The biggest problem I saw with the High-Speed Rail plan wasn't the outrageous cost, but rather that it was a plan to spend 60+ billion dollars to solve the wrong problem. The state should have been working on some plan to give high-speed access from the SF Bay, where property is really expensive, into the Central Valley where it's really cheap.
Not many people need to travel the 400 miles between LA and SF at 220 miles an hour. On the other hand, if you can travel 60 miles or so from San Francisco (or the mid-peninsula or even San Jose) at 120 miles an hour, that's a big deal, because that opens up a bunch of low-cost real estate for local workers.
An Altamont Pass segment ought to have been one of first things built. A faster 'Altamont Corridor Express' would have created a ~1-hour link between Stockton and the Bay, integrating the corridor's economy further beyond its current role as an overlong exurban commute. It would've also provided for an alternate rail routing between Sacramento and the Bay that'd be competitive with the Capitol Corridor.
After the initial push towards a 'Super ACE', Altamont lost in the planning to Pacheco Pass; this increased linearity and reduced distance in the SF-SJ-Fresno axis, but in my opinion it was the wrong move. Fresno's accession to the economic continuum of the Bay is far less likely than that of Stockton or Modesto.
Or speed and augment existing infrastructure. Spend a billion dollars on feeder light rail to Caltrain. Run twice as many cal trains. Oops, neighbors complain about traffic wait times. Bury five of the crossings. Now you can speed up the cal train. Nice. Now run more trains, connect the stops to the places people actually live and work. Do the same in and around Sacramento and LA. But don’t build a bullet train to nowhere.
There’s so much more good we could have done with billions in transportation funding.
My understanding of this is that CalTrain is already running at capacity. Trains are, essentially, back to back. Part of the electrification project is that the electric engines should have better acceleration than the current diesel ones, allowing tighter packing of trains on the tracks. (And thus, more trains, and thus, more capacity.)
We really, IMO, need 4 rails from SF to SJ, but if Atherton doesn't want to give up a few trees, I can only imagine the hell that would get raised for more space. That, and funding.
> Bury five of the crossings.
AIUI, Mountain View considered this (grade separation) w/ the Castro/Moffett/Central intersection, but decided against it, opting instead for simple removing the crossing. (The wrong decision, IMO. I'd bury the train, but I think the (canned) plan was to bury the road, as it would be less disruptive.)
> The state should have been working on some plan to give high-speed access from the SF Bay, where property is really expensive, into the Central Valley where it's really cheap.
Given that that's one of the key things HSR would have provided (and a key reason that it routed through the inhabited part of Valley), and one of the earliest it would have (with the planned San Jose to Merced Initial Operating Segment) provided, how exactly was it solving the wrong problem?
Indeed, sad that they pulled the rail off of the bay bridge. It's really painful to from Amtrak to SF. I suspect a bay bridge link would have WAY more traffic than the high speed rail at a small fraction of the price.
Also sad that they never included a bike lane on the western span of the Bay Bridge. That entire project was managed by idiots who cared more about aesthetics than actual transportation.
Lots of people today travel faster than 220mph between LA and SF; they take airplanes. The point is to take pressure off the airspace because it's already close to capacity, not to mention the visibility issues at SFO that mess things up all the time. And of course flying is terrible from a CO2 emissions perspective.
It'll continue being a problem. Housing has become the gold of California and those who have the gold don't want more of it otherwise the value drops. There is no incentive right now for California home owners to want more housing.
From what I've seen the parents stay around, the kids move out of state, eventually inherit their homes, and then either rent the homes or cash out but face a huge tax penalty.
Older people have a community and time invested living in a place, it's hard to motivate them to move or want change. They would also rather their kids get their financial investment (gold) and have comfort knowing they'll be taken care of when they're gone.
And yet somehow silicon valley companies are oblivious to this. I have had so many recruiters disappear on me when I mentioned upfront that I cannot move to the bay area. It was surprising because some of these companies have small or satellite offices in the city I live in and yet they want "co-located" team members only.
outside the valley, recruiters aren't really needed (or at least not so much as to warrant the enormous bonuses they get for SF/PA). Recruiters get paid big bucks in Palo Alto and SF precisely because there's no housing there, thus it's much harder to convince people to move there and work there.
companies don't care because it's easier to pay recruiters big bonuses than it is to ask VCs or CEOs to get on an airplane a few times a year.
