I think remote work is often understated in reasons people move away. When you go into the office every day, it's pretty obvious that you have to live in whatever city you live in. But with remote work, the question becomes "if I don't have to live here, do I want to keep living here". For many (including myself), the answer was a definitive NO.
Sure many headlines and news segments make it seem that it's the crime, the high rent, and all these super visible indicators and while I'm sure that factored into the decisions of some, for many it was that they just wanted a change and got the golden opportunity to do so.
EDIT: It's not even that one may even "want a change", it's when you're presented with the opportunity to make a change, the gears in your head start turning as to what options you have at your disposal. I would imagine many people that moved had previously no intention to but just got the opportunity and decided to take it while it lasted.
I am not in the Bay Area myself, but about half of my friends there have relocated in the last couple years. A bunch to Washington or Oregon, some to Texas, one to Nashville, and a few others to places mostly in the northeast. All of them cited cost of living as the primary reason ... but all also mentioned full time remote work is what finally made it possible to move.
When you aren't chained to a physical location by your job, lots of things become possible.
I actually know several people who used this as an opportunity to move into the Bay Area. The sudden drop in rents made it more attractive and they jumped.
They both work in industries where face to face communication is a competitive advantage. It’s easy to forget that not every job is naturally compatible with remote work like it is for those of us who type on computers all day.
I'm in this boat. We moved apartments in SF during the pandemic and we now live in an amazing neighborhood, amazing building, for 40% less then we were paying for a below average apartment before.
It's not one or the other (moving in or out), it's about getting what you (the individual) wants, and being smart about timing and using world events to your advantage, not disadvantage.
Some people wanted to move away from SF, some wanted to move in. It was an opportunity for either.
Where have you been seeing the rent drop in SF? I'm in the south bay and have been interested in moving to SF now that I'm going remote, since I want a bit more active nightlife. Now that I'm remote, I don't have to stay in south bay.
Largely SOMA and parts of the Mission and the Van Ness corridor. It's mainly areas which generally feel less like a neighborhood and more like a bustling city - mainly areas where renters are more OK with living in than homeowners would be willing to purchase in. A great example is the new Chorus building which opened in 2021 on Van Ness and Mission. It remained mostly empty throughout 2021 despite offering 10 weeks "free rent" with a 1 year lease. Stunningly gorgeous building, incredible amenities, but a subpar location - a condo here would be sold at a heavy discount because of the location, thus this is a luxury rental apartment instead. Across the street is the new Fifteen Fifty building, also with heavy "free 2 months rent" discount for a 1 year lease.
But even in the most desirable neighborhoods, rents are still down about 10-15% compared to pre-COVID
I would revise this statement:
"mainly areas where renters are more OK with living in than homeowners would be willing to purchase in"
To say:
Areas that appear less like traditional neighborhoods with single family homes and more large modern condo buildings.
Our building, and many around ours are largely condos, not rentals. They don't look like traditional houses, but even in this more modern area with multi story buildings and retail all over the 1st floor it's not that it's a place that people don't want to buy homes, it's that there are no "homes" to buy, just condos.
I use the word "home" to also include condos. Home does not mean "house".
Hayes Valley has tons of condos - homeowners want to buy here. Homeowners don't really want to buy at 6th and Mission and a Condo there would be heavily discounted per sqft.
Mission Bay also feels like a neighborhood - calm, some park space, all condos
Rents are definitely down - or at least they were 1.5 years ago when I last moved. Before the pandemic, 1 bedrooms were usually at least $3500 and often $4000+. When I looked last January, there were decent places between $2500 and $3000. I emailed some landlords saying "is there any chance you could go lower" and they offered me free rent for 1-3 months. I ended up with a pretty good deal on a large one bedroom in the Mission.
I have seen more 'For rent' signs in the last 3 or 4 months than I have in the last 15 years I've been living here. No idea how that translates to rent prices though.
I haven’t seen these supposed rent drops in SF or the Bay Area either. My lease in the peninsula is up next month and the rent is increasing about 8%, and that’s aligned with the prices I’m seeing elsewhere for comparable apartments.
We've known multiple people whom their building was expecting they'd continue their lease at the higher rent while offering the lower rents to the general public for new tenants. I'd encourage you to find out what they're advertising rents at for new tenants and then hold them to that advertised rent.
The available units listed on the website are even slightly higher prices.
There’s another nearby building that’s extremely similar (same developer, I believe, and very similar floor plans, appliances, and amenities). Last summer comparable units in that building were priced the same as in my building, but are now a ludicrous 20-25% higher than my building.
Even renters increase housing costs. Housing is finite and some people sit on the fence about buying or renting. An inability to find a rental unit sometimes tips them into the buying territory
Speculators betting it will come roaring back afterwards, money still getting cheaper, folks with families that can’t move, inability to ‘just move’ if you own, all probably contributing.
Housing prices have been out of whack with fundamentals (cash flow) since at least ‘12-‘13.
Here's another more bleak option. Just like in 2008 when corporations bought up huge swaths of the housing market for cash while no one could get a loan. (which is part of the current issue with not enough homes to buy)
They aren't betting the market will come roaring back, they are betting that they can corner the market and housing will be a subscription just like everything else they sell.
Rent seekers aren't going anywhere, and the cost is really immaterial to them for the most part. They don't need cashflow, they need a monopoly.
As usual, the “speculators” and “out of towners” and others are convenient scapegoats, lest we have to face the underlying supply and demand and barriers to development.
You want to have a monopoly on housing in a major city? I’d be hard pressed to point out an industry where that would be harder. You have literally millions of competitors.
