LA's made quite a bit of improvement over the past 20 years. It's not particularly great, but I'm not sure it qualifies as worse than the Bay Area anymore. Depends to some extent on where you are within each metro area and what kind of commute you have. Some LA maps (metro and commuter rail):
The extension of the Expo Line (light blue on the first map) out to Santa Monica, scheduled to open next year, should improve things further. The Purple Line extension even more, but that's unfortunately some years out.
Sure, there are plenty of places with worse public transit, even just within the state of California. That doesn't change the fact that the Bay Area has an awful public transportation system that fails to provide services to the majority of commuters.
It is always relative for public transport. You get people in New York and London whinging about having to wait 6 minutes for the next train, because they just missed one. Coming from an area where we would have buses every hour if you were lucky, this seemed ludicrous, but I started to feel the same way after 6 months.
Part of the reason is because people in New York treat public transit differently: at least in Manhattan, it's assumed that public transit is "just there", i.e. I don't have to time when I leave for the subway. This means I don't bother checking when the train is leaving, or planning my day around the subway, at all. I just assume, given I want to go somewhere, that how long it's going to take me is about the longest it's ever taken me so far.
In contrast, in Providence or Phoenix (or even when taking the train in NY), when using public transit, I make sure to time everything as well as possible, so that I minimize my wait times. Which means it's a lot more of a big deal when there are delays, because there aren't enough buses/trains to just take the next one available, and I end up waiting for the entire time of the delay.
I grew up in Toronto, Canada. And when everyone is complaining about Bart or Muni or Caltrain. And complain again when Bart is on strike. I just laugh at them.
Any fellow TTC haters would agree here.
By the way, do you call Tracy as part of Bay Area?
I've lived in Toronto. And San Francisco. The TTC is a thousand times better than either BART or MUNI.
You can actually sit on your seats (see: BART). There aren't giant shit-stains on the carpet (who the fuck puts carpet in a public transit vehicle?!). The trains run on time for the most part (see: MUNI). The stations don't literally smell like shit and piss (see: BART). Oh, and it takes 23 mins to travel 7 mi, instead of 55min (York Mills - Union station, compare with Ocean Beach - Embarcadero).
The BART and MUNI are horrific transit agencies. The TTC ain't perfect, but it is strictly better in every single way. You Torontonians have easily the second- or third-best mass transit system on this continent. Nothing in the SF Bay Area even comes into the same league.
The seats are better on NJ Transit, but I never had to take it as a commuting platform (only on the weekends into NYC or to EWR), but I found Caltrain to be so unreliable as to make driving 40 minutes up I280 to a BART station to be a better option.
Also their ticketing is messed up unless you're a regular with a clipper card, and even then it's easy to forget to sign on / off.
Not sure if trolling. I use NJTransit on a daily 2 hour commute. The main problem with NJTransit is that the ride home is almost never on time. 90% of the time, it's 5-10 mins late. But I can count on one hand how many times the morning ride has been delayed over the past 2 years, most of which had to do with atrocious winter weather affecting all the trains. If Caltrain had to deal with Northeast winter weather it would be 10x worse than NJT.
You are so right on this. I realized at a young age, if you
want a life and you live in the Bay Area(except S.F.); you
need a reliable vehicle--preferably a vehicle you can repair
youself. If you are reading and poor--buy a old Toyota. The 22r engine is almost indestructible.
This suggests there are land owners who are growing rich on the backs of the prosperous tech community.
I always find it strange that articles on this topic go directly from wages to rent prices without acknowledging there is a human making the decision to raise rent in between. It's as if people have begun to believe that the relationship between demand and increased prices is a physical law rather than a societal tendency.
Consider the following alternatives. 1. A land owner decides not to raise the rent on their properties. (It might shock some to know that people do, willingly leave money on the table for all sorts of reasons) 2. Regulation fetters rent increases to prevent people from having to leave their homes.
I think there are many good examples where the above do not, and have not happened. But I take issue with the blindspot, or purposeful omission, of such discussion. Perhaps I am being overly harsh on readers of such articles, but I suspect that by omitting these considerations, you decrease the chance that one will call for property tax controls, rent caps, or organize local property owners into a self-regulating body to limit rent increases.
> A land owner decides not to raise the rent on their properties.
If a landlord has fifty prospective tenants (as they surely will if they're offering the best deal in town), how should they whittle that down if not by raising the asking price?
More realistically, through an arbitrary emotional choice.
