I live in SF and I think the doom loop narrative is true of downtown. So many job cuts (though I think the AI boom is already gaining traction).
However the neighborhoods are dreamy, as good as ever. The city lost population during the pandemic but it has been gaining and in 2023, it is the fastest growing in the state.
I've been in tech for years here and it is the best job market, most lucrative, and most advanced. It's an opportunity to work here. Just don't live in the tenderloin.
I never got this. I lived in a “good” neighborhood, but still the TL issues (drug addicts, unhoused mentally ill people, dirty sidewalks, needles) still crept in. What neighborhoods are immune to this?
This is so anecdotal but I remember taking a Lyft from Noe Valley to Taraval earlier this year and the ride went through (I'm zooming into Google Maps for the neighbourhood names) Miraloma and surrounding areas. Basically the neighbourhoods just north of Monterey Blvd. The area just looked and felt really nice, homey, and safe.
I've haven't driven past that area before nor after, but it really made me feel like long-term it would be a nice place to reside in SF away from the classic SF problems you've described.
There are two types of "bad" neighborhoods you don't want to live in: the ones where crime lives and the ones crime visits. Much of San Francisco falls victim to the latter which isn't always obvious on an Uber ride or casual walk.
These neighborhoods feel "dreamy" but living there is a different reality. You have to trek down a hill to buy things and when you do, you get the full SF doom loop experience. Most people pay a small fortune to DoorDash and Uber to avoid leaving their dreamy neighborhoods.
No, NW border of Excelsior is 280, so definitely not north of Monterrey Blvd. Broad strokes neighborhood is Twin Peaks area. That part of Twin Peaks is heavily influenced by historically affluent planned developments. Some of the more well known ones listed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Residence_Parks.
I feel like the ability to deal w/ this type of thing is more person to person assuming you don't have young kids to worry about. Like I do encounter that type of behavior but I don't know for the most part it doesn't bother me. It does make me feel uncomfortable from time to time but I can look past that.
I live in the Mission district with young kids, and we walk / take transit all over the city. Smash and grabs of backpacks left in parked cars are annoying, as are bike thefts, and every once in a while a shouting homeless person is a little sketchy, but just like anywhere else in America automobiles are by far the most dangerous feature of daily life for small kids. We've never felt any serious personal safety concern from pedestrians or people hanging out outside.
We also live in the Mission district and just had a kid. We love the walkability but are not sure about staying here long term. Obviously house prices are a factor, but I also know people ferrying their kids across the city to school (as school allocation is not based on location in SF) and that sounds completely hellish to me.
This is technically true, but in practice it's up to the parents. If they want to send their kid to their local 'Attendance Area' school, then they can put it as their first choice, and there's a high chance they'll get it.
Most parents who need to drive their kids across the city are doing it because the alternative (their kid goes to the nearest school) is, in some way, worse.
No offense, but as someone who lived in SF as a kid, it blows my mind that (I assume) techie white families are raising their kids in Mission, Potrero, etc.
We lived in those neighborhoods cuz they were cheap and there were community services to fall back on. Once our parents could afford it, they would move out as soon as they could.
It's not clear during what time frame you grew up, but note that violent crime is dramatically lower than it was 30+ years ago.
It blows my mind that people are so uncaring about their kids' daily experience (mobility, independence, access to interesting activities, ...) as to move to typical American suburbs with their kids. The benefit of the suburbs is a bigger amount of personal space at home for the same price, but everything outside the house kind of sucks, especially for kids.
We're not necessarily the "techie family" you are imagining though; I spent about a quarter of my childhood in a medium-poor city in Mexico, and my wife grew up in China. Personally I really appreciate having a quite diverse cast of neighbors.
It’s a relatively safe neighborhood if you aren’t black or Mexican. Expect to be vigilant when alone at night if you are. The drug users are more relaxed than in other parts of the city.
Nah it's less safe if they think you have something valuable on you and don't look like someone who'll put up a fight. Gangs you run into nowadays are more into robberies & break-ins that fighting with each other.
I moved to San Francisco from the UK about 10 years ago. Fortunately California has relatively strict gun laws so San Francisco is pretty safe for the US if still bad for a developed country.
Homicides per 100k (from a couple of years ago):
San Francisco: 4.5
US: 6.3
UK/France/Germany: 0.8-1.2
(While most of the difference is due to availability of guns the US is just generally more violent and despite what Trump says the US has 1.5x the knife murders of the UK as well as 70x the gun murders. https://www.euronews.com/2018/05/05/trump-s-knife-crime-clai... )
Living in the Mission there are a handful of shootings per year. But it's a pretty dense neighbourhood so per population it's probably pretty normal for the US. The level of street homelessness is shocking but not as bad as downtown and you get used to that after a while too. Petty crime is definitely a problem.
Personally I worry more about being hit by a car crossing the road since cars are allowed to drive through the pedestrian crossing even when there is a walk signal.
20-25,000 murders per year. Around 40,000 fatal car crashes. Around 5-7000 fatal accidents involving pedestrians. Everyone excited about waymo but opposed to gun and knife wielding security robots.