San Francisco is already the second most densely populated city in the USA (the first being NYC). SF is actually already slightly more densely populated than Tokyo, which many like to tout as a mecha for de-regulated zoning.
With around 6,300 people per km2, "it is similar in terms of population density to San Francisco. In Tokyo’s 23 wards, however, the density is 15,381 people per km2, making it 50% higher than New York City as a whole."
My comment was more about the parent comment's poor comparison between SF and Tokyo by using Tokyo Metropolis (Tokyo-to) population density – which includes large areas of rural land and mountains – instead of the 23 Wards which is still not perfect but a better approximation of the "city" part of Tokyo Metropolis.
I agree that the link's comparison of Tokyo 23 Wards with all of NYC is not an appropriate comparison. But not necessarily because of single-family housing as you describe. Even for Nakano Ward (with population density nearing Manhattan's), 20.8% of residential buildings are detatched single-family homes and 48.9% of residential buildings are less than 3 stories tall [0], surely a higher proportion than several NYC boroughs. Its high density is more due to having fewer areas with offices, narrower streets (compared to NYC), and barely any green space.
I guess you mean the housing that you see coming on Caltrain after pass through south San Francisco? 30% of SF’s housing is classified as single family, so there must be some in the city. Just not as common as it is say, here in Seattle.
Not quite. The Brisbane project was an old Southern Pacific (Union Pacific?) yard that's right by the Caltrain station. AFAIK there's still nothing there.
South of the Mission take a look at Oceanview/Merced Heights/Ingleside (OMI). That's largely SFH. BVHP (Bayview + Hunters Point) as well and parts of it are visible from Caltrain. Heading west you'll find basically all of the Presidio, Forest Hill, Sunset, and Richmond neighborhoods are SFH or maybe low-rise apartment buildings.
A lot of the single family houses in SF have walls right up next to each other but do not actually share a wall. While Forest Hill properties historically had racially themed covenants, most of those neighborhoods predate HOAs and the worst of the covenants have been discarded.
>San Francisco is already the second most densely populated city in the USA
This isn't true, even if you limit it to cities with population over 100k. New York City, Jersey City, and Paterson, NJ are all more dense than SF.[0] San Francisco is effectively tied with notoriously anti-development Cambridge, MA. Quite a few smaller cities around the country are more dense as well.[1]
The housing situation in San Francisco is nothing to be proud of, unless you think that having the highest median home prices or median rents is a laudable achievement.
Urban areas are desirable even outside of the availability of high paying jobs. There are neighborhoods in America's desirable cities filled with the adult children of wealthy people who pay their kids' insane rents while they pursue arts, fun and wait tables or bartend on the side for petty cash or to keep busy. That section of urban residents are not dependent on high paying jobs and will continue to seek out cities for the lifestyle aspect.
Sure, It's not a sure thing forever and not all areas are going to be winners, but if you have a big enough budget, you can just buy houses everywhere for a long time and probably make decent rent for a while. Heh, if not, or when it ends, they can just dump it and or the company and walk away. It's not like they are doing it with their own money.
This is a spooky narrative, but the rent seekers can't be the majority. My understanding is that many Californian real estate markets are kept artificially tight due to various forms of NIMBYism.
If renters become the majority, it's suddenly no longer viable to limit new housing through regulation. Markets are nowhere near the fundamental limits of homes per square meter of the state that's good to live in.
I don't think they are a majority and I think the main problem is lack of housing being built. But I do think that what housing is out there on the market faces stiff competition from companies not people. I'd assume there are a few people buying houses with cash but my guess is a lot of those stories you hear about people bidding 100k over ask and losing to a cash offer are mostly not people.
Theres a good number of companies that are open about increasing their housing portfolios. Even construction companies that built thousands of starter homes per year converting to rentals only.
These are long term changes, and not a quick cash grab at the bottom of the market.
Homeowners are a reliable political cohort, they tend to organize quickly as soon as any issues are on the agenda that might affect the value of their land and they will reliably push for whatever increases land values. They show up at city hall to make sure they are at least the loudest group on the issue. Homeowners are also diligent voters. You’ll need more than 50% of people to be renters to counter this, unless you can convince renters to organize as reliably and passionately as home owners.
> Homeowners are a reliable political cohort, they tend to organize quickly as soon as any issues are on the agenda that might affect the value of their land and they will reliably push for whatever increases land values.
I feel like this is a myth, do you have research to back this?
As a 20+ year home owner, I've never been asked to support anything to increase land/housing value (not that I'd want to, since that means higher taxes for me, which I'd rather not).
I don't think this homeowner cabal to increase values actually exists. If it does, nobody invited me and nobody invited any of my homeowner friends (which is all my friends) either, so it can't be a very large group.
Have you been asked to vote for/against zoning changes, or for special approvals for variances for developments?
Because I got those all the time. If I didn't show up (which I often did, as a homeowner in the area just to see what they were proposing), all the old folks in the area (90% who owned) definitely did to shoot it down or ask for crazy demands that jack up the price. Sometimes they just filibuster in the vein of 'onion on my belt'.
You'll see big boards up talking about 'Planning Commission Meeting' or 'Meeting on a Proposed Development' at the site of any proposed work, public notices in the paper, and developers in an area are usually required to send notice mailers to every address in the area too in advance.
Those are typically what you see. People generally don't propose a zoning change titled 'Plan to screw over all the poor renters and make the homeowners rich', since that's a bit too obvious and would get thrown out in court. It would be something like 'Plan to develop lot XYZ into high density residential' (which may get shot down).