There's a reason stories of housing discrimination generally center around communities employing rent control. When faced with more tenants than they know what to do with, landlords have way less financial consequences from doing all manner of unfortunate things.
Screw "efficiency." Why should rent in urban areas be $3500 for one person just because someone can afford it? People on HN love to talk about how suburbs are destroying the planet, then others turn around and claim that impossibly high rents in urban centers is "efficient"?
Yes, but you'd have a more diverse mix in the urban center to run the place, more of the consumer surplus would be distributed more widely, and a strong pressure against class mobility, housing and transportation costs, would be reduced for those lucky enough to be selected for a high demand area.
Very easy, pick the ones more likely to stay around, more likely to not damage the place, more likely to not cause a nuisance.
Now of course it is silly. Why would they not just raise the price? Unless they do what they do for fun or provide a public charity or good, why sift through hundreds of cred reports and pay marketing researches or run a lottery of sorts if say it is easier to just say "ok, rent is now 20% higher".
If there were a way to know in advance that a prospective tenant was going to damage the place or be a nuisance, or to stay a long / short time (whichever is worse) wouldn't landlords already be using that technique?
They do and try if it is quick. Credit reports are used as a proxy "Paid back his bills = proxy for will probably not skip on rent and trash the place". Others could use social status, for example, maybe other un-expected clues. Would it be illegal to create national black lists that land-lords can share? Casinos do it... It is just not worth bothering probably.
It just doesn't pay to worry about it if can just raise the price. The price to fix-up and absorb the damage from a few such incidents is folded into the insurance and current rent price.
Because when the good times stop rolling, these high-earning tech workers getting bussed in to wherever they go will vanish.
My uncle owned a few properties, mostly outright with no mortgages. Once he found a good tenant, he'd generally only raise the rents to absorb new property taxes.
Everything has a price. If your investment horizon is 30 years vs 30 months, the safe gets are good bets.
I always find it strange that articles on this topic go directly from wages to rent prices without acknowledging there is a human making the decision to raise rent in between.
There's also a confounding factor thrown in by the IRS: as I understand it, landlords are not allowed to claim losses on rental properties unless they charge above median rent for the area, without regard to property age or condition. Thus, there is a constant upward pressure on rent prices, especially for lower cost units.
There would probably be a consolidation happening. In such a hot area, those that have large resources would probably come in and just try to buy blocks at a time if they can. I imagine in a while you'd find that some prince from Saudi Arabia owns whole neighborhoods.
That's pretty much the side of the story that is never told. The newspapers only like to talk about the San Franciscans that are renters and find themselves forced out and completely omit the San Franciscans that are owners that realize they can make a great stable income taking advantage of the high rents if they are willing to live farther away.
I'd love to see the following headline one day "Increased housing demand from techies; Some San Franciscans win, some lose."
Furthermore, I'd love to see the following headline too:
"Why can't renting native San Franciscans count on those San Franciscans that own homes to choose them over techies when choosing who to rent to?"
The situation is absurd and it sucks for everyone, but if anyone should get the blame it is the housing owners. Ultimately, they can choose who to rent to and do have the right of renting to a fellow San Franciscan over a Google employee willing and able to pay a lot more. I really want to see the same people protesting the busses spend half their time blocking buses and half the time on the front lawns of those San Franciscans who've moved to the suburbs, but still own housing in San Francisco that they keep raising the rents on.
Personally, I think those housing owners are right to accept a higher rent. Years ago they made the right choice to buy rather than rent while others took accepted their rent controlled apartment and ignored the housing problem until it was beyond their capacity to solve.
>>>That compares to San Jose's fourth-quarter median price of $645,000; Sunnyvale's $964,000; Milpitas' $648,000; Oakland's $435,500; and San Francisco's $867,000.
Can anyone explain why Sunnyvale has a higher median than SFO? Is it because SFO has more apartments compared to individual houses in Sunnyvale.
Wow, that commute time image is laughably wrong. 1 hour commute from Tracy? One hour to where?! One hour over the pass, barely into Livermore!
I recently left the bay area as well, but I went way far north and gave up the commute. None of the fringe cities have decent school systems. That's what is most important to me at this point. (3 kids.)
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 65.8 ms ] threadhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spring-2012-LACMTA-M...
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The extension of the Expo Line (light blue on the first map) out to Santa Monica, scheduled to open next year, should improve things further. The Purple Line extension even more, but that's unfortunately some years out.
