Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

https://medium.com/@justinkrause/how-to-save-san-francisco-89b9609e4650

by krausejj • 9 years ago

156 248 9 years ago

0xB31B1B• 9 years ago

If these things interest you, consider learning more about the yimby party (sfyimby.com). We’re a group advocating for these policies at a local and state level. DM me for more details.

krausejj3• 9 years ago

I'm definitely interested. The part that I'm curious about though is that your brand is "SF Yimby." Your content looks Bay Area focused though. Have you thought of broadening the scope to be more regional?

fourstar• 9 years ago

All politics start local.

tmh79• 9 years ago

There are plenty of ally/partner organizations. "East Bay For Everyone" is the east bay one, and there are a few budding orgs in silicon valley (http://www.sjyimby.org/). We all work on local issues, and partner on big projects. For instance, I live in SF but I have traveled to mountain view to advocate for the north bayshore development. SFYIMBY is the "mothership", is the most mature and has the most power to drive votes at the state level.

epistasis2• 9 years ago

There's even a Santa Cruz Yimby. Local organizations are necessary to deal with local issues, and going to local planning meetings, and local city council meetings.

And on the regional level, the YIMBY movement has been very successful this year with several state legislative initiatives that hold cities accountable for meeting their planned housing goals, and for increasing funding for affordable housing.

santaclaus3• 9 years ago

In the Bay Area, you’re unlikely to have easy access to San Francisco at all if you’re not in San Francisco proper.

Eh? It is pretty easy to get to San Francisco from Oakland or Berkeley. Hell, its easier to get to fidi or soma from Oakland than from parts of San Francisco.

Edit: For the downvoters, I’m genuinely curious how BART from Oakland to San Fran is considerd hard? I was simply contesting the point that there is nowhere in the bay with easy access to San Francisco! Now San Jose to San Francisco? Maybe not.

ryguytilidie2• 9 years ago

Yeah, this is bizarre. I used to live near MacArthur BART and my commute into the city took ~20 mins. I could EASILY get to: the ballpark, anywhere along market, anywhere in the mission, SFO.

I now live in El Cerrito, which makes people go "Oh god, how long is your commute?". 31 minutes. That's it. People seem to think it's a different planet, but I can't even get through a full podcast on the ride home.

Totally agree with you on the last part. It's WAY easier to get to FiDi/SOMA/The Mission/Embarcadero or the Ballpark area from Oakland on BART than it would be to get there from: The Presidio, Sunset, Richmond district, etc.

aphextron• 9 years ago

I now live in El Cerrito, which makes people go "Oh god, how long is your commute?". 31 minutes. That's it. People seem to think it's a different planet, but I can't even get through a full podcast on the ride home

Shhhhhhh... don't let people know about El Cerrito ;)

martian• 9 years ago

I don't disagree with the sentiment here, but want to add a few comments: If you have to walk once you get off of Bart (and let's be honest, the Bart stops are pretty well spaced out), your commute goes up. SF transit (the 38 Geary, the N) might seem slower, but you typically don't have to walk as far when you get off. Also, depending on time of day, Muni runs more frequently than the specific Bart lines. Compared with NY Metro (or most other major cities), Bart stops are spread thin.

And quick nit on the Presidio: it's a lovely place to live and if you live there, there is a free shuttle to downtown called the Presidigo that's easy and efficient.

habosa2• 9 years ago

Only if: a) You live near BART b) Your destination is near BART

And there's also the fact that even if a+b are true for you it's very expensive (~$4-5 each way compared to $2.25 in NYC), overcrowded, and has horrible latency. The fact that on a Friday night at 9pm the trains are running 20m apart is embarassing.

santaclaus3• 9 years ago

$2.25 in NYC

$2.75 now! Depends where you are going on BART on how the fares match up to NYC. I'm often traveling from West Oakland to Downtown Berkeley, which is 2 bucks, and hence cheaper than NYC.

usaar3335• 9 years ago

This is cited in the article.

Here's a map of areas within 45 min public transit access of Powell Street BART: https://www.mapnificent.net/bayarea/#12/37.8342/-122.2933/27...

To the articles point, it's basically:

* All of SF

* Downtown Oakland and Berkeley

* Other areas next to BART

To be fair this isn't considering driving or biking to BART + Ferry stations, which is leaving out a lot of other areas. But I think the general pattern holds.

tathougies• 9 years ago

Yeah, I live in Marin, and it's a 30 minute ferry ride to work or a 40-50 minute bus ride, which literally takes me door to door (oh, and it has comfy seats and free wi-fi!)

When I tell people where I live, they think I'm crazy for living in the middle of nowhere.

But, it's honestly great. On the weekend, I have the option of a 10 minute drive to an ancient redwood grove, a 20 minute drive to a national seashore, a 30 minute drive to Napa, a 10 minute walk to empty land and mountains, or a 15 minute drive into San Francisco. Or, I have the option to take the ferry into the city, drink as much as I want, and then take the bus back home.

jaredcwhite2• 9 years ago

So much here resonates with me. I’m sitting in a train right now taking me from a suburb into downtown Portland, OR...an easy commute...only $5 a day gets you unlimited transportation across all of the regional transit services (all part of the excellent TriMet system). I moved here from the Bay Area mainly due to affordability and sane public transit. The Bay Area is an amazing place but it’s imploding under the weight of its own popularity and lack of appropriate regional infrastructure response.

cullenking2• 9 years ago

"I moved here from the Bay Area..."

At the risk of sounding xenophobic, Portland is going to turn into San Francisco soon enough if people/companies keep immigrating from California and New York, and elected officials keep proposing policies modeled after the Bay Area. I'm not saying "stay away" as I enjoy much of the growth PDX has seen over the last few years, especially the fact we have a much easier time finding good developers these days. I'm just concerned that many of our newcomers had it so bad in regard to traffic and costs of living, that their tolerance for those things will, generally speaking, lift up the floor here in Portland.

