Families pack up as S.F. rents keep rising

[yuiyoshida]

Protests against landlords are commonplace these days. Try to evict a tenant — especially through the Ellis Act — and you’ll probably have people shouting through bullhorns outside your building in about five minutes flat.

There was no such reaction when Kelly Dwyer — a city worker, an elected member of the local Democratic Party leadership and the mother of a 5-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy — was forced to move out of her Sunset District rental home. The house is empty, the moving truck has left for Vacaville and nobody really noticed.

Dwyer wasn’t actually evicted. But when her landlord — who lives in China — sent a letter in February notifying her the monthly rent on the two-bedroom home was rising from $2,100 to $3,000, it meant Dwyer had no choice but to move.

The contract compliance officer for the city of San Francisco and her husband, a Vacaville firefighter, make a good living. But when they looked for a two-bedroom home with a rent low enough so they could still pay for child care and sock some money away for savings, they realized they were not only priced out of San Francisco, but San Mateo, Berkeley and Oakland, too.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Families-pack-up-as-S-F-rents-keep-rising-6353463.php?t=5e5b758cc5f294ee0d&cmpid=twitter-premium

[Dr. Xavier]

1. As a transplanted Southern Californian,

I don't know how to respond to this. I know people who have been displaced and are in worst shape than this family. I, once, got my dinner and that of my wife comped simply because I had helped the maitre'd read his buy-out contract. He had told us that our drinks would be comp'ed but instead he bought our dinner too. The City is changing and will never be San Francisco again. It will keep the name but it won't be San Francisco, ever again.

[NBachers]

2. It's a bloody nightmare

Last edited Sun Jun 28, 2015, 04:59 AM - Edit history (1)

All these sidewalk-to-sidewalk buildings going up are completely devoid of any kind of soul or architecture. I call them squat 'n' drop developments. Some big combine comes into town, squats on a block, and drops out some glass and panel cube structure. They charge huge rents, and use the buildings to harvest lives. And that's what happens- the tenants' lives are harvested to occupy space in these buildings.

The buildings aren't that attractive to begin with, and they Will Not age well. But, by that time, the developers will be hidden behind the property management veil, and will have no responsibility or accountability beyond the harvesting of their tenants' lives.

One side of me can see the sense in developing the area around the 16th and Mission BART station. More housing is needed in the neighborhood, and there are some pretty unsavory elements hanging out there. But the reality is, that as soon as the development goes up, then the building owners nearby will jack up the rents and evict all the little shops and establishments and tenants in the neighborhood. The people working in them will lose their jobs, and the new places that move in and "upgrade" will be beyond my, and other local residents', ability to shop or patronize.

[arcane1]

13. Indeed, they usually have nothing on the ground floor, such as retail space.

It's not really a "neighborhood" when there isn't even a damn corner store space.

And don't get me started on the increasingly long lines everywhere. Once the half-dozen or so high rises in my vicinity are completed, it will take half an hour to get a cup of coffee. And it will cost four dollars

[jtuck004]

3. "Why middle class can't afford rents "- and moving may not be an option.

A new analysis by Zillow finds that the typical renter can no longer afford the median rent in 90 cities across the United States. Many Americans are severely cost-burdened: 4 million working renter households pay more than half of pre-tax income on rent.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/22/opinion/hickey-affordable-housing/index.html



Also:

http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/foreign-buyers-of-real-estate-california-investors-foreign-china/

[Helen Borg]

4. Pretty bad...

Every time I visit San Francisco I like it less and less. Been noticing this every year for the last several years.

[nebulous cloud]

5. Hasn't been the same around here

Here it is in music:

[secondwind]

6. the owner lives in China... hmm.. Detroit building are being purchased sight unseen by China. n/t

[arcane1]

12. There are a lot of properties being bought by Russians and Chinese and not even being occupied

It's more of an insurance policy for them: their home governments can't seize real estate in San Francisco or London.

It's obscene.

[mnhtnbb]

7. Daughter of a friend of mine finally gave up on SF

and returned to the east coast. She was mid-20's, good job, couldn't
find anything she could afford other than a tiny, tiny, studio so she could have her own
place and not need to live with roommates.

She's now working at a good job in Boston (not exactly cheap rents, either) and
living in a studio apartment--decent size--walking distance to her job.

And yes, she's still paying off student loans, too.