Many folks (including planning commissions) are happy to ask for on the surface reasonable stuff that makes projects economically unviable, or complain about how the extra traffic from all those people will place an undue burden on them and ruins their quality of life and 'the neighborhood character'. Those complaints are also real - having more people in a small place DOES increase traffic (even with public transit), DOES change quality of life and neighborhood character (better or worse depending on who you are), etc. Adding more parking WOULD be nice for many people, even if there isn't space for it on the lot (why not do a underground parking garage then! $$$)
Which if the planning commission doesn't weigh heavily will result in a rather short tenure for them, in my experience.
All of which raises property values, and decreases the overall number of people who can have accommodation in an area by reducing density.
> Have you been asked to vote for/against zoning changes, or for special approvals for variances for developments?
Also, if there are cities where this level of question does go on the ballot, it's the same ballot for everyone. So both homeowners and renters in that city get to vote on that, so it's not like there is any special influence power in being in one group or the other.
My municipality's NIMBY calling cards for proposed new development are "if dense housing is built, traffic will be even worse!", "more housing development could mean overcrowded schools!" and "what about our precious open space that some residents treat as garbage dumps and allow overgrowth of invasive species in?"
> Have you been asked to vote for/against zoning changes, or for special approvals for variances for developments?
No, never. That's not the granularity of questions that bubble up to the ballot. Those planning and permit commissions do whatever they do mostly behind closed doors, they certainly never ask the electorate.
It never really gets on the ballot around here. But it is certainly brought up in counsel debates and people usually vote for that by proxy through the counsel positions.
There are also always hearings around higher density zoning and people turn out tooth and nail to oppose those at counsel meetings. On thing that is interesting, is people generally like the idea of more housing but when you say, 'We're going to add these 4 blocks near your house to the high density core', either people like it less or the people who like it less come out in droves and throw a fit.
But in the spirit of the question and for curiosity’s sake, if you were faced with a decision that’s beneficial to renters but decreases your property value, which way do you go?
> But in the spirit of the question and for curiosity’s sake, if you were faced with a decision that’s beneficial to renters but decreases your property value, which way do you go?
Details of the proposal matter of course, but in general I'd rather not support home values going up because that just means higher taxes for me in exchange of nothing since I continue to live in the same house which is unchanged.
Many of my friends who are tech workers who've worked at unicorns and tech giants for 5-10 years bought their first homes in SF during the pandemic. I would guess part of the drop in rents is a shift in demand from former renters to new homeowners. Also, there was a general increase in prices across all asset classes during the pandemic that continued to drive prices up. Finally, property prices have actually gone up less in SF than they have in the US as a whole, likely because of the general effect of people moving away - compare the change from January 2020 to today in this chart https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS vs this chart https://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-ca/home-values/
The loss of population is directly caused by property prices, so if they were reduced, the loss would reduce or reverse and we simply would't be talking about population loss anymore (seriously).
Yes, but probably not all. WFH has enabled those not interested in SF property to go for their property elsewhere.
It's also difficult to imagine demand increasing again and prices falling or even staying level. The issue with SF, NYC, London, etc. is sqr miles are effectively fixed and zoning limits how many residential units you can add to the market.
Maybe? Just as many people are probably staying in or moving to SF because they remote work to a job in the valley (eg San Jose) and not commute that much. They aren’t so price sensitive and value being in the big city. Until SF is undesirable, demand will keep, rents will remain high, and people are going to be priced out.
One of the items that seems to be missed in these kind of discussions is the increased demand for what otherwise would be called sprawl. You hear about people want to stay in a big city, or want to move to $tier3 city, but there is also a large cohort that wants to move to within 1.5 hours of bigcity, so I can maintain my network/family/work in the office once a month/etc ... This "sprawl" space is't a limited as the cities proper ... but with commutes was effectively limited. That limit is gone for large groups of remote/semi-remote workers.
I don't know the answer but I do know that all the attempted answers currently posted get the basics of economics spectacularly wrong.
My money is on either this census data or property value data simply being wrong. Housing is a famously inelastic market and a 6.4 % drop in demand should lead to a double-digit decrease in rents and values.
Presumably the willingness to pay a given amount from just one person’s income is lower than that of two people’s income. Add in additional temporary uncertainty in big parts of the tech market and I can see a lot of currently occupied units having a tenant not willing to renew as-was.
Even if you like San Francisco on balance, it's hard not to ask yourself if you like it so much that you're OK with paying for some of the most expensive housing in the country when you don't have a reason you have to be there.
This is not a strategy for everyone, but I definitely pay less in SF than I would in most cities because I know people willing to live with me long-term (and split rent) here. Generally it's easier in SF to find a roommate who is high-earning and willing to split an apartment or house compared to other cities, where similar people would just pay a little more to get their own place.
Splitting rent among roommates is not specific to San Francisco, it's common to cities with expensive housing. LA, Miami, NYC, San Diego, etc. all have high proportions of adults living with roommates (https://porch.com/advice/cities-whose-residents-likely-live-...).
Having roommates certainly helps save money, but it remains true that you and your roommates are paying for some of the most expensive housing in the country.
You (and those like you) have informally recreated boarding houses. It’s a shame that Single Room Occupancy is basically illegal to build in any major US city: most cities require building “single family units” that must have their own bathroom(s), kitchen and bedroom(s).
It would be nice if people who are OK sharing common spaces were able to have housing built specifically with them in mind.
