Are tech workers ruining San Francisco?
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- Опубликовано: 20 июл 2024
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Since the 1990s, the tech industry in Silicon Valley has grown and many of those workers own or rent here in San Francisco. In that time, housing prices have gone through the roof and now the city is the most expensive place to live in the United States, beating out Manhattan. Longtime residents are being priced out and teachers, nurses, and police officers are struggling to live in the city. Lots of people blame the tech workers for the problems facing San Francisco, but are they really to blame or just a convenient scapegoat?
Sources:
A. “Mission: Community Organizing and Resistance in SF’s Mission District” by Miriam Zuk and Karen Chapple. 2015. www.urbandisplacement.org/site...
B. “Mapping Displacement and Gentrification in the San Francisco Bay Area.” www.urbandisplacement.org/map/sf
C. Metcalf, G. (2018). Sand Castles Before the Tide? Affordable Housing in Expensive Cities. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 32(1), 59-80.
D. Pogash, C. (2015). Gentrification Spreads an Upheaval in San Francisco’s Mission District. The New York Times www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/us...
E. “Mission: Community Organizing and Resistance in SF’s Mission District” by Miriam Zuk and Karen Chapple. 2015. www.urbandisplacement.org/site...
F. Brinklow, A. (2017). San Francisco says development not to blame for Mission gentrification. Curbed San Francisco. sf.curbed.com/2017/1/30/14442...
G. Metcalf, G. (2015). What's the Matter With San Francisco? CityLab. www.citylab.com/equity/2015/0...
H. Pogash, C. (2015). Gentrification Spreads an Upheaval in San Francisco’s Mission District. The New York Times www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/us...
I. Samara, T. (2016). Don’t blame SF’s “left-leaning, anti-growth, NIMBY homeowners” for the city’s housing crisis: It’s not as easy as building our way to victory. Salon. www.salon.com/2016/01/24/dont...
Video thumbnail: HBO and Wikimedia Commons user Bernard Gagnon.
Produced in sunny Sacramento, California.
I made this video to continue the conversation from my last video on SF. Please keep comments civil, even when referring to groups of San Francisco residents. Thanks!
The whole bay region is a failure of proper zoning and not increasing density of neighborhoods. Too many NIMBYs blocking construction of more real estate upward.
I also moved from LA, CA to FL to get away from taxation and regulation system that prevents the working class to move upwards. All of those taxes didn't make an equal playing field, it made it worst.
My suggestion to fix san francisco
They should allow affordable high rises near the down town area
Surrounding towns and cities like San Jose should allow more housing and have the public transit to san francisco
My solution: YIMBY plus PHIMBY. Pass SB 827, but also pass public and affordable housing minimums with a Viennese or Swedish mentality. Enforce with higher carbon taxes in cities that don’t meet them, then give the money to those that do. (Ben Bartlet’s platform.) Encourage higher density housing in the suburbs and closest to the Pacific Ocean. Also, repeal Costa-Hawkins, Prop 13, and the Gann limits, pass a tenants’ bill of rights, and preserve existing rent-controlled stock.
For my solution it's pretty simple (ya'all americans probably not gonna like it, at all, it is very european after all)
Do like Vienna, rent control ALL THE THINGS. www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/12/vienna-housing-policy-uk-rent-controls
This is what has landed Vienna to be the most liveable city ON THE PLANET. You can have a 100 sq meter apartement (that's about ~1100 sq foot for those not using metric) for about 700€, 20 min walking distance from the city centre.
Because the city of Vienna has been building housing since the 1950s and has 2/3 of rent controlled apartments by the city. That's the only way. Housing (like health care, also another major US problem...) should be a universal human right.
I lived in Paris for most of my life (now living in Ireland, and Dublin is probably even worse than Paris) and gentrification has been killing the character of that wonderful city since the late 1970s.
The last exemple being the limit between the 9th district (rather posh) and 18th district of Paris which used to be a rather shady place (it's pretty close to all the cabaret and sex shops and drug dealers haha). But at the start of the 2000s, Paris was becoming so expensive that a lot of pretty wealthy people (or their kids, nothing worse than rich kids) started to slowly colonize the 18th district side of that place.
Fast forward to 2018 : this place has more american girls giggling, cocktail in hand than the latest trendy place in williamsburg. In a word : disgutingly bland.
And the same happened to other parts of Paris and lots of other cities.
Because we let money rule, whilst completely ignoring the need for housing and the fact that those tech people ususally need service jobs (that are paid like shit) really close to their home and work. And those people certainly can't afford to live near the tech people. So even from an economics point of view it makes zero sense to not have social diversity.
TL;DR : Rent control all the apartments and BAN all AirBnBs / buyouts of property by wealthy people in the historical center of your cities if you want them to retain ANY character in the future.
I know SF is the poster child for gentrification, but as an urban designer, I'd say the problem (and maybe the solution) is just to the south of it. San Jose and the entire surrounding valley is a sea of sprawl, detached houses and industrial parks. It doesn't provide an adequate alternative to living in the dense, vibrant and expensive SF. It's obvious that current legislation isn't doing enough to promote higher density and building new developments in that area, at least around the existing transit hubs.
I realize this isn't technically part of the city of San Francisco, but the local planning laws should take advantage of the city's expected growth and promote density in its 'suburbs'. Having alternative living options would therefore ease the pressure of people moving to the peninsula.
David R couldn't agree more! And you can apply this to most cities around the world. Smaller hubs around a big one take some pressure of the core. And if it's not too late (like in most american cities) it can prevent that land-eating sprawl
Exactly. But in the case of SF (and some other cities), there are no options for the city to spread radially outwards from the core. Therefore mass transit is crucial in connecting it to the valley and across the bay. And BART solves this problem relatively successfully. But the legislation isn't keeping up with the contemporary ideas of Transit-oriented development.
But that displaces San Jose's current residents like myself who like living in a low density area.
I understand that. And there are no perfect solutions for these kinds of issues. But, if you're a homeowner, real estate prices going up should be a positive thing for you. And if you're a tenant... sadly, just like all of us, you might be priced out of a particular area. But the valley is enormous tho, it's easier to move, I would say.
My point was that San Jose and its surroundings can absorb a larger population and higher density than SF could ever do.
And it doesn't have to be some kind of radical change. The laws could incentivize homeowners to add another storey to their detached houses, for instance... The current zoning is ridiculous and grossly outdated.
While clear gentrification in the way mentioned in the video haven't really happened where I live (completely the opposite part of Earth from US east coast), most of the low-level slums are usually desired to undergo some sort of clearance anyway. Most developments takes place either in these areas or in entirely new satellite towns with planned public transport.
You just need to make an entirely new district for these newcomers. Or alternatively, develop an even higher density urban core.
Remember that nerd you picked on?
Now hes ruining your rent
ミートローフLv 154 😂
Haha
ミートローフLv 154 I don’t know. After watching Pop Culture Detectives video on The Big Bang Theory/ the complicity of geek masculinity, maybe they weren’t so innocent after all 🤔
@Eisen Chao Then he hunts your ass down. Has his Lawyer rip you a new one and you go to jail where you are spit roasted by a couple of dudes in prison. Justice is then done. Long live the Nerds! P.S. I'm one of them.
I’ve never picked on ANYONE. :)
You completely ignored the rich foreign people buying up entire buildings as investments and keeping them empty.
I was going to comment the same thing. Same thing is what happened in Vancouver. All those rich foreigners (mostly Chinese) buy up property to hide their money from taxes
In San Francisco?
ray: yes.
Exactly where are these empty buildings in San Francisco? I know of only one restaurant space owned by a local who kept it empty for close to two decades. That's it. I don't see any high rises that are empty for long periods of time.
They are there, but they don't advertise. If they did they would attract squatters.
The only place that does print the address is some folks printing them for the benefit of squatters.
Businesses are different. You see those places stay empty for a long time all the time.
Wealthy people do indeed keep vacation homes in different cities, to stay in once in a while and as investments.
You could change the title from "San Fransisco" to "Seattle" and the same points would still apply. Great recap on these issues!