Sounds like you're a frog in
boiling water. You're so used it you no longer realize the hellhole you live in.
note, I also live in the Mission District and it's a shit hole to me. Gangs hanging out at 20th and Mission fronting for each other. Illegal markets all up and down the street selling stolen goods. Traffic signs and laws being ignored. Valdalism everywhere. Homeless under my window. Mentally ill screaming at 3 am. People drag racing at 2am
I feel the same, when I travel to other larger cities (Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, LA, Atlanta, etc) there are similar problems. It’s not an SF problem it’s a city problem, especially the more “downtown’s” it gets as opposed to more “neighborhood’y”.
Cities have plenty of problems, but by and large they are not a particular danger to children.
I generally feel significantly safer in cities with relatively walkable sidewalks, relatively narrow streets, and lots of pedestrian/bike traffic than I do in typical American suburbs full of strip malls and 6-lane roads. The latter are in my opinion horrendous places to raise children.
It can be polarizing depending on your gender (or rather publicly perceived gender); many women have reported higher levels of harassment and aggression towards them in the same areas others may report fine or acceptable.
I've never forgotten a quote by some one who offered to help a homeless woman who smelled rather horrible. Offered things like soap or a safe place to clean up, the woman responded that the smell actually helped reduce sexual advances towards her.
NOPA is great. If you like to run or have a dog, it’s hard to find a better neighborhood with enough balanced elements (large park access, downtown commute, bars/food, access to the rest of the city, etc).
On the flip side, I can’t imagine being a runner and living in the Mission. The amount of streets you would have to cross every day just to get a few miles in is stressful to think about
I’d only ever driven through it. Residing here for a spell showed me what I’ve been missing. Proximity to GGP and great food options are just a level above. It’d be on the list if I ever (had to) return/ed.
Noe valley, Cole Valley, Inner Sunset, Inner Richmond, most of pacific heights / Marina, Russian hill, all of the southwest neighborhoods if you want a more suburban experience, Excelsior / Glen Park / Bernal as well are all pretty safe neighborhoods, even more so a block from the commercial strips.
SF is a block by block affair though, there’s a few sketchy blocks in all of those neighborhoods, you just have to know the social topology of the city.
I’ve never lived in SF proper but, while visiting, twin peaks always seemed like it would feel isolating to live in. Is it possible to walk anywhere from there (in a “daily convenience” kind of way, not an “urban hiking” kind of way).
Not really. Maybe if you live in the bottom half right above the Castro district it's doable (but steep), but definitely not in the top half and definitely not if you're elderly or have any disability. I usually walked down and took an uber back up, back when the VCs were subsidizing the rides.
As awful as it is that's the trade off: if you can't conveniently walk up the hill, criminals and homeless people usually won't bother either.
Ya, this is also a double edge of transit: if you have a nice convenient public transit system, so does everyone else, including criminals. This is why sometimes neighborhoods fight to keep bus routes or light rail stations out, basically the original NIMBY.
Even if this might be true in isolation it doesn’t generalise
For example the poor public transit available to developed places such as West Sydney, or Bijlmer in Amsterdam have lead to increases in crime rates
Poor physical mobility for the lower classes leads to decreased social mobility which results in increased crime rates for the larger metropolitan areas as a whole
just moved _back_ to central richmond _tonight_ from downtown san leandro. My wife doesn’t drive and we have 3 kids (expecting a 4th). It is the best compromise, though we would have lived NOPA west, and mid-sunset near irving/judah. Alameda was a fallback for wife (probably my first choice though). Kids are in local schools, which are good.
I’m leaving SF to go to Seattle because they changed the job on me but are paying me more than I ever have. I’m relocating to improve my finances temporarily but I really hope I can come back to SF. I’ve been here for over a decade and this feels like home to me.
Y’all got any of that sun over there tho? That’s the main issue. I have been there for all of two weeks and the lack of sun is real. I never knew how much the difference is until I went home for the holidays.
We have lots of sun in the summer (high latitude = 9PM sunsets, very little rain), not so much during the winter (early sunsets at 4PM, lots of rain). We are known for our high per capita sunglasses purchases.
I haven’t seen much poop (although sometimes neighbors throw bags of dog poop in my garbage can, grrr). Seattle attracts more homeless per capita than SF, although the problem is obviously not as bad in the winter as it is in the summer.
I live in San Diego and every morning at around 6 AM downtown There are people pressure washing the streets. I like to go for early morning runs before work and if I go any earlier than 6 AM it’s a mine Feild.
I lived in SF for ~10ish years up until 2020 and still return regularly for work/friends.
I agree that it is mostly downtown that is dead but the rest of your comment seems hyperbolic to me. Hayes Valley, Valencia, Polk was way more lively when I was there.
> best job market
The hundreds in SF laid off this year may disagree
> most lucrative
yes, incomes and stocks do generally increase yoy. Tautology.
After all the layoffs we still have an unemployment rate of of 3.4% (as of Nov). In Seattle it is 3.6% (as of Oct). Also the fact the population is increasing probably reflects job hires. It's expensive here. Who else would move here? Maybe AI startups...
Seconded. It is nutso good in the neighborhoods and the startup energy and ambition between Hayes valley and Silicon Valley (south bay) is absolutely unmatched.
It just sucks people are forced to make a these difficult choices for rent.
I’ve seen confused founders become relentless executors when surrounded by the right vibe. And I’ve seen ambitious founders burnout fighting for traction in an environment that doesn’t foster their energy.
To be a _good_ founder you should also be capable of starting a tractor dealership in Iowa or taking over an accounting firm in Dallas. You have leadership, entrepreneurship, and decision making skills.