So, welcome, but please please please push back against freeway expansions, push for more alternative transit, push for more walkable communities, and all that jazz. PDX can't stay small and easy going forever, but maybe we can avoid some of the pitfalls that have befallen other large metro areas.

jaredcwhite2• 9 years ago

Fair points. I'm happy to push for all the things you just mentioned, and I certainly don't want to contribute to messing up the good thing you have going. :)

cvwright2• 9 years ago

At the risk of sounding xenophobic, Portland is going to turn into San Francisco soon enough ...

It is already in the process of doing so.

please please please push back against freeway expansions ...

And this attitude is the reason. I don't know why people think that adopting the same anti-growth, anti-construction, anti-roads attitude that has made San Francisco so unaffordable for regular people will have a different outcome here.

pnathan• 9 years ago

I've long thought that having a regional government be the governing authority for the Tacoma-Everett-Kirkland region would be the proper system to have: turn the cities into bouroughs and have a Puget Sound Metropolis Government (that encompasses Seattle).

This would politically solve many intractable problems that are being naturally caused by local tribes sparring. I think it's likely the proper solution to the urban/suburban donut problem we have in many regions in the US.

Veelox• 9 years ago

The idea of having a Bay Area "Mayor" sounds like an idea that could have solve a lot of the problems in the Bay Area. The issue would be trying to make that transition happen, seems almost impossible.

bradleyjg4• 9 years ago

California has a initiative right? Couldn't it be done through a statewide ballot measure?

junkscience20175• 9 years ago

No, you cannot just vote to delete a city you don't reside in, even in California

ende2• 9 years ago

Interestingly enough, when SF and Oakland were both attempting to annex every neighboring town in proximity, SF had designs on consolidating all the Bay Area municipalities under a system similar to NYC's boroughs.

gojomo• 9 years ago

More details on what coulda, woulda, shoulda been: http://hoodline.com/2017/03/that-time-san-francisco-tried-to...

DrScump4• 9 years ago

There were also plans to fill in most of the Bay as well. After all, "all those pesky wetlands are just wasted space!"

junkscience20175• 9 years ago

I live in Los Gatos which has a population of 30k. I know the mayor by name. I can go to a Town Council meeting and directly address the Council even for needs that would seem trivial.

Tell me how my life is upgraded when my local political context goes from 30k people to six million.

polskibus3• 9 years ago

Is it beneficial for the rest of US to save SF? Won't its demise actually improve the lives in the rest of the country/world as businesses spread out after workers or allow remote work?

krausejj3• 9 years ago

Interesting you mention this - did you see Richard Florida's recent article that says the same thing? https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/10/the-flip-side-of-nimb...

My opinion, however, is that we should do everything we can to encourage prosperity in all our cities, including our superstar cities. If that means more concentrated urbanization in a few places, that's simply a continuation of a trend since 1870 that has resulted in tremendous growth and prosperity for this country and many others.

ghaff9• 9 years ago

If that means more concentrated urbanization in a few places, that's simply a continuation of a trend since 1870 that has resulted in tremendous growth

That's not universally true. Even leaving aside cities with fairly big problems like Detroit, many of the current destination cities saw significant outflow over the course of a number of decades. The current trend for a fair number of (mostly) college-educated millennials to desperately desire living in certain dense urban cores is a relatively recent phenomenon. (Which is part of the reason it's way outpaced things like mass transit infrastructure.)

cowsandmilk• 9 years ago

That assumes people can be equally productive no matter their location. Concentration of industry and specialization of regions increases productivity.

polskibus3• 9 years ago

Side effects of this productivity increase (which is hard to measure anyway), can completely negate the benefits when looking at the big picture. You create concentration in one area and create a bubble instead of betting on a more organic approach.

twinkletwinkle• 9 years ago

Isn't that true of any city? Let's permanently shut down the subway in NYC. The rest of the country will benefit from the flood of educated people looking for jobs elsewhere.

polskibus3• 9 years ago

I suppose it depends whether a city is a hub that serves other cities too, on the shape of wealth distribution and how the rents are shaped. As far as I know NYC has rent control laws and it serves as financial hub for many other cities. If you dismantle it, another city will take it's place, but one not multiple - that's pretty much how finance works.

alexandercrohde• 9 years ago

Great point.

Also worth asking, can a city not just find a comfortable homeostasis? Is it every city's goal to become increasingly dense? Do we measure the "success" of a city on GDP?

I don't. I think the best cities in the world would include Paris, St. Petersburg, Valpariaso, not the manufacturing centers of China or America.

So, define "save."

tomkarlo15• 9 years ago

Paris is twice as dense as SF, and denser than any other US city except New York. Increasing density isn't necessarily a goal, but it's a sign of a healthy city - it means people want to live there so much that they're willing to pack together closer in order to be there, and it helps drive the cultural wealth (food, culture, social) that marks the most prominent cities such as NY, Paris, London, Hong Kong, etc.

tomkarlo15• 9 years ago

It's beneficial for the rest of the US to find solutions that make high density cities successful. Such locations tend to be both your cultural and economic centers, in particular due to the network effects of putting so many people in close proximity to each other. (The Internet helps but hasn't proven to be a substitute quite yet.)

Additionally, dense urban areas tend to have the smallest environmental impact per capita (lower carbon footprint in particular), and help prevent the problem of urban sprawl invading rural areas. Nobody wants to live in a suburb that covers the whole country.

alphonsegaston• 9 years ago

These solutions have already been found and implemented in developed countries around the world. The problems in the US are ideological limits that circumscribe the forms of collectivist action that are required to implement strategies that work. Singapore, Western Europe, Japan etc don’t have these limits and thus don’t have the problems that result from them. Heck in Singapore, upwards of 80% of people live in some form of public housing. It’s not means tested and there’s no stigma about it.

How we’re currently trying to address these problem is a bit like trying to address climate change while refusing to believe it exists.

kendallpark2• 9 years ago

I had the same thought when reading the article. NYC became NYC partly because of the need for physical proximity of businesses. For example, there was a time when you HAD to be physically present on Wall Street to exchange stocks.