Or New York, or Boston.
What's the equivalent of Silicon Valley in the Seattle area?
@@RaymondHng - The Eastside. Across Lake Washington. That's where Microsoft and other tech companies are located.
@@islandbee is that where Amazon is?
@@gmarefan - No. Amazon's corporate HQ is in Seattle. But, Amazon is moving offices to downtown Bellevue.
If you want to see gentrification city-wide in action right now, look at what is happening in Austin, Texas. The gentrification there is off the charts. Also, NIMBY doesn't seem to be as big of an issue there.
On a side note, Silicon Valley is one of my favorite shows!
Its happening in new york as well. The city is going from a blue coller working union town to a town of bike riding hippies. A town that is conducting a war in cars. SMDH!
@@albundy3929 because new generations who weren't alive to experience are finding it increasingly difficult to own property or to even live in these cities to access jobs that are vital to their career.
@@albundy3929 This is the dumbest argument I've ever heard lol
That’s the problem with the environmental movement: So much of it occurs on the West Coast, and in the North East where the scenery is worth protecting, yet so much of the country lives in banal settings where an oil derrick or fracking, or some other concern seems hardly a bother. NIMBYs are a real problem but one has to realize that tearing down the Haight, the Castro, or Noe Valley for a denser district resembling that around the Ballpark would destroy much of the reason anybody would come to SF. That said, you could still build a lot without demolishing the victorians, and in my neighborhood, the Tenderloin, there are entire blocks that could come down to no aesthetic loss, and be built 20 stories high and still feel comfortable, with nary a century old building of decent ornament lost to the transition. But, it takes a willingness to listen and discuss and that is a commodity in modern America that is scarcer than a nice, affordable one bedroom apartment in San Francisco.
Are prices more controlled. A large influx of people moving into a city is always going to drive up prices NIMBYs don't make the problem they just stop the fix making it worse and last longer.
I was born and raised in SF. When it was time for me to move out and live on my own, people were charging $900 for a couch. My family was never rich and they made it in the city just fine, but I live in LA now because it’s drastically cheaper. Also, when I do visit SF now, the faces are a lot less colorful.
Mike D Yup my family is Mexican and grew up in the Bayview neighborhood. My grandma said that she grew up among a lot of blacks, Mexicans, Italians, Filipinos, Chinese, etc. But now it seems like most of the people who have been born and raised here and have been here for generations have had the rug swept from under them. Now they're forced into places like Stockton, Tracy, Antioch, Sacramento, Chico, etc. My buddy moved to Sac due to affordability issues and so many people, predominantly blacks, in his complex moved from SF, especially Sunnydale area. They said that SF was home and they missed it, but it's simply too expensive at this point.
That’s racism yo! It’s cool... I love to racism bro!
Not as severe as SF, but LA has similar problems though.
Because they have to step in poop on the sidewalk and the air smells like urine
How *IRONIC* latinos getting "pushed out" after pushing blacks out of sections of los Angeles via illegal immigration, racially motivated gang attacks, housing discrimination, bi lingual preferred/only opportunities, etc.
SF has a long history of blacks as well. I live in LA county to brotha, i own 2 homes, im 36, i worked 2 jobs for 5 yrs to accomplish this. It was rough
Tokyo has a lot more affordable housing. Stagnant prices since the country's bubble burst is one factor. Largely, they're able to build a lot of new housing to keep up with demand. Loose zoning regulations allow mixed zoning types and density. Easy to knock down old single family dwellings replacing with condos with little to no stopping power. Two skinny SFDs can be built on one lot.
New building codes to protect from earthquakes update constantly, old homes are replaced. Homes lack equity in Japan and only the land has value.
You can live where there's a lot of nightlife, near efficient transit systems, and be a lot safer.
I lived in Nishinomiya in Western Japan, and I saw this happen too. In less than five years, there were four or five single family homes surrounding my apartment complex that were all torn down, with two higher-density homes built on each lot, doubling the number of homes on just that block. This will probably happen more as Japan's population continues to age and more people move to urban areas. Even though Japan's population is shrinking, Tokyo's is growing.
I would argue against the term loose zoning. The North American exclusive zones is the odd man out. Mixed zoning is more traditional and negates the need for a car...that and public transit. Japanese zoning is height-based too. Plenty of zones exist, but nearly all are mixed.
@@cyzcyt
Thought they did elsewhere too, and that it was the land itself that appreciated, not the building.
@Marie Kondo
The vocaloids, asimos, tvs, and gynoids would like a word.
They make better cars as well
New neighborhoods with the density of the Mission are not allowed in the region. Everything new outside the core is crappy sprawl. Who wants to live there?
Yeah, this is actually a regional issue. It's difficult for residents of outer Bay Area communities to see it that way, though. They like their low density.
Families like to live their, and don't want high rises next to them.
Book of Stories 5 story buildings with gardens between them wouldn't impact anybody that much, while increasing density by lot. Best locations to start with are the transit hubs
Nicolas Blume that's your opinion but I'd have to disagree. I don't think most homeowners in a neighborhood would be pleased with high density residential construction and all the problems an influx of people with high turnover rates brings. That's why the neighborhoods in San Francisco have been fighting so hard against it.
Book of Stories 5 story building really aren't bring that much of an impact. Indeed, a complete suburbian neighbourhood filled with >10 story buildings like from the 1960s are big trouble makers. However, putting a 5 story building at the entrance of a quarter or at transit hubs shouldn't hurt anyone.
Remember when you could rent a room in sf Mission for $400 monthly..? Yeah that was 10 years ago.
Shut up!! Really?
Remember people get shot there? That's why it was $400 a month. One of my friend's girlfriend almost got kidnap outside her door and her dad pull a gun out to shoot in the air to chase the guy away.
Wow
@@maggiejetson7904 So raising up prices ridiculous high and pushing out residents is better
@@thecraplordsell4575 Do you prefer drive by shooting?
I've lived in the Bay area all my life and for my money, there's a few things that made SF the centerpoint of gentrification:
1. It was built up as a dense urban center for a long time, starting I'd argue after the 1906 earthquake
2. While some other places have higher density buildings in them, the vast majority of cities and towns surrounding SF are much more low density, notably Palo Alto and other towns in San Mateo county.
3. Many multi-use buildings were razed in favor of pure commercial buildings both in the city (Union Square, the Embarcadero) and surrounding cities and towns (San Rafael, Oakland)
4. San Fancisco has always been the centerpiece of the Bay Area. San Jose might be bigger nowadays, but it does not have the cultural significance of the city. Its reputation and history have always made it a desirable place to live.
5. Supply has been persistently short for 15 years.
The technology boom was mostly a stroke of luck and a coincidence, if it was any other industry they would be taking the blame just as equally as the tech sector, see Seattle and it's relationship with Microsoft and Amazon, or the oil-boom towns in North Dakota.
Those are good points. I feel like tech workers get a lot of the blame unfairly, especially since a lot of the work they do is beneficial. Regardless, it's a shame to see such rampant gentrification going on in the bay area.
Also, Palo Alto is in Santa Clara County, not San Mateo County.
The problem in San Francisco is people expecting their neighborhoods to be just like other neighborhoods. There has been in influx of high-end restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops, art galleries, etc. And they are all pushing out the mom & pop stores that have been the heart of San Francisco since the beginning in the 1840s.
True!
Can't we let cities evolve naturally and organically, responding to the actual (constantly changing) preferences of the people who live there? Preservation is important in isolated circumstances, but excessive focus on crystalizing every aspect of a community's character permanently damages the dynamic nature of cities. If we really allowed housing to grow without artificial restrictions, you would see people of all socio-economic backgrounds flood in. Cities would again be the places of opportunity for upward mobility they were at the turn of the 20th century.
Well you are historically incorrect. Cities have never been "places of opportunity for upward mobility" for the majority of people. At the same time we are talking about outsiders coming in a pushing out locals and local businesses. This is not organic in any way. In SF today most of these new people work 40+ miles away. They live in San Francisco just so they can have it on their resumes. And they don't care about the history of SF or it's multiple cultures. They expect each neighborhood to be exactly the same. They are pushing out the LGBTQ community from the Castro, the Latino community from the Mission, and starting to push the Chinese community out of Chinatown. There is nothing organic about this.