Silicon Valley has enough tide to lift all boats that mediocre people like you describe can still have a chance at success and being heralded as mold breaking visionaries.
To me the guy who can run a tech company in the valley and a tractor dealership in Iowa usually becomes the MBA bro. They’re good leaders no doubt but they inevitably become some Private Equity bro, just absolutely inconsequential to the larger economy.
I quite prefer the valley environments ability to take deep domain experts and turn them into the best managers of their own technology.
It’s similar to asking whether students need to go to university to learn a subject when everything there is to learn is available at the touch of a keystroke.
Technically not needed, but turns out it is really beneficial to be with likeminded people with common goals.
I quite liked living in the Tenderloin. It's close to transit, it's cheap, and it's got great restaurants. I wouldn't live there if I had a cohabitating partner or kids, though.
During my year and a half there I had to wash poop off my shoe once. It took me a few minutes. My rent was several hundred dollars per month cheaper than any other place I lived in the Bay area. I'll wash anything off anything for a thousand dollars a minute.
> The median one-bedroom asking rent in San Francisco was $2,190 in November 2023
This number must be dragged down by rent-controlled. It seems too low. At apartments.com, there are 1777 listings for one bedroom apartments in SF. There are only 112 apartments listed for below $2200.
Unless the laws changed, rent controlled apartments are rented out at market rate, and then price increases are strictly controlled.
I lived in a rent controlled apartment in SF for a year. What was frustrating was realizing that I was paying significantly more rent than other tenants in similar units.
New tenants have to pay market rate to begin renting. Rent control kicks in after that and prevents the rent from increasing much.
If the other renters had been there for many years, they'd still be paying market rate (plus a bit) from years earlier. That could be a lot less than market rate now.
That's why renters in rent-controlled units tend not to move as much - as market rates go up, your rent gets relatively cheaper over time and that's an incentive to stay put.
The rent is frontloaded. It averages out over the long run, but landlords charge more at the beginning of the lease to make up some of the difference caused by rent controls by the time the lease ends.
It wasn't that way when I shopped for an apartment in SF. (Summer 2008.)
The rent controlled landlords struggled, and didn't have much, or any, wiggle room for upkeep. (Just look at the Parkmerced saga. The place was a dump, but politics prevented them from fixing it.)
I moved into my rent controlled apartment because it was a good deal; the non-rent-control apartments actually cost more at the time.
To me it’s more like if you have a non-rent controlled place you have to make it more attractive with lower prices, which is OK as you can just increase like hell after a year.
Imagine: you’re in the middle of crunch time at work, your wife is pregnant, you receive some notice that the rent is going to increase ten folds in two weeks, good luck.
That’s the game. When I was looking for a place during covid I could have gotten some dope appartements for much cheaper than the rent controlled ones, hell they would even throw a free month sometimes lol. But I knew all of these would jack up their prices right after your lease ends. It blows my mind that some people don’t look for rent controlled apartments.
I think it might be right, because while most of us tech folks on HN would be living in nicely kept old-school buildings or in new construction, most of SF is quite poor and might be living in areas like Mission or Excelsior and Bayview, basically SE of the city.
I've seen "low" rents there, but you get to live in a rough looking neighborhood and its not very clean or safe.
To be fair, if you're making 170-240k base you can easily afford 3-4k per month rent to live in a nicer building. People who are in relationships can stretch this even further, not to mention the RSUs/options.
Also, people live all the way down to SJ and then up the east bay. Rents in SJ are like 2500/mo for a single bedroom in a newer building, but its not that great of an area tbh. In mid-peninsula its comparable to SF rents because it is really nice, safe, and you get a lot more families. There are no homeless and barely any crime there, and SF is just 20-30 min away.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but listing in apartments.com is not really the best dataset to look at, as its usually slightly nicer listings there. Have to combine with Craigslist at the very least where a lot of people look for cheaper places. That said, $2200 for 1bed still seems kinda low.
Nope. $2190 sounds about right. If you don't live in Mission Bay, Rincon Hill, or Cow Hollow that's around how much you can expect a 1 bedroom to be in most neighborhoods.
Most listings are posted on the Property Owner's website (eg. Gaetani, RentSF, etc), not on apartments.com, Zillow, or Craigslist. Those are where us townies fleece transplants.
Before the pandemic, I had a 1 bedroom in Nob Hill for around that much before upgrading to Mission Bay.
Yeah. There's a widespread scam on CL where they take pictures and text from an MLS sale listing and post it on CL for a surprisingly low price. It's an identity theft scam. They try to get you to apply to qualify for a site tour.
Bah, there goes my paranoia. I was already deeply uncomfortable with the amount of information my landlord demanded to sign the lease. Now I know that it has straight up been used for identity theft.
I think it’s something else. I was recently apartment hunting and most of the vacant apartments in the city are offering 1-3 months free but are keeping the overall rent high. Which brings down the annual rent to anywhere from 10-25% lower, but the monthly rent stays well over the median that’s being reported.
A lot of commenters not reading the article. For clarity: rents in San Francisco HAVE decreased compared to 2019 in absolute dollar terms, this is despite rents in the state increasing overall, and the city of San Francisco has seen this in a more pronounced manner than the Bay Area overall.