Another article about how San Francisco is prohibitively expensive!
I think more mid to big companies should consider investing in moving to some of these areas where there's little to nothing else. If you look at something like Epic in Madison WI, they basically own that town in that sector, so a lot of people end up working there a lot longer than they want to because they've invested in that area (whether economically, emotionally, or something else).
The problem is nobody wants to live in Madison WI.
If you're a top performing engineer you're likely to want to head straight to the epicenter of tech innovation. You want to knock heads with the best of 'em, and that isn't in Madison WI or any other small town.
As a New Yorker, this comment is hilarious. Madison is about a third of the size of SF. As a polite reminder, SF is a little more than a third of the size of Queens, and fundamentally still kind of a small town compared to real cities. It's about the same size as Hempstead, NY which is certainly a small town. Hell, I bet more people bike to work as a % in Madison than in SF.
This is exactly why big employers leave smaller regions. I've seen it happen on numerous occasions. People in Seattle/SV/RTP/NYC are seen by leadership to be "better" than those in podunk mid-western towns. They are more than happy to pay $160k for a median NYC dev rather than $100k for a great mid-westerner.
So what incentive is there to stick around unless you really want to? All the good jobs are in those cities.
If that's the case they should absolutely stop complaining about housing prices. It's self inflicted pain. If you must live in the most expensive city in the world due to your own desires, you have no right to complain that it's expensive. The option to live somewhere cheaper exists, you just choose not to take it.
Urbanization is a global phenomenon. It's happening everywhere - in rich countries and poor. Resisting urbanization is expensive and ultimately a wasted effort. Instead we should be doing what the Japanese are doing and thinking carefully about how to gradually decommission small towns in the most humane way possible for the few people still living there - how do we provide them with medical services and utilities while they're still alive?
And we need to cut the bullshit, implement land reform, and let everyone who wants to live in one of our nice big cities live in one.
Actually lots of people want to live in smaller places; you may just not know them personally. "No one" is clearly hyperbole, as I know many such people myself. I find that a lot of people who live in big cities have little idea what life in a smaller place is like. It's looked down upon, and even feared, irrationally so. I bet a lot of folks who favor urbanization actually have a wider range of communities in which they would thrive than they think.
What you're asking for, an explicit effort to "decommission" small towns, is in some ways also signing the death warrant on a way of life, a culture. I don't think there's a humane way to do that. I think there are healthier perspectives available, with recognition that different people have different wants/needs. It doesn't have to be only a small number of big cities. It can be some big cities, some medium cities, some small cities, some rural areas.
It's certainly not, but I think the company wants it like that because, largely, working in healthcare sucks. If you had C# experience and were tired of jumping through hoops and constantly having fires because of the demands of the medical industry, you probably wouldn't keep doing it if you could take those skills somewhere else.
That said, I was more referring to the bigger companies noted for how they treat employees well. Having a 20k employee building for, say, google, in one of the more sparsely populated areas of California, Oregon, or Washington would solve at least part of the problem, but then I'm guessing that whatever population lives there now would absolutely hate the company for coming in and taking over everything.
When I visited SF and the valley a while back I wondered about all the low rise buildings in many areas. Homes with 2 stories max. While I think it’s an essential part of the areas’ culture I wondered why the space above is left unused. Because of geological reasons? Esthetic reasons?
Homeowners want to see their investment appreciate, plain and simple, and will do anything and make up any justification to impede development so as to reduce supply and increase home values. Pretty much any argument, any rule, that restricts housing ("ruining neighborhood character", "affecting the historic value of the neighborhood", and in almost all cases, "environmental impact") can be understood if seen through the prism of selfishness. Never mind that people's lives are more important than obtuse feelings of 'neighborhood character', and never mind that the reason the shitty silicon valley house you bought in the 70s is worth millions only because of the blood, sweat and tears of all the people who came here and started companies and built things.