That is simply not true about businesses. There are very strict laws in every city in the US about building codes and what can happen on individual pieces of property. And you clearly have never seen what gentrification does to a neighborhood. It can be devastating to the local community.
Normally yes. But tech started within the bay area. It's not like it dropped out of nowhere from some other city. Steve jobs, Intel, etc. It's more like the city didn't adapt to the city it has the potential to be. When looking at places like Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul, Taiwan, constantly adapting cities, and building them...modernizing in less than 50 years (in South Korea's case) San Francisco is hopelessly behind the times. Being a huge museum is not helping anyone.
"Ruining?" It is already ruined. I moved away 9 years ago because it was being ruined. The city is different people now; different vibe especially different from the 80s and 90s vibe. Less of a soul and a uniqueness and embrace of it's culture and diversity. Now it's bland and overpriced. I had my time there for decades. I'll hold those fond memories in the new places i live. RIP Sucka Free City!
Hey, new culture isn't bland anymore than the old Latino or korean culture is bland. I guess we could do an ethnic quota system like singapore if the supreme court didn't rule that it wasn't kosher.
@@user-nf9xc7ww7m You can get chalupas with beef and broccoli anywhere.
@@user-nf9xc7ww7m I lived in SF from 1990 to 2019.
The city is now bland.
It’s Burning Man only.
Used to have a vibrant art scene.
Now it’s boring yuppie scum.
Tragic.
I went to an art exhibit. Everyone had a shitty drawing of a photo of Bowie or Prince. Nothing unique. Nothing original. Nothing but crap.
SF art shows used to blow my mind.
Who cares. You can buy yuppie prints just like all your friends.
Look the same!
Be like everyone else!
If it’s not Burning Man approved they’ll ignore you.
I'm in the process of being removed from here right now. Can't we at least do something fun before we leave? Such as a human sacrifice of a few techies? Just like in the movie 'The Wicker Man'. Just one time. Stick them in a wicker man that we make at Land's End, then light it just like in the movie, and watch and listen to them wail for once. Sounds fair to me.
I think that San Francisco's should loosen up its building height restrictions
Yeah, that would help.
Airport restricts height as the whole city is in the flight path
yellfior Let’s make sure there’s a percentage of units, say, 30% of them, that is affordable housing, in those buildings.
Jarrod Baniqued what are the criteria that you would define as affordability?
yellfior Rent is not higher than 30 percent of area median income. All public housing is also included.
San Francisco is only the worst case scenario of a national problem. Any midsized city that has any level of significance to education, industry, and govt is experiencing a similar issue with long-term residents being priced out of their own hometowns. DC is another example of this.
CzarJuliusIII sounds like the usa fails miserably at building adaptable cities that react correctly to demand, new economies.
Happening here in Seattle too, but we have water and mountains that makes it harder to expand
@@shanewillbur1325 You don't build adaptable cities. If cities are left free, they are adaptable. The problem is there are rules preventing SF from adapting.
@@ArchKnight28 No, you can private roads, private transport etc. Not sure what you mean specifically by facilities but i'd guess they could be done privately too.
@@ArchKnight28 Natural monopoly is an arrogant term. It presupposes a complete understanding of all the ways in which a certain service could ever be provided. This is, of course, absurd.
Do you know that there is a way in the free market to prevent negative externalities? If a person or a group of people are hurt, they can sue. This would push factories away from certain areas or incentivize the owners to find ways to reduce their emissions. In the case of the latter, it is obviously a cheaper solution. What this means is that zoning has, in this case, made society worse off. In other words, you've 'fixed' society to be poorer.
None of those examples you listed need to be handled by the government and a lot in the past have been handled privately.
why is tech companies going to sf?
I have friends who live on the other side of bay but go to sf for work in bart and they hate the commute and wished tech companies were scattered around the bay not heavily in one area of the bay..
San Fransokyo.. hehe I dunno actually but if they have it there it's for a reason for sure.
Clustering; it's a thing.
because most young people hate the suburbia -- companies are flocking to the big city. Many people hate the suburbia. This is not Texas. Suburbia is like living with your parents, just like young people prefer instagram over facebook.
San Fransisco is centrally located and has a lot of public transportation options. Where would they prefer? Brentwood? Petaluma? Half Moon Bay?
@@halfvolley11 im young and i love suburbs
The last time I was there was 2009, and I've been many times since 1969. Even what I experienced almost ten years ago, I was horrified at what was happening to the city, and knew I would never be returning to the city I always loved. Really sad.
Building an underground transit system involving high-speed trains commuting people from San Francisco to suburbs e.g. Redwood, San Mateo & Palo Alto.
Ben Lawrence good luck funding that
It would be easier to just fund a lot of non-company buses. And make most if not all roads residents-and-services-only.
There are already decently fast commuter rails to those areas, but homes there are often even more expensive, as it's illegal to build anything other than single-family homes with large yards
Would be easier just to stick to the original design of BART. If you aren't aware, Google it, and you will see it spread to all nearby counties down to San Jose with many stops for each city. Then the planning fell apart. What we have today is barely a shadow of it's original design.
Caltrain?
When I was a kid, the "problem" with cities was that people who could afford to, moved out. Now it's a "problem" that they are moving in?
chris: exactly. The rich and middle class moved to the suburbs and left the cities to the poor. Now their children are moving back in, kicking the poor into poverty suburbs. But suburbs are not a good place to live if you are poor.
Lol touché
the Suburbs are not a good place. For anyone and Most certainly not for cities
The smart ones escape California for better states...
@@3rdFloorblog *the poor ones
Also the rise in higher income gated subdivisions also lowers the supply of transit friendly areas.
Part of the problem is the insistence of all the tech companies to want to be located in Silicon Valley. Some of the big tech companies could afford to open satellite facilities spread throughout the greater Bay area and this could help solve many problems
I'm not sure how it would help solve SF's problem though. SF is already 30-60 minutes away from Silicon Valley, and many tech companies provide company buses because mass transit to Silicon Valley is practically non-existent.
Berkeley resident atm. I think the problem has more to do with government regulations and nimbys than tech workers just looking for an apartment. Clearly a supply problem, imo.
Evan Richard well, you can't just blame one group of people for this problem. This is a very complex issue, and it involves everyone. We have problems with gentrification here in Seattle because of all the new tech jobs. But at the same time the NIMBYs make it hard for those who want to live close to downtown. We shouldn't forget, everyone does have a right to live in a house or somewhere, and not get evicted, unless one is several months late in mortgage payments.
Montfortracing Nope not complex at all, plenty of housing in Boise yet none in Comifornia despite tons of people leaving that evil state. Time to stop voting for people like Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters
Adam Smith it is complex because in addition to the factors he mentioned in the video there is also geography. Boise is more spread out, similar to Phoenix and KC. Seattle and San Fran have limited geography. You also have to take into account that most tech companies started out in the Bay Area, thus more techies would want to live there despite the exorbitant high taxes. Yes government has some blame because of zoning laws and other regulations but people also have a part to play. Other than that, I mentioned in another comment that these tech giants should also look into markets like Boise when adding jobs, cuz as you may know, I've heard Boise is a great place to live, like Denver and Chicago minus the liberal politics.
What exactly do those highly paid "tech workers" do that merits a salary of over $150,000 a year? A tech worker is someone with a degree in STEM or a degree from a community college in some skilled vocation.
Is Facebook really a tech company or is it just a bunch of politically connected spoiled brats who develop spyware on behalf of the government? Google/Waymo is funded by DARPA and it just got another contract from the Pentagon.