This points to a localized impact that is not explained by broader trends in inflation, housing, etc.
The obvious explanation is that Sf tech workers have increasingly worked remotely since 2020, and working remotely encourages them moving to further-away housing with lower rent.
Keep in mind that inflation is measured with a basket of goods that often excludes housing. Inflation being 10% does not imply that housing has gone up 10%.
It’s not hard to figure out - it was crazy expensive - San Francisco the city is poorly managed - and there are much better places to live in the Bay Area.
Like where?! The rest of the Bay Area (except maybe Oakland and Berkeley) strikes me as a cookie-cutter, suburban hell-scape. I've visited Palo Alto, San Matteo, Pleasanton, Fremont, and San Jose in the course of my time in the East Bay, and I couldn't help but ask myself why the heck anyone would live there. I don't see anything unique in those places--why not live in a suburb anywhere else, at 1/8th of the cost?
I would say just about anywhere in the Bay Area would be nicer than SF. Cupertino, Campbell, southern San Jose, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Santa Cruz (not quite Silicon Valley but sort of), Alameda, Gilroy, etc. I'd say the only place I'd avoid more than SF is Oakland.
I mean... I'm not about to go giving away info on all the nice spots... But there are some places out there with good schools, a reasonable balance of transit/development and open space, and affordable (by bay area standards) housing.
No, but it was will marginally bid up the price of housing, which is my number one expense right now and my expected number one expense for the foreseeable future.
Maybe this whole thread is a mislead and someone has their eyes on the peninsula ;)
I've lived in Palo Alto, and there are nicer bits and others less so, but overall it's just the suburbs. All suburbs feel the same to me: empty and lifeless.
I moved to the Tenderloin in SF and I was much happier, it was very lively indeed.
As much as I hate SF, there aren’t any real cities in the US besides SF and NYC. If you can afford to live in Europe or Asia then obviously what are you doing here
Chicago is just new enough (post-fire) to have been infected with the insane setbacks and building codes that plague the rest of the country to the point that they prohibit any interesting pedestrian-friendly spaces. Mostly, Chicago is like the rest of the country, car-focused and absent of urban fabric.
For having lived in Chicago I would say it’s much more walkable than SF. Actually I’d say the only city thats more walkable that I’ve been to in the US is nyc
What? Have you even seen Chicago? You don’t even need to drive in most of the city. Same with Boston. America has cities that don’t require car dependence and they’re sure not on the west coast.
Most of the city is definitely an exaggeration. Chicago is absolutely a car-first city, and it's pretty obvious having moved here 20 years ago.
You can very easily live in areas of the city without a car and I have done so. Plenty of places on the Northside - but those places will be somewhat expensive compared to the city average. The good news of course is that Chicago is generally far cheaper than other large cities, so most folks posting on HN can probably find something that fits the bill.
Vast swaths of residential neighborhoods are simply not well serviced by public transit. Especially on the south and west sides where to be blunt, most folks on HN will never visit. These areas look much like the post-WWII suburbs I grew up in elsewhere in the midwest, just slightly more density due to lot lines being closer together.
It really is a tale of two cities here. If you can afford to, you can easily live in one of the most walkable and transit friendly cities in the nation. I posit it's only behind NYC for that. However, if you live just 5 miles away in the "wrong" neighborhood your options will be car or relatively poor bus service.
Of course your definition may be different than mine. My father considers places like St. Louis livable without a car - but I totally disagree. Sure you can make it work, but at ridiculous expense to your time and lifestyle.
I personally bought a place specifically in relation to how close it was to functional rapid transit. I'm privileged enough to do so, but many friends and family simply couldn't afford to live in such areas of the city - if they moved here they would certainly be daily car drivers.
These two facts contradict each other exactly. If you want more housing in a city you want rents to not grow in real terms. What else are you hoping for?
What if it's not the revenue (i.e.rent) that's the problem but the cost, due to the artificial scarcity of space that can be filled with housing? San Francisco is infamous for its restrictive constraints on what can be built. If it were possible to build denser and presumably cheaper forms of housing, I posit that people could develop profitably, without rent needing to go up indefinitely.
A lot of people have been moving from California to other, more suburban, places. Especially North Carolina (my location), Texas, Florida, and others.
It ends up messing with the local housing market, as the Californians come in with a ton of money for housing (as housing is so expensive where they're from) and all the prices are super low in the new location. Since they have enough money to pay for it, prices go sky-high. Not good for locals (unless you want to sell your house).
You can buy 2 equal sized, equivalent location, equal desirability houses in North Carolina (or insert most other states) and California and end up paying double or triple in California.
> It ends up messing with the local housing market, as the Californians come in with a ton of money for housing (as housing is so expensive where they're from) and all the prices are super low in the new location. Since they have enough money to pay for it, prices go sky-high. Not good for locals (unless you want to sell your house).
This argument doesn't make any sense, it isn't like Californians come and think "Wow let me pay 200k over asking price because this is such a good deal compared to the Bay!", they see the same prices you see. I don't see how Californians are distinguishable from any other demographic that migrates to somewhere like e.g. Austin, this just seems like an unwarranted reason to hate on people from Cali
It doesn't have to be 200k above in a single transaction to upset the "poorer" market. When you've just sold your house at a big capital gain, you're more willing to pay just a little bit over the average market value if you find something nice, even without being conscious of the fact (buying something is never a perfect decision, you have a span and can be pushed in either direction a bit). And that little bit over feeds the trend delta when lots of buyers think like that over time.