In the 21st century, how great the need for physical proximity in the tech industry? Sure, it's convenient to have a ton of skilled devs in one place, but does that convenience outweigh the (rather extreme) cost? Is this sort of flocking behavior a cultural hand-me-down from a bygone area?

That said, this isn't an either/or situation. We can fix SF's mass transit situation AND we can find ways of spreading out businesses across the US.

Ciao_a_tutti• 9 years ago

Hi, I read your comment here -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13152917.

Are you still developing your software, and is it downloadable?

s73ver_3• 9 years ago

If the only way you feel that you can attract talented workers is for some other place to go under, you're not trying hard enough.

habosa2• 9 years ago

This article really gets it. It's all about transportation. It will never be possible for everyone who wants to be in San Francisco to live downtown, or even adjacent to downtown. Just like the article said, Manhattan is much denser but no more affordable.

But we make it so hard for people to get around. You can take a bus for 45m or take the BART which is overcrowded, unreliable, and has trains that can be as much as 20m apart.

Plus using transit around here requires way too much knowledge. There are so many different major transit agencies that don't make any effort to connect (Caltrain, Muni bus, Muni metro, BART, etc) and they all have different pricing schemes (flat rate, monthly passes, pay by distance, etc).

Living 10 miles from your job shouldn't mean you live an hour from your job. NYC gets that. SF Bay Area does not.

archagon2• 9 years ago

Transport in the Bay is so, so hilariously bad. I'm in St. Petersburg, Russia right now and the subway here doesn't actually have a schedule. Instead, there's a clock on the wall. If the next train doesn't arrive within 2 minutes and reset the counter, something's not right. The stations cover basically the entire city, and as a result, venturing 5 miles across town feels about the same as going down a set of escalators and then coming right back up on the other side. This sort of thing is par for the course in Europe. (NY too, for that matter.)

How did one of the richest areas in the world go so catastrophically wrong in this regard?

majormajor• 9 years ago

Much of the infrastructure was built when (1) the country was so rich that most of the people with any influence at all had cars and (2) the country was less populated so traffic and parking were less severe problems.

Everybody builds the infrastructure that the then-state-of-the-art calls for. That was roads and freeways for most of the US. It's an accident of history, not an idiotic mistake. Not doing anything about it for the past ten years is the possible mistake, but from the perspective of the people who already live somewhere, and like having relatively lower density, they have just as much right to doing things how they want as the new tech crowd interlopers do.

sogen4• 9 years ago

The bus arrives on time: Yes

But it's so crowded and stinky, it's not worth it. That's my educated guess about why so many people use car sharing services

Also, why do they keep doing so many new buildings?

Those buildings are going to need people, and people need transportation, and a house...

RealityNow• 9 years ago

Mass transit in America is terrible, period (outside of maybe Manhattan, despite the fact that our subway has been getting worse and is in dire need of upgrading). America sucks at mass transit, but for whatever reason Americans don't seem to care. I think it's because they're complacent, don't know any better, and have this toxic "everybody for themselves" mentality that makes it impossible to improve anything that's in the general public welfare.

tomkarlo15• 9 years ago

Honestly, having lived in both NY and SF for years, you need both - a highly dense urban core, and effective transportation from the outlying regions.

If you just add transport, what will happen is what's now happening in Brooklyn - you'll just see rents pushed up further away from the center as the wealthy utilize mass transport to buy up housing a bit further from the core. It ends up with everyone else just being pushed further away until they're again facing a 60-90 minute commute.

Manhattan is able twice as many residents as San Francisco, which means it can absorb a lot of people before they start to spread outwards. It also helps unburden the mass transit system by reducing the distance that the average resident is traveling to work - helping make room for people commuting from the edges. (And to be fair, anyone in NY now will tell you that their mass transit system is having serious problems, too.)

The Bay definitely needs better mass transit - but I'm not holding my breath waiting for Marin, or Palo Alto, to jump on board with the idea of both better transit and more housing.

In the meantime, SF should be doing everything it can to increase housing stock if it wants to remain affordable - and yes, that might mean high rises in the sunset, or near GG park, despite what the author says. That kind of "build housing, but not in a place I have to see it" attitude is a big part of why we have a housing crunch.

Build more places to live, and the cost of living will come down. It's that simple.

pfarnsworth3• 9 years ago

If you read the article, it's not actually about transportation. He's talking about making a political region around the Bay Area that can break NIMBYism by making decisions that affect the Bay Area as a whole.

Interesting idea, but ultimately a fairy tale. It won't happen.

junkscience20175• 9 years ago

It won't happen because no one really wants it. You need only look at San Jose and LA, both of which grew by swallowing neighoring municipalities, to realize bigger is definitely not better

blang• 9 years ago

I'll have to disagree with you on that one. It's really about transportation and housing density.

The article seems to ignore the idea of the denser urban core gives more places for the wealthy to live and possibly damping the sprawl of medium wealthy house.

Also one of the central ideas of the article is that there needs to be one governing body to make everything work together, but at the same time ignores the fact that half of the color coded map contains housing from a different state.

Furthermore, while public transportation in NYC (and the North east corridor in general) is better, it is still kind of slow. While I couldn't find a great example of 10 miles being an hour in NYC my closest was Astoria queens (relatively cheap) to Wall Street is about 10 miles and takes around 45 minutes on the subway (one transfer).

hardtke• 9 years ago

We are already seeing that Uber/Lyft are causing declines in the usage of public transit, and there could actually be decreasing appetite for public transit investment. Compared to the rest of the US, the Bay Area is actually already pretty good when it comes to fraction of workers commuting by transit (#2 or #3 after New York City and possibly Washington, D.C.). Unfortunately, I find that most people are all in favor of other people using public transportation so that they can drive where they want to go faster. Transit only gains massive adoption for particular commutes where it is substantially faster than driving.