The real problem with the housing crisis is too damn much government $$$ flowing into the economy and that's what is creating all the hyperinflation in the real estate market.
facebook is mostly an advertising firm. there is some cute tech behind the curtain but it is all geared to harvest data and serve ads
You completely overlooked mostly Chinese people flipping houses as a reason making housing more expensive
Real estate has always been a casino and housing is like gambling chips. Building more housing to lower prices is like building more casinos in Las Vegas to lower the cost of playing slot machines
Everyone can flip house, and when you read Chinese newspapers, you can still see $1200 for one bedroom studio or $400-600 for one bedroom share bathroom/kitchen
chinese been in S.F since the gold rush . they been owning property here since the city was built .real san franciscans do not like the vibe the tech workers bring
kansasthunderman1 They’re flipping houses because the housing is in a crisis. It’s a self-feeding cycle.
@@marpar3971 whats a "real san franciscan" ?
If Ed Lee had required Tech companies to hire XX percent of local employees in exchange for their tax free zone in SOMA it would have helped to off set the influx of non-local techies pushing locals out. I work at one of the big tech companies on the Peninsula and nearly all of my coworkers are from outside of CA and moved into the bay for work. There is no incentive for companies to hire local.
Note that most, if not all, are international Chinese. He wants to flood CA with Chinese. He is Chinese himself.
Same problem in Vancouver, although everyone blames Asian immigrants. It goes to show, housing prices are too high when people are using them as an investment. Decrease regulation and let the new developments happen.
Yeah, that's where I'm at too.
How does deregulation stop people from using real estate as an investment?
economixxxx It doesn't, but it allows the supply side to catch up to demand. When the supply is increased, the prices will naturally come down.
economixxxx For example, it can take up to three years for new housing developments to be approved within the city of Vancouver. How is the supply of housing supposed to keep up to demand if it's always lagging three years behind?
Building cods might also require a certain size or look for dwellings which causes that only middle upper income houses to be build. Regulation rarely if ever help the poor but rather those who are in control of making those regulations.
Techies earning high salaries are certainly part of the problem but not the entire problem. What's missing from this discussion is the wealthy investors from China that are really driving up cost. They actually have more money then the techie brats.
I wish the US would do what most countries do and only allow US citizens to buy property in the US.
The reason why US is the strongest country in the world - they get the money from other countries, China is the one worrying now
Californians literally support Open-Borders-Imperialism so good luck trying to improve the life of any actual American living there.
How do I solve the bay area's displacement issue? I don't know, I live in Portland AND THEY WON'T STOP BRINGING THEIR PROBLEMS UP HERE
*laughs in Seattle*
To me, it makes sense to build more housing with a mix of low-income housing and market rate, in order to build taller, maybe 6-8 stories of housing at most. Create incentives for developers to build but make sure they adhere to a general set of guidelines. In addition, to keep the style of the city, make sure the developers only build in an aesthetic that matches the surrounding city.
The Mission isn't "historically Latino". It was known as an Irish neighborhood until the 1960s.
Braylin Guerrero what??? The Mission didn't exist as a neighborhood until the 1880s and didn't look anything like what it is today until after the 1906 quake. And then it was all Germans, Italians, and Irish.
Big whoop. It was Italians before that Irish before that and Indians before that..........What's important is what's currently there and will be lost soon.
True but all the Irish, Germans, and Italians moved out during the 50s and 60s to the suburbs. Look up “white flight.”
I was born and raised in the Mission District. Here’s my solution:
The Tech industry should hire locals and give them those high wages that they give to folks from out of town. If education is an issue, work with local colleges to set up programs for locals to help them earn degrees relating to the tech industry. To add, many of us either have or are getting college degrees. Some of us want to get good jobs so we can afford to move back home. Education is the solution.
And something else comes. Sometime, I think San Francisco is the most conservative place around. Nothing must ever change..
The "problem" presented here is literally that the city is becoming a more valuable place, as people want to move there. The opposite of this "problem" would be educated wealthy people moving out, and only low income people (if any) moving in.
If that is what you want, there are a lot of places like that. The prices are low because nobody wants to live there.
As an urban planner who did most of my research in housing and development, just building new housing won't necessarily solve the problem either considering that housing is often more of an investment now, than an actual thing people buy or rent to live in. If there aren't restrictions on who can live in that housing, in terms of residents who actually live and work in the area, then new supply could easily just sit empty and fuel more gentrification. At the same time, if there are too many restrictions then there isn't an incentive to build, or it isn't profitable for a developer to even try. There are so many factors that go into this that you could basically do an entire series of videos and not actually solve the problem.
I just moved to Dover Delaware and it feels like that's a huge problem here. I took a new job with the state government but can only really afford to live in Dover if I wanted to live on my own (a city with a less than stellar reputation). Thankfully, I was lucky enough to rent at a 55+ community, which I think pushes down the rent and I have a pretty decent apartment which is near my office. For whatever reason, most non-section 8 apartments around here are just super expensive and it's absurd. I'm not looking for anything fancy, I just want somewhere reasonably quiet.
I've been very curious about tissue for a while. At least part of the problem is burdensome regulations on where new housing can be built and what kind it can be, as exemplified by SB 827. Could a government funded high density project alleviate the problem, like the high rise blocks being built in China? The crisis at this point isnt so much finding something people will like, but has been reduced to finding a point which everyone hates the least.
Connor Amlee "the projects" were our attempt at that. Let's be clear on this. That failed everywhere we tried it. Even the British failed with that and got rid of them. They look good on paper but fail in real life. Just like programs like section 8. Section 8 makes slum Lords as shown in New York. The projects made crime filled towers we're no cop would go and you where likely to be stabbed.
ipeters61 you seem to be commenting on housing speculation. Namely prices being inflated due to there seemingly being demand. And if you're right then the bubble will burst and the prices will crash back to normal.
It's a massive problem in Europe, London has 60% of it's office space bought up and sitting empty as an investment. And quite a lot of it's housing too. AirBnB has on the other hand eaten up tourist destinations, where southern countries struggle to accommodate for their residents as destinations like Venice and Rome are turned into a giant hotel. The thing that is worse than the problem is the rate at which it happens. I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years London is mostly empty due to "investments".
This was great. Im glad you added nuance to the issue. You should do a series on gentrification and what some cities, developers, and advocates have done to create solutions.
There’s only so much building you can do in a city that is 7 x 7.
Hope that (at effects of the pandemic) work in home jobs lower the demand for tech cities and so rents can be a little more affordable again
Everything in San Francisco is ruining San Francisco
Other cities need to have more technology companies. The fact that so much is concentrated in the SF Bay area is the problem.
They try convincing them to come, personally I know tucson has thrown their hat into the ring a ton of times but not many takers, only caterpillar. Shame though because its a pretty cool city with a lot of history, just needs a little income to take care of itself.
Somethin' a lot of tech companies require in the modern era is robust internet service. As great as it would be for, say, Microsoft to relocate to the Arkansas boonies, there's no gigabit or fiber optic (besides, the old coots would throw a hissy fit over all the 'stupid Millennials' moving in; oh, and the whole 'nature preservation' thing). Oh, and starting a new town specifically for a tech giant isn't a viable option, either. Aside from the cost and the municipality issue, we know that centering towns on a given industry is a horrible idea. Detroit taught us that.
When they say they are pushing out low income workers we are also talking about people making 90k a month even middle class can not afford to live there anymore.
And now in 2021 we are seeing the effects people are leaving the city and California is facing an exodus even some tech companies are leaving.
Because smaller startups cannot afford to stay there either.
Perhaps city centers are simply not the right places for low income neighborhoods. Gentrification is essentially returning things to normal now that the reign of the automobile is finally coming to an end. The main concern should be identifying what made this neighborhood so desirable, and figuring out how to replicate it in other areas.
TapOnX sounds like common sense to me
Yes, the problem is the shortage of nice urban neighborhoods. A lack of supply drives up the costs.
TapOnX moving poor people to the urban fringes means that they can find themselves with a whole slate of problems like expensive commutes and food deserts.
Allie Doak and affordable housing.
Book of Stories housing isn’t affordable if you can’t afford to get to work because of where your house is
Really good information and research! Promoting awareness of these issues is really important, especially with extreme examples like SF becoming more normal.
