Rental Prices in San Francisco

https://medium.com/@andersem/a-guy-...out-sf-housing-prices-bd61fd0e4ef9#.wf4ejjeyi

It would be interesting to see how applicable the pricing model is to other cities...

Successful companies need to base themselves in attractive places to attract the best employees => Better paid employees want to live in attractive places => Attractive places get more expensive.
C'est la vie.
SF is not '****ed'. People who like SF but cannot afford it are.

SF has always been an incubator for startups rather than successful companies; like all these things it takes throwing a lot of shit at a wall before something sticks. Greed masquerading as entrepreneurship with absolutely no social contract is what drives the young white, male privileged middle classes living a new kind of American Dream bur rather then President -- everyone wants to be the next Steve Jobs or Elon Musk.

A lot of people that don't live here don't realise that San Francisco *is* the people. The Tech Bros and Instacrats setting up their startups in the hope of being absorbed into a larger company or gaining VC money until they can get an IPO have changed the tone of this city. There is far more abject homelessness than I have ever seen in 22 years of visiting the city regularly and fewer services to help people who are just a paycheck or two away from the street.

Many of my sex-worker, artist friends and bohemian friends are being pushed out -- first to Oakland, then to Portland and those of that made a pile in the dotcom 1.0 of the mid nineties and got out before Y2K moved to Seattle (I moved back to the UK). Portland is now going the same way as San Francisco... a lof of my kink friends moved out there but the increase in prices and demand for properties is the same.

Try this SF Startup tries website where you can bid for housing

Actually this is a pretty good way to rapidly inflate and burst the housing bubble. Unsure if Anarchist or just willfully dangerous.

But this is just people doing what they will do motivated by money. Writing letters to the mayor compaining that the homeless are making them uncomfortable while buying $5 coffee at bluebottle. The style of housing is changing where apartments are actually looking more like student dorms, what seems to be happening is all the new builds are being built by tech and VC money on college housing plans and ideas so that young graduates go from college to housing block with a shitload of debt and are in moderately paid jobs with 80% of their income going on rental dorm style accommodation. A great way for the 1% to keep the best of the 99% down.

But enough of the bohemians and sex workers and kink folk are still here. Hanging on doggedly. It wont last forever and the party might have to end. Its been a good run and a lot of good times have been had, I love this city. I love being in a socially liberal environment where a transgender woman can go shopping and no one cares... no one bats an eyelid, some people (not me) get car passing "hey faggot" shouted at them which is new to San Francisco, but actually these days most people just assume I am a woman -- which is great. Its good to be white, blonde have money but I am aware of my privilege.

Well said Claire..

I tried SF in the late 90s, thinking it was the answer for me, and decided it wasn't. I have plenty of friends from around then that are still there, and enjoying it immensely. I think I picked up on the vacuous net bubble brigade before most, and decided i was looking for something with a bit more substance as I kind of felt like the little kid pointing at the emperor and shouting 'but he's not got any clothes on!'.

I don't like the sound of abuse being shouted at people, not cool.

..some people (not me) get car passing "hey faggot" shouted at them which is new to San Francisco, but actually these days most people just assume I am a woman

Click to expand...

Let me guess, it's the same 'wealthy young entrepreneurs'- grossly offended by poor people living on the street in SF? They'd also agree not to shop their Mexican housemaid to the Immigration Service provided she drops her hourly rate to $3.25

I wonder if part of the answer is to restrict individuals and companies from building/buying/owning numbers of places for rent, such that they can almost "cartel" the market.

TheDecameron said:

Let me guess, it's the same 'wealthy young entrepreneurs'- grossly offended by poor people living on the street in SF? They'd also agree not to shop their Mexican housemaid to the Immigration Service provided she drops her hourly rate to $3.25

Click to expand...

Actually some cleaners are having to supplement their salaries by sex work with their tech bro 'employers'. With threats to the same outing of their status. I personally know one who had that 'offer'

The tech bro writing to complain about the homeless is here

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...-letter-i-dont-want-to-see-homeless-riff-raff

There does need to be some differentiation however between the entrepreneurs and a lot of the people working for the start-ups who are working on subsistence wages with almost no health care benefits or anything to fall back on. So much of the "millennials are so entitled rhetoric is really just a form of gaslighting young people with shitty jobs into feeling crazy for excepting basic decency and respect.

The people working for a lot of the start-ups are actually earning less than McDonald's wages and no there is no pot of gold at the end of the IPO -- most of that goes to the venture capitallists and the entrepreneurs that started the company which is in stark difference to dotcom 1.0.

Media representation and reality are starkly different in this respect

bownose said:

The people working for a lot of the start-ups are actually earning less than McDonald's wages and no there is no pot of gold at the end of the IPO -- most of that goes to the venture capitallists and the entrepreneurs that started the company which is in stark difference to dotcom 1.0.

Media representation and reality are starkly different in this respect

Click to expand...

Nine times out of ten there is no IPO, most start ups fail, it used to be that you got paid better than average at a start up to compensate for insecurity, I didn't realise it had changed that much. Anyone who works for a startup, other than people that set it up, thinking they are going to get rich needs their head examining.

I was in silicon valley from 1997 until 2005 and back then startups would offer lower salaries and shitty benefits because "one day you will be rich, rich, rich". I was a senior engineer for a company that went from 10 people to IPO. I made about $25000 on my stocks - the (psycho) CEO make $25 million. The little people rarely make out. 1997 was the time to get into real estate in Northern California (and in the UK, by global-credit-bubble-coincidence).

I'm glad I left.

San Francisco is like California - lovely for a holiday, but not a place to seriously consider living, especially with kids, unless you have $2-3million+ in the bank.

I still go back every year (my employer is in San Jose) and a bike ride across the Golden Gate bridge and up and over the hill to Stinson beach is perhaps my favourite of all rides.

But as a place to live - it's pretty f*ck*d up, though not much more so than London.

The homeless in San Francisco should be scooped up and moved into a huge Work-House in an Oakland industrial park.

Those who do not comply in the Work-House should be made into Soylent Green.

Soylent Green is an ideal cheap substitute for food, for low paid workers in start-ups.

I interested in the fact the author found a formula which tracks the rent rates very well for SF. It would be interesting to see if similar tracking formulas apply for London for example because it reinforces the fact the only solutions to spiralling rental costs are to build more properties or to move a lot of the jobs elsewhere...