The more things change the more they say the same.
If there's one thing I've learned in life, is to never listen to people moaning about the "good old days" and how [insert group] has "ruined" [insert place], not like those [other group] that were great. The good old days were never actually that good, and [insert group] is neither worse nor better than [other group].
We're all way too young to be curmudgeons yet, so stop acting like it.
It's also amusing to see one wave of gentrifiers shake their fists angrily at the next wave of gentrifiers. I heard about the Yuppie Eradication Project - where people who invaded a traditionally Latino stronghold vowed to key the cars of people who later invaded that.
FWIW, they can fight for the Mission all they want. No matter how many rose-tinted pairs of glasses you put on, it's still the piss-filled, shit-littered, gun-happy, knife-stabby, gangbanger-filled shitpot we know and love.
Yes, I will forever miss Carol Doda, the go-go "swing joints," the disco clubs, the Mitchell brothers, the Pavarotti operas where the star never showed up, the old SP trains with their smoking cars where you couldn't take a breath without choking, the no-growth mindset that caused the City to turns its collective nose up as the tech boom began and to wave to it as it passed by, the exodus of businesses that fled high taxes and silly regulations in favor of friendlier climes, and, of course, Playland, where you could ride bumper cars to your heart's content without having to consider anything more serious than how to find the sun amidst the continual fog that hung over the place. Having been afflicted already with such grievous losses, I imagine the City will survive an influx of talented young entrepreneurs who seek to build great new companies and maybe just to have a little fun to boot.
Having lived through all this, I can tell you, the City is what it has always been: an amazing collection of high life, low life, and tempered life of every kind imaginable. Today, it has lots of character, just as it always has. It is vain and fruitless to try to glamorize a pickled version of the things of a bygone era, as the author here does. We just need to appreciate it on its own terms.
"If there's one thing I've learned in life, is to never listen to people moaning about the 'good old days'"
You're just being a reverse curmudgeon. Creativity thrives in an environment of diversity, and San Francisco became a mecca for creative software people because it was already a mecca for artists, hippies and people of all races and creeds, not because it was packed to the gills with iPhone developers in ironic t-shirts. Maybe there's nothing that can be done about it, but I think there's definitely a loss when a place becomes homogenous due to gentrification.
I've only been here since 2008, but even on that limited timeframe it's been pretty damned annoying to see useful places (like hardware stores, markets, dry cleaners, etc.) shut down so that room can be made for yuppie bars and overpriced restaurants. So we replace shops with co-working spaces and bookstores with boutique dealers of objets d'art and we pretend that it's "progress", but we make the neighborhoods less attractive to the people who made the neighborhoods attractive.
In short: if you're giving me a choice, I'll take "stabby" neighborhoods over luxury condos. At least the former gives an artist or a musician a place to squat while earning nothing and doing something truly novel; the latter gives a software engineer a place to live while working for Zynga.
>Creativity thrives in an environment of diversity
I don't know how that assumption would correlate with SV. The Peninsula and the SR237 triangle aren't known for their creative diversity --they were orchards just a few decades back -but those valleys were the primary genesis for the information technology we have today. When the HPs, Fairchildren, NatSemis, Intels, etc. began all the Beatnicks were in SF. The valley was a kind of backwater --well, it was mostly orchards, from what I can tell. Despite that those companies were able to find bright people who brought forth progress and ideas which profoundly affect us today. So, I don't really see the correlation between creative types and the discoveries by the engineers. That's not to say engineers can't enjoy the creative arts as pleasure, but to say they are related directly seems a stretch, to me. It's not a detriment to have creatives, but not sure they were a necessary ingredient.
> I think there's definitely a loss when a place becomes homogenous due to gentrification.
I think the premise is an old canard. Post WWII Tokyo had a choice to make. Change rapidly and modermize and progress or remain chained to its old ways and remain a kind of defeated backwater. They chose the former, and while modern, Tokyo is not "boring" and homogenous. There are thousands of distinct neighborhoods with their own unique character, despite the fast pace of building and modernization.
"I don't know how that assumption would correlate with SV. The Peninsula and the SR237 triangle aren't known for their creative diversity"
It isn't an assumption. There's a lot of literature backing up the association (for a popularization, read Where Good Ideas Come From, by Stephen Pinker).
In any case, for many years the city was a bedroom community for Silicon Valley -- people worked in the valley, and lived in the city for the diversity and culture (which is part of the reason we have Caltrain). San Francisco has always been a draw.
Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a read when I have some time. Still, questions linger. Artis live up and down the coast from Santa Cruz down to LA. There are even art towns/communities -I don't see a lot of innovation coming from there. Sure, artwise they may be avant guarde, but proponents of progress (aside from social change) and drivers of innovation, I don't see that. If anything, they seem to tend towards conservatism when it comes to progress.
Now, engineers and scientists might enjoy and even admire artists for their literary imagination, expressiveness, showship, fame, etc. In popular culture, perhaps perpetuated via the products of these same artists, people tend to stereotype engineers as socially inadequate and dull. So that's a bit ironic. Personally, I think it's somewhat incidental. Engineers and scientists have some of the 'artist' in the old Renaissance sense of the word, but they are primarily innovators and not expressive artists.
No, that's not the right history. Caltrain is the remains of the old Southern Pacific commute lines; the SP brought people FROM the peninsula INTO San Francisco to work during the day, and back to their peninsula bedrooms in the evening. After WWII, San Francisco headed downward. By the 1960s and 1970s crime and disorder were so bad that only the very rich could live in San Francisco. Large employers moved their "back offices" to the suburbs, and in-commuting fell. Startups in the 1970s and 1980s had to be in Silicon Valley, because few decent engineers would have dreamed of living in the disgusting city, and they didn't want to commute to it either. Freeway traffic in the 1970s and 1980s was almost entirely INTO the city in the morning, back to the Peninsula in the evening; working in the Valley where one lived made that unnecessary. Only in the last few years has it become common to live in San Francisco and work in Silicon Valley, as San Francisco has recovered and become a vastly better place to live.