Thanks!
My grandparents lived in the Mission when it was home to working class families. They were forced out in the early '60s due to the influx of residents who caused the deterioration of the neighborhood, i.e., high crime and decreased property value. Now the tables are turning and those people are being forced out by high rents and the improvement of the neighborhood. About time!
I know someone who bought in a cheap suburb in my city ($340,000) and several years later sold that house for $620,000 after minor work to make it look nicer. People like that are the winners of gentrification.
Could you do a video on the move from long standing ornate masonry towards quickly obsolescent bland and facade based buildings?
Honestly, more housing needs to be built. Not just a "little" more. A LOT more. Now, whether San Francisco has the desire to do it, is an entirely separate issue. But, no other method will truly solve the problem. If you allow a lot of new housing to go up (along with loosening building height restrictions), then supply will catch up to demand, and rent will go down (which benefit residents). Extremely limited half-hearted construction doesn't solve anything. It's like pouring a cup of water on a raging fire.
TheBigExclusive We have to start with upzoning. Why not pass an improved version of SB 827, but also pass a complementary approach that favors more public housing under a Viennese- or Swedish-style mentality? And let’s have the central tenet of the Ben Bartlet platform, too: the state government enforces affordable housing quotas by having municipalities impose higher carbon taxes if they don’t meet them, then regional housing agencies backed by a state bank redistribute the money to cities that do. Meanwhile, we must incentivize construction firms and universities to research cheaper, more novel methods and lower the cost of construction.
I agree, how about more density?
SB 827 was killed in the first committee hearing.
RaymondHng An improved version of it, not the bill itself.
Yes let's build a huge trash compactor on every block and cram 1000s of people in it. That will improve density.
Great video as always! I feel you missed out on how the region as a whole is adding to the housing crunch. The recent tech boom as be attributed to suburban Tech companies such as Google, Facebook and numerous other startups south of SF. Cities like Mountain View readily zone high density commercial without proportional allocation for housing for workers who work in these high density commercial blocks. For a long time SF was the only place dense enough to accommodate (not to mention have enough cultural activities) relentless Tech Hiring.
Yes, that's a good point. There aren't many other places for tech workers to go due to restrictive zoning practices in the larger Bay Area.
City Beautiful , I'd rather call it greedy specific development plan/zoning
I'd love your take on the situation in Seattle. As you probably know, Amazon's headquarters is in Seattle and their growth is pumping alot of six figure software engineers into the city. Seattle is actually building alot of new residential units, so many that rents are actually stagnating. However, due to the city's 1990s decision to preserve a massive amount of single family zoning, the lion's share of development is occurring in retail areas that formerly held the city's most quirky and cherished businesses and gathering spaces. There is this painful reality juxtaposed to the only bright spot in the US in regards to transit, both in service hour investment, as well as capital investment in new rail lines. Right now, the vibes are negative, but there are alot of factors. On the one hand, preserving the city's single family character is preventing apartment development from being more spread out - market rate mixed use apartment buildings are replacing quirky old retail spaces that had super interesting businesses. On the other, cherished local traditions, like rock music, thrive in older multi-bedroom houses with basements, shared by a bunch of art kids who work in the service industry. Apartment buildings, as currently designed, cannot really host rock bands.
Yeah, Seattle is definitely going down a similar road as SF. I'd love to do a video on Amazon -- both it's influence on Seattle as well as this crazy search for a second HQ.
Here are a few ways to try and solve it:
1. Eliminate building code road blocks and provide developers a blue print (that you ACTUALLY stick to) to develop.
2. Do not adopt rent control.
3. Build more BART connections in the sunset, Richmond areas.
4. Work with tech companies to promote a work from home incentive. This allows workers to expand further out into surrounding areas.
Blame it on the greedy CEOs that choose to create all their jobs in one area, the tech workers are just people wanting to make an honest living
It makes sense to concentrate industries in single geographic regions as companies compete for employees and employees have alot of leverage (treat me well or ill go down the street to work for a competitor). I work in oil and gas which has consolidated around Houston. Luckily we have what seems like unlimited land to keep sprawling out to so housing hasn't gotten out of hand but the traffic is ridiculous.
@@JB-kx9bx As unlimited as that land seems, there's a lot of problems with continuing to sprawl out. Remind me again how bad the flooding gets in Texas every year? Yeah, you kinda need natural grassland to absorb the heavy rainfall ya get outside of summer... Besides, as much as someone in your line of work wouldn't particularly want to acknowledge it, there are people who can't drive. The further a city sprawls out, the worse life is for people who can't drive. Seriously, how am I supposed to get to doctor appointments if the only 'good-enough' transit lines are in places with $5,000/mo studio apartments? Let alone actually getting to work (most of which is miles away from the R1 zoning that makes up 90% of that sprawl). Yeah, don't even get me started on how ableist the job market is.
Sprawl is the problem, not the answer. As lovely as a nice, green lawn would be, no one can afford it anymore. The flooding is atrocious, disabilities are very much real, and the stress caused by traffic jams is literally killing people. Turn your industry's focus from small vehicles to mass transit. The whole world is gonna benefit from it.
Oh my gosh!!! Y'all are the only Channel that make videos about Cityscapes and Urbanism that have spoken so honestly about some real ass issues.
Thanks so much!
Gentrification is rampant mostly in "choice" locations. Where I live in the Bay Area, housing prices have not seen a dramatic increase. Yet. That's because I live in an area reputed to be a "ghetto". People would rather live elsewhere than in my neighborhood. Too bad, though. We have a ton of really nice homes in what I would call a "secret market". I own one. If I had the money, I'd buy another in my neighborhood before word gets out about how affordable it is to live here.
What city r u in?
You in Vallejo?
In fact, that's why Apple, Facebook, Alphabet (Google), and so on are looking at building operations in other parts of the country. You may see a lot of companies move operations to Texas, for starters.
"mostly white tech workers"
Hahahah, this guy has never worked in tech.
SmashBrosBrawl says the white techie
White are always top of the any line of businesses that making millions and millions, Asians are the cheap workers that barely making 200-300k, and new grads only making 120-150k.
LOL really? Look at the CEO of Google or Microsoft. Also oohhhh nooo the poor cheap workers making 200-300k ...so pooor
Most tech workers in the San Francisco Bay Area for now are white males between the ages of 18-35. It isn't an overwhelming majority, but it is a majority.
Aalok Joshi: "LOL really? Look at the CEO of Google or Microsoft. Also oohhhh nooo the poor cheap workers making 200-300k ...so pooor"
Those guys are CEO's especially to get people like you to make stupid comments like these.
I live in Bellevue, WA which is in the greater Seattle metropolitan area and my family is not that rich so this video is just so relatable... My dad and I are planning to sell our house this summer to finally move away from my abusive mom and its just not fair that all these Microsoft and amazon workers are taking up all the space, But Chinese immigrants are even worse! like they buy up 2 or 3 houses at a time and rent them out to OTHER tech workers so housing prices are so high that nothing within a 30-mile radius of Bellevue is affordable so I have to move farther away to Olympia because it actually starts to become affordable when you're 50 miles away! or Olympia isn't that exciting which is true. The point is I'm sad and frustrated that i can't live in the town that i grew up in, where all my friends and memories are, and have lived in far longer than any of these people have been waiting for their green cards!, all because they have jobs working at Microsoft and amazon.
I just want to be with my friends, is that too much to ask for?
Great video, and good points. The same problem is occurring in Seattle. One of the issues in Seattle is that while new developments require a certain number of affordable units, there is nothing stopping a developer from demolishing existing affordable units in the process. The net increase in affordably priced units isn't much compared to overall units.
One thing that makes the problem worse is that the big tech companies in Silicon Valley provide free shuttle buses so their employees can lead a hipster lifestyle in SF without facing the consequences of an unsustainable commute.
You're right. They might not find SF so attractive if they had to sit in traffic for a few hours every day commuting to work. But if you can just relax and watch a movie on a free bus its not so bad.
