patrick.net

Downing said, she and her husband, a software engineer, were sharing a home with a couple for $6,200 a month.

Where do the fast food workers live? Share a house with 10 couples?

I expect a lot of them live with parents or relatives, or they live in very dangerous areas like parts of Oakland where the rent is low.

Violent crime is actually necessary to keep rents low for them. Employers and low-wage employees both have a financial interest in making sure that violent crime continues unabated in those places.

HeadSet says

Downing said, she and her husband, a software engineer, were sharing a home with a couple for $6,200 a month.

Where do the fast food workers live? Share a house with 10 couples?

Patrick says

I expect a lot of them live with parents or relatives, or they live in very dangerous areas like parts of Oakland where the rent is low.

Violent crime is actually necessary to keep rents low for them. Employers and low-wage employees both have a financial interest in making sure that violent crime continues unabated in those places.

That and they more than often overpopulate the dwellings, very hard for the landlord to constantly check and monitor. You can easily have 4-10 people live in 2-3 bedrooms. Still they compete for the rental and housing market on the lower end. Illegal/unskilled immigration and selling the mid to high end shitboxes to wealthy foreigners and a few techies is mainly responsible for this scenario.

Even if you built the housing, you are dumping all this population and their cars into an already overburdened, congested infrastructure that California has already demonstrated it is unwilling to significantly upgrade in any meaningful way except as another Potemkin conduit for raping taxpayer money.

One party rule has consequences.

Patrick says

On the surface, 42 people leaving per month doesn’t seem to make a dent. But Brian Brennan, vice president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which backed the project along with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, said that it’s a “dramatic shift” from a year earlier. Figures for 2017 were not available.

42 leaving per month is meaningless. The same article mentions 2,506 new immigrants arriving there per month in 2016. There would also be some people migrating to the area from other parts of the US.
Bottom line.....If more people are coming in than leaving, and you still don't build enough housing, the home shortage can only get worse.

Strategist says

Patrick says

On the surface, 42 people leaving per month doesn’t seem to make a dent. But Brian Brennan, vice president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which backed the project along with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, said that it’s a “dramatic shift” from a year earlier. Figures for 2017 were not available.

42 leaving per month is meaningless. The same article mentions 2,506 new immigrants arriving there per month in 2016. There would also be some people migrating to the area from other parts of the US.
Bottom line.....If more people are coming in than leaving, and you still don't build enough housing, the home shortage can only get worse.

The problem is more the quality and skill of people coming vs leaving. Skilled workers leave the bay area and you can only have so many low-skill services catering to the few wealthy left. Also the pressure in the bay area and most of CA is mostly in the low-end housing sector, sadly low-end in SF means $500MM-$1MM+, maybe medium end starts at 1.5MM or even 2MM. In the high-end prices have actually been falling for a while. So you get the poorer competing for shitboxes. Not necessarily a good plan. I agree though that it is likely not as severe (yet) as the article makes it seem. Businesses are leaving left and right though, while the area is supported by a few mega corps such as salesforce, google, twatter and facetwat. Ironically many old-school established businesses are moving all their non-customer facing workers into community tincan workspaces such as WeWork or RocketSpace (which are still overpriced by a mile) to save rent. Not great.

mell says

The problem is more the quality and skill of people coming vs leaving. Skilled workers leave the bay area and you can only have so many low-skill services catering to the few wealthy left.

I would say it's the less skilled blue collar workers who leave the Bay Area, because they earn less and can't afford the homes there. I would also think it's the high end earners who settle down in the BA, because who in their right minds would want to live there, unless they can make a lot of money?
Also, bear in mind 42 people leaving vs 2506 coming in, is a 1 to 60 ratio.