I've visited and/or spent significant time in San Francisco since considerably earlier than that.
I've visited and/or spent significant time and/or lived in numerous other communities, large and small, since considerably before that.
Here's a little secret: things change.
Hardware, drug, and book stores have been closing across the country and around the world with consolidation.
High-quality fresh/organic food markets, good cafes, restaurants, museums, and of course, restaurants, have largely increased in number over the same period. Even art-and-creativity friendly places such as the Crucible (in Oakland), Makerspace, and the like have popped up.
Do I miss some of the things that were and now are not? Sure. Do I appreciate some of the things which were not, and now are? You better believe it. Are there still fascinating reminders squirreled away in strange nooks and crannies that remind us of the old times? Yep.
The 1950s - 1970s creative boom occurred in large part because Northern California was an inexpensive place to be. Other parts of the country are now inexpensive (including such near-range locations as California's Central Valley, or even Alameda County -- no need to go back to Ohio, not that there's anything wrong with that). It's part of the dynamic. Art's still got to pay the rent, and if there's not much money in that, it needs to go where the rent is cheap.
And if you didn't think the Hippie culture was ironic, well, brother, do I have a grass bridge to sell you.
It's easy to say 'too bad, you're a gentrifier complaining about further gentrification', and I agree with that to some extent.
On the other hand, I think what the sentiment of this article is getting at is the frustration that comes with watching culture and community being washed away at a large scale. Sure, enclaves of artists/musicians/hackers may set up shop in various neighborhoods throughout a city, but early on it's never enough to really remove the feeling of culture and community of where one is on a whole. But then at a certain point you hit some sort of inflection point where the flood gates open and the entire city feels foreign. This happened to Manhattan a while ago. Sure it's still uniquely New York, and it's still an amazing place that I love, but it's a borough for the wealthy now.
I encountered this feeling of resentment towards post-flood-gate gentrifiers recently on a subway ride on the Q train back into Brooklyn. If you've ever spent any significant time on the Q train you've probably experienced the emergency doors on one side of the train open, followed by a group of young guys entering the car exclaiming "It's show time!", followed by all sorts of acrobatic break dancing. It might not be all that amazing the 20th time, but it is what it is. A couple weeks ago this familiar act began happening and, at the risk of sounding prejudiced, a new-wave gentrifying girl yelled "Oh, no! Stop! I hate this!" while giving a stank face to everyone. My initial reaction: this is NYC, specifically Brooklyn, and it's for moments like this that we live here, so what are you doing here?
I had realized that Brooklyn had changed significantly, but for some reason this made me realize it's nearing the point of no return. You see people charging $2700 for 1 bedrooms in Bushwick and Bentleys cruising on Flatbush and realize the charm of the entire place is in danger of being lost.
I also have conflicting options about the issue. On the one hand, yes get out of the way and let things evolve. On the other, how sustainable is a city that only the wealthy can afford to live.
My husband and I loved living in SF, but left because event though we both have great, well paying jobs, we can't afford a place large enough to be comfortable, let alone have a kid. So we moved and many of those we know have done the same.
I think about this in my own city (Seattle), where the quirky artists have been progressively priced out of several neighborhoods. And sure, something is lost when this happens, but I don't think anyone should be assured that their place in the world is theirs forever. So, you have to move from Fremont to Georgetown, and maybe then from Georgetown to South Park.
Sure, something is lost, but is it a real tragedy?
I think when you get to the point of gentrification in a place like NYC or SF, when it no longer is possible for the creative class to afford living there, you do risk losing the city, and that's tragic.
It's not only a question of these being expensive places to live, but if the entirety of the city is filled with bougie restaurants and bars, is that even attractive anymore? Do I really care to live in a place filled with $15 burger joints, art galleries that don't take risks because they are targeting wealthy buyers in order to pay their leases, and music venues that have to have 7 acts a night rotating through so the space can sell enough $7 beers to stay open?
I mean Bill and Hilarie Clinton even had an event at Roberta's in Bushwick (Brooklyn) this week. The Clintons hanging out in Bushwick?! At what point do people just start looking elsewhere?
These are all questions I don't have answers to. I do love New York, and every time I leave I can't wait to get back. It's a magical place. But sometimes I can't help but think nearly free rent and a blank canvas like Detroit sounds mighty appealing.
I can't help but think nearly free rent and a blank canvas like Detroit sounds mighty appealing.
I honestly hope that the nearly free rent and blank canvas does appeal to a lot of creative/artist/hacker types.
As shameful as it is to say, I've thought about buying property there (or somewhere similarly cheap) just so I could do cool stuff with it. My small residential lot doesn't have enough room (or a proper tree) to build a tree house with my kids, and I don't have nearly enough room in my shop to experiment with the crazy building stuff I want to do.
I share your concerns, though I'm optimistic it's not quite so bad. For one thing, I've noticed in some places that gentrification is not monotonically increasing, and is in fact cyclical.
I lived for some time in Belltown (Seattle), a former starving-artist neighborhood that then got hit by the gentrification bug really hard. At this point the artist population in that neighborhood hovers around zero, and has all been replaced by high-rises and expensive but mediocre bistros. From the long-timers (well, longer-timers) I've spoken to, Belltown is actually less expensive than at its peak, as the complete eradication of everything interesting about the place has caused it to lose a lot of the appeal - to the point where it may actually be cheap enough for art to exist again :P
The artists are alive and well - we're simply seeing a slow, decades-long process where different demographics ebb and flow in the different parts of a city. On a larger scale, we're also seeing a decades-long process where populations ebb and flow amongst different regions in response to economic pressure. Detroit has now established itself as perhaps the next "it" place in large part due to its affordability. I highly doubt America will ever run out of compelling environments for art to thrive.