Can we please stop demonizing tech-workers? It's no better than Trump demonizing Hispanic newcomers to America. These are hardworking people who just happen to be culturally different. If you want to reduce unsustainable commutes, allow higher density housing to be built along transit corridors like SB-827 proposed!
SB 827 was killed in the first committee hearing.
To be fair, I was demonizing the tech companies, not their workers.
omg, a bus? the horror! google is now full-tilt evil
I would always say that the solution to an influx of citizens is to develop new areas. In Denmark we have been doing this for 60 years now and with great success. Instead of having people move into already existing areas we'll build a new suburb which has good access to public transit and is high density. Then we don't have to displace people in other neighborhoods and we don't create more traffic.
The only areas to build new suburbs in the SF Bay Area are 1.5-to-2 hours to commute to San Francisco. The City officially now has the most expensive average rent *in the world* according to WalletWyse.com farm1.staticflickr.com/915/28341255697_1dbd87422e_o.jpg San Francisco is at the chart, with an average rent of $3,500 a month. Hamilton, Bermuda comes in second with an average rent of $3,400, with Manhattan in third at $3,050, with San Jose, Calif., in fourth with $2,500 and Oakland, Calif. in fifth with $2,450, and Berkeley, Calif. in sixth with $2,400. San Jose, Oakland, and Berkeley are part of the San Francisco Bay Area.
WalletWyse chief growth officer Aaron Ansel says that the most significant factor that differentiates San Francisco from other cities with notoriously high average rents is that the city’s rent average does not tend to lower as you travel further to the edge of the metropolis. Instead, S.F. rent stays consistently high throughout the city as a whole. Rents are extremely high even in neighboring cities, San Jose, Oakland, and Berkeley.
"I think the big difference when you look at cost of living for a place like the Bay Area is that in most high cost cities like New York, if you go far enough out, you run into a drop in price," Ansel told _SF Gate_ . "The San Francisco Bay Area is not like that. You go 30 miles in any direction and you're still within that zone. Whereas a lot of these big cities are high price points surrounded by normal price points, San Francisco is an ultra-high price point surrounded by more high price points."
To me there are really two fundamental problems facing housing all over the world right now:
1. Land ownership and commodification is creating two classes of citizens, and those who own land have so much more power than the rest that they can influence the regulations into protecting themselves and their investments rather and are not incentivized to make regulations for more utilitarian values. I'm not saying that the government should own all the land: that just centralizes all the power in whoever's currently in government. But we need to start getting rid of the notion that someone should be able to own more than one property and start moving towards co-ops for the land assemblies required for denser housing. In a similar way, more streamlined zoning laws (like the Japanese ones you mentioned earlier) that allow properties to be subdivided further so that even lower class citizens are able to have a small stake in the land.
2. Globalism is exacerbating all of this by exposing local markets to global forces. I don't think there's necessarily any solution to this (just like how trying to get multinational corporations to follow any one country's regulations/taxes has been difficult at best), but it is more of a catalytic force and so solving 1. will help to mitigate this portion I think. Perhaps having reciprocal relationships with countries with regards to foreign ownership (you can't buy land in our country unless we can buy in yours) might be a fair way to partially address this too. All of this being obviously easier said than done.
This was fantastic!!!! I'm currently doing a paper on gentrification in San Francisco in an urban studies class. I think that paper just tripled in facts. Thank you for this well-informed video. This was exactly what I was looking for. Well done.
I was born and raised in the Mission when Cedar Chavez was still Army street. My question is why does gentrification happen only to Black and Hispanic communities and not to the Chinatowns? I've lived in several cities and not one has seen a change to their Chinatown while Latino and African-American neighborhoods are methodically and quickly. 'gentrified'? What are the Chinese doing differently? What did my gente do wrong to repeatedly lose our land to los gueros?
1967sfoman one thing you did wrong was speak Spanglish in that last sentence
Because the Chinese have economic power. It's really that simple. You could even argue that they are now beating American whites in that domain, especially when you consider the foreign investors buying up everything to avoid paying taxes and shield assets from the Chinese government.
Blacks and Latinos do not have that economic influence and thus become easy targets. Esoecially given the racial climate in America where noone really cares what happens to these people beyond virtue signalling about how we shouldn't be doing this.
Chinese families stress education and advancement as part of their culture. They also keep capital within the Family unit. i.e. everyone in the Family works at the Family run business and live in the same home. So they save and increase their capital then can expand outside the Family. They don't say to a kid "your 18 get out" dooming that kid to failure. They spend more time and money readying the kid for the outside world.
1967sfoman My dad grew up in Manhattan's Chinatown, and the Chinese community there is disappearing. Taken over by hipsters. It's true that it hasn't happened as quickly to Chinatown as, say, Williamsburg or Bushwick though. There are a few possible reasons I can think of for this - one is that even poor Chinese people value homeownership a lot, and will frequently scrape together money from the entire extended family to buy property and live together in cramped conditions. I dunno how other cultures approach this though, so I can't compare. The second is that fewer communities exist for displaced Chinese immigrants to move to -- there aren't exactly a lot of Chinatowns out there -- which makes it more crucial to work within established community networks. Again, not super sure how this plays out in reality, though. The third is that I think hip white gentrifiers tend to see Chinatowns as less "cool" than other neighborhoods. Chinatowns tend to be smelly and dirty and loud and cramped with markets and vendors and Chinese immigrants. Until recently, it was a pretty big faux pas for a hip gentrifier to admit that they lived in smelly Chinatown rather than the surrounding gentrifying areas. Maybe Chinese communities feel less penetrable to them than other ethnic enclaves? Like an upside to the "perpetual foreigner" trope? I dunno. Would love to hear other perspectives.
There isn't just a low supply of affordable homes, but also a low supply of transit friendly areas. Many places have zoning laws not only against mix use but also apartments. The laws were specifically designed to keep out low-income (a.k.a. black) people.
Huhh??? I don;t understand a damn thing you've said and I don't believe you do either.
Poor people does not explicitly mean "black" people. There are plenty of brown skin privledged kids paying high rent there too.
I don’t care about their race, poor and lazy people should move out. San Francisco is for someone who deserves it
Ling Qi How they lazy Ling Qi. Anybody can be lazy so what exactly are you talking about.🤔
Katarzyna S No they are talking about blk ppl always has been.
I moved to San Francisco 5 years ago and it has lost some of its charm.. The cool people have to move out of the city being replaced by a young population of techies who absolutely don't blend in the local community. They are not good for local businesses. Most of them get free food at work, buy everything online, they don't even care about anything that is not tech related. Not to mention how boring they are. If you wanna ruin a party, invite a bunch of them. They will talk about work, work, stock options, work, stock options.. a freaking nightmare!!
This areas and neighborhoods are going to evolve over time, this is what happens
San Jose is next
Basically, in corporate terms, Google = EA
Thank you for this video. As someone grew up in a rural setting and has no interest in fancy/luxury housing and who's likely to move in or right next to a city because, well primarily, that's where all the jobs are, it would be nice to learn more ways on how to promote infrastructure and planning that improves local quality of life and the environment without making it unaffordable for long-time residents, especially the low income demographic.
As a Native, I can't imagine going back to live there. The density has caused an abundance of stress and crime. People on top of people. No way, Jose. Fun to visit, but that is it. Do miss the weather of East Bay, not the violence and theft. Visited my former apartment on Dolores St, 90's -2000 where I paid $1200 for a nice 1 bedroom with garage. Ran into an Indian Tech guy on the street outside of the apartment, told me it goes for $4500/ month, and the city ain't fun anymore......nah, I'll pass.
I don't understand how gentrification is in any way negative to long term residents. They can just sell their house, move to a cheaper place and have enough cash left to not have to ever work again. Or they could just lease out the house and get upto 5 grand a month and live elsewhere.
$3800/month for a 1 bedroom apartment... Whew!
Not bad if you share that bedroom with four roommates...
Still $760 a month. There are cheaper apartments in many Midwestern and Southern states.
Young working singles do not want to live in places where the town sleeps at 9pm.
RaymondHng was there a point to this statement?