I think that logic ties in with the theme of the article as well. Supply and demand regulates markets in a subtle way, it's not a binary input like "people want to live in SF or not". Maybe it's enough that 1/10 of the people who wants to move there changes their minds when they see the housing market.
Buyers who need a mortgage can't go above the appraisal value, which in times of high demand lags behind the actual value of the home. If the buyer and seller reach an agreed upon value and the appraisal comes in lower than they expect, the buyer may have to back out (which can screw up the seller's plans) or lower the offer.
A cash offer doesn't have that risk, so all else being equal sellers will choose them over mortgage offers. This has the effect of raising prices faster than they might otherwise go, because the appraisal system normally serves as a bit of inertia in the system.
Yes, that's what we did, but that's out of reach for most first-time local buyers, who typically barely have enough for the down payment on the mortgage. An influx of out-of-state buyers who have lots of equity in their to use will therefore price out the locals.
There aren't that many Californians moving to NC. There are probably more than from other states, but that's just because CA is the most populous state. Inter-state migration has not budged much from the long term average. Californians are just east targets to blame cuz there's always a few around (most populous state) and the ones who do move out tend to have more money, but not enough to actually affect NC rents
My partner and I were stunned to see that SF housing prices are way lower than New York’s. Like a decent 2 bedroom 2 bathroom with amenities like an elevator (ikr what an amenity), in unit laundry and nice fixtures will run you 6k easily in New York. In SF there’s plenty of listings for 3-4K. Its making us seriously consider moving to SF for a bit
If you're Asian, SF works out better than Manhattan or Brooklyn.
The fact that you can just go downstairs and get fresh and near authentic Com Tam, Shiumai, or Tandoori for cheap is hard to beat, and the community is much stronger and better represented.
Not to say NYC is bad - it's an amazing city - but, to quote Ali Wong, SF is absolutely an Asian Wakanda
As a non Asian person I always thought New York offered quite an array of Asian cuisine etc. the old Chinese communities especially seem pretty legit. any comments on this?
I'm not Chinese so I can't speak to it, though I found Flushings to be solid.
I can speak as someone of South and Central Asian descent though. There are options for that in NYC, but I'd need to commute over an hour to New Jersey, Midwood, or Brighton Beach. Meanwhile I can get Aush or Charsi Kebab within at most a 40 minute BART ride from SF, and have 4-5 different options.
If I want to get HK Cha Chaan Teng style Yu Char Kway I have like 8-9 options within 3 miles of me within SF, or if I want to try some cool Thai Chinese style crepes there are 4 options in SF alone.
If I ever want to find a specific Asian sub-ethnic group's food - I will always find 3-4 options for that in the Bay Area, but it's difficult even in NYC
Furthermore, Asian and Latino culture is extremely normalized in California compared to NY. The same way a New Yorker is a fanatic for an Italian sub is the same way a Californian is for their Banh Mi
And finally, it's hard to discount the representation all over California. In the east coast you will feel like the other - people absolutely do look at you weird if you ain't white or black - but in the West no one bats an eye.
Basically, imagine if you were an Italian New Yorker. Italians have been well represented politically, culturally, and socially. You're basically the top dog. In NYC you can try every single type of ethnic Italian cuisine at every single price point. For Asian ethnic groups, that's most of California (and the West in general).
Meanwhile NYC alone has more Asians than LA/SF combined in a much smaller area and even you admit on the flanks of NYC, e.g., Fort Lee has its own contribution here (of course, it's no 40 minute bart train ride -- maybe a 30 minute car trip though)
The rest of your story's anecdotes are about twenty years out of date. NYC for Italian subs? Really? There's like six Italians left east of the Husdon and three of them speak Spanish at home.
Top dog ethnicity btw is a hilarious (and dangerous) way of looking at things.
> Meanwhile NYC alone has more Asians than LA/SF combined
Numerically, not proportionally. The Bay Area has been a hub for Asian Americans for a long time.
> Fort Lee has its own contribution here
Fort Lee is mostly Korean.
I gave an examples of Pakhtun and Cantonese food - one a niche community in the US and the other a large diaspora in the US.
That's the thing - us Asians aren't a monolith. We're a fucking continent with hundreds of different ethnicities.
Just about every South Asian, Chinese, and Southeast Asian community is represented in the Bay, with a well represented Central Asian and East Asian community as well.
I can get Liti Chokha (Bhojpuri), Laghman (Hui-Uyghur fusion), Horse Kumis (Mongolian), Banh Mi Xiu Mai (Highland Vietnamese), etc within the core Bay Area via public transit alone. With driving it would be even faster
That almost isn't a thing in NYC. Hell, there's only one Laghman joint in NYC and they completely butchered their Samosa compared to Mrs Khan, Kusan, or Nursel. Farida is decent, but half their family and staffed moved to the Bay Area to open restaurants like Halal Dastarkhan.
Every small Asian ethnic group is well represented in the Bay irrespective of size.
If you're a numerically large ethnic group like Korean or Cantonese it might not matter as much, but it does to us who are from smaller ethnic groups. My ethnic group has only 3 million people at most, and most of them only reside in South and Central Asia with no diaspora.
I don't want to lose my cultural background. And this is the same for plenty of other smaller communities.