FWIW, I'm a little skeptical about your Q train experience. I ride that train (and the F, more the F than the Q) regularly and have very, very rarely encountered that kind of attitude. IMO you're making a mountain out of a molehill - I would be very hesitant about guessing at demographics from it.
> "and realize the charm of the entire place is in danger of being lost."
Sure, and I'll agree with you - but my point also is that you weren't there first. Williamsburg was interesting and artsy before the new demographic moved in, but it was also completely different and interesting before the starving artists moved in. The existing charm you now miss was, in its time, an usurper of existing culture as well, and that turned out ok. I suspect this will also.
Yeah, I think we're for the most part in agreement here.
My main questions though are around what happens when the whole city becomes so expensive that it's impossible to live here on a budget. Sure, you can keep going further and further out, but at what point does it not make sense to even live here anymore, if you are an artist that wants to spend time creating and have no intention of trying to pull in 6 figure salaries? It's not like all of a sudden Chelsea got cheaper as Fort Greene got more expensive -- the entirety of Manhattan is out of reach, and now most of the western part of Brooklyn and Queens is as well.
I use the anecdote of the Q train not to make a generalization as to how the train is -- this was certainly an exception -- but to illustrate the fact that I'm finding myself unable to socially understand many of the current wave of people coming into the boroughs.
The charm I miss isn't really hipsters running around Williamsburg, in fact I don't miss that at all. It's more about the diversity of a place, both racially and economically. Seeing people drive down Union Street in Rolls Royces makes me second guess why I live here.
I moved to SF in the midst of the dot-com boom, looking for a job writing, only to soon find myself working at a dotcom. For those who didn't live it, it's hard to explain how much money was floating around and how arrogant many "dotcommers" were and how many oozed an entitlement to IPO riches. The crash was in some ways a relief for many, who then pursued careers they really wanted.
It was a complicated time, and we're in another one right now. I just hope the newest wave of dotcommers - who thankfully include way more programmers and fewer smarmy bizdev guys -- finds a way to avoid feeling entitled.
True. But there's also no way to have another business doing a great job on a corner for 100 years - without waiting 100 years. It IS significant when great, non-obsolete businesses are pushed around by economic upheaval (in the article's case, real estate prices and taxes).
Yeah, but he highlights a big reason for this. Nothing new gets built. All those good old days people constricted supply and then got pissed when the demand hiked prices and they could no longer afford it.
You see this all over. Cool towns try to constrict supply through regulation to stop people from moving to their town, but ultimately just end up making their towns more expensive.
>Nothing new gets built. All those good old days people constricted supply and then got pissed when the demand hiked prices and they could no longer afford it.
Exactly. I wrote this comment yesterday:
>If employers offered significantly higher wages then plenty more supply would quickly appear to clear the market
This is really a housing supply question as Matt Yglesias makes clear here: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face... and as others have written (see, for example, Ryan Avent's The Gated City). Housing costs in Silicon Valley are insane, which prices out lower skill workers and forces companies to pay more for highly skilled workers. Allowing to higher building heights and reduce setback requirements alone would do a lot to improve the jobs situation.
Housing costs in Silicon Valley are insane, which prices out lower skill workers and forces companies to pay more for highly skilled workers.
It also reduces the quality of life for those who do live in Silicon Valley, because the salary rises almost never entirely make up for the rise in land prices.
(Yes, I've used salary calculators, particularly to compare the Bay Area's and Boston's software engineering salaries to places like Portland and Seattle that are cheaper but still have lots of tech.)
Because if you can't build much-to-any more housing in Silicon Valley, salary increases there just serve to bid up housing prices further, rather than motivating people to build more & better housing.
The Mission looks more like Noe Valley runoff than ever. Sure, some parts are still slightly scary but there are signs of it becoming more bourgeois all over the place.
Only if you stay strictly on/west of Valencia. The rest of the Mission is as fucked as ever. Let's not forget that the murder rate east of Valencia St is, at least in the last couple of months, working out to be 1 every 2 weeks.
The east side is by no means "as fucked as ever". 24th street has totally transformed and become another valencia street. Folsom/Harrison has been changing a lot. There are lots of fancy restaurants, cushy bars, theatres, climbing gym, nice cafes, etc etc. To think that this area is not changing is quite frankly delusional.
I haven't redefined the Mission at all - quite the opposite in fact. Consult a map if you don't believe me.
If you look on a map you will find "the area west of Valencia" is a tiny sliver of the whole neighborhood - coincidentally the only part that is highly gentrified, this is the area GP was referring to.
"The rest of the Mission" as I called out, is in fact the vast majority of the neighborhood, but also one that is routinely ignored by wealthy San Franciscans. It is vastly larger than the gentrified little corner, and is still a crack-ridden hole.
I lived at 24th/Mission for a year, and as a photographer have been all over every nook and cranny of that neighborhood, the good and the bad - I don't think I'm unqualified to say that the area of the Mission west/on Valencia is an entirely separate universe from the rest of the Mission.
I haven't made any claims on the Mission, say, in early 00s, because I obviously wasn't around then. The main thrust here is that the Mission is not the gentrified yuppie paradise that the media (particularly outside of SF) consistently makes it out to be - that would be the Marina. Only the tiniest sliver of it has seen "colonized" by the hipster/dotcom/yuppie contingent.
In any case, my original comment re: gentrification wasn't aimed at the Mission exclusively - I've lived in numerous other rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods (Belltown and Capitol Hill in Seattle in particular) filled with curmudgeony 20-somethings shaking their fists angrily at gentrifiers who followed their own gentrification.
Actually, the anti-gentrification sentiment in the Mission is substantially less intense than it is in Seattle. Up on Capitol Hill in Seattle, if you have money and live in one of the new housing developments you're practically a persona non grata.