DrScump4• 9 years ago

  Uber/Lyft are causing declines in the usage of public transit

Are there studies that confirm this causation? They've certainly caused declines in the usage of taxicabs, but they compete at very different price points from public transit.

akgerber5• 9 years ago

Manhattan is more affordable. There are plenty of 1-bedrooms available right now under $2000: https://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/area:102,139,135%7Cbeds:...

Brooklyn is still twice as dense as SF, and much more affordable.

winter_blue• 9 years ago

Just curious -- why did you exclude midtown from your StreetEasy search?

(I happen to live in a $2.5k studio just a couple minutes away from Byrant Park. I picked it because it made my commute to work a 9 minute walk.)

ryuker163• 9 years ago

When I looked into moving to New York, I saw similar rents and figured something was up.

Are these sub $2k places across from a public housing complex, rat infested, or just scam listings that magically have a new price once you call>?

wwgg715• 9 years ago

Agree. And people who want density first - how do those people get to work without transit. Transit comes first.

compiler-guy6• 9 years ago

"Someone else should make the sacrifice."

There's the problem right there.

From the article:

"Brisbane ... is currently blocking a large housing development for local reasons."

"And we also probably don’t want high rise condos on the edge of Golden Gate Park. San Francisco isn’t New York."

I've voted in favor of every housing initiative available to me, but you can't make your favorite part of the Bay Area sacred and expect everyone else to give up theirs.

mc325• 9 years ago

Faulting Brisbane is myopic. Brisbane could add maybe a few thousand units. San Francisco could add a hundred thousand units, if they really wanted to, but no, instead they blame a town of 3,500 for their problems. It shows how non introspective they are and how willing to blame others they are.

epistasis2• 9 years ago

We can fault Brisbane just as we can fault every municipality in the Bay Area. That's not short sighted, it's necessary.

stellar6784• 9 years ago

The Brisbane baylands area is a full square mile, which is contiguous with parts of San Francisco and is separated by a 5-lane highway from the current residential part of Brisbane.

I live in a mixed SFH/midrise apartment neighborhood in Oakland, and our population density is 24,000 per square mile.

So putting 24k people in that part of Brisbane wouldn't even look particularly built up.

The Nob Hill, Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill areas (beautiful, treasured, highly desired places) in San Francisco all vary from 30k to 60k per square mile.

Putting 45k people on Brisbane baylands would be awesome.

What's really happening is that Brisbane loves the sweet tax revenues from all the businesses they host, but don't want the (expensive) responsibility to house all those people that work in town.

wahern3• 9 years ago

Do you live in San Francisco? For the past 5 years there have been housing projects _everywhere_ across the city. Last year there were 62,000 units in the pipeline (anywhere from approved to under construction). (http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2016/02/a-record-62000-un...) I can't find a link, but I think the goal several years ago was to have built 30,000 units between 2015 and 2020, and progress has been okay.

In 2016 San Francisco built twice as much housing per capita (EDIT: per new resident) as the state average. (https://sf.curbed.com/2017/5/4/15543668/san-francisco-new-ho...)

The city could do much, much better. The issue here isn't approvals, per se; it's the high cost of construction, and a big part of that is the concessions that the city (and NIMBYs) squeeze out of developers. But in any event at least the city is _approving_ projects. Compared to every other city in the Bay Area San Francisco is leading. Unfortunately that says more about the Bay Area than it does SF, but in any event SF isn't being hypocritical when it criticizes Brisbane, Palo Alto, etc.

rsync• 9 years ago

"Brisbane ... is currently blocking a large housing development for local reasons."

Good for them. I mean, probably not, but Brisbane is their town and they should determine their own values and courses of action.

The solution to San Francisco needs to occur in San Francisco - not CC county or Marin or Sonoma. There's a lot of very, very distinguished and historic and noteworthy 1-4 story housing stock in San Francisco that I hope stays around ... but there's a lot of 1-4 story housing stock that is complete shit and needs to be rebuilt, in-filled, brought up to 2017 sanitation and earthquake regs and served by new rail lines.

Notice how I didn't say "served by BRT[1]" ? Served by rail.

If you see a bus, they blew it.

[1] Bus Rapid Transit (and related half-assed bullshit)

rthomas6• 9 years ago

What's wrong with buses?

nerfhammer2• 9 years ago

Brisbane is their town and they should determine their own values and courses of action.

Do you feel the same way about other critical shortages that cause massive human suffering?

gok2• 9 years ago

Served by rail. If you see a bus, they blew it.

And if you see streetcars, they blew it worse. Streetcars combine the traffic creation of buses with the inflexibility of a rail line. As an added bonus they make biking extra treacherous.

If you have the budget to build a real buried or elevated rail line, go for it. Otherwise stick with BRT until you do.

lukasb• 9 years ago

Except San Francisco is paying the price for Mountain View and Palo Alto being willing to add jobs but not housing. Arguing "well then those cities should build housing" is true, but misses the point: given that people can commute, city boundaries are sort of irrelevant. It's a regional problem.

GiraffeGlove• 9 years ago

Nice to see someone I can agree with. Sure there's plenty of beautiful Victorian homes in San Francisco, but there's a lot of shitty ones that need to be razed too. SF doesn't need all these 3-4 story, 3-4 BR single family homes with tiny unusable garages - it needs taller denser and modern apartment complexes with a nice park in the middle.

All but about 1/8th of the city is just a sprawling suburb.

tedivm3• 9 years ago

There's a difference between the major park in a major city that is used by thousands of people a day, and that shitty town of 5k people that doesn't want anyone else to move in. Shit, there are more people in GGP right now than there will be all week in Brisbane.

At the same time it's not like Brisbane isn't building. They just aren't building housing, because they want to build commercial so they can get the taxes without having to get the population increase.

compiler-guy6• 9 years ago

Yes there is a difference. The difference is that Golden Gate Park is near the author's home, and Brisbane isn't.

High rise condos around Golden Gate park wouldn't affect the usability of Golden Gate Park all that much. It would barely affect the beauty.