As you can probably guess, I'm pretty disillusioned at probably not ever being able to ever afford a place to live in the place I call home. (And I'm a relatively well paid engineer, others have it much worse).
You have mischaracterized the motivation of most homeowners. Have you ever actually talked to many? The loudest, most influential NIMBYs have lived in the area since before the first Internet boom and plan to die in their current homes. They don't care about housing as in investment, and in fact complain about rising real estate values because it drives up their property taxes (albeit slowly due to Proposition 13).
What they actually care about is quality of life. Their perception is that higher residential density means more traffic, parking issues, noise, crime, pollution, school overcrowding, etc. If you want to get them on board with higher density then you'll have to find a win/win solution which addresses their concerns. Maligning their motives will accomplish nothing.
There is definitely a lot of that. But that is not the only reason. The excessive housing pricing have gone on long enough now that many people will be trapped and ruined if housing prices stagnate or fall.
People have had to spend far more than is prudent to get a house that is not that great just because there are no other options.
If you are putting all of your extra money into your mortgage payment, you are going to have to rely on being able to sell that home anf move away when you retire. If you cannot at least sell it for the equity you have in it, you will be trapped in an expensive city with no money to retire on and no way to sell and get out.
So I understand why so many are fighting to keep prices high. Their financial future depends on it and I don't think it's greedy to try to avoid financial ruin.
What would you say to the developers who are opposed to H1bs (for supposedly lowering salaries)? Isn't constraining H1b similar to homeowners stifling housing?
It's not just homeowners, it's the entire real estate and banking sector as well, quite posibly with other players.
With floating and fractional reserve banking, bank assets (incluing mortgage) literally underpin the money supply. Reductions in asset values decrease that, and the impacts are felt throughout the system. From individual homeowners to banks and assetbmanagers to national policymakers and central bankers, rising prices are "free money", and anything which might decrease market value is seen as a threat. That's effectively what 2007-2008 was.
The modern homeless crise was co-emergent with floating the U.S. dollar, the 1970s oil crises, and the Volker inflation and recession (intentionally triggered).
Housing and real estate now function principally as asset classes rather than as a service good. When financial assets serve only (or principally) as assets, the social disruption is low: gold, siilver, gems, fine art, rare wines, etc.. When assets perform vital functions in the real economy, their store-of-wealth function can become quite problematic.
This is normal for any investment, why would anyone want their investment to depreciate? I also don't understand why so many people in San Francisco want to own a home. Owning a home in San Francisco is a giant pain in the ass. Everything is ridiculously expensive once you own. These homes are 100+ years old and most need updates and earthquake retrofitting (that's $100k+). You pay an obscene amount in property taxes and have to go through the city to change nearly anything. Once you do get approved you have to find a contractor and most contractors are on giant month long waits because there aren't many in the city. It's a pain, honestly I don't understand why anyone would want to buy when you can rent and be on rent control and not worry about any of these headaches.
It's unfortunately this. Not earthquakes, not hills, not technical problems, but almost 100% due to balkanized city councils. The state needs to step in more. They already have a little bit.
To find the answers to this you need to jump into the rabbit hole of corruption, low cost housing and zoning laws. Yes, people are greedy but then that is true for every single town in USA. It is only in SF bay area that housing is so expensive.
It is possible to build a high rise building but such a project needs to be approved by local town which they won't. They will put unreasonable restrictions in terms of parking spaces, open spaces etc. These laws prevent building anything bigger.
There is a deeper rot of corruption called "low cost housing". There are several organizations that will deliberately litigate any new project, run it into ground and once the developer has lost a lot of money they will buy it cheap for so called low cost housing. To give a real world example a laundramat owner in SF who made ton of profit had pity on the housing need of the city and out of his good heart decided to demolish the laundramat and build housing instead. He has been harassed, the corrupt city admin declared his building historic monument in order to prevent him from redoing it. All the while he lost money and paid property taxes. [1]
As of today it takes around 2 years to get all the necessary permissions for any kind of construction project. Most developers have turned their back on the city. See this interview with one of the builders. [2]
Third part is large empty patches of land that are for some reason not being brought under development. Look at google maps and you will notice there is plenty of land in Fremont, Santa Cruz mountains, Palo alto etc. where mountains can be demolished, new housing units created. But wont happen because of over zealus environmentalists.