Having lived in the Mission a dozen years, I think you are incredibly hasty in your judgments.
The last year has seen a spectacular boom all along Valencia, but the whole Mission has been getting shinier for 15 years at least. And certainly whiter; Latino population is down 22% between 2000 and 2010.
And yes, you did make claims outside your experience. You opened with "rest of the Mission is as fucked as ever". One year, forever: they're practically the same thing, so I can see how you confused them.
And in regards to your claim that "the rest of the Mission" is "still a crack-ridden hole": go fuck yourself. I especially love the "still". Gosh golly, you've waited a whole year! And nobody has gotten around to living up to your imported standards. How dare they!
Stick around for the next anti-gentrification wave. You'll see that, as with the last one, there is a lot of involvement from people with much deeper roots than the 20-somethings you mock.
Huh, I've never felt unsafe walking around east of Valencia in the mission. I travel out to SF from Brooklyn quite regularly and always find myself walking out around York. It's never even occurred to me to think of it as unsafe, but I guess I'm not a local and don't hear the stories.
There's a sort of ugly urban cycle. First, you get an interesting place. Then interesting people move in. These interesting people do interesting things. Wages go up. Money moves in. Then you have real-estate hyperinflation, and the place becomes unaffordable to anyone who isn't already rich or grandfathered in.
Trouble is: the next wave of interesting people usually start out as starving artists/hackers/entrepreneurs just like the previous wave did.
It's almost as if regional success beyond a certain point accomplishes nothing but inflating real estate, which redirects further success into keeping that real estate bubble inflated. This primarily benefits banks.
Imagine what would happen if this didn't happen... imagine living in a place as inexpensive as a medium-sized Midwestern city, but with Silicon Valley salaries. Imagine how many other places that wealth could go: more startups, more gadgets, better infrastructure, world-class everything, better health care, even generosity. But nope, real estate just soaks up wealth beyond a certain point and redirects it back into the financial pyramid.
Sometimes a place is so unbelievably interesting, like New York, that people are willing to live in a catbox in order to be there. But even then people have a tendency to get sick of this after a while, and anyone contemplating reproducing or wanting to do anything that requires space is out of luck and has to leave.
... imagine living in a place as inexpensive as a medium-sized Midwestern city, but with Silicon Valley salaries.
I'm imagining myself waking up every morning wondering what good it is to be making $XX0,000 if I have to live in this place. My cousin makes ~$220,000 in Yakima WA as a doctor -- her main expenses are weekly flights to NYC.
The reason why people want to be in big cities is because other people are there -- supply and demand explains the high prices. I came from Sacramento, but I wouldn't live there for even double my salary because nobody is doing anything interesting there. The startup scene is non-existent and there are no major universities turning out bright minds. Just more fat people having kids at age 22.
Or are you asking why a SF-style city can't be as inexpensive as Topeka? To that, I would answer: because nobody wants to be in Topeka.
SF isn't a mega-city by any means. It's the 14th largest in the country (between Austin and Columbus). An SF-style city can't be as inexpensive as Topeka. But it could be as inexpensive as Philadelphia or Boston.
San Francisco is the only major city in the US where you a) don't need a car and b) there's no snow. Apparently, lots of people highly value these (and other) factors, enough so that it cannot be as cheap as Philadelphia or Boston.
It's not a question of what would be nice. It's a question of supply and demand.
It is a matter of supply and demand, and while demand in SF is high, it's nothing like say NYC or LA where there are millions of people looking for housing. SF is a medium-sized city as far as cities go. It's a growing city, unlike many, but in the last ten years it grew slower than Boston, DC, Portland, Seattle, San Diego, and Miami. It's not like developers can't build housing quickly enough to keep up with all the demand. It's that the city won't let them.
Perhaps very few readers of HN would like to be in Topeka, but there are also families that have lived there for generations and all kinds of people who I'm sure absolutely love Topeka.
In fact, I suspect they would tell you that you can take NYC or SF and have it (or worse.) The bottom line is to each their own - no reason to disparage other's interests and life choices because you choose to live in a big city and have found a community of like-minded people, it just makes you sound like a pompous jerk.
Perhaps very few readers of HN would like to be in Topeka, but there are also families that have lived there for generations and all kinds of people who I'm sure absolutely love Topeka.
As an additional note, there are also families that have lived in New York City for generations and all kinds of people who absolutely love New York.
Then they get priced out, too. This is why my family moved us to New Jersey at age 5: between crime and school zoning, my parents couldn't stay in their home city of New York and raise children. So to the suburbs we went (in roughly 1994) and by even the mid-2000s we were completely priced out of the city all four of us were born in and very much feel culturally attached to (what with our families having lived there for 100 years or so).
And both my parents had white-collar, professional jobs with salaries and benefits packages!
The point is not NYC > Topeka for everyone -- that is a subjective judgment and you have to pick what's best for you. The point is, for many more people, larger cities have more to offer than small towns. Additionally, on many objective scales that matter to many people -- mainly measures having to do with economic mobility and opportunity -- NYC and other large cities outperform Topeka and the rest of the midwest.
It's not as if I want to live in the Bay Area and spend 1.5X+ on living merely because the population is larger. It's because I have a chance to work for 5-10 years, collect options at some up and coming companies, network with many very successful people, build a career and then retire at age 40 with a 7+ digit net worth. And if I fail to achieve that, I can still land somewhere on a spectrum of outcomes bookended by that goal. The opportunity to do this is very small in Topeka and elsewhere.
So when you say "... no reason to disparage other's interests and life choices because you choose to live in a big city and have found a community of like-minded people, it just makes you sound like a pompous jerk," you're missing the point. I'm not "disparaging" Topeka because there is a community of like-minded people. I'm disparaging the idea that a town like Topeka could just become like SF, only cheaper.