I can probably get why it was banned (if abused, it can be horrible) but it is extremely common way of living, especially for young people without families in expensive places - so one would think the government would stop pretending it's not happening at some point...
in our city, my partner and I bought a house entirely for 5.5 years of what we were paying in rent. Now just 2 of our rent payments cover annual tax and insurance.
any locally optimized strategy within the overall context of renting is still a failing proposition imo.
For cities in general there's much more to do compared to low density areas. Restaurants, entertainment, other people. All of this within a decent traveling distance.
Sure, but most who leave SF will choose a smaller metro area, not a rural area. What I have found in my time in the Bay Area is a general ignorance of how many smaller metro areas have developed more vibrant urban centers over the past 10 years. The people from these cities who went home for the first time in a decade are finding surprisingly livable metros waiting for them, closer to aging family.
I think one thing that keeps me in the Bay Area is economic opportunity, although it remains to be seen how larger macro-economic forces will effect this.
For the last decade though, if you write code in the Bay Area, there is just this massive backstop of companies looking to hire. I've lived here since 2011 and worked for all of 3 startups that entire time, so this isn't so much about job hopping. Instead, because of all the competition for talent in the area you get to enjoy a degree of job security, high pay, and benefits that are pretty nice. It is also a major relief to know that if your company does have to let you go for whatever reason or you just get sick of the work you are doing and want to quit, there are a ton of other places hiring.
With remote work I imagine being physically close to the Bay Area is less of a requirement, but it seems like there is some amount of drive to get people back into offices, so we will see how long that remains viable.
This is really the main reason I stay in the Bay Area, I moved out to the Greater East Bay a few years back and was able to find a nice house in a nice enough area for a reasonable price.
Having easy access to so many employers provides a peace of mind and an implicit pile of leverage that's pretty great.
A lot of smaller cities have developed gentrified cores. Mind you, these cores can be pretty small. You may have a relative handful of restaurants and bars you like and they may lack some of the cultural amenities of a larger city. But I know a couple who just sold their presumably very appreciated house in a major metro and moved somewhere smaller.
I've definitely thought about finally leaving the Bay Area, previously I'd written off a lot of places because I want to be close to the coast and I love the relatively mild weather. More recently I ended up talking with a park ranger about life out here (he's from Truckee). He was real attracted to the Oregon coast but aghast at the white supremacy issues that are still ripe up there. There's always a catch.
Now? Politics and infrastructure put me off of huge chunks of the country (especially Texas and Florida). I don't really care if Austin is a vibrant metro area when the state government is trying to ensure women have subhuman status at most even if they've got to gut our judicial system to do it. Small town Texas? Absolutely fucking not, doubly so if I actually wanted to raise a family. Then again the Bay Area is my home.
Yes, you’re certainly wrestling with a different circumstance than many others, if not most, if you’re from the area.
For someone from a place most people from the Bay Area would never deign to visit, I’m more than happy to go back and do the hard work to make it better. Work politicians and voters in California are incapable and unwilling to do.
I understand your confusion. You can mentally insert "which" or "that" between "Work" and "politicians" to make sense of it. Making that its own sentence was probably a mistake on my part for this audience. My statement is politically neutral. Not sure which angle you're coming from, but I'm not interested in that discussion. It's not helping anyone in the community I grew up in.
Sure. Cities lend themselves to different sorts of activities and have different pros and cons than do rural areas. Personally I get all the city stuff I want in short visits. I can see a play in a large city that is an hour drive away without living there.
I think the parent was me :-) I actually like SF but some of the most expensive housing in the country is a high bar if you don't either have enough money that it's a non-issue or have to live there for employment or other reasons. There are many cities with solid city activities that aren't SF.
Like it or not, SF has the most vibrant tech community than anywhere else.
I live an hour away, and I make the painful, tedious drive up in rush-hour traffic at least once a week to meet up with some group or another in person. The alternative is the dreary, sleep-inducing vendor teleconferences that double as "meetups" on the Peninsula.
I'm strongly considering ditching the Peninsula and moving to SF for better networking and more diverse hangouts and career opportunities.
This is both the good and bad of living in area like the Bay. I'd find the idea of going in an evening a week with a tedious drive to do work-related stuff tedious at best.
Not a lot of places in the USA where you can take transit, walk around and be close to the beach and the mountains while having a garden and some space :)
Yes, this is famously true, with SF's cost of living (especially but not only housing) being some of the very highest in the nation. Getting out of California helps even more.
Well they can. If I move to another popular place like Manhattan they probably won't go down much. But it's reasonable to ask, if you don't have a work-related reason to live in a place, whether it's good value based on your priorities. The answer may be "Yes!" for SF for some people. But it may also be "No."
I live in the south Bay Area. The local public school district has been steadily losing enrollment due to the high cost of living. The district administrator I talked with said that based on student records transfer requests, some families have moved further east and south into the sprawling exurbs, and many others moved to Texas.
I agree with you and GP; I'm just pointing out that the article does mention it as a primary reason:
> Experts have said the Bay Area’s high housing costs and remote work policies, particularly for the tech industry, fueled out-migration during the pandemic, as residents sought cheaper homes and more space. Almost all California coastal cities lost population, while the more affordable Central Valley and Inland Empire saw gains.
My observation from the discussion here is that there are a lot of people here still raving about city life (especially as pandemic tapers down) and how people are moving back in, etc. I think it's suffice to say everyone has a different living preference, and remote work enabled people who otherwise didn't want to live here, to move away, which in turn also opened up some spaces for people who wanted to live here but found it too expensive, to move in. The real question is probably how the numbers work out. Are there a lot more people who wanted to move away and are doing so now? If so, home prices and rents would drop. If the opposite is true or the numbers are about even, then prices wouldn't drop or would drop less.