SF's infrastructure was never designed for high density. They can't just add homes by themselves. That would overwhelm the roads, sewers, electrical grid, schools, public services, etc. Those things all must be upgraded before adding more housing, otherwise the city will start to resemble a shantytown. The infrastructure upgrades will be tremendously expensive and in many cases would have to be done as huge capital projects rather than incrementally. There is little funding or political will to undertake such projects.
The root cause was a failure of urban planning decades ago. Now SF leaders and residents have to deal with reality as it exists today rather than what it ought to have been with better foresight.
> There is little funding or political will to undertake such projects.
It really sounds ludicrously obscene that the city with the highest average income per person in the world can't "afford" to do things that third world countries have done to multi-millennia old cities histories spanning much larger footprints with way more people involved and way less money in the economy.
If SF wanted to develop into the proper metropolis it should have been since the 90s there is ample money flowing through the Bay Area to pay for it. You just need the political willpower to make it happen, which may be rarer than flying pigs.
Law prohibits a lot of places to built it. I remember Palo Alto had some condition. In SF, I think it doesn't have a good foundation to build tall building. It's either that or the architect here is not great.
NIMBYs stop it because they “don’t want the feel of the city to change”. That is the excuse I’ve heard in Mountain View and Palo Alto to shoot down any high density apartments.
It really bothers me that homeowners here have so much influence beyond their property lines. You own a plot of land. If someone is building an apartment not on your plot of land it should be none of your business.
a. That particular area happens to have had a history of earth quakes.
b. People who already have homes, think they own the view. Also known as NIMBY.
c. Building new homes(like big apartment complexes with mass housing), would crash the market. Because many people have put in $1 million+ to buy a home. Imagine what happens when homes are suddenly available for $300K a piece. Those people will go bankrupt instantly.
The market won't crash. You can't physically build fast enough to do it even if all the zoning was fixed. If anything you'll temper prices or lower slightly but even if they fell a bit maybe CA'd get needed tax changes finally.
> That particular area happens to have had a history of earth quakes.
This is not an excuse. High rises that are well designed are perfectly safe in earthquakes (safer than single family homes often times). Other major cities in earthquake areas (like Tokyo) do not have this problem.
If more companies would let people work at home 3 or 4 days a week, there would be a lot more housing options.
There are plenty of affordable homes in the San Joaquin valley, close enough to San Francisco to do a round trip on one Tesla charge. Every time I check Redfin, for example, Merced has plenty of 3 or 4 bedroom houses in the 1700 sq ft range for under $300k. Modesto also has plenty under $300k, and is even closer to San Francisco.
Merced or Modesto doesn't have anywhere near the cultural offerings San Francisco has for your off work time, but again, San Francisco is close enough that a weekend trip is not a big deal.
One of the symptoms of communism as experienced in Eastern Germany and other countries was the scarcity of many things. People formed long queues when rare goods (e.g. bananas) happened to be available and spent a lot of effort to procure necessary items (parts and materials to repair a vehicle or fix their appartment).
Occasionally we find this kind of queue-forming scarcity in western market based economies, even though the laws of supply and demand handle most situations quite well. To me this is not just an irrationality, it's a bit of a disgrace. With all of the shortcommings of capitalism, at least it ensures that a good substitute product is always available.
Be it a job market with affordable housing, a mobile phone or a movie, or a restaurant with friendly service and fair prices: Whenever I spent a few moments to look around, I never fail to find an excellent choice of suitable products and services.
On the other hand, outside of communism, a horde of irrational customers who insist on having a certain scarce thing cannot possibly be satisfied. Prices go up and/or the provided value goes down.
I wish for everyone to recognize the workings of the laws of supply and demand, and a happy life in any of the great tech/startup cities of the world.