Yes, Brisbane ought to build more housing, but what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.

And if we want Brisbane to give up its autonomy so that we can cram housing into it, and significantly change the character of the place--and we do!--then we have to be willing to cram housing into other places that will significantly change the character of that place.

As soon as one goes all sacred cow, one loses the game.

krausejj3• 9 years ago

Very true, and I definitely didn't mean to imply in the article that the areas around SF should "make the sacrifice."

What I'm advocating for is regional ("metropolitan") leadership and planning. We all have to make sacrifices. That doesn't mean we can't have planning - I think urban planning is essential to building a city that works. But we need to do the planning at the level we're having the problem - which is, the Bay Area level.

Maybe high-rises do make sense on Golden Gate Park, but then we'd better have BART stations there taking people down to Mountain View and Sunnyvale (or wherever they're working).

cmontella4• 9 years ago

I used to live in the dead center of the city, in the Ashbury Heights neighborhood. It took me literally 1 hour to get to work, down town taking muni (fastest time recorded is 40 minutes without any delays and essentially running the "last mile"). This was the longest commute of my life, and I lived 3 miles from work. It would take me just a little more time to walk there. Biking was faster, but more dangerous -- I got hit once (by another cyclist running a light) and that was it for me.

That, plus people assaulting my wife on the street, plus $3000 rent for a 1 bedroom, and I had it with the city. I loved it, it was a great experience, but I just couldn't take it anymore. Now I work from home in the central valley, where I can afford to rent a 3000 sq. ft. home (not because I'm paid much, but because housing is so cheap), and my commute is 1 minute. I'm much happier out here, yet I find when I tell people from SF where I live, some (not all, most people ask "Where the heck is that?") wrinkle their noses. I say, if you're tired of the city, give it a shot -- you might be happier.

tomkarlo15• 9 years ago

That's great, but it seems kind of orthogonal and non-scalable to the problem of the Bay Area housing crisis. Are you proposing that everyone in SF move to places like the Central Valley (driving up price) and start driving around cars (increasing traffic and pollution)? What about folks who don't have the luxury of jobs where they can work remotely?

cmontella4• 9 years ago

kind of orthogonal and non-scalable to the problem of the Bay Area housing crisis.

The problem can be attacked from two angles. Either ramp up housing development to take care of the population influx, or slow down the population influx to match the rate of housing development. Obviously, the people of the area have a vested interest in keeping the area attractive; but for the rest of us, I think it's important to remember there are other places to live and you can be just as happy or happier elsewhere. I'm someone who could have used that reminder a year ago.

There's a lot of justification that goes into paying $3000 per month to live in a one bedroom apartment. You have to recoup that value elsewhere. A lot of it has to do with the job opportunities available to tech workers. That's undeniable. But some of the other justifications I used were more or less lies I started telling myself about why I had to stay.

Are you proposing that everyone in SF move to places like the Central Valley (driving up price)

It's already happening, so maybe we should embrace it as a valid option. The town I'm living in has become sort of a telecommuter town, precisely because of rents in SF.

and start driving around cars (increasing traffic and pollution)?

I actually went about 8 months without a car in SF. I took Uber, bike, and muni as my get around. Between me and my wife, we were spending $700 per month on transportation, so we ended up buying a car to get around -- it was just more convenient. Out in the valley, we actually put fewer miles on it, because it's easier to bike out here, and things are actually closer to us than they were in the city (both in miles and minutes).

eip• 9 years ago

What about folks who don't have the luxury of jobs where they can work remotely?

I would bet >50% of the people working in the bay area who say they can't work remote are doing jobs that could very easily be done remote.

Do you work on a computer? You can do that remote.

ryguytilidie2• 9 years ago

"Are you proposing that everyone in SF move to places like the Central Valley (driving up price) and start driving around cars (increasing traffic and pollution)?"

I don't know where you came up with this. The OP implied that by moving away from a heavily populated area and working remotely, he was able to afford more space and shorten his commute. You managed to turn no commute into increased pollution and moving to a less densely populated place as "driving up price"?

airstrike2• 9 years ago

Of course someone from SF would have to call it "orthogonal"...

Feniks• 9 years ago

The alternative is America getting its act together and change their cities into Singapore/Tokyo/Hong Kong. Good luck waiting for that.

Infrastructure is not something the average citizen seems to give a fig about.

guiomie• 9 years ago

I live in Lower Haight, and takes me 10-20 minutes. But I agree with you SF or just city life can take a toll.

diogenescynic• 9 years ago

You left out some other frequent experiences: having your car broken into, bums pooping on your fire escape, used needles all over, BART general unsanitary and unsafe conditions, bad service and crowded restaurants, I could go on and on.

San Francisco is the most expensive and over-priced shithole. I’ve lived here for 10 years and I’m completely over it. I can’t wait for some startup or tech company to use this as a disruptive opportunity. I only live here because my job is here. I’d move if my job would let me.

swendoog4• 9 years ago

I think this goes without saying but... if you're a software developer, there's never been a better time to find a new job, at a different company.

Mz9• 9 years ago

Fresno is really a great place. I was there for over two years. I don't know why it gets badmouthed so much. And, yes, compared to coastal big cities in California, it is dramatically cheaper.

They are starting a high speed rail line there. It is 500,000 people and much more spread out than the coastal big cities, so it is not nearly as dense. The bus system is the best I have ever seen in the US, so you can live without a car there, even though it sprawls. I have lived without a car for years and Fresno was a big improvement over previous experiences.

I considered doing a website* as an ode to the city/to promote a walkable lifestyle there. It didn't get off the ground and now I have moved out of state. But, if you want to stay in California and want to get away from some of the insanity in places like SF, I will second "just move to the Central Valley if you can arrange it."

http://pedestrianfresno.blogspot.com/

jacobolus6• 9 years ago

The weather is miserable for half the year, and there’s less to do. A bunch of my extended family lives in Fresno and elsewhere in the Central Valley, but I can’t imagine living there.