> NYC for Italian subs?
It's an example of cultural assimilation to highlight how ingrained Asian ethnic groups have become in California.
Yeah…I don’t know about that. New York has a stunningly good chinese food scene and a surprisingly meh Italian scene. And people looking at you weird if you’re not white or black? Have you lived in New York? In like the last 30 years?
There is surprisingly poor Vietnamese and Indian food in New York, although that’s slowly changing. But for lots of asian cuisines there’s fantastic diversity and quality.
And most other communities aren't well represented in general. Even Chinese ones, compared to the Bay. Like I think there are only 2 Guilin style restaurants in the NYC area (please correct me if wrong - I'd love recommendations).
For smaller Asian ethnic groups, we are well represented in the Bay Area due to the existing large Asian community (and to a lesser extent in most other West Coast cities)
This isn't a think in NYC. Nor is there convenience. The same way a New Yorker can go downstairs and get a Pizza Slice, I can get a Banh Mi or Jiaozi in SF.
NYC has options, but it's a minority. That's a very real thing - it's a MINORITY. This simply isn't as common an experience in California.
If you're a numerically large ethnic group like Korean or Cantonese it might not matter as much, but it does to us who are from smaller ethnic groups. My ethnic group has only 3 million people at most, and most of them only reside in South and Central Asia with no diaspora.
I have to say that Naan N Curry is the only Pakistani restaurant I ever walked out of (after eating of course, not in anger) feeling it was too authentic - right down to the attitude of the staff.
Public Schools in NYC are basically in the same boat as Public Schools in SF. Outside of a handful of exclusive programs, your only options are $60k private schools or moving to the burbs in Hudson/NJ/Long Island/East Bay/South Bay/Peninsula.
Public transit is better in NYC, but that's a side effect of density.
I feel like that’s an unfair comparison. Because New York has a ton of cheaper district. Your numbers don’t seem right if you’re looking in Harlem or Brooklyn. Whereas SF is quite small and there are just no cheap apartments. Even TL is expensive as hell.
Yes, you could live in harlem or deep brooklyn but then you lose stuff like an elevator or easy access to grocery stores or a kitchen that doesn’t look like a joke. Don’t get me wrong there’s plenty of nice places but the standard of living is a lot lower than the rest of America.
A few years back, 1-bedrooms in dire need of renovation were going for $3-$4k. Sounds like things have really fallen off. I still wouldn’t move back, unless I were 15 years younger and needed to jumpstart my career
Adjusted for US-wide inflation, rent in SF is down 30% (not a typo) since the end of 2019. They're down because there's more supply and less demand, so landlords can't fill vacancies.
That doesn't sound right: US-wide inflation since 2019 is less than 30% (more like 19%), in which case I don't see how to square your claim with the article's headline.
Thanks! I misunderstood the headline, and thought it was saying that despite covid rents are still higher than the pre-2020 baseline, when actually it's saying that rents are still lower (in nominal terms, and so strongly so in real terms) than the pre-2020 baseline.
Thoughts on how the vacant property tax will impact asking rents? My understanding is that it becomes effective Jan 1, 2024. Feels like it might encourage landlords to rent units at a rent they will begrudgingly accept to avoid the tax vs holding out for top dollar, but perhaps too early to tell.
I'm mulling moving (back) to the SF Bay area. I am at a senior position at work(AI). Pay is a factor but more about wanting to be at the cutting edge, and change of scene. Issue is I have two kids under 10. I was doing the math for south bay area but this thread makes me wonder if SF is doable (living/employment). Suggestions about feasibility/lifestyle compromises/something else to factor in?
No comment on best places to raise kids, although I firmly believe a city (even a smaller one) would stimulate their development much more than a car dependent suburb.
Ask for no less than 200, preferably 250+ base. Live close to work, transit in the Bay ranges between somewhat tolerable to nonexistent. Check family health insurance costs carefully. Do not assume you will be able to work remote, return to office is very real. Several Peninsula cities are only about half an hour from SF, might be a good starting point that lets you explore up and down the bay and decide where you would want to settle in for the long term.
I think the city is an outlier (as noted) due to rent control. Rent from the north bay to monterey county has NOT gone down. Rents keeps increasing ... this is talking to people renting not the sites that will post a price and demand something else.
I haven’t heard a single person who left SF that said they would go back. Every documentary I watch about it makes it look like a lawless hellhole. And that government… just an overall disaster of a city.
Then you're not talking to enough people and watching too much mainstream media, which gets off on the lawless hellhole angle because it gets them views and thus ad dollars.
A lot of people are just ridiculously scared of homeless, which really fuels the media narrative. I see it in San Diego - the way the media talks about it, the way the city doesn't spend money allocated for such issues, stand up comedians disparaging them, acquaintances afraid of people on the street just trying to survive, banning people from sleeping in their cars, etc.
There are plenty of crazy homed people. There are plenty of homed people committing crimes. Most people who are homeless are totally normal people who hit a bad patch, and it's very difficult to get back on your feet when no one will give you a job.
I have been threatened and people I know have been assaulted by unhomed people. I have never been threatened and nobody I know has been assaulted by homed people. So no, they aren't "ridiculously" scared of homeless, it's a reasonable response to the on-the-ground truth.