The scarcity problem is well understood in the Bay Area: government works hard to disallow new housing. Cities here zoning for lots of jobs, but they do not allow residences for those who work at those jobs.
The irrationality is simply bad planning by local governments. They are extremely strict in what they allow, and they do it in a way that maximizes profits for current residents, at the expense of anybody who comes along later (through birth or migration). This is pure regulatory capture.
As others have noted, this is because of governments telling developers they can't build, not a lack of developers wanting to build.
And there are other substitute products. You only need one great job at a time, and there are plenty of other markets in the US where one can make a living that under any other circumstances would get everyone telling you to count your blessings and stop whining so much about how you're only upper middle class. There's startup hubs, industry hubs, places that may not be anything in particular but still have plenty of jobs of various types, things closer to nature, places with decent weather (even if SV is the epitome of weather for some people), all sorts of other choices.
Really, if you don't want to "work for a startup" (including starting one), and even then, a rather particular sort of startup, you don't need to be in Silicon Valley. It's an option, yes, and I'm neither surprised some people choose it nor particularly criticizing them. But it's not the only option.
I get the point you are trying to make, but it doesn't make sense in this case. For all it's problems, East Germany solved the housing problem [1], in fact, its probably one of the main contributors to Berlin's ability to grow while keeping housing prices "reasonable"[2]. Our current property system isn't really that great at handling rapid fluctuations in housing demand, as we are witnessing in real time in the Bay Area. If we don't find more efficient housing solutions, we essentially condemn all but the privileged class to impossible commutes, poor quality housing and homelessness.
Readit News
Not many people need to travel the 400 miles between LA and SF at 220 miles an hour. On the other hand, if you can travel 60 miles or so from San Francisco (or the mid-peninsula or even San Jose) at 120 miles an hour, that's a big deal, because that opens up a bunch of low-cost real estate for local workers.
After the initial push towards a 'Super ACE', Altamont lost in the planning to Pacheco Pass; this increased linearity and reduced distance in the SF-SJ-Fresno axis, but in my opinion it was the wrong move. Fresno's accession to the economic continuum of the Bay is far less likely than that of Stockton or Modesto.
My understanding of this is that CalTrain is already running at capacity. Trains are, essentially, back to back. Part of the electrification project is that the electric engines should have better acceleration than the current diesel ones, allowing tighter packing of trains on the tracks. (And thus, more trains, and thus, more capacity.)
We really, IMO, need 4 rails from SF to SJ, but if Atherton doesn't want to give up a few trees, I can only imagine the hell that would get raised for more space. That, and funding.
> Bury five of the crossings.
AIUI, Mountain View considered this (grade separation) w/ the Castro/Moffett/Central intersection, but decided against it, opting instead for simple removing the crossing. (The wrong decision, IMO. I'd bury the train, but I think the (canned) plan was to bury the road, as it would be less disruptive.)
Given that that's one of the key things HSR would have provided (and a key reason that it routed through the inhabited part of Valley), and one of the earliest it would have (with the planned San Jose to Merced Initial Operating Segment) provided, how exactly was it solving the wrong problem?
The original business plan actually was based around taking pressure of need for increased freeway capacity, not relieving airspace pressure.
Older people have a community and time invested living in a place, it's hard to motivate them to move or want change. They would also rather their kids get their financial investment (gold) and have comfort knowing they'll be taken care of when they're gone.
companies don't care because it's easier to pay recruiters big bonuses than it is to ask VCs or CEOs to get on an airplane a few times a year.
I think more mid to big companies should consider investing in moving to some of these areas where there's little to nothing else. If you look at something like Epic in Madison WI, they basically own that town in that sector, so a lot of people end up working there a lot longer than they want to because they've invested in that area (whether economically, emotionally, or something else).
If you're a top performing engineer you're likely to want to head straight to the epicenter of tech innovation. You want to knock heads with the best of 'em, and that isn't in Madison WI or any other small town.
Lake Nebagamon WI is a small town.
So what incentive is there to stick around unless you really want to? All the good jobs are in those cities.