The politicians they elect throughout the Central Valley are also absolutely bonkers.

ben_jones• 9 years ago

Not talked about: you're married. Having worked from home while being single it has its ups and downs. Sure you can get to the gym more but unless you're a natural extrovert you're going to meet way less people - and you'll be less likely to "find someone" (if thats what you're after) compared to the huge number of single people in the city.

I feel like this is a hidden motivation for many people. Maybe just me.

chrisseaton2• 9 years ago

Surely the only difference is you won't meet the people at work, but you probably wouldn't date them anyway would you. You'd still meet people at every other place people meet, which is where people look for dates anyway.

chrisseaton2• 9 years ago

lived 3 miles from work

Huh? So why weren't you just walking in the first place? That's like a 45 minute brisk walk. That doesn't sound like any kind of hardship.

carb• 9 years ago

A 45 minute brisk walk to and from work every day is excessive. By no means is 7.5 hrs of walking every week a commute I would call "just walking".

cmontella4• 9 years ago

It's a 570 ft elevation difference between where I lived and work. Yeah, maybe I need to work out more, but that was just too much for me 5 days a week. Also I didn't like walking through mid market.

acchow• 9 years ago

I used to live in the dead center of the city, in the Ashbury Heights neighborhood. It took me literally 1 hour to get to work, down town taking muni

Was a great deal of that time spent walking? Because taking the N from Cole Valley to downtown normally takes 15 minutes.

closure3• 9 years ago

After 8 years in SF I have been seriously considering moving to NYC, largely over my commute to South Bay, but also for the substantial increase in density which brings with it a manifold increase in cultural opportunities and activities.

The weather is a drawback (in probably 200+ days in NYC over 10 years I can remember a single week of what I would consider nice weather). I have realized that crappy climate is a poor reason to avoid the move.

My one main concern is finding a job with similar pay and interesting work. 90+% of the job listings I see are for Java enterpise-type work paying a third of what my (admittedly more than comfortable) current total pay is.

cmontella4• 9 years ago

I have realized that crappy climate is a poor reason to avoid the move.

I'd be interested to hear your reasons. For me, I'm the exact opposite. In the 3 years I've lived in CA, I haven't had bronchitis once, which used to happen almost every year on the east coast. Not having to deal with 14 degree weather and snow is one of the main reasons I moved away. For me, so much happiness flows this simple fact.

closure3• 9 years ago

All I really mean is that on balance I think it’s worth the trade-off (due to the other pluses). I wouldn’t trade SF for say an inexpensive area with no culture and bad weather, but I think I am willing to put up with the heat & humidity along with cold & snow given all the rest NYC has to offer.

hendzen• 9 years ago

What kind of work do you do - and what qualifies as interesting work? I assure you a talented software developer can earn as much if not more in NYC than SF.

rorski• 9 years ago

I don't agree that crappy climate is a poor reason to avoid a move. Ideally it's not your only reason, but the climate in California is definitely a major selling point for just about everyone (myself included) who have come here from the east coast and the primary reason I won't go back. And the surrounding outdoors (if you're into that) is much better in SF than NYC, and really any city I know of in the US. A 30-45 minute drive from SF can get you into Muir Woods, wine country, Half Moon bay, etc. Really beautiful places that are very accessible for a weekend day trip. 45 min from NYC gets you to... Staten Island? Coney Island if you're lucky? It's a no brainer for me on that front.

closure3• 9 years ago

Yes I understand that and the outdoors activities have no appeal to me.

I’ve lived in Michigan, Texas, Washington, California. The weather in California is dramatically better than the others, but on balance I would much rather give up 3+ hrs of commuting a day for 1hr where some of that is in a humid subway station.

If you haven’t lived in the humid areas of Texas, you don’t know that it’s much worse than NYC/Boston/etc in summer. Rather than 85-90 with 85% humidity, think 104 with 85+% humidity. With virtually zero culture. And continual rain throughout the otherwise mild winter.

apendleton• 9 years ago

Generally great. I live in DC and we suffer from similar troubles because of lack of regional planning integration (multiple states rather than just multiple cities, so in some ways it's worse).

That said:

And we also probably don’t want high rise condos on the edge of Golden Gate Park. San Francisco isn’t New York.

Probably going to have to get over this objection for a plan like this to work. Transit and accessibility are great places to start, but transit-oriented development requires density to succeed. If people are going to be getting around via transit lines instead of by car, you need a lot of people to live within easy walking distance of each residential transit stop, and you need a lot of the places people are trying to get to (work, leisure, etc.) to be within easy walking distance of the stop on the other end of their trip. High transit ridership and neighborhoods comprised of single-family homes don't work well together, and while part of what makes the Bushwick example work well is the better transit, the density is a big part of the calculus as well (again, on both ends).

pascalxus• 9 years ago

How can he sit there and deny the benefits of larger supply? Obviously, if supply increases vastly enough the prices will come down. Sure, maybe not in the first thousand units, but you've gotta build baby build! It'll probably take 10s of thousand of units or even 100s of thousands of units, but it's gotta be done. And sure, it won't be as cheap as the suburbs, but if we get rid of regulations and allow SV to innovate enough, we can automate the building of these tall buildings and allow the price to come down to levels never before seen.

Allowing commuters to cover even longer distances is just another bandaid. One that will just add more environmental damage. The least environmentally damaging commute is the one that happens on foot.

Increasing supply to reduce costs to where EVERYONE can afford the city is the ultimate solution we should strive for, not more lotteries for a tiny percentage.

chrismealy• 9 years ago

If nice places for people are too expensive, make more nice places for people. But instead we make more nice places for cars.

SirZimzim• 9 years ago

Parking lot to parking lot, home computer to cubicle.

pfarnsworth3• 9 years ago

The real solution is for companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, etc to have the COURAGE to create large work epicenters outside of the Bay Area. Create headquarters for tens of thousands of workers in more remote areas with a strong infrastructure, with great benefits for working families. Do what Amazon wants to do with a second HQ, and create demand outside of the Bay Area.