Such a notion embodies no understanding of the reasons why SF is objectively better than Topeka. You are confusing my comparison of the cities on objective criteria with a claim about certain subjective qualities of the places. Yes, some people don't want to put up with the cost, noise, filth etc. involved with big city life and they don't highly value the opportunities we have here -- in my personal opinion, those people have poorly chosen their life's priorities, but objectively stated, they will not enjoy living in SF.
Yakima WA is also where Raymond Carver chose to live & write. Maybe you shouldn't disparage a place just because it's small. I'm sure there are plenty of "fat people having kids at age 22" in Houston, Texas even with the Major Universities turning out bright minds.
That's not an ugly urban cycle, that's progress! Rents and real estate prices go up, prompting new development and increasing density. Much of San Francisco, even near(south of) the downtown core is 3-5 story industrial buildings and parking lots ripe to be turned to high-density use. Right now this "ugly urban cycle" has Twitter and a VC firm moving into the shady Mid-Market neighborhood next to the Tenderloin (Benchmark Capital is literally next door to s trip club) with other startups hot on their heels. This is a good thing.
An "ugly urban cycle" is not when property values rise and people move IN to the city, it's when people flee to the suburbs (see: Detroit, or most U.S. cities in the 1960s).
That said, I agree it's annoying that people tend to pile into city in herds, because it takes on the order of 5 years for real estate to be approved and built to meet demand, and by then there's often been a reversal and you get a flood of supply at exactly the wrong time. But that's actually good for the city too - lots of new housing at low cost.
The problem isn't real estate, it's people - our herd instincts and inconvenient relocation patterns. Similarly, the solution isn't to try and divert money people _choose_ to spend living in preferable locations into health care (where inefficiency and costs are already too high) or "gadgets" (what?) but to get better ways of mitigating the discrepancy in speed between how populations shift and how long it takes to develop new places for people to live.
(PS Downtown Oakland is fantastic and still cheap. Maybe if SF rents get high enough people will get over their hangups about a demographically young downtown with bustling nightlife that's 5 minutes by BART from SOMA)
(PPS You'll notice implicit in my comments is the fact that real estate developers do NOT reliably get rich as the result of a boom. It takes 5 years or more to entitle and build an urban mid- or high-rise housing development, which means it's a crapshoot whether a boom will be on when you're done. In fact developers can go broke if they build now assuming the economy will stay hot because if it's cooled when they are on the market selling they'll miss their numbers. The people who make money in the boom are existing owners who sell and landlords who can jack up rents. As it happens these are the same people who will take a bath when things cool off again.)
Sure, it's not an ugly urban cycle if you're one of the gentrifiers. Then it's full of win.
It's less obviously "progress" if you are somebody who wants to live near the rest of your family, or has a landlord who's decided he'd like a richer tenant, or are in an "urban renewal" zone, which has been bitterly joked about as "negro removal".
I'm a tech guy who has lived in SF a dozen years, so it's all wine and roses for me. But that doesn't stop me from noticing the downsides for others.
Yup, it's less obviously progress for people whose rents spike up, because that is objectively bad, as I said. But long term it's better to have people moving back into urban centers than the massive outflow we had in the 1960s, which did not create a utopia for the largely poor and minority residents who remained, in fact crime and joblessness skyrocketed.
It's complicated and there is suckage all around, as I tried to acknowledge, but having tech companies clustered in the urban core is better on many levels than having them dispersed out into suburbs or the midwest or whatever the OP was envisioning. Was Mid Market REALLY better off with just strip clubs, liquor stores, greasy spoons, and scattered social service agencies than it is with some of those things plus Twitter, a VC firm, and some other tech startups? Really?
We agree that it's not ugly if you've got plenty of money. If you're one of the people forced out, then it is little consolation that the richer people who replace you think the city is "better off".
I'd be really interested to see the argument in which the city is better off in the opposite case - the startups all, as OP suggested, keep to the suburbs (like Pleasanton) or cheaper Midwestern cities (won't the gentrification just move to those cities?) or maybe the middle of nowhere where no one will be gentrified but everyone has to spew loads of CO2 into the atmosphere to get there.
I will say that people are flocking to the suburbs. Many of the artists, yogis and writers I know have chosen to live in places like Oakland and Santa Clara. Not that your usual get-rich hacker would care.
Americans tend to think of "suburb" as meaning "sprawly low-density area with lots of parking-lots and roads," but really it can mean any sort of outlying secondary community.
Kawasaki, and even Yokohama, for instance, are very much suburbs of Tokyo if you look at how people live (a huge proportion of the population commute to Tokyo for work and play), but are also a large cities in their own right, and very densely populated.
A lot of the pain is self-inflicted in San Francisco's case, from idiotic zoning. I'd day Chicago is a reasonably interesting place, interesting enough for 3 million people to live there, and our real estate is pretty affordable.
The problem with SF and NY is that the people living there are selfish and want to pull up the ladder behind them. They like their cute little low rise buildings and won't allow new high density housing to be built.
An enemy of restrictive building codes is converted to an ally the moment the ink on the title is dry.
In fact, the person most harmed probably becomes the more ferocious defender of the zoning restrictions. Because they paid the highest prices, they stand to lose the most by voting away the restrictions that contributed to those astronomical prices.
Actually, this may be how policies like the mortgage deduction or prop 13 can get so entrenched. They may be unfair, but the only thing that seems even more unfair to new buyers is that the benefits would be taken away only after they've paid the heavy toll.
Possibly. I think part of it is cultural though. My wife grew up in a little Midwestern town with 2,000 people. It's got this perfect little 10x10 street grid, because the townspeople wanted to be prepared for when it became a bustling metropolis. I think some people see development as a source of pride, and others are more whimsical and see it as losing the character of the community. And I don't think the mix of those attitudes is uniform across the country.
