Eat the rich. Please.

March 8, 2019 9:51 AM

Thousands of New Millionaires Are About to Eat San Francisco Alive. SF is already known for having some of the highest rents in the US (although some would disagree, it's still solidly in ridiculous territory). It's long been well known that you can make six figures and still be low income, and that it's cheaper to rent than buy here. Studies confirm that thanks to the expected IPO spate this year, it's about to get worse for those not benefiting from an influx of cash.
posted by allkindsoftime (15 comments total)

The housing situation in this country is a story about the death of the middle class and a return to the gilded age, not silicon valley IPOs. And yes, this is even true in the bay area.
posted by MillMan at 10:10 AM on March 8, 2019 [4 favorites]

It's so weird. I'm really glad I lived there when I did, because so much of it is just completely unrecognizable now. All the fun things I got to be part of (much of which, to be fair, was possible because of the first silicon valley boom/bust) have been destroyed or forever changed by the last influx of people with too much money.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:23 AM on March 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

There's new millionaires and I'm not one of them. SMDH.
posted by bleep at 10:50 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm someone who has lived in San Francisco since 1992. At one point I was a computer programmer and worked for a company that had stock options and went public. That was about the highest the stocks went, and I had some complicated taxes one year, the company collapsed, and I certainly didn't become a millionaire. I'm still renting and still in San Francisco. Maybe the sky is falling, but it has been for a while.
posted by larrybob at 10:51 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]

Report: Nation's Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization

WASHINGTON—According to a report released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, the recent influx of exceedingly affluent powder-wigged aristocrats into the nation's gentrified urban areas is pushing out young white professionals, some of whom have lived in these neighborhoods for as many as seven years.

Maureen Kennedy, a housing policy expert and lead author of the report, said that the enormous treasure-based wealth of the aristocracy makes it impossible for those living on modest trust funds to hold onto their co-ops and converted factory loft spaces.

posted by BungaDunga at 11:30 AM on March 8, 2019 [9 favorites]

It's really sad that I had to mouseover to confirm that's the Onion - "powder-wigged" tipped me off.
posted by aspersioncast at 11:40 AM on March 8, 2019 [10 favorites]

The SF metro area has 10 million residents, give or take. Many of whom either own a million dollar hovel home outright, or found someone to lend them a million to buy such a home. It doesn't strike me as particularly problematic if another .05 percent flip from borrowing their home to buying it outright. The problem is that homes cost a million dollars, full stop.
posted by pwnguin at 1:14 PM on March 8, 2019 [4 favorites]

Cheaper to rent than to buy is a symptom of a housing bubble, or at least that's something I remember reading back before the 2008 crash. Here we go again.
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:29 PM on March 8, 2019

I feel so sorry for my friends who grew up in SF. They can never go back home.
posted by egypturnash at 4:48 PM on March 8, 2019 [6 favorites]

Well, they could always live literally anywhere else. It feels like half the problem is that people get hung up on the image of living in a certain location, and that’s what drives housing costs up. San Francisco isn’t the only cool place to live in the Unites States—adapt. How are we ever going to change our society into one that embraces, say, more telework and economic distribution, if people continue to act like you can only succeed and achieve in the Bay Area? It’s stupid.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:07 PM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]

It's really sad that I had to mouseover to confirm that's the Onion - "powder-wigged" tipped me off.

Joke it may be, but in my Los Angeles neighborhood -- long gentrified -- middle class white folks are getting priced out by extremely affluent buyers of giant mcmansions that are springing up. It's interesting to watch the reactions of "gentrification isn't bad" folks as they start getting the other end of the stick.
posted by davejay at 6:08 PM on March 8, 2019 [4 favorites]

San Francisco isn’t the only cool place to live in the Unites States

It might be the only place their family and childhood friends live, though.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 7:10 PM on March 8, 2019 [15 favorites]

Joke it may be

I mean, yeah. That's why I had to double-check. Manhattan south of the 130s already went through something more like the Onion article, where at this point hereditary wealth, often from foreign aristocrats, is snatching up much of the available real estate.

Gentrification in DC has been *bonkers* over the last decade, and there are several already-gentrified neighborhoods that are getting hit. It was already going back to *bonkers* in the Bay Area when I left, after a brief lull in the early aughts. It's happening in LA, Austin, even Denver.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:35 AM on March 9, 2019

Many of the companies that are bringing in lots of highly paid workers are in Silicon Valley. The problem is that Silicon Valley is really a collection of suburbs. And these suburbs are allowing these companies to build lots of new buildings, but they aren't allowing the building of lots of new housing. A lot of young employees would rather live in an exciting city than a boring suburb, so they all try to get into San Francisco, and take one of the many hundreds of corporate white buses that drive the 40 miles down 101 from San Francisco to Silicon Valley.

It is classic supply and demand problem and it would be easily solved if it weren't for NIMBY not-in-my-back-yard misguided politics.

Just look at any other fast growing metropolis--Singapore, Hong Kong, heck even New York City back in the early 1900s. The answer is to build lots of housing. Cities should require that no new office buildings could be built unless there is an equal amount of housing built. The Silicon Valley suburbs should realize that they are becoming metropolises and allow (yes, even I shudder, but it must be done) the building of high rise housing, and lots of it.

Nothing else other than a collapse of the economy or a major earthquake (which is actually coming according to the USGS) is going to bring down housing prices.

I'm a fourth generation Bay Area resident and this housing price increase has been happening since my great grandparents lived here. Housing bubble bursts affect the surrounding areas, but not the core, because as soon as the core prices drop, people now commuting long distances from their cheaper housing start moving in and just prop the prices right back up again.
posted by eye of newt at 6:10 PM on March 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

It took some searching, but here's a Google maps capture of a couple of the many hundreds of private charter buses that go between San Francisco (and other areas around the Bay Area) and Silicon Valley every morning, and back every evening. They are all titled 'Google' 'Facebook' 'LinkedIn', etc

It is weird because it is a reverse commute from the past. My Dad, and many of his generation, lived in the suburbs and commuted to the city (and, sorry San Jose, but 'the city' always meant San Francisco). Now, the commute has entirely reversed, and young engineers live in San Francisco, and commute down to the suburbs.

Housing in the entire Bay Area has become ridiculously expensive because all the companies have been building and moving in and relatively little new housing is getting built to house all these new highly paid people. The reverse commute is why housing is especially expensive in San Francisco.
posted by eye of newt at 6:45 PM on March 9, 2019