It's a response to the suggestion of living in "cheaper apartments in many Midwestern and Southern states".
More tech parks can be built in nearby towns, release the density of the valley.
I live just south of this dump and used to work there - I hated every minute of driving, walking and existing in that place.
I AM A BORN AND RAISED NATIVE SAN FRANCISCAN. IVE LIVED IN THE BAYVIEW FOR THE LAST 30YRS AND THE 7YRS BEFORE THAT ON BRYANT STREET. THE STREETS WERE VASTLY MORE CRIME RIDDEN AND DIRTY. AS A KID I HAD TO WORRY ABOUT BEING SHOT OR STABBED JUST GOING TO SCHOOL OR GETTING GROCERIES FOR MY MOTHER. THE MISSION FROM AROUND 18TH AND MISSION AND UP HAD NORTENO GANGS AND 17TH STREET AND UNDER HAD SURENONES. MEANING DEPENDING ON THE NEIGHBORHOOD YOU WOULD GET BEAT UP OR KILLED OVER THE COLOR OF YOUR CLOTHES. AS A FATHER I VALUE SAFETY OVER ANY COMPLAINY OF HOUSING OR COST OF LIVING. COST OF LIVING DOES NOT DELIBERATELY TAKE SOMEONES LIFE AND THREATEN SOMEOMES WELL BEING. I GREW UP WITH MANY FRIENDS DYING BEFORE THEIR TIME AND OUR NEIGHBORHOOD COMMUNITIES NEVER PUT UP ENOUGH OF AN EFFORT TO CHANGE ANYTHING. SO IF IT TOOK "GENTRIFICATION" TO MAKE MY CITY THAT MUCH SAFER THEN SO BE IT. COMPLAIN ALL YOU WANT ABOUT COST OF LIVING AND HOUSING BUT WHEN YOUVE LIVED THROUGH THE VIOLENCE AND CRIES OF FAMILIES THAT LOST LOVED ONES, THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM AT ALL. THE CITY IS NOT PERFECT BUT IT IS VASTYL BETTER THAN IT HAS EVER BEEN. STOP YOUR WHINING OR MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE. NOW LETS GET SOME HELP FOR THE MENTALLY THE DISABLED. THE LAST "REAL" PROBLEM LEFT MOSTLY UNCHECKED.
Transit and housing please. A 10 minute drive to work would take 1 hour by bus for me.
Michael Hamasaki yea and I'm afraid to ask you what parking downtown cost.
So called "Transit Oriented Development" is a complete myth. People don't want to ride crowded buses and trains.
kansasthunderman1 Hmmm....looks at videos of tokyo, seoul, Taiwan, and singapore. These are A++ world class cities, You are saying what now?
Techies are traveling 35+ miles to Silicon Valley. SF residents that actually work in SF cannot longer live there. So yes, it is unnecessary gentrification. They don't add anything to the community.
On the flip side. Tech started in the bay area in the mid 70s, and the internet was also born with the help of Berkely. Steve jobs is from cupertino, and many other tech founders. There is nothing more native than tech is to the bay area. It was born here!
To make it worse, the bay area had ample time to see this coming and adapt to it. It chose not to, And now we have the result.
The question is why not start a new city in between the two overcrowded places. That long commute cannot be comfortable.
@@shanewillbur1325 Just shows you that incompetent politicians can ruin even the best cities in the world.
Blame prop 13. Keeping property taxes out of sync with property prices and you will have these problems.
When I was in the Bay Area especially Silicon Valley(Cupertino etc), I was surprised that there are just so much small buildings. Imo one could build nice walkable blocks with multifloor Buildings which would take out some pressure. This nimby problem also exists in my city in Germany, and market prices nearly trippled in 10 years (good for my dad, bad for me if I want to move out :/)
Hi ! I just subscribed to your channel and for the past week, I have watched nothing but your videos. Great content and insights ! Loved it ! I'm from India, my state of Andhra is a new state (4 years old ) and our Chief Minister is working on building a new futuristic capital called Amaravati. I have been following up on the urban planning going on there, under the constrains of a very tight budget. The Sigapore Government is helping us in the planning. Would be wonderful to get your analysis & opinion on the making AMARAVATI ! Cheers !
A lot of the 'edges' of the city are actually land fill. I always thought they could fill the land out from the Hunter's Point area. If you tacked on a square mile of dirt into the bay, and built mostly residential it would make a significant addition to a 7 square-mile city.
Creative thinking. Impressed.
As a nearby resident I can add that one reason rents are so high and building is slow is the limited room. Look at a map of San Francisco and notice all the federal and state land that surrounds the metro area. The entire bag area is enclosed by park land.
Gentrification also happens in my town, Jatinangor, West Java, Indonesia. First Jatinangor is a rural area, but there is developed 4 universities, so jatinangor grows to be education district..so many apartments n the others great buildings are here
Interesting video. The problem with San Francisco housing isn't San Francisco, it's California. The state makes it too tough to build new housing and attacks housing construction from multiple angles. You want a solution? You won't like it. Here it is: get rid of Proposition 13 and cut back on the crippling requirements that make housing difficult to build. For instance - requiring houses to have solar panels will raise costs for things people won't necessarily want. Let people paying the money decide what they need (I know, rad concept, right?). Also, get rid of the whole mentality that housing is "bad" because it "sucks up resources and burdens infrastructure." Housing is good because it gives people a place to live. Period.
Anyway, this whole "preserve the character of neighborhoods" mantra is nonsense. Neighborhoods change over time, that's how life it, things change. If Latinos lived there in the 1950s and don't anymore, too bad - maybe the newcomers will live somewhere else in 50 years, too. Trying to stop change undermines market incentives - and then we get back to the reason housing isn't built. See, it's all part of a mindset, a mindset that is the cause of the problem in the first place.
It's a solvable problem, but given the mentality of California right now, it's not going to be solved anytime soon.
So you advocate destroying the character of San Francisco by turning it into San Ramon or Rohnert Park or Fresno or Bakersfield. That will not happen.
Yeah right - Get rid of Prop 13 so the government can raise property taxes through the roof like it was doing before 1978. As Ronald Reagan said : "No country has ever taxed itself into prosperity".
_Nordlinger v. Hahn_ challenged Proposition 13 in the Federal Court. It was appealed up to the Supreme Court in 1981 where the majority affirmed Proposition 13 as constitutional.
kansasthunderman1 Reagan was wrong. The greatest middle class growth in US history came in the 50s and 60s when tax rates on the rich were as high as 91%.
The government used that money to invest in society creating jobs and programs like social security.
I don't like what you're sayin at all, but I always look at things from both perspectives. It's true what you say about how hoods change. They always have and always will. I don't even call mission the mission anymore. It's hipster haven now. I just wish that places like LA Taqueria (which hipsters like and THANK GOD, will keep open) won't be replaced by some duchebag slow drip coffee soy organic bullshit. Let the staples have their place. That's keeping the culture alive and letting it change dynamically at the same time. Am I right? Does that make sense? I feel that's a good give and take.
Apparently "preserving neighborhood characteristics" is not an argument you can use if the neighborhood is white or Asian.
But if they DARE move out then it's "White Flight"
the only neighborhoods to have successfully resisted urban renewal and gentrification are white neighborhoods. Look at what the planned highway projects planned for DC and Portland before the neighborhoods said no.
@@mikestone6527 Those to above you are idiots.
You could’ve have talked about literally anything but as soon I saw the Silicon Valley cast in the thumbnail, I knew I needed to watch it.
It is not just San Francisco. When you look at the whole bay area you can see that it is mostly composed of single-story, single family homes with a big garden.
To be honest, I'm not sure if this problem needs to be solved. Consider the following: one of the main reasons San Francisco is so attractive as a place to live is its character. There's more affordable housing in nearby cities like Oakland and San Jose. Building more homes would cause SF to lose its charm, thereby becoming more like the Oakland that already exists. The way I see it, if there is a large group of people willing to pay a premium to live in a place like San Francisco, then shouldn't that be an option for them?