This very ladder-pulling-up is written into law as rent controls. Although typically presented as a way to ensure that widows and orphans are not priced out by gentrification, rent control is actually a tax on 'people who have moved recently': landlords can and do get stuck with permanent tenants for decades who are now paying 20% of the market rate for their apartment, sometimes less than what it costs to even maintain the apartment. To compensate, they have to raise the rent as much as possible when a unit becomes available, to make up for the cost of carrying the far-below-market units with the permatenants. Anytime you move into or within San Francisco, you're subsidizing the people who haven't moved recently.
I've been taling with friends about organizing a voting bloc to get fellow tech workers in SF to vote on critical issues that affect our lives (rent control, zoning, homelessness, transit). Such an important part of the city's revenue base is virtually unrepresented in policy decisions.
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED: shoot me an email at dan@dangrover.com and if there's enough interest, I'll try to coordinate a meeting/discussion!
I can only hope you're right. The history of the supes though is that they pander to the people who want to "conserve the rich history and diversity of the city". It sounds nice, but what it results in is paralysis and band-aids (for example in the provisions to grant building permits is to build "affordable" housing.) So the builders build million dollar condos (who only few can afford) and the below-market condos -who only the near destitute qualify for). That leaves most people competing for the few actually (non subsidized) affordable places, which due to pressures are the leftovers (substandard inventory -old, needing repairs, lousy areas, etc).
I have little respect and some disdain for the supes . They have driven the city's progress into the ground. Anywhere else, these policies would have driven the place into a Detroit West, but they get propped up the the surrounding valleys' wealth.
I could only wish the city was governed a bit like SJ --without the sprawl.
If we stay in the grow-or-die culture that we've been in for the past 15 years, then the other option is to move. You can't grow if you can't hire, and you can't hire if your employees don't have any place to live.
I don't know if you can fix it, or at least not in the short term, no matter what kind of critical mass you get. Housing stock has a lifecycle of 50-100 years. Anti-development policies can create a "housing stock debt." In New York, which doesn't apply rent stabilization to any housing built since 1974, 60% of housing units are still rent-stabilized!
New York hasn't grown nearly as fast as San Francisco, so most of the existing housing stock is adequate.
Everybody has a price at which they'll sell, and as more people arrive wanting housing more property owners will get offers from developers that are too good to turn down.
SF is on a peninsula and Manhattan's an island. Chicago is relatively low-rise as well, but there's a lot more land in back of it. I hate the SF planning process, but there's no question that the city's growth is partly constrained by geography.
Yes but over 1/3 of the city population is concentrated in the lakefront neighborhoods. Everywhere you look there are shiny, new condos and apartment buildings.
I am thinking of moving to the Chi and was surprised that rent is less than half of the average bay area price. A lot of craigslist ads even tell applicants that they require a check for eviction court as part of their deposit. In total contrast to SF's rent controls.
(2) Definitely move here. Chicago is a fantastic city and the reason you don't hear about it more is that it's underrated.
If there's a kind of neighborhood you're interested in living in, I'm happy to help point you in the right direction. You should have no trouble finding a place.
Obviously you have several factors in play, and available land is one of them. But both SF and Manhattan would be cheaper than they now are if they had Chicago's more liberal attitude towards development, construction, and rent controls. Not as cheap as Chicago in the limiting case, but still cheaper. Indeed, even if SF had only New York's somewhat more draconian attitude towards development, it would be a lot cheaper than it is now. Rents in SF are comparable to Manhattan even though Manhattan has half the land area and twice the population.
There is also the sunset which has good food, cheap rent, and the M, L, K and N to get you places.
But the issue here is there is nothing good in soma besides jobs. In the weekend, I don't want to go to soma. I want to go to Northbeach or the mission or the castro.
All that being said, I haven't lived in Dogpatch, so it could be fantastic.
Would you rather pay for transit twice a week or five times a week? And dogpatch is relatively nice, especially if you include Potrero Hill which is a short walk away.
Re: real estate prices, go read "The Rent Is Too Damn High" by Yglesias. Yes, it's a problem. And regulation is a big, big part of it.
Also, there are plenty of places where you can make money working in tech and have a relatively low cost of living. Austin, San Diego, Spokane, even Seattle isn't too expensive, compared to the bay area.
Which one of these cities doesn't fit.....Spokane? Since most of my family lives there, I would love to hear about tech opportunities there compared to...Austin, San Diego, and Seattle.
That doesn't really make for a tech scene, as much as I would love for that to be true. I couldn't go to Spokane and a get anywhere near a comparable job as I could in Seattle. Even Salt Lake City has a better tech scene. Spokane lacks a flagship university, unlike the other cities.
The problem with this theory is that in the hypothetical midwestern city you describe, there is no incentive for anyone to pay Silicon Valley salaries. Everyone can live on less money, so that sets the baseline. Premiums or discounts are applied to that based on the rarity of the employee's skill set.
If you're running a company, you have a limited amount of capital to work with. Your pay scale is determined by the markets you operate in - the prices competitors are paying for employees, and the prices competitors are charging for their product or service. You can't just say, "Well, I'm generous, I'm going to pay a million dollars a year to all of my employees." You'll be bankrupt in a month that way.
The real estate price inflation you describe is a side effect of this process, not a main element. With the exception of situations where external capital enters the system to finance a bubble, as in much of the US and Spain in the early 2000s, it's the sign of a healthy local economy where functioning businesses can employ large numbers of people because they're all generating enough cashflow to do so.
The alternative scenario -- Detroit -- is far, far uglier.
Interesting that you bring up Detroit. Detroit once had the highest salaries in the US from the auto industry, and priced out everyone not involved in the auto industry. Then the auto industry crashed.
That's not the only reason Detroit crashed, but it's a contributing factor. The others were racism and "white flight." Detroit sort of got a perfect storm.
If something ever does massively disrupt Silicon Valley, I could see the Bay Area undergoing a nasty crash too. Probably nowhere near as bad as Detroit since it's a prettier place to live and is more diversified, but still ugly.