Urbanization is a global phenomenon. It's happening everywhere - in rich countries and poor. Resisting urbanization is expensive and ultimately a wasted effort. Instead we should be doing what the Japanese are doing and thinking carefully about how to gradually decommission small towns in the most humane way possible for the few people still living there - how do we provide them with medical services and utilities while they're still alive?
And we need to cut the bullshit, implement land reform, and let everyone who wants to live in one of our nice big cities live in one.
What you're asking for, an explicit effort to "decommission" small towns, is in some ways also signing the death warrant on a way of life, a culture. I don't think there's a humane way to do that. I think there are healthier perspectives available, with recognition that different people have different wants/needs. It doesn't have to be only a small number of big cities. It can be some big cities, some medium cities, some small cities, some rural areas.
I’m not sure that’s a good thing—for them or the company
That said, I was more referring to the bigger companies noted for how they treat employees well. Having a 20k employee building for, say, google, in one of the more sparsely populated areas of California, Oregon, or Washington would solve at least part of the problem, but then I'm guessing that whatever population lives there now would absolutely hate the company for coming in and taking over everything.
Homeowners want to see their investment appreciate, plain and simple, and will do anything and make up any justification to impede development so as to reduce supply and increase home values. Pretty much any argument, any rule, that restricts housing ("ruining neighborhood character", "affecting the historic value of the neighborhood", and in almost all cases, "environmental impact") can be understood if seen through the prism of selfishness. Never mind that people's lives are more important than obtuse feelings of 'neighborhood character', and never mind that the reason the shitty silicon valley house you bought in the 70s is worth millions only because of the blood, sweat and tears of all the people who came here and started companies and built things.
As you can probably guess, I'm pretty disillusioned at probably not ever being able to ever afford a place to live in the place I call home. (And I'm a relatively well paid engineer, others have it much worse).
What they actually care about is quality of life. Their perception is that higher residential density means more traffic, parking issues, noise, crime, pollution, school overcrowding, etc. If you want to get them on board with higher density then you'll have to find a win/win solution which addresses their concerns. Maligning their motives will accomplish nothing.
There is definitely a lot of that. But that is not the only reason. The excessive housing pricing have gone on long enough now that many people will be trapped and ruined if housing prices stagnate or fall.
People have had to spend far more than is prudent to get a house that is not that great just because there are no other options.
If you are putting all of your extra money into your mortgage payment, you are going to have to rely on being able to sell that home anf move away when you retire. If you cannot at least sell it for the equity you have in it, you will be trapped in an expensive city with no money to retire on and no way to sell and get out.
So I understand why so many are fighting to keep prices high. Their financial future depends on it and I don't think it's greedy to try to avoid financial ruin.
What would you say to the developers who are opposed to H1bs (for supposedly lowering salaries)? Isn't constraining H1b similar to homeowners stifling housing?
With floating and fractional reserve banking, bank assets (incluing mortgage) literally underpin the money supply. Reductions in asset values decrease that, and the impacts are felt throughout the system. From individual homeowners to banks and assetbmanagers to national policymakers and central bankers, rising prices are "free money", and anything which might decrease market value is seen as a threat. That's effectively what 2007-2008 was.
The modern homeless crise was co-emergent with floating the U.S. dollar, the 1970s oil crises, and the Volker inflation and recession (intentionally triggered).
Housing and real estate now function principally as asset classes rather than as a service good. When financial assets serve only (or principally) as assets, the social disruption is low: gold, siilver, gems, fine art, rare wines, etc.. When assets perform vital functions in the real economy, their store-of-wealth function can become quite problematic.
You don't have to live in the Bay Area. Developers are employable all over the world and remote work is gaining popularity.
It is possible to build a high rise building but such a project needs to be approved by local town which they won't. They will put unreasonable restrictions in terms of parking spaces, open spaces etc. These laws prevent building anything bigger.