When you look in the cars, are they older people? Where I live (western Florida), it's generally older people and not the demographic that you'd expect to find on this site.
I just moved NYC to Florida and I've been shocked how many other people have done the same. Florida is doing a relatively good job of attracting high end tech talent as far as I can tell. Texas is the other place I hear mentioned a lot.
On one hand, lots of tech workers with kids move there for big yards and good weather.
On the other hand, the universities are not up to scratch. And for college graduates and the young, moving to Florida isn't going to provide you with much if any career safety.
I'm very interested in the future of Florida in a few years. It can go either way.
Assuming you’re moving long-term, aren’t you worried climate change is going to make Florida (especially coastal southern Florida) a lot less attractive?
You joke, and I'm sure for some people (who don't really plan to stay anywhere for very long, especially if single & childless) it doesn't matter. But I'm 39 and have little kids. I'd like to stay where I settled for the rest of my life at this point (which may still be another 50+ years).
Would you bet on climate change not making Miami a lot less ideal place to live in by the time you're old?
I live in Missouri and people who have lived on my street for decades have Florida plates. They must have property there and claim it as residency for tax purposes
Funny thing is, I recently went back to a few cities which have started to recover and the vibe was so fun I thought how much fun it would be live in one again. So much energy, good shops restaurants and amenities ! People didn’t throw cities away, they threw away cities in lockdown. I think a lot of people will rediscover city life and ultimately end up back there for some reason or another.
Cities grew organically for different reasons, we kept them because they serve a purpose. Before the pandemic it wast like we all hated living in cities.
This is so sad to me. The fracturing of the community because of capitalism. All these people that are moving away from their friends they are shortsighted. When they really need people no one’s going to be around them. Sad.
There's also a natural tendency for many people, as they get older, to tend to gravitate away from downtowns as they care less about the bar scene, say, and more about space for hobbies, family, etc. So you're always going to have some natural outflow for older demographics and it's probable it's not being counterbalanced by new grads moving in.
But I agree with your basic point. If you no longer have to live in an area for work, you definitely start thinking about where you want to live.
It's funny, I moved to SF and landed a tech job, in that order. I moved to the Bay Area for certain things above a job. I know there are others like me, perhaps not a majority of the HN crowd, but I quite like it here and it would take a lot for me to change my mind about the place.
I think the point is that many people feel forced to live in SF because of their job. At the same time, there are so many people that love SF that are forced out due to economics.
It would be better if people were able to choose where they want to live rather than being pushed into certain living situations that aren't what they'd choose. There are plenty of techies that feel pushed to living in SF for their job. There are plenty of LGBT people that feel pushed out (or kept out) of SF due to economics even though they want to be there. It's not that any group is right or wrong. I just think that people get resentful when they're kept away from the things they want in life. Place is one of the biggest parts of our lives. "I want to live in X, but I can't really because..." is just a recipe for unhappiness.
Lots of reasons why people hate SF. The homeless problems, the petty crime. The smell, the dirtiness, the shitty weather, the actual danger of stepping on human feces, the drug use.
To each their own, but I think it's important for people to get out of their headspace and see things from a more general perspective as well. There are very good reasons why people don't like SF and unless people who love the city acknowledge those things, change is likely impossible.
There are good reasons why people don't like SF but why should people who do like SF care or try to convince them otherwise? I don't like Dallas but I don't think people who do like Dallas need to get out of their headspace and change things for my benefit.
Obviously SF has problems and no one loves SF who doesn't want to improve the homeless issue. It doesn't make them wrong to love the city.
Do you know the excitement that surrounds stories like this on foxnews? They want liberal Democrat cities to fail so they can blame leadership as an example
The correct response of leaders is to ignore wealthy citizens attempting to prop up their multi-million dollar 3bed4bath properties and let them know, "We're going to zone more areas for residential development, sorry. 2500 square foot homes shouldn't be $3 million in any area in America."
And all these rich liberals - and they are liberals - use the same bullshit line over and over, "I'm all FOR affordable housing... I'm just afraid it'll change the character of our neighborhood."
Bull. Shit. You. Lying. Fuck.
You thought you'd be able to set up your grandchildren for life because you chose what was a relatively sleepy, and honestly kinda shitty, city back in the 1970s. Fuck you and fuck off.
What they're really afraid of is that some politician who really does give a shit about the city will come along and upend their apple cart and their 50 year old brownstone will only be worth $1 million instead of $7 million when they die.
> let them know, "We're going to zone more areas for residential development,
Why? This may seem deliberately naïve but in the context of the current discussion, why should more areas be zoned for residential if people are leaving the Bay Area? If there are residents who hate the Bay Area, can't afford it, and are no longer stuck there now that they can WFH then it sounds like they are cheerfully leaving. The wealthy citizens keep their houses and neighborhoods and perhaps the rest of us get a break from the ceaseless complaining.
It's an easier solution than massive rezoning proposals.
The amount of residential zoning is NOT the problem. It is the restrictions on existing zoning.
People want to maintain a suburban way of life for a population that is changing into a city.
What right does a person have to prevent me from turning my home into a 4 unit apartment complex? No right, yet this is the rule that prevents suburbia from transforming into a city.
It is like a growing reptile refusing to shed.. Instead it stays put growing bigger and bigger until it's suffocates and explodes. The bay area has has already suffocated... the exodus is it's guts spilling out of a rupture in the skin.