I'm not saying that it doesn't happen. But the reality is, to make one random comparison to a bigger threat, that 597 people have died in 2023 from mass shootings [0] and I can't even find any statistics on the number of people killed by homeless in 2023. When I tried various search queries, all I find is articles about the number of homeless dying and things like serial killers who target homeless in LA.
Yes, some homeless are dangerous. But the simple truth is that there are still way more crazy homed people who are dangerous. Yes, that is obviously partly because there are way more people who are homed than homeless. That is part of my point - the homeless issue is magnified by fear. I'm not saying it's made up.
Well, now you've heard of one: I left SF in 2019 and moved back in 2021. Do not regret it. If I have to leave in the future it will be with great sadness.
It is not a lawless hellhole. There is a lot of property crime, but it's not because we don't have enough cops. The weather is very good. Excellent restaurants.
This is not directly related but I really really really wish Realpage and landlords that used it to artificially increase rents pay a big price for their shenanigans.
It’s happening nation wide. Seattle is down ~10% yoy. Overall housing costs have been coming down nationally, and the last inflation report actually had us in deflation month over month.
Well, if people left at a higher rate than people decided they wanted to arrive, the supply is now less insufficient to meet demand and so it is expected that prices would decrease.
Just this—if lots of people get laid off from high paying jobs and new hiring slows down, there’s not going to be enough money to support higher rents.
The rent will not go down in SF, owners would rather sit the apartments empty than to rent at a discount to keep the prices high. Or they offer a few months off, so the annual rent is lower but the monthly rent is high. All to ensure the SF rents stay high in the long run.
I mean, this kind of behavior obviously doesn't work in the face of a durable new balance between supply and demand (lower demand or higher supply). Like, can you wait out a three month period of market uncertainty? Sure! But if, say, people actually do significantly shift the balance of population away from the Bay Area, all those kind of games do is leave you worse off, and neither the financial nor the moral resources of landlords to try to outwait lower demand is infinite.
The etymology of the phrase has little to do with the modern day.
Does land in the Bay Area have a significant value? Certainly! But if there's a durable change in the supply/demand balance (which it's far from proven that there is), that value can become less (not zero, just less), and trying to finesse it back to its peak value just won't work if there is a significant durable change.
Again, this is silly. I can't tell what kind of counterfactual you're even comparing to.
Is person A who has a plot of real estate in a valuable location likely better off than person B who is exactly like person A, but has no real estate? Well, like... no duh, dude. Real estate has positive value, and nobody has ever suggested otherwise.
Is person A who has a plot of real estate in a valuable location likely better off than person B who is exactly like person A, but instead they have a non-real estate asset that has the same nominal value as person A's real estate? Maybe, maybe not! It is not a law of nature that real estate outperforms other assets.
And you're simply wrong. Go find out the price of any random lot near you over a long time period, if you don't believe me, and compare to index funds.
That's not the comparison you have to make here. Instead consider :
price of the lot + compounding (regular income from utilizing the lot + rent you would have otherwise paid)
As it happens, I'm an officer of a family business that has a number of real estate investments (some residential, some commercial, some industrial). We've had the properties over a timeframe of decades -- in some cases like 10-20 years, in other cases 30-40. We're now selling them.
Some of them have been basically good investments. Others have been iffy. You do of course accrue rents from them, but there are also costs. There is no law of nature that they outperform other investments.
People are opting out. I redirected my career away from a tech mega-corp for precisely the reason that eventually I'd have to relocate to the bay area to continue advancing. There's absolutely no way I'm doing that to my family.
Actually there are tons of empty office buildings and residential units.
It’s the same situation as in New York.
Plenty of landlords can afford keeping their prices high hoping for the eventual bite. If they lower their prices further they do a bigger damage to their portfolio for years to come once you factor in rent control.
Forget rent control, the way commercial real estate works, many banks give loans based on certain minimum rents being paid, if the landlord lowers the rent the bank can call the entire loan to be paid immediately.
If there is no rent, then there is a default too. You don’t get to pretend your property is worth $x per sq ft unless it is landing in the bank account.
What the landlord does in this situation is paying out of pocket the expected interest payment to the bank, while deducting this as a cost from their other more profitable portfolios.
In that case, the landlord could rent for a lower rent than the bank is okay with, and supplement the missing amount himself. That would be cheaper that leaving it empty and paying all the rent himself.
No, the lender or the servicing company will regularly request the P&L and check up on business. Paying out of pocket does not mean the debt covenants are satisfied.
The “damage” part is only real if one intends to refinance constantly and chase the highest multiple possible. The flip-side of rent control is high occupancy. If the building was properly capitalized and rented with a proper return in mind, rent control ensures you keep turning a profit year after year. Not sure about SF, but in many jurisdictions including utilities allows higher increases. Staying on top of these allowed increases and ensuring good budgeting makes a lot of rent controlled buildings a gold mine.
EDIT: of course if you mess up, that mistake is now set in stone and backed by legal resource of your city, so it’s not risk free.
> rent control ensures you keep turning a profit year after year
this assumes the returns set out by the rent control is appropriate in all future situations. Even with the allowance for increases, there are still situations where such an increase is insufficient.
Yes, unfortunately we have seen examples recently with COVID where municipalities basically offloaded subsidizing rent to landlords by both prohibiting increases and evictions for non-payment. These policies are not part of what’s normally thought of as rent control or rent stabilization ordinances.
