Padmapper has no 2BR units for $0-1950 for rent anywhere near what someone would still consider to be "San Francisco". If you drop to 1BR there are a handful but not many.
"What it costs" shouldn't be represented as a percent of mean household income. This is very misleading. For example, if you drive out poor by increasing prices it may well make a city "more affordable" because both the numerator (prices) and the denominator (income) are increasing. Despite what Figure 6 would suggest, New York is not considerably "more affordable" than Detroit.
Sure, it's expensive to live in San Francisco, which is why only people who make a lot of money can or should live there.
It's like Beverley Hills. Nobody complains (or at least if they do, they don't get publicity) that it's unfair how expensive it is to live in Beverley Hills; if you can't afford to live in Beverley Hills you live somewhere cheaper.
An unfair comparison perhaps, since Beverley Hills has been super-expensive for decades whereas San Francisco has recently gone from fairly expensive to super expensive, meaning there's a lot of people who could previously afford to rent in San Francisco who no longer can. But that's life, and that's the risk you take if you choose to rent rather than buy.
Seconded. In 2010, $1700 for Mulholland Drive free-standing house with a brilliant view. (I cycled about instead of owning a car and avoided the local gym and cocaine habits, which easily made up for the difference!)
I agree with you. SF is just showing supply and demand in action. On the demand side it would be smart for companies to give up on trendy SF and look elsewhere in my opinion. Is it really worth it to be there? It makes sense for so many reasons with how high taxes are in California and rent in SF to move. I hear there are many companies moving to portland.
Regarding SF. they ought to relax the building regulations to make it easier for people to expand their homes, build guest houses to rent out, re-zone areas to allow people to build in higher density etc. This can help increase the supply of houses and drive down the average price to rent.
I mean that those who have been living in the city for decades but didn't buy there may now find themselves pushed out. They could have bought twenty years ago for much less but they didn't. If they'd bought property they would have instead made a huge profit. That's one of the risks you take when you rent rather than buy -- that values may go up significantly and push you out.
This article is patently wrong in its data representation. And by the way, the data is from 2010. It cites a "citizen's budget report." Rent for a typical household in NYC is $14k? Where can you rent out an apartment in NYC for $1160/month for a "typical regional household"? This is completely absurd. Are these "regional households" different in family size across cities? Is that normalized for in these graphs?
How is this "Total income for a typical household" computed? Is that an average or mean? Even then, with a $20k housing and transportation bill with only $62k of income, how is that doable? In NYC, a $62 income only takes home $42k, $20k of which will go to housing and transportation, if you only take public transportation and it is always available to you. Get real.
> "Rent for a typical household in NYC is $14k? Where can you rent out an apartment in NYC for $1160/month for a "typical regional household"?"
NYC is bigger than Manhattan. The parts of Brooklyn and Queens that aren't filled with rich people (i.e. most of it), as well as the Bronx and Staten Island, are not nearly as expensive as what you might be used to.
Not to mention statistical sampling of rents is always going to skew lower than market because of rent stabilization and rent control - it measures how much people are paying, not how much they would be if they were on the market today.
NYC is 8.5 million people, only ~1 million of whom live in Manhattan.
I haven't looked at the data itself, but if their measure of NYC is the NYC Metro (rather than the city proper), rents will go down too, since now we're including most of North Jersey and a lot of Long Island.
Part of the issue here that is not measured is just how fan into Staten Island would you have to go to find a household for ~$1100 what what does that income to time spend on travel ratio look like? This study says nothing about how far away they would have to live to normalize for this, as different cities have different transportation systems access and the time spent on travel is a considerable component of your happiness, which is obviously not calculated here.
Nowhere did I mention Manhattan, but even in Queens or Brooklyn you will be hard pressed to find apartments at those price points available. Since when is Jersey included in NYC housing statistics? Can you point to where that is stated in the linked article? Ridiculous.
I hate to stick my head up, but I pay less than that for a 2Br in the Mission (I moved in about a year ago). It's not luxurious, but it'll do.
The missing piece is that (relatively) cheap real estate is not advertised, you need to get it from a friend who's leaving SF. It can be frustrating sometimes that good apartments are allocated by seniority (how long you've lived here & who you know) rather then by the free market.
I'm not sure I buy the premise (that you can use the cost of transportation as another index of affordability) but I do agree that 'affordability' is the combined cost of food, housing, and transport.
That said its interesting that a place like Mountain View would be both more affordable housing wise and transportation wise. Does anyone compute the local minimum of those three chunks?
And at the game last night (go Giants!) it struck me how the differences between San Francisco (mostly a live in night life kind of place) and San Jose (mostly a work a day not so much nightlife) had their residency cycles inverted from each other. Making me wonder if "urban bedroom communities with restaurants and shopping" will be a thing here in a decade or so.