If Google created a new HQ in Kansas City, with it's fiber links, and low cost of living, and added really great benefits like free day care, etc, then won't software engineers move there, especially those that are ready to start a family? I bet you they would. I definitely would. Then it would create a new ecosystem of economic prosperity there, and then it would take a lot of pressure off the Bay Area.

jra_samba• 9 years ago

In its heyday HP did this. Look at places like Roseville and Fort Collins. Essentially company towns. And while the going is good, and the quarterly numbers keep going up, everything is great.

But eventually the bad times come, and the employees living in these places are cast off like so many worn shoes, along with their families.

I've seen this. I'm never moving out of the SF Bay Area until well after retirement (and maybe not even then :-). Going to a Kansas City HQ is a gamble that whatever company will always do well. Do you want to gamble your future on that ? Do you want to gamble your family on that ?

pfarnsworth3• 9 years ago

Risk vs return. That's okay that you prefer the Bay Area. I would have no problems if I knew that Google were committing to a permanent HQ in Kansas City. If they close down, they close down. I have no control over that, but I do have control over saving money and still maintaining a high quality of life because I'm not obsessing over property prices, private school for my kids because the public schools are so terrible, etc.

akgerber5• 9 years ago

The tradeoff is that if you make anything resembling Bay Area wages in Kansas City, you can pay off a lovely older house in a walkable neighborhood in two years or so.

Apocryphon4• 9 years ago

Amazon seems intent on attempting this. It's incredibly doubtful that they'll build HQ2 in the Bay Area (though the backlash from such a decision would be incredibly hilarious).

usaar3335• 9 years ago

If Google created a new HQ in Kansas City, with it's fiber links, and low cost of living, and added really great benefits like free day care, etc, then won't software engineers move there, especially those that are ready to start a family? I bet you they would. I definitely would.

Maybe some, but I'd be really surprised if you get substantial numbers of your top people to move - which effectively blocks the overall team moving.

A Google Staff engineer makes $400k+. On such a salary, the high cost of living in the Bay Area really isn't a problem; sure in Kansas you could afford a mansion on that salary, but a lot of folks (myself included) prefer "paying" for the Bay Area's weather, scenery, and culture over larger living.

alkonaut5• 9 years ago

Aren't there attractive places in California where tech companies could set up offices to accommodate those who want to leave the valley, while still making sure everyone is still just a few hours drive away if they should be required in a meeting at main HQ?

ghaff9• 9 years ago

At some point though, if Bay area housing prices continue to rise because of all the people who must must must live there, the Googles and Apples of the world aren't going to keep raising salary levels accordingly. And startups/smaller companies (to say nothing of many non-tech jobs) certainly won't/can't. Something's got to give and even if housing supply increases somewhat (as it's slowly doing) there's inevitably going to be some equilibrium where enough potential employees and employers go enough is enough and move elsewhere.

After all, there are plenty of successful, non-startup companies that are quite distributed.

bproven• 9 years ago

IMO a better (or at least positive) solution would be for these huge bay area companies - especially those on the peninsula - to spread out there offices along the south peninsula and into south bay. We should be adding commercial into these residential areas so that everyone (in tech) is not traveling to the same region from all over the south bay or SF. Live where you work! This IMO would alleviate the traffic exodus that occurs in basically 2 directions every day. Put more companies in Los Gatos, Saratoga, Campbell, San Jose downtown (especially since it is fed by light rail). Stop putting offices in these "office/commercial zones" where there is NO public transportation. Why does everyone need to be in one small section of the bay area?

Optionally if we are committed to this current "everything must be in one region" mentality lets get together as communities (Mtn View, San jose, campbell, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, etc) and get the rail built now. One of the biggest stressors in this area (outside housing costs) is the traffic and aged infrastructure. Frankly its easily solved - if this supposed "progressive" area would do what needs to be done. Yes it would cost, but it would make daily life so much better for everyone.

Yes, I know its more complex than this (one issue is NIMBYs and those that bought in early to housing and need/want it to go up), but how can our children live in this area and make it home in its current state? Humans seem very short sighted.

(sorry for the overuse of quotes and my possibly incoherent rant :) )

abecedarius• 9 years ago

Would you bet on the rail network being greatly improved before robocars greatly improve the experience on the road network? That’d be good, but I wouldn’t.

purplezooey• 9 years ago

Great article! I like the call for bold strokes. We seem helpless in the face of our big problems.

taheca3• 9 years ago

Those of us who grew up in less desirable environments (where they have real winter) are perfectly content with living out farther, and commuting in on the BART.

I personally live out by the Delta surrounded by fresh air, fresh fruit, and nice people (we have a strong community and frequently see people we know out and about, it's great). My commute into SF is about 90 min one way, and it is the easiest, least stressful commute I have had in my life.

Johnny5553• 9 years ago

With 3 hours/day spent commuting plus a full day of work, when do you have time to see your neighbors?

I live in a Peninsula community with a 10 minute bike ride to work and that is the easiest least stressful commute I've had in my life.

taheca3• 9 years ago

I see my neighbors on the weekend. My wife, who stays at home with our kids, sees them all the time.

I'd love a 10 min bike ride commute, but my career is non technical therefore I don't have the same amount of opportunities as others on here may.

No complaints out of me though. My commute may be long, but my life is rich (and I am not talking about money).

alkonaut5• 9 years ago

I hope you work during your commute so you don't have to be away from family for 3 + 8 (Or more) hours. That means basically working the whole day all week, seeing your family only on weekends. I can't imagine what kind of comp someone would want for that (effectively permanent 55 hour weeks).

taheca3• 9 years ago

Easy to make a statement like this.

My wife has never worked because she did not have a career established when we decided to have kids. Allowing her to stay home is one of my proudest accomplishments (and it has done wonders for our kids).

I am home every night to spend a few hours with my kids, and I read to them every night before bed.