My friend out there checks her phone, leaves the house accordingly, and catches it every time. To me, that seems like excellent service.
http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2010-02-01/learning...
In contrast, in Providence or Phoenix (or even when taking the train in NY), when using public transit, I make sure to time everything as well as possible, so that I minimize my wait times. Which means it's a lot more of a big deal when there are delays, because there aren't enough buses/trains to just take the next one available, and I end up waiting for the entire time of the delay.
Any fellow TTC haters would agree here.
By the way, do you call Tracy as part of Bay Area?
You can actually sit on your seats (see: BART). There aren't giant shit-stains on the carpet (who the fuck puts carpet in a public transit vehicle?!). The trains run on time for the most part (see: MUNI). The stations don't literally smell like shit and piss (see: BART). Oh, and it takes 23 mins to travel 7 mi, instead of 55min (York Mills - Union station, compare with Ocean Beach - Embarcadero).
The BART and MUNI are horrific transit agencies. The TTC ain't perfect, but it is strictly better in every single way. You Torontonians have easily the second- or third-best mass transit system on this continent. Nothing in the SF Bay Area even comes into the same league.
Really?
Also their ticketing is messed up unless you're a regular with a clipper card, and even then it's easy to forget to sign on / off.
I always find it strange that articles on this topic go directly from wages to rent prices without acknowledging there is a human making the decision to raise rent in between. It's as if people have begun to believe that the relationship between demand and increased prices is a physical law rather than a societal tendency.
Consider the following alternatives. 1. A land owner decides not to raise the rent on their properties. (It might shock some to know that people do, willingly leave money on the table for all sorts of reasons) 2. Regulation fetters rent increases to prevent people from having to leave their homes.
I think there are many good examples where the above do not, and have not happened. But I take issue with the blindspot, or purposeful omission, of such discussion. Perhaps I am being overly harsh on readers of such articles, but I suspect that by omitting these considerations, you decrease the chance that one will call for property tax controls, rent caps, or organize local property owners into a self-regulating body to limit rent increases.
If a landlord has fifty prospective tenants (as they surely will if they're offering the best deal in town), how should they whittle that down if not by raising the asking price?
There's a reason stories of housing discrimination generally center around communities employing rent control. When faced with more tenants than they know what to do with, landlords have way less financial consequences from doing all manner of unfortunate things.
Actually, a lot more than two.
Now of course it is silly. Why would they not just raise the price? Unless they do what they do for fun or provide a public charity or good, why sift through hundreds of cred reports and pay marketing researches or run a lottery of sorts if say it is easier to just say "ok, rent is now 20% higher".
It just doesn't pay to worry about it if can just raise the price. The price to fix-up and absorb the damage from a few such incidents is folded into the insurance and current rent price.
My uncle owned a few properties, mostly outright with no mortgages. Once he found a good tenant, he'd generally only raise the rents to absorb new property taxes.
Everything has a price. If your investment horizon is 30 years vs 30 months, the safe gets are good bets.
There's also a confounding factor thrown in by the IRS: as I understand it, landlords are not allowed to claim losses on rental properties unless they charge above median rent for the area, without regard to property age or condition. Thus, there is a constant upward pressure on rent prices, especially for lower cost units.
I wouldn't think this was at all in doubt?
I'd love to see the following headline one day "Increased housing demand from techies; Some San Franciscans win, some lose."
Furthermore, I'd love to see the following headline too:
"Why can't renting native San Franciscans count on those San Franciscans that own homes to choose them over techies when choosing who to rent to?"
The situation is absurd and it sucks for everyone, but if anyone should get the blame it is the housing owners. Ultimately, they can choose who to rent to and do have the right of renting to a fellow San Franciscan over a Google employee willing and able to pay a lot more. I really want to see the same people protesting the busses spend half their time blocking buses and half the time on the front lawns of those San Franciscans who've moved to the suburbs, but still own housing in San Francisco that they keep raising the rents on.
Personally, I think those housing owners are right to accept a higher rent. Years ago they made the right choice to buy rather than rent while others took accepted their rent controlled apartment and ignored the housing problem until it was beyond their capacity to solve.
Can anyone explain why Sunnyvale has a higher median than SFO? Is it because SFO has more apartments compared to individual houses in Sunnyvale.
I recently left the bay area as well, but I went way far north and gave up the commute. None of the fringe cities have decent school systems. That's what is most important to me at this point. (3 kids.)