Jakub Waniek the problem is that we don’t want more techies in the bay. Not in Oakland, not in San Jose, not in Fremont. We just want them out. They’re ruining the bay areas economy.
Mason Moore Oakland is full of fucking hipsters and techies now. If you’re from the east bay you’d kno that gentrification is real in Oakland
Jakub Waniek Oakland and San Jose are already ridiculously expensive as it is. It sucks because my family has been here for generations and helped build the railroad tracks and build ships for WWII only to be priced out by people who can't appreciate what a gem the Bay is. Unfortunately the gem is slowly but surely losing its luster.
Shane Willbur lmao are you from the bay?
Mudbone gaming Even Steve Jobs was from the bay man. Tech is very much bay area. The computex (computer shows) in the 70s & 80s started at the cow-palace. Internet was partly pioneered at UC Berkeley, with help from SF state.
Great video as always. I'm wondering if you have any plans for a video on Tokyo, where housing keeps up with demand and despite being a giant metropolis, remains affordable.
Hi April, thanks! I'd love to do a video on Tokyo. It's on my list of cities I'd love to travel to, so I might wait until I get a chance to see it in person.
Tokyo is full of termite mound housing projects. Let's live in 30 square foot cubicles so housing is more affordable.
kansasthunderman1 and yet, life expectancy, and quality of life is much better than any city in the usa. If you are attributing the amount of space you live in as = to quality of life...i fear you may need to travel more.
The life expectancy in Japan VS the U.S. is a genetic factor that has nothing to do with whether people live in an apartment in a big city or a single family home. If a person of Japanese ethnicity came to live in Kansas and an American went to live in Tokyo, there would be no change in their life expectancy and I don;t need to travel more to know the reasoning behind this phenomenon.
Furthermore, most people in the U.S. don;t want to live in high density cities like Tokyo or Hong Kong and rely on mass transit. They prefer low density and private cars. If we let the market determine where people want to live, people will go for an apartment in a low density area or a private home. And that's what I'm seeing here in San Francisco.
haha. because thats all that exists! If high rises weren't constantly voted down, and the baby boomers didn't get their way you can bet that zoning would be changed to allow a much taller city.
After reading all the issues going on in California due to harsh regulations and difficulties to build houses, I became kind of glad of the mess that my city lives in because any idiot can easily get a permit to build a high-rise apartament building. Yes, it might not be the most aesthetically pleasing thing, but it has controlled the market and if all goes well I'm on my way to pay my first apartament in less than 4 years.
I saw a video that showed a prototype hi-density apartment building. 23 units where there would be normally be six. If San Francisco wants to save the middle class, as well as its service workers, that may be part of the answer. Unfortunately, most of the NIMBY rules would have to tossed aside. I have been studying the Situation in SF for a while now, and I fear it may take the big one, plus a radical change in state and local government to resolve what appears to be a full blown crisis. Not just in SF, but statewide.
can you talk about Vancouver, we have the same problem.
except us its the chinese
Vancouver is another "Agenda 21" city. Do a search for videos by Grindall61.
He just put out a video on Vancouver now.
Great video as always!
Hey thanks!
My mom works as a janitor for UCSF and lives about an hour and a half away. The majority of her coworkers don’t even live in SF county because it just isn’t affordable. The ones that do live in people’s garages that cost more than our house does. I still don’t understand why people want to live in SF especially in the older neighborhoods (homeless tent cities, litter everywhere, too many cars, ugly cable’s above your head at all times).
In the Philippines especially in the Manila Bay area one of the solutions we used is reclamation of land from the sea for the purpose of Flood Control and expanding land area for not only new high desity housing but also for high density commercial.
Does this mean they build islands off the coast?
Build more housing. It really is that simple. Ban restrictive zoning laws.
Mirza Ahmed we don’t need more fucking housing people need to leave
@@stephen_jc Why do you get to tell people to leave?
Yep. NIMBY combined with high demand is what has driven prices up so much. People rent-seeking on market manipulation, keeping supply low and rents high.
David It’s these techie losers that are coming from all over and building these cutesy expensive coffee shops and riding fucking scooters all over that are driving the rent up and ruining San Francisco
Gentrification is unfortunate, but in some cases has to happen in order to survive. Detroit for example is also experiencing gentrification, but not at a fast enough rate. Those tech companies should move to Detroit to speed up the gentrification process in a much needed area (fun fact is that Detroit use to be one of the wealthiest cities and the same population as LA in the 1950s).
The metro Detroit area is like Silicon Valley for automobiles, but majority of those companies are in the suburbs, while tech companies are being established in Downtown Detroit (such as Amazon (tech hub), Google, Linkedin, Microsoft, Quicken Loans (fintech), etc). I read an article today about how certain non-profit organizations might have to relocate outside of Downtown due to the increase in Downtown rates.
Part of the problem is the lack of space. SF is 7 miles by 7 miles (49 square miles). The only way to create more housing units is to tear down single family dwellings and create dense multi-family apartment blocks - and carve out a percentage of those for Section 8 vouchers. But who would approve such a thing?
One thing I've noticed in cities like San Francisco, Barcelona, Roma, etc. is that if you walk around in central parts of the city or the parts that have especially beautiful architecture in the evening, you'll notice that there is no light in the windows. I noticed so many beautiful apartment buildings in the L'Exiample district of Barcelona and Victorian houses in the Noe Valley district of San Francisco that had no lights at all in the evening. Like they are obviously empty
If the tech workers can afford it, Let them pay high rents. If the current San Francisco community *can't* afford to live there, give them tax breaks
Someone 234
Tax breaks alone won't stop the government or your landlord from raising the rent or property tax. If anything they'll raise it even faster because they assume that you "earn more."
So the cycle continues.
Oh hey! I just saw my old apartment!
You're right that the problem is very multifaceted and so it's not going to be an easy fix. But I do think the first part of that solution is getting more supply into the market place, even if all of it is market rate. I say this because every new market rate apartment being built is someone not trying to outprice an existing unit. Building for low-middle income is nice, but for now just maintaining as much as possible what we do have is important.
Alongside that the NIMBYs really need to be reigned in. We've lost the opportunity to build nessicary projects in neighborhoods they're well suited for because of it. For example a few years back when people wanted to build some high-end units near the waterfront, but wealthy people who already had a view of the Bay launched a massive PR project to turn the city against the development so they could retain their views, or the laundromat owner in the Mission who wanted to retire and sell his plot to have a mixed usage of low income and market rate hosuing build where the laundromat is which was blocked by groups in the Mission who simply didn't want any new housing.
End of the day, more people will be moving into the area, and not building housing isn't going to deterr them. All the cities in the Bay Area (San Francisco included) need to be building up to support the higher population.
A question that I always had is how is it called when areas of a city or entire cities are slowly changed for the worst?
Thanks for uploading this before my AP exam because I needed it xD
So sad to see the culture and magic of the bay area be overwhelmed and destroyed by tech lames.
blame NIMBYs
CLEAN, SOBER, HEALTHY AND PROSPEROUS CALIFORNIA
The problem is in supply. Either remove regulations that restrict building, or don't - and make the problem worse. There's no way to keep everything the same. A decision must be made.
Just cut out corporate welfare and one the government money supply dries up, the cost of housing will drop like a rock
Gentrification has also spread up north as well. In my hometown of Santa Rosa which is just an hour North of San Francisco and the largest city in wine country as well as the fifth largest city in the San Francisco Bay area the cost of living has gone up significantly here as well. It is so frustrating that because of how expensive it got in San Francisco people are moving up here and driving up the cost of living as well.
And despite the fact that there had been annual fires in this area or nearby it from 2017 to 2019 real estate companies have become so evil by driving up the cost of rent and actually adding additional restrictions like being required to make three times the income to live in a one-bedroom apartment which on average is over $2,000 per month. So basically they are saying that by yourself you should be able to make $6,000 per month just to live in a one-bedroom apartment. Even couples have a difficult time making that much money per month.
As a Seattle resident, its wild seeing how its almost exactly the same situation here as in SF n other tech cities