area and don't plan to, so have no dog in this fight.

RickJWagner• 9 years ago

Remote work is nice. You can get paid by the big employers, but live in a place where you can save a few bucks.

You can always visit the big cities on vacation.

iamleppert• 9 years ago

I moved out to the bay area five years ago. Mostly, because I'm a nerd and wanted to be around other like-minded nerds and fulfill my nerd dreams.

Fast forward to today. I've worked at startups, big tech, and generally have lived that tech life. I see my friends back in Ohio taking vacations, buying homes, and generally having a nice life. And I see myself here, paying more and more rent each year, working in the high stress of startups and in the tech scene as my own passion for the actual tech slowly wanes. Sure, I make a lot of money and I have a fancy job but money and prestige, I've learned, isn't everything. If you're pissing all that money away with no end in sight, except to become fabulously wealthy in some kind of exit that likely won't ever happen, you start to question your original motives.

At this point I have decided to stay another five years here, mostly so I can say I had a "10 year career" in the bay area. I will then take that experience, most likely back to the midwest, and try to leverage it into a better job than I'd be able to get by spending 10 years back in the midwest. Hopefully, this strategy will be successful for me. I think by then I'll have a shot at becoming director or VP-level, and coupled with my experience out here I will stand out in the midwest. I'll also have a far better experience-lead "technical education" out here than I would have ever had in Ohio, and that at least stands for something.

abalashov4• 9 years ago

Indeed, one of the functions of tech economy meccas is precisely to enable this type of economic arbitrage, and certainly, that's one of the reasons why the cost of living in them commands a sizable economic premium. :)

Best of luck in your venture.

pj_mukh2• 9 years ago

It sucks that you have to choose between,

"Mostly, because I'm a nerd and wanted to be around other like-minded nerds and fulfill my nerd dreams."

and

"taking vacations, buying homes, and generally having a nice life. "

Ideally, you wouldn't have to choose between the two. In fact, the two should compliment each other instead of trade-off.

chris_72• 9 years ago

My techie friends in New York tend to be the ones taking the interesting vacations because they have a lot more money.

New York and Bay Area tech companies can pay two or three times what the suburban office park type companies pay, and they have other benefits that add up as well (i.e. fully-paid tiny-copay health insurance). While housing costs will eat into that somehwat, whether you rent or buy, I don't think that they come close to cancelling out that increase.

Then, when we do go on vacation, there are more flights, since we're near major international airports. Since I live near EWR and JFK, I don't really need to consider connecting flights for European vacations, for example.

There are other less objective things for describing a "nice life", of course (IMO, renting vs. buying should be categorized as one of these, neither is superior). For example, non-chain restaurant availability, quality of cultural institutions, etc.

nfriedly2• 9 years ago

That's about what I planned for, except I gave up and moved back to Ohio after a year in the bay area. (I was already married before moving out; my wife's wishes were part of the reason for moving back earlier than planned.)

But I managed to keep a low/mid-range SF salary and work remote from Ohio. So, while I'm not a director or VP yet, I do have a house that will be completely paid for in about 8-10 years total, and I should be financially independent by age 45-50.

smcdow• 9 years ago

No surprise there. Does anyone think of the Bay Area as anything more than a way station in life?

velobro• 9 years ago

I'm moving the bay in less than two weeks from the Central Valley. I plan to stay there around 5 years or so then move.

I'd like to own a home one day and there is no one in hell that is happening in the Bay.

excitom• 9 years ago

In 2015, the US Census found that about 80,000 people left the SF-Oakland area over the course of a year. But then about 100,000 new people moved in to replace them.

The sentence that explains it all.

notadoc2• 9 years ago

The bay area, like most of the USA, needs to build up. It is sprawling enough as is. Build up, not out.

83 percent of Bay Area renters plan to leave, says survey

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