> What they're really afraid of is that some politician who really does give a shit about the city will come along and upend their apple cart
The opposition party in Australia in 2019 wanted to take some policies which makes investing in houses more profitable which might have lowered house prices but majority of people in Australia are homeowners so they didnt vote for opposition party.
Attacking conservatives was just poor taste and off topic. The reaction you got was well deserved because you tried to give something neutral a political bent.
1. First rule of comments on Hackernews is "be kind". My statement didn't attack any single user on this site. If the user disagreed with me he can simply state that with a counter argument.
2. Conservative pundits have made remarks implying politics/a political party are to blame. I don't think it's politically neutral and that's what I was commenting on. Examples below where the population decline is discussed.
Foxnews - segment on the crime issues and the population decline. Saying that "a rare breed, a Republican" ... "community activist is trying to save his city". Then when talking about the DA and a recall "..who is the notoriously soft on crime DA in San Francisco". [1]
Washington Times - "In recent years, more people have left California for other states than have moved there, a trend Republicans say is a result of the state’s high taxes and progressive politics" [2]
Newsmax - [Headline]"DeSantis Concerned About California Exodus; Calls San Francisco 'Dumpster Fire'"
(Desantis quote's are the main portion of the article) It's like the leftism, they will not draw the connection between their leftist ideology and the destruction that's all around them,""
It is an attack. It's blaming a situation based off of someones politics. People are conservatives too and when they are talked about like that, they feel blamed or almost like they're being observed like creatures in a zoo.
The person who responded to you interpreted that way and to me it also reads that way. Simply bringing up politics is often an attack and depending on the context it may be relevant, but in this case I don't see any relevancy. Lots of people hate SF who lived there and this is independent of the media.
Even Fox news doesn't always report lies. Sure they have strong bias and tend to twist reality and exaggerate situations but their objective is political, not to simply just "lie." If a story aligns with their politics then when they report it, it's basically reporting the truth.
In this case the whole communism thing is an exaggeration, but it is an aspect of the truth that lots of people hate SF.
There's just no need bring up Fox or the conservative media here. Better to offer your opinion on the matter because a good number of people who hate SF are actually liberal and moderate as well.
In my opinion some conservative pundants hate sf not because of the conditions but because of who runs the government and who lives there
And I think bringing up Foxnews is worth it because they push a narrative about issues in California less on numbers and more on emotion. They repeat the same accussations or statements without data so often people take it as fact now. For example "California is a failed state "
A lot of two small houses can made into a condo that serves eight families or more (a very tiny condo).
The values of those eight condos isn’t equal to the two houses; the total value will be eventually be quite higher yet individually be more affordable.
That’s just the start. Let’s suppose 1000 single family homes were converted into a 4000 units.
The construction alone means economic activity, though that’s temporary.
3000 more families means more to that much more demand for services in the long term. Which ripples into more demand for service jobs, generating a demand for labor.
More incoming labor means more people, which means more construction activity due to demand.
Rinse and repeat.
San Francisco is missing out however, because the window of opportunity is passing; that is, if it hasn’t already passed.
> To each their own, but I think it's important for people to get out of their headspace and see things from a more general perspective as well.
What makes you think those of us who enjoy living in the area haven't made the conscious choice? There are good reasons I chose to live in the urban parts of the SFBA, just like I presume there are good reasons several of my friends are happily running a household in Seattle, Austin, Chicago, Brooklyn, Columbus, or pretty much any other part of the US.
Many haven't... I've literally met people who claim they haven't seen any human feces in San Francisco or drug users and homeless people everywhere.
Then there's people like you who prefer the fair and balanced look. Like San Francisco is a city that has some problems just like any other city.
Are there really, truly any factually bad places to live in the world? Or is everything just a matter of opinion? Nothing is bad or good it's what each individual makes of it.
When is it that enough people believe in something that it's no longer an opinion but a fact? Some people may enjoy being punched in the face but enough people hate being punched in the face that this situation is considered to be factually just a shitty situation to be in, completely independent of opinion.
I'm saying enough people are talking shit about SF that SF is pretty much in the zone of being factually categorized as a shitty place to live. If it's not there yet, it's close enough where people need to acknowledge some big problems here that no other 1st world city has.
This is what I mean by people not getting out their headspace. I literally find it impossible not to experience every single thing I mentioned above on a daily basis just by walking through the city.
I agree that remote work allows more workers to live where they want.
You claim that workers left SF not because of any attribute of the city, but because they wanted a change.
You imply that SF is desirable place to live, however it's population declined only because of a desire for change.
However, there are more remote workers outside of SF than in it. If SF was in-fact desirable, and remote workers simply want 'change', then SF's population would increase. Because a greater number of remote workers would move to desirable SF for their change, than would leave it.
Reality is this: Remote work allows workers choose desirable places to live regardless of office location.
Without the advantage of office location, SF stops being desirable. It stops being desirable because the benefits it supplies (culture, etc) are less than the costs it demands (crime, rent, etc).
One might argue that MANY cities are going to experience similar declines and that SF isn't unique. So this can't be seen as people voting with their feet against SF.
That's fine. Then people are voting with their feet against MANY cities and cities are simply not desirable.
The price of rent shows its desirability. Lots and lots of people want to live there, but that doesn't mean they can, or that it's the best fit for their other requirements.
No it really doesn't. It's a supply/demand thing. A ton of jobs bring people into San Francisco, a lot of people coming into SF (with housing supply roughly steady) let to ever increasing prices. Simple as that. That's the majority of why people come to SF.
It's not the 1960s anymore as people fled to SF because of flower power, hippies or the gay movement. Sadly it's become a very different town.