[LuvNewcastle]

8. That's sad.

I spent some time in San Francisco about 20 years ago and I loved it. It's a shame what's happened there. It was a nice, fun city back then, with a wonderful variety of people. It looks like now only rich people can afford to live there, and they're building ugly houses.

I see how the rents got out of control, but you'd think the city would have had regulations on what type of housing was being built. It's a shame that people with middle class incomes can't live there, and it's a shame that they aren't regulating the type of buildings being raised in a city known for it's nice architecture. How far are they going to let it go?

I think I'd rather live in Detroit instead of SF these days. At least Detroit is affordable. Driving out average people is about the worst thing a city can do. We've seen it with cities losing their higher income citizens and being left with a small tax base, but SF seems to be having the opposite problem. Either way, we're talking about the death of a city, and I don't think one is really preferable over the other.

[yuiyoshida]

9. I lived in Santa Barbara for a while

that is until the rents were so high, I had to move back to San Francisco, now its too expensive to live here. To move into a place you need to show that you could hypothetically afford three times the amount of Rent that you would normally pay. That's friggen ridicules! I am lucky to have a rent control building...but its no picnic here. Even when the Rent isn't going up the price of food is... Its insane here. But at least, I get to say I am still a resident of San Francisco! One day, I maybe priced out of here!

[LuvNewcastle]

10. I just hope you have a nice place

to go when you have to leave. The average rent in SF is more than I make in a month. That's outrageous.

[yuiyoshida]

15. I have a cubby hole.. basically

Its called a granny room, in the garage.. it has a standup shower and a kitchenette.. its okay but sometimes it gets cold as hell, and all I have is a space heater.

[arcane1]

11. I've been very fortunate that my rent hasn't budged, but...

I know they could double it and still get a tenant

[daredtowork]

14. Costa-Hawkins is evil

Because it makes the landlords who are providing housing instead of engaging in the commodities market feel like chumps. There should not be two side-by-side systems - especially when it pressures the landlords who are doing the right thing to feel wronged and complain.

The "investors" need to be taken out of the picture all together somehow: each resale of a building drives all the rents in that building higher. One thing that could be done is to seriously penalize/tax out-of-state and out-of-town investors (without allowing them to pass that penalty on to the renters). Ultimately they need to be driven out of the money. Homes are not their brokerage accounts.

But there is an even deeper source of the evil right here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-23/fewer-california-affordable-homes-planned-on-brown-s-cuts

In 2011, Brown balanced the budget on a libertarian theory of trickle-down housing that is simply wrong - and what has happened to the housing market since should prove to Brown that it's wrong. All these displacements and human tragedies should be on Brown's conscience, and thus he should step in with meaningful State interventions to repair the situation. Above all, he should stop trying to push trickle-down billionaire development. This does not work, and, moreover, it risks red-mapping the State by shifting the demographics of low-density liberal cities to "desirable properties" stuffed with high-rises of luxury condos. All around policy fail.

[yuiyoshida]

16. Whats going to happen probably

is all the middle class and poor will be pushed out of desert California, with Billionaires having to spend all their money shipping water in... Hopefully by than, I will be living on Saipan or something

[KamaAina]

17. Where is Sen. Mark Leno on this?

He's been fighting a lonely battle against the Ellis Act -- but I, a housing activist!, had not even heard of Costa-Hawkins until a workshop last week!

[daredtowork]

18. I'm not sure

But Costa-Hawkins is what makes it impossible to find a new place at a reasonable rent once you get evicted from the old place. It is unfair to cast someone who has lived in a City as a "new arrival" just because they were the victim of eviction - and that includes constructive evictions. Even some rent-controlled places eventually price out for some people in Berkeley: for instance their local tax-based increases may go over what a standard SSI fixed income pays.

The largest issue, however, is the florescent green-eyed envy it causes land lords who ARE still subject to rent-control. Seeing the money that's being made in the hyper-inflated market, they go *crazy* trying to figure out how they can beat the system and keep from being "cheated" themselves. Huge get-rich-quick stories are being paraded before them. The answer is NOT to let them join the bandwagon, but rather to rein in those who are making commodities out of housing without regard to who gets dumped on the street.

We need to crack down on "landlords in China" as well.

[mackerel]

19. Once I was married and had kids, I had to move out of the city. My cousin who has law

school student loans moved to Sacramento. Warmer weather but the she likes the big city feel and all the diversity.