Unfortunately, the proverbial cat is out of the bag and we will likely see repeats of such “subsidies”. It’s unclear how it will change the calculations long-term. Short-term, it has already driven the unlucky small landlords out of business and forced surviving to keep greater reserves. This increased reserves need will definitely hamper future development and probably will drive rents up even more due to lack of supply. Large corporate landlords tend to focus on the higher end of the market, but the shortage is in the more affordable price range…
Progressive leftists (correctly) think that landlords are leaches. Expect no sorrow or concern from the average SF voter and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
If property owners want to turn their buildings into businesses, they need to be smart businesspeople and plan for those situations. If they fail then that's the market dynamics at play!
I think that comment is talking about evictions and rent increase moratoria we saw during COVID lockdowns. It was very close to a black swan event, at least for me. Now, reality has changed and landlords need to plan for the risk of not having income for several years. It’s not normal rent control/stabilization, so the long term effects are yet unclear. For now, leverage is risky, so new investment is going to be hard to come by.
Reminds me of the situation with AOL dialup, which I was surprised as heck to learn is a) still a thing and b) charges way more than I would have expected in areas where its otherwise not feasible to get high speed internet (easily). Could be similar to the situation here with people who can't leave/won't leave for personal or career reasons, and taking up the prices available.
I think "captive market" is the term you want. Same reason cable TV bills keep climbing to +$200/month, and newspaper delivery prices keep going up while the product keeps shrinking.
Demand for some things is elastic only down to a point. That's the point where customers are hostages.
Newspaper prices are more of a death spiral than a captive market.
People stop getting papers delivered in favor of online news, so prices have to go up to cover fixed costs, pushing more people to stop getting papers delivered and so on.
I notice, walking around the 'hood, that some people still get the San Jose Mercury-News delivered. Why?
I think they just have to get a morning paper, and if it's getting shittier by the year, well, so be it. You're right, lots of readers have already cancelled, but there's a core of readers who won't. The Merc can raise the price and they'll just pay it.
Same. I've never lived in SF, but I convinced my wife to relocate to NYC so I could kick-start my tech career. We lived there for 4 years and then moved to FL in 2018. I'm glad I had the experience of living there, but I'll never do it again. Nor will I ever move to SF, no matter how lucrative the offer.
The Bay Area is also a much bigger place than SF. Unless you’re familiar with a lot of the Bay Area it would be pretty unfortunate to refuse a lucrative offer in many Bay Area places because of the problems that SF is infamous for.
You would rather raise a child in a state like Florida where the government has made it illegal not to glorify the confederacy and chattel slavery?
That is a very odd choice. I get that the bay has a crime/homeless/CoL problem but fleeing to a place with much of the same issues in its own cities while also being one of the worst parts of the country culturally outside of then isn’t any better, IMO.
I didn't say anything about bay area homelessness, in fact the comment you're responding to was specifically about NYC, which I mentioned I lived in for 4 years. Also, no offense, but I'm willing to bet you haven't spent much time in Florida, if at all. Culturally, about half of my social circle is made up of Venezuelan refugees, all of whom love living here.
Several of them are granted official refugee status. Also not sure what bias you’re talking about.
FWIW, I’ve lived in 8 states - TN, MS, GA, AK, CO, NY, NJ, and FL. Every one of them has pros and cons, and you find all sorts of people everywhere. This idea that a particular state is somehow culturally worse, reflects a lack of either depth or life experience.
As someone who chose NyC over SF to start my tech carrier myself, it looks like it would have been much better if I had gone to SF (from how my colleagues did). NYC was my dream city so I don’t regret it but SF is leagues ahead in terms of tech ecosystem.
> Nor will I ever move to SF, no matter how lucrative the offer.
You have never lived there, if I understand correctly. Why wouldn't you move there? Is there some experience you have with it? Housing prices? Internet rumors?
I've never lived there, but I visit often for work. Primarily two reasons - the first is that I'm starting a family and neither I nor my wife have any family there. The second is, as you guessed, the home prices. If I wanted something even remotely affordable, I'd have to live far away and have an insane commute. We've already lived that lifestyle in NYC, and we're not eager to return to it.
Well, family is more than just daycare for one thing. But the larger point is that I don’t see my reasons as issues that need to be addressed. Silicon Valley is not the center of my universe.
South Florida, about an hour north of Miami. The prices down here have gotten kind of crazy so I'd like to move, but our family is here so that makes it difficult. Still better overall than NYC.
Appreciate the response. Wife and I looked at SoFlo, specifically Miami, really closely. Even lived for a month. It was hard for us to pull the trigger, but cool to see it's working out for others.
I wouldn't mind being there as opposed to this winter in the bay...
I think it is a misconception that you need to be in the Bay Area to advance an tech career. Unless you have some ultra-non-portable skill that only develops in one region on Earth, you might need to reconsider your career path, because it sounds too limited to be useful.
I took them as saying that they'd need to move to the Bay Area to advance in the specific tech mega-corp they were in previously, not that you have to be in the Bay Area to advance in tech in general.
However the neighborhoods are dreamy, as good as ever. The city lost population during the pandemic but it has been gaining and in 2023, it is the fastest growing in the state.
I've been in tech for years here and it is the best job market, most lucrative, and most advanced. It's an opportunity to work here. Just don't live in the tenderloin.