There is a deeper rot of corruption called "low cost housing". There are several organizations that will deliberately litigate any new project, run it into ground and once the developer has lost a lot of money they will buy it cheap for so called low cost housing. To give a real world example a laundramat owner in SF who made ton of profit had pity on the housing need of the city and out of his good heart decided to demolish the laundramat and build housing instead. He has been harassed, the corrupt city admin declared his building historic monument in order to prevent him from redoing it. All the while he lost money and paid property taxes. [1]
As of today it takes around 2 years to get all the necessary permissions for any kind of construction project. Most developers have turned their back on the city. See this interview with one of the builders. [2]
Third part is large empty patches of land that are for some reason not being brought under development. Look at google maps and you will notice there is plenty of land in Fremont, Santa Cruz mountains, Palo alto etc. where mountains can be demolished, new housing units created. But wont happen because of over zealus environmentalists.
[1] https://reason.com/archives/2019/03/19/the-most-contested-ap... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfIjDGF_YYQ
The root cause was a failure of urban planning decades ago. Now SF leaders and residents have to deal with reality as it exists today rather than what it ought to have been with better foresight.
It really sounds ludicrously obscene that the city with the highest average income per person in the world can't "afford" to do things that third world countries have done to multi-millennia old cities histories spanning much larger footprints with way more people involved and way less money in the economy.
If SF wanted to develop into the proper metropolis it should have been since the 90s there is ample money flowing through the Bay Area to pay for it. You just need the political willpower to make it happen, which may be rarer than flying pigs.
The slanting, sinking high-end building terrifies me. https://www.businessinsider.com/is-millennium-tower-safe-sti...
And many people in SF (especially if they have lived their a while; i.e. property owners) are not thrilled that their home is changing.
You really don't want the feel of the city to change? Fine, then keep out employers.
a. That particular area happens to have had a history of earth quakes.
b. People who already have homes, think they own the view. Also known as NIMBY.
c. Building new homes(like big apartment complexes with mass housing), would crash the market. Because many people have put in $1 million+ to buy a home. Imagine what happens when homes are suddenly available for $300K a piece. Those people will go bankrupt instantly.
d. Rent control.
This is not an excuse. High rises that are well designed are perfectly safe in earthquakes (safer than single family homes often times). Other major cities in earthquake areas (like Tokyo) do not have this problem.
There are plenty of affordable homes in the San Joaquin valley, close enough to San Francisco to do a round trip on one Tesla charge. Every time I check Redfin, for example, Merced has plenty of 3 or 4 bedroom houses in the 1700 sq ft range for under $300k. Modesto also has plenty under $300k, and is even closer to San Francisco.
Merced or Modesto doesn't have anywhere near the cultural offerings San Francisco has for your off work time, but again, San Francisco is close enough that a weekend trip is not a big deal.
Occasionally we find this kind of queue-forming scarcity in western market based economies, even though the laws of supply and demand handle most situations quite well. To me this is not just an irrationality, it's a bit of a disgrace. With all of the shortcommings of capitalism, at least it ensures that a good substitute product is always available.
Be it a job market with affordable housing, a mobile phone or a movie, or a restaurant with friendly service and fair prices: Whenever I spent a few moments to look around, I never fail to find an excellent choice of suitable products and services.
On the other hand, outside of communism, a horde of irrational customers who insist on having a certain scarce thing cannot possibly be satisfied. Prices go up and/or the provided value goes down.
I wish for everyone to recognize the workings of the laws of supply and demand, and a happy life in any of the great tech/startup cities of the world.
The irrationality is simply bad planning by local governments. They are extremely strict in what they allow, and they do it in a way that maximizes profits for current residents, at the expense of anybody who comes along later (through birth or migration). This is pure regulatory capture.
And there are other substitute products. You only need one great job at a time, and there are plenty of other markets in the US where one can make a living that under any other circumstances would get everyone telling you to count your blessings and stop whining so much about how you're only upper middle class. There's startup hubs, industry hubs, places that may not be anything in particular but still have plenty of jobs of various types, things closer to nature, places with decent weather (even if SV is the epitome of weather for some people), all sorts of other choices.
Really, if you don't want to "work for a startup" (including starting one), and even then, a rather particular sort of startup, you don't need to be in Silicon Valley. It's an option, yes, and I'm neither surprised some people choose it nor particularly criticizing them. But it's not the only option.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattenbau [2] https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/09/a-second-life-for-ber...