SV today really doesn't appeal to me because it is nothing but hackers. There are no artists, no hippie bohemian weirdos, no writers. These people can't afford to live there. In fact, I'd say it's even worse. There aren't even many hackers doing truly creative projects outside startups running around looking for funding, because you can't do anything that isn't going to get you that big cash out effect. Not if you want to afford to live there. You also can't easily bootstrap without outside funding, which means you can't own your own stuff. You have to have a financier with deep pockets.
All of that is the fault, primarily, of real estate hyperinflation.
I think part of the reason salaries are so high is that employers have to compete with these costs. If the real estate price / cost of living went down, salaries would be down as well. There is quite a bit of data showing that Bay Area salaries are higher than anywhere else in this industry.
How much of it is baked into the cost of living? If my rent is 30% of my salary, and I'm looking at a job that pays 30% more but the rent is double in the area, isn't it a wash?
Sure, that's possible. When I moved to San Francisco I traded my car for a MUNI pass (and eventually a bicycle) which saved me a lot of money. A few months ago I tallied up how much my parents pay for housing + energy + transportation and how much I do, and the amounts are roughly the same, except I spend almost all of it on housing and they spend a lot on energy and transportation.
That said, most people who move to SF don't give up their cars.
SF isn't the only city where you can live car-free ;)
Also, cars are, sadly, much cheaper than houses. My spouse and I share a car and the TCO is not anywhere near our rent. At least an order of magnitude, maybe two.
One thing you left out is that people make laws to try to stop people from moving in. Those laws make it harder to build which does not stop people from moving in, but makes housing more scarce which leads to higher prices.
What would San Francisco look like right now if they'd allowed high rises to be built for the past 30 years?
I tend to believe these places become interesting due to the fact that so many people live there. There's bound to be interesting people based on sheer numbers.
Keep in mind NY and SF were founded on industrial business and immigration; not founded on interesting people.
Imagine what would happen if this didn't happen... imagine living in a place as inexpensive as a medium-sized Midwestern city, but with Silicon Valley salaries. Imagine how many other places that wealth could go: more startups, more gadgets, better infrastructure, world-class everything, better health care, even generosity. But nope, real estate just soaks up wealth beyond a certain point and redirects it back into the financial pyramid.
That sounds at least a little bit like where I live now. We don't have SV-level salaries, but the tech industry can pay roughly $60k-$80k per year in a place where $45k is the median dual-income household and $33k is fairly comfortable for a single adult.
A few key differences from, say, most of the United States, that I think can transfer over to other places without getting into local culture:
* There's no state/provincial/regional government, except in rural areas, where a group of villages is governed by a regional council. If you live in a city, you've got the municipality and then the national government. One less layer of abstraction, and the municipality is entitled to take decisions that in the USA would fall to the state-level government.
* The municipality levies "arnona" (our word for the old English "rates" system) as a tax on the square-meterage of dwelling units. The occupant pays the tax, but like a VAT, the arnona is factored in as part of the price you pay for a rental unit. The effect is to discourage the development of very large dwellings in favor of dense buildings full of smaller dwellings. The other effect is that we don't have conflicts over assessments of property values, because they're not taxed. Living in a beautiful, well-located house won't stick you with extra property taxes unless the city specifically decides to zone your area for a higher per-square-meter rate. It works pretty decently, overall, although there is a problem of schools being underfunded (though this may be a political/national problem rather than structural).
* Urban planning here is pro-urban rather than anti-urban like in the States. The typical family dwelling is a three-bedroom apartment (one master bedroom for the parents, one bedroom each for your two children), building is planned in terms of semi-self-contained neighborhoods, and zoning consistently sprinkles in a certain amount of parks, a certain amount of schools and clinics, a certain amount of community centers and houses of worship, a certain amount of sports fields, and a certain amount of mixed-usage residential/commercial/office space per neighborhood.
* Public transit here is not just for poor people. Bus and minibus systems operate extensively, including between cities, and there's also a coastal intercity rail line and a small subway that goes up and down the mountain we're built atop. I estimate I can reach anywhere in this city that I might work within 30 minutes of automotive commuting, 30-60 minutes on the bus system, and that's if I can't actually walk to it.
* NIMBY is not a thing here. Period. Only major real-estate developers go around actually thinking their land holdings are so freaking important that they should have the power to block other people's projects, particularly municipally-sponsored ones. There are whole neighborhoods built around the shipping port, the oil refinery, and the High-Tech Park where the BigCos live.
* As far as I know, you can't actually build things outside cities or towns. The countryside is countryside, and nobody is necessarily entitled to land rent or real-estate tax from it. So big things like tech parks and office buildings get built in cities, because you have to build them inside some municipality recognized by the national government and once you have that requirement, you might as well put it near your prospective employees and customers.
TL;DR: No, cities and urban living do not innately cause ultra-high real-estate prices. Yes, public policy matters, because urban planning, transit infrastructure, land taxation, and a strength of property titles appropriate to urban life all provide rules and incentives for building a city that's actually nice to live in. There is absolutely no reason a place like Silicon Valley can't make itself a very nice and even affordable place to live, except that the existing residents enjoy feeling privileged. They get to feel privileged, because in SV and in many other desirable American places (Boston-Cambridge and New York City come to mind), real-estate has become a status good with a permanently fixed supply. They'd feel somehow insulted to find out that their land is a mere commodity, to be bought and sold in bulk as common families want or need.
The problem is lack of supply of real estate. The proper response here is to build higher density real estate, or to build transit systems that effectively expand the amount of land that can be reached quickly enough to be "in" the city, or both.