I spend all day on the weekends with them.

Sure I would love a shorter commute, as I said, I am in a non technical, and not in as high demand profession as many on here.

This is what a regular person goes through Hackernews. Keep that in consideration the next time you feel like complaining.

kcorbitt• 9 years ago

I agree with everything that the article writes. That said, if you work in SF and are looking for a concrete way to improve your commute today without adding another car to the road, consider purchasing an electric bike or scooter. I've been commuting from San Bruno to SOMA (14 miles each way) for the last 3 months on an electric bike and I vastly prefer the experience to the available alternatives. If you live closer in, it's even more of a no-brainer.

RestlessMind• 9 years ago

Do we want to be a white-washed Disneyland for software developers, or do we want to be a vibrant, diverse, integrated (and bigger) city?

What if people actually prefer the former? I mean, sure, their "stated preference" can be later but the "revealed preference" can actually be a myopic selfish one; which is not that abnormal and totally in line with basic human nature (claims of "being progressive" notwithstanding!)

Apocryphon4• 9 years ago

Social causes aside, do a majority of software developers really want to live only with software devs? What happened to monocultures being bad?

It might come with being a local, but I always feel alarmed when people contrast to places like NY or LA, which have a dominant industry but isn't as dominated by it, and have costs of living that allow those outside of the high-paying industry to survive. Having a one-industry region is trouble both economically, and culturally. (Doesn't it get tiring to only meet people who are in tech? Doesn't it create bubbles cut off from the larger world?)

bluthru• 9 years ago

Do we want to be a white-washed Disneyland

People spend $100 a day to experience this.

ringaroundthetx• 9 years ago

Finally, empirical evidence that San Francisco sucks without just coming off as a pretentious New Yorker.

SF masquerades as a world class city because there is literally nothing else for Northern California to compare it to.

abalone• 9 years ago

tl;dr Uses excellent maps to visualize just how dramatically worse our regional mass transit is vs. New York. Makes the point that Manhattan is very dense but still not affordable. What makes New York more affordable is the accessibility of less expensive boroughs.

Wackier highlights: calls for politically reorganizing the bay area into a metropolitan government, and confuses regional work commutes with "diversity and inclusion."

atcole• 9 years ago

His proposal is two-fold, for those who want a summary.

1) Build better transit to connect areas that are affordable (or areas at all i.e. San Jose / Oakland) to central business districts

2) To accomplish this by creating a centralized governing authority for the whole Bay Area.

I wonder if this kind of consolidation has ever happened before. Did New York City absorb areas that it now controls as it evolved, or did the parties agree afterward to some symbiotic relationship?

vosper• 9 years ago

I'd argue Oakland is fairly well connected to the SF CBD. A lot of people in Oakland live within (at most) a 15-20 minute walk of a BART station, and then it's ~20 minutes to downtown SF, with only a handful of stops.

What surprises me is that there aren't more startups headquartered in Oakland. Sure, it's a bit more hassle for people in SF to get out there, but you're going against the flow of traffic, so the commute is pleasant. And my suspicion is there are a lot of senior people living in the East Bay (or even further out). People who've moved on from small apartments and roommates and and have their own places, or have a family, or want cheaper rent... whatever it is. I suspect there's enough of those people who'd love to be getting on and off at 19th St Oakland and working down near Lake Merritt, rather than commuting into the city. I have a senior engineer friend, living in Berkeley, who said he'd take a $20k pay cut not to have to commute into SF. And that's not even a bad commute.

If I was starting up, looking to save some money, and wanting to hire experienced developers, I would definitely be setting up in Oakland.

samlevine• 9 years ago

San Francisco's population density: 18,573/sq mi

Manhattan's: 71,998.9/sq mi

It's difficult to look at this without thinking that the initial problem to be solved is density in the urban core.

Eventually, yes, you need much better transit to outlying areas. This will take decades even with iron clad political will, which isn't happening short of a takeover by house of Bourbon.

timr• 9 years ago

That's not how it works. You don't build housing first and the infrastructure to get to it later. Nobody rational would build a skyscraper in the outer sunset (even if they could), because they know that the demand isn't there. Commuting to the outer sunset from downtown is painfully inconvenient. This is why rents are substantially lower on the west side of SF, despite the lower density.

Build effective transit, and dense housing automatically happens, because people will organically demand it -- the story plays out identically in nearly every city that builds a light rail line. The YIMBY activists in SF don't seem to understand this, despite lots of rhetoric about supply and demand.

The truth is, YIMBY folks in SF are myopically focused on a few core neighborhoods that are already pretty dense (i.e. the Mission), and completely ignoring the driving forces behind the demand. This is largely because they're being supported by people who want to re-develop already expensive neighborhoods, which is a quick way to make a buck in the short term, and a dubious way of responding to a housing crunch. An effective movement to increase housing density in SF should focus on better transit corridors, and leave the housing policy to happen of its own accord.

In other words: if you want density in SF, run a subway line down Geary.

methodover2• 9 years ago

Better transit and a unified representative government is a great idea.

It's also never going to happen. Or if it will, it's decades away.

I've become convinced that if we want real change, it needs to be done by technology. Lyft for example could solve the transit problem if they figure out how to lower the cost of a ride, perhaps with automated drivers. Then you wouldn't need to build too much more infrastructure -- no need to get the entire bay rallied around a hundred billion dollar public transit system that's just going to get outdated again. We might need to make another bridge though...

Housing is another problem though. I've been wondering if technology can help there too but I haven't come up with any good ideas yet.

whamlastxmas• 9 years ago

AirBnB arguably has the potential to help with housing. Some would argue it also winds up hurting it though.

methodover2• 9 years ago

The best idea I've heard is a system that helps people pool their money together to buy expensive single family homes, then split the lot into multiple homes or into a condo.

kapauldo• 9 years ago

Is SF out of buildings to renovate? If I were to move to SF it would be to build housing. Seems like a sure bet.

Saving San Francisco goes deeper than “build more housing”

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