As soon as jobs didn't require people to live in SF (thanks to Covid induced remote work) people moved out. Not everyone! Of course. But more people moved out than moved in, showing that the desirability of SF isn't as strong as you think it is.
If SF was attractive, then people would want to remotely work from SF. But it isn't. So, they're leaving. On the other hand San Diego seems to be blowing up.
If SF was unattractive, it wouldn't cost $2,500-$3,000 to live in mediocre housing with 6 housemates.
Even people that don't have high paying tech jobs are lining up to pay these kinds of insane prices. They don't want to pay the prices, but it's worth it to live in an area like SF.
One of the only places on the planet in human history that people put this much energy and money into just living somewhere.
Don't confuse the city and county of San Francisco with the whole bay area. There are NIMBYs just like everywhere else out here, but San Francisco is already one of the most densely populated cities in the country. You don't have to look very far (e.g. Brisbane) to see places with little-to-no housing fighting new developments tooth and nail.
While I agree, being among the most densely populated areas in a country that's mostly empty ain't much to write home about. It's basically just apologism. I know it needs to happen everywhere, I just have a particular disdain for SF city politics.
I don't think this is necessarily true. Consider that the reason many people were in SF in the first place was because their job required them to be there and they didn't have a choice; now that they have a choice, perhaps many of them find SF attractive and stay, while a minority don't and leave.
> Consider that the reason many people were in SF in the first place was because their job required them to be there and they didn't have a choice
I’m not sure how big of a factor that is/was though. I know plenty of people in their 20s who worked in the peninsula or east bay but deliberately took on the high costs (and long commutes!) of living in SF for the usual reasons related to SF being a cultural center.
I think it would be fairer to apply your claim to the reason many people live in the entire Bay Area, but not specifically in SF.
I mean, to be fair, we're talking about 6 out of 100 people moving this year. I can defiantly see 6 out of 100 people being there just because that's where they get paid or their job moved them.
It's even more likely that part of that 6 percent had family obligations, and some just realized they wouldn't buy a house even if they loved the city, and some just hated it.
Around 2010 and before SF was very attractive. The southbay were where most jobs were located but everyone wanted to live in the city. That's what caused a huge amount of companies and startups to move to SF.
The influx of techies, however, changed the city. And SF soon became what it is today.
No. It started in 2000 and proceeded into 2010 where around 2010 and before it became noticeable. By the mid 2010s it reached it's peak.
Prior to 2010 and a little after it was more than a place to work. It was a place where all techies wanted to live; but not because of work. Because they loved the city. That's why those shuttles from SF to mountain view google exist. Too many googlers wanted to live in SF and work in MTV.
SF is expensive. If SF was cheaper, it would be more attractive, more people would arrive, and rents would be pushed up again by the increased competition. This is just supply and demand at work.
The even more obvious thing is the lockdowns. Regardless of whether you think the lockdowns were appropriate or not, it’s pretty clear that many of the advantages of living in a dense cultural center like SF go away when you’re mostly confined to your home and can’t participate in night life, the art/music scene, restaurants, etc. Heck you barely even benefit from the weather any more.
> "if I don't have to live here, do I want to keep living here"
I answered the exact same no to that question, moving out of NYC when my job went permanently remote since the pandemic. I moved to semi-rural Virginia where my family is, and bought a house with far more space and a pool than I could have dreamed of within commuting distance of NYC.
I agree but I think this also understates the importance of just how messed up SF has become. I don't want to come into contact with human feces as part of my daily commute. I'm going to leave no matter what once that is the case. Especially when the equity in my two bedroom apartement is enough to buy the nicest house ever built in some other smaller city.
I didn't mention this in my comment as it was more about the broad trends in every city rather than SF/NYC specifically.
Typically for a group that got tired of a city and moved out, there would be a new group that is ready to fill their place. Thing is no one wants to move to SF given the situation (crime, COL, homeless, etc). Now for all the folks that will say "it's not that bad" I say that it doesn't really matter. If you're moving to a city, your opinion and view of the city is largely dictated by what you see/hear from friends, relatives, on the news, etc. Even if SF wasn't "that bad", it still doesn't matter, because the perception is more important for gaining residents than the actual situation IMO.
Exactly. And the problem is even if I want to stay, once my entire social group has left during the pandemic since none of us were old enough to have mortgages or kids, well, this all kind of sucks right now. All the people I work with have kids and mortgages and have enjoyed flitting up to Tahoe for the past two years, but I'm not from the state but was required to work within it for the past year anyway. Well, my life here is pretty shitty right now, and as soon as I could really start doing things, it was time to start a hybrid model designed with people with kids and mortgages in mind. Traditionally, these folks have a lot of leverage over their younger counterparts, which we're finding is not holding.
The issue is that Gen X is small, so they don't have a lot of leverage if the only other two generations in the market just leave town. Unless it's their opinion that Californians are just better, but of course, now we're back to the shrinking schools problem. It's difficult for me to imagine how California rebounds without losing a lot more ground first. Probably the best thing that could happen for people from the part of the country I grew up in, if we're actually concerned with equity though.
I think you're right about perception to people considering going there. But I really think it just comes down to cost. Cities have gotten exorbitantly expensive.
It doesn't make financial sense to stay in SF if you're salary stays the same in Texas and your company is remote. Unless there is some specific reason to live there - you like the vibe, or it's where you were born, or some other reason (weather).
I think it's good that we have this shakeup. Change is a good thing, and I think a lot of cities need some change.