San Francisco has failed miserably at both. Development is a four letter word due to the attitudes of many of the existing residents and the legal process that allows anyone to stall and delay anything. BART meets the threshold for tolerable transit, but there's not enough of it, and even if there were fast rapid transit to the peninsula or Marin the residents there are even more opposed to density than San Franciscans. Most of the new development is happening in parts of the East Bay near BART because that's where people are willing to allow it and where transit can get you downtown quickly. If the city were to permit and construct 10 story buildings in the Sunset tomorrow that wouldn't do much to alleviate real estate prices because it takes longer to cross the city on transit than it does to BART in from the good parts of Oakland.
True that. It used to take an hour to get downtown from the Sunset. Finally we gave up and moved to North Oakland. The weather's nicer, and it takes 20 minutes to get to downtown SF.
Yeah, it is inexcusable that the N Judah takes close to an hour to travel 7 miles from the ocean to the Embarcadero, half that in tunnels/dedicated right of way.
Agreed, but part of it is just people having ridiculous expectations for how long it takes to get places by transit. San Francisco still has a lot of "car culture", where people think a 30-minute car ride is great, but a 30-minute bus ride is intolerable. Even a 45-minute train ride isn't that damned bad, if it means that you can run on Ocean Beach every morning, then read a book for 45 minutes and pop into the office. Perspective!
I was also recently surprised by the number of otherwise reasonable friends I have who are just completely unaware of life outside of SOMA and the Mission. I've had a lot of people tell me that they didn't know where the Inner Sunset was located. If they can't walk there in 15 minutes or get there by BART from the Mission stations, it doesn't exist.
Public service announcement to 20-something SF newbs: there is life outside of the Mission and SOMA, kids. The rent's cheaper, too.
I lived in the Sunset for 8 years until last December. I don't miss Muni at all. Mind you, running on the beach in the fog isn't my idea of a good time either.
Agreed, but when you say "half", are you talking distance or time? My experience is that once you're in the tunnel, it's pretty quick. Surface streets are achingly slow.
I agree, though I'm not sure if this is a possibility with a single set of tracks.
Aside from bart or muni in the tunnel, I found the fastest public transportation in SF was the various limited or express buses that go from the richmond to downtown. They make very few stops and move quickly.
The thing is, the express buses can easily pass the slower regular bus that make every stop. That wouldn't be possible with the streetcars, which I think would have to be all or nothing.
Outsiders and newcomers tend to see the problem as lack of supply. Those who would have to live next to new skyscrapers (or move to make room) have a bigger variety of opinions.
If you want to control the character of what gets built next to you, buy up that property. It's an abuse of zoning law to zone to keep your neighborhood from changing. The purpose of zoning is to have orderly segregation of industrial and residential areas, not to put neighborhoods into a time capsule.
It doesn't have to be skyscrapers. Raising height limits even modest amounts would help. There are places within a block of the BART station at Mission and 24th that are restricted to 40 foot tall buildings.
David Talbot, founder and CEO of Salon.com recently participated in KQED Forum talking about 'How much tech can one city take?'. Somewhat similar to the above article but a 2012 view.
I find it curious that the same people that complain about evictions complain about high rises getting built.
This sort of article gets written year after year.
People have to live somewhere, any if there continues to be resistance to higher density housing, rents will keep skyrocketing.
I moved to The Mission in 1996 So I'm likely included in the internet crowd that ruined the city. I loved living there, but I when I visit now its not the lack of artists that I notice, its the (relative) lack of crack addicts. Lets not let the glasses get too rose colored. It might be more difficult for people just starting out or on limited income to make it there, but if they do there is a base line improvement to their quality of life that comes with living in a safer and cleaner environment. I took my son to play at the newly renovated park at Valencia and 19th the other month and I couldn't believe that there was an outdoor water park in SF, much less The Mission, that I felt OK with him playing in. The locals looked pretty excited about it too.
Besides the young and hip are doing what they always do, find new areas to make hip. I've been living in the East Bay for a decade now and I can't believe that Oakland is the new hip spot in the Bay Area. Hope it does something for my property values.
Anyone can die at any moment and everything is gone doesn't that suck. You can't control death and you can't control change! Life always moves on no matter what you do. Thats why you have to enjoy the moments as they pass and stop trying to keep them from passing, forcing them to stand still! Life would be boring without new things happening. I know some people get stuck in their ways and can't stand change, but I can't imagine that life is very fun or enjoyable at all!
There's always at least one person whining about certain cosmetic characteristics as though they are cultural treasures. Characteristics of neighborhoods are always changing. In the past they changed over a generation, now technology and a rapidly transforming economy create changes in decades and half-decades. This isn't a bad thing.
All the little things the author opines romantically about are relatively recent developments that were decried by earlier generations no doubt. OH THESE FILTHY BUTCHERS HAVE DISPLACED THE PICTURESQUE HUNTSMAN AND HIS MEAT CARRIAGE WHICH USED TO PLY THE STREETS OF MINE YOUTH. You see what I'm saying?
This woman has no idea. She's all shriveled up and unstuck in time. She can't see things with a long lens. All she knows is that things she is comfortable with are changing, and she doesn't want to learn to see something beautiful in what is still to come. She wants everything to be frozen in crystal for all time.
These people are spacewankers of the worst sort. Don't let the fact that they are good at writing English seduce you to this stupid hipster way of thinking.
If there's one thing I've learned in life, is to never listen to people moaning about the "good old days" and how [insert group] has "ruined" [insert place], not like those [other group] that were great. The good old days were never actually that good, and [insert group] is neither worse nor better than [other group].
We're all way too young to be curmudgeons yet, so stop acting like it.
It's also amusing to see one wave of gentrifiers shake their fists angrily at the next wave of gentrifiers. I heard about the Yuppie Eradication Project - where people who invaded a traditionally Latino stronghold vowed to key the cars of people who later invaded that.
FWIW, they can fight for the Mission all they want. No matter how many rose-tinted pairs of glasses you put on, it's still the piss-filled, shit-littered, gun-happy, knife-stabby, gangbanger-filled shitpot we know and love.