Detroit is above San Diego on the chart in the article. Can someone explain that to me? I just read how Detroit is an "emerging market", and San Diego is often cited as a very expensive city.
No, because it doesn't make sense. Salaries in San Diego actually aren't that much higher than they are in the Detroit area. Neither place has public transportation (to speak of), and housing prices in San Diego are about twice of those in Detroit.
This is a case of the 'higher order bit'. Housing costs have increased to the point where other costs are negligible by comparison. The ratio of <cost-of-non-housing-good> to rent will of course be low.
I'm kinda sick of seeing these articles on gentrification. Hey, if you can't afford to live there on a burger flipping job, then don't f'ing live there. Then the "rich people" who buy those hamburgers will pay more for them, which requires higher pay for the burger flippers, and less desirable to live there. Maybe it will become a desert void of service jobs, which would suck to live in, thus lowering prices. Oh, and I don't live in CA, actually someplace in flyover country that is affordable.
It's not going to hell, it's a slow adjustment. This isn't rocket science, it's a simple system stabilized with negative feedback. Wages for low pay jobs will naturally rise when there is no one there to fill them, instead stimulus is being introduced to keep those people treading water. It's just the reverse effect of all the high paying jobs leaving; let all the low paying jobs leave.
I live in Williamsburg, NYC. A lot of people want to live in Williamsburg, NYC. More people than the neighborhood can house. What's the solution to this problem? Preventing landlords from raising rents to what the market will bear seems unfair. Allowing rents to run wild and create problems for existing residents seems unfair, as well.
I know money doesn't at all indicate someone's worth as a human or how great of a contribution they're making to the world. But. In an economy such as ours, it does indicate what kind of TV you can buy, what kind of car you can drive, and what sort of home you can live in.
Oh, and I'm not saying I think housing prices should just be a free-for-all. Regulation is good. But it doesn't get us completely around what seems like the core issue...
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 80.8 ms ] threadhttp://www.huduser.org/portal/datasets/fmr/fmrs/FY2014_code/...
[1] http://blog.zumper.com/2014/02/here-are-your-january-2014-me...
It's like Beverley Hills. Nobody complains (or at least if they do, they don't get publicity) that it's unfair how expensive it is to live in Beverley Hills; if you can't afford to live in Beverley Hills you live somewhere cheaper.
An unfair comparison perhaps, since Beverley Hills has been super-expensive for decades whereas San Francisco has recently gone from fairly expensive to super expensive, meaning there's a lot of people who could previously afford to rent in San Francisco who no longer can. But that's life, and that's the risk you take if you choose to rent rather than buy.
Regarding SF. they ought to relax the building regulations to make it easier for people to expand their homes, build guest houses to rent out, re-zone areas to allow people to build in higher density etc. This can help increase the supply of houses and drive down the average price to rent.
Ah, but it really wasn't much less 20 years ago. It was STILL expensive compared to everywhere else.
NYC is bigger than Manhattan. The parts of Brooklyn and Queens that aren't filled with rich people (i.e. most of it), as well as the Bronx and Staten Island, are not nearly as expensive as what you might be used to.
Not to mention statistical sampling of rents is always going to skew lower than market because of rent stabilization and rent control - it measures how much people are paying, not how much they would be if they were on the market today.
NYC is 8.5 million people, only ~1 million of whom live in Manhattan.
I haven't looked at the data itself, but if their measure of NYC is the NYC Metro (rather than the city proper), rents will go down too, since now we're including most of North Jersey and a lot of Long Island.
The missing piece is that (relatively) cheap real estate is not advertised, you need to get it from a friend who's leaving SF. It can be frustrating sometimes that good apartments are allocated by seniority (how long you've lived here & who you know) rather then by the free market.
That said its interesting that a place like Mountain View would be both more affordable housing wise and transportation wise. Does anyone compute the local minimum of those three chunks?
And at the game last night (go Giants!) it struck me how the differences between San Francisco (mostly a live in night life kind of place) and San Jose (mostly a work a day not so much nightlife) had their residency cycles inverted from each other. Making me wonder if "urban bedroom communities with restaurants and shopping" will be a thing here in a decade or so.
"Let the city go to hell and then it will adjust" is crappy policy.
I live in Williamsburg, NYC. A lot of people want to live in Williamsburg, NYC. More people than the neighborhood can house. What's the solution to this problem? Preventing landlords from raising rents to what the market will bear seems unfair. Allowing rents to run wild and create problems for existing residents seems unfair, as well.
I know money doesn't at all indicate someone's worth as a human or how great of a contribution they're making to the world. But. In an economy such as ours, it does indicate what kind of TV you can buy, what kind of car you can drive, and what sort of home you can live in.
Oh, and I'm not saying I think housing prices should just be a free-for-all. Regulation is good. But it doesn't get us completely around what seems like the core issue...
Yes, it seems unfair, but that's what ought to be done, as they have made no investments, as compared to the landlords.