I think your argument ignores that fact that in other cities, you drive by the social problems, whereas in SF you walk through them.
Nobody complains about the homeless people who live under the Las Vegas Strip because they are unseen, but per capita, some studies imply Las Vegas has a much worse problem than SF.
I see this argument constantly, that the streets run brown with human feces. I worked in SOMA for a decade, I would commute every day on BART and would walk from Montgomery Street Station or Embarcadero or Civic Center or 16th Street to wherever my office was at the time (different companies, different offices).
SOMA was always pretty clean, Civic Center a bit more hit or miss, 16th Street was generally a bit dirtier and rougher.
The number of times I encountered human feces though was very low, like not even a monthly occurrence. Now I'm sure there's parts of San Francisco that are worse than others, and the walk from 16th Street BART to Potrero Hill would take me past plenty of homeless people camped out on the sidewalks, but I rarely if ever encountered human feces.
But every. single. time. San Francisco comes up, it's the same tired line, "Oh I couldn't deal with the absolute deluge of human feces" which like cool, neither could I and it was fine because what the heck is everyone talking about. I'm not going to claim that every sidewalk and roadway is completely free of poo, but as someone that managed a team of people and would frequently go for walking meetings all around San Francisco, it was never my experience.
This comment is absurd to someone living in a small metro area. There should not ever be human shit encountered on a sidewalk. Not once every couple months; never. You've been living in absurdity for so long that you've lost sight of it.
The solution is to not tolerate drug use, petty crime, vagrancy etc etc
Homeless people aren't stupid. They find a way to get to where it is most comfortable to be homeless. In SF you can do drugs all day and night and get free needles and poop on the streets and no one will bother you. In other places you will not be able to do this.
Why are people surprised that places that go to great expense to subsidize homelessness have a lot of homeless people?
If we're talking about 'reasonable' conservatives, the typical answer is that booking people who commit a crime, and then using the threat of prison time to force them into rehab will ultimately be much better for them and the community than immediately releasing them under the guise that poverty causes addiction and crime and that therefore they are essentially blameless.
Some former addicts attest that, when they were addicted, it was only the threat of prison time that could force them into rehab, because at the time they were not fully in control of their own decision making. They say the 'stick' helps motivate them to choose rehab instead, and it ultimately helped them out of a bad situation.
Sam Quinones' book, The Least of Us, documents some of this and is well-researched.
Centrist candidate for Governor of California Michael Shellenberger, who has interviewed many addicts on the streets of SF and has a credible plan to address homelessness and open drug abuse:
He doesn't live in San Francisco but is claiming that if he commuted to work he would always see human feces on the ground. He provides no evidence, not even a personal experience
What do you want? Pictures? This is commonly known to be an issue there. If I was there right now, I'd say give me 5 minutes and I'll post a picture. Was in SF last week. If you do a lot of walking there, you WILL see not only a shit, but someone actively shitting.
Same. We lived in SF for 10 years and saw something like that maybe twice? On the whole the city is pretty clean, and most of the dirtiness is because it rarely rains. That's what's keeping many of the other popular cities looking cleaner.
For reference we've been in DC for a year now and we saw someone literally pull their pants down and poop in the middle of the sidewalk the other day. I don't think that's any indication of the city though.
I think it's the kind of thing where many folks visiting would end up in the rougher part of downtown, see something unfortunate, and not really experience the rest of the city. And then the whole city is painted with that brush.
The bay area has many problems (housing policy is probably the worst in the country), but it's also a beautiful and vibrant place to live.
Many SF tech companies would love to not allow remote work again, but I think they can't really pull that off anymore. The argument "the company can't function that way" has been demolished during COVID days, so it'd be very hard for companies to go back. And the more companies allow it, the less leverage the ones that don't have.
That said, a lot of people that worked in SF didn't live in SF even back then. They may live in Oakland, Redwood City, Mountain View, all the way from Walnut Creek to Los Gatos or Milpitas. Now they can just avoid the multi-hour commute - and I think that's a win.
There's another data point that supports this view of remote work: retirement
Many people, when given the chance to not work at all, leave their residence or make a decision to split their time between their old home and a new home in a location with a better lifestyle, friends, family, whatever.
I laughed a little at how hard the wording here is trying not to say "The homeless and druggies". Anyway, this explanation might have some grounding in reality but I don't know that it's actually saying anything useful since people and businesses choose remote work for a reason and they choose to displace themselves to embrace it for a reason. There are essentially two components in this scenario. There are the people who leave because want to work remotely and the companies that want to leave to hire remote workers (or move their current workers). The people want to work remotely because of the crime, toxic local culture, and costs. Companies want to leave because of the crime, incompetent governance, and costs. In either case, the fraction of people/businesses leaving because remote work is just so awesome and it's fun to get out and see new places is miniscule.
Tl;dr: People and businesses choose to work remotely for reasons and there's little evidence to show that a primary or even significant motivator of this is simply a desire for a change of scenery. Even if it was, the question still becomes what is the scenery being escaped from.
This is exactly why I left to a smaller town. Once I was fully remote, there was nothing keeping me from seeking out better prices for housing, better schooling for my children, and better streets to walk down.
Sure many headlines and news segments make it seem that it's the crime, the high rent, and all these super visible indicators and while I'm sure that factored into the decisions of some, for many it was that they just wanted a change and got the golden opportunity to do so.
EDIT: It's not even that one may even "want a change", it's when you're presented with the opportunity to make a change, the gears in your head start turning as to what options you have at your disposal. I would imagine many people that moved had previously no intention to but just got the opportunity and decided to take it while it lasted.