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Some of the favorite gurus of tech workers are already there, like Tim Ferriss, life-hacker, who left for Austin in 2017, and Ryan Holiday, whose writing about stoicism is influential among the start-up set.

Sahin Boydas, the founder of a remote-work start-up who had lived in San Francisco and its suburbs over the last decade, saw all of that. He looked at his wife and two young children, working and learning from home while crammed into a Cupertino rental that had seen better days. Much of the late summer, the air was full of smoke from wildfires. For days, electricity would go in and out at his house.

“You start to feel stupid,” said Mr. Boydas, who is 37. “I can understand the 1 percent rich people, the very top investors and entrepreneurs, they can be happy there.”

So he and his family moved to Austin. For the same price as their three-bedroom apartment in Cupertino, they have a five-bedroom home on an acre of land. For the first time, Mr. Boydas has outdoor space. He just acquired two rabbits for his children. Sure, it’s (very) hot, but he’s ready for it.

“We’re going to get a cat and a dog,” he said. “We could never do that before.”

And it’s not just the cost of rent that is lower — the water bill is lower; the trash bill is lower; the cost of a family dinner at a restaurant has fallen significantly. Mr. Boydas said he hadn’t even known about the taxes.

“I run payroll for myself, and when I saw zero, I called the accountant like there’s an error — there’s no tax line here,” he said. “And they were like, ‘Yeah there’s no tax.’”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/technology/san-francisco-covid-work-moving.html

If the New York Times wasn’t reveling in the schadenfreude of publishing pieces about how unbearable San Francisco had become in the last couple years, they were taking seemingly great pleasure in reporting on the various missteps of the tech companies that fuel a good portion of the economy here. And while there’s no denying there has been an exodus of city residents during the pandemic that is driving down rents, did the Times need to go with the headline, “They Can’t Leave the Bay Area Fast Enough“?

The latest piece by SF-based NYT columnist Nellie Bowles (formerly of VICE) refers to this current moment as the end of “a tech era,” which is arguably true if you assume that it will be followed by yet another tech era. The dot-com bust was, after all, just a blip in the Bay Area’s steady progress toward becoming a global technology hub — and many were predicting that the boom that began around 2010 was destined to go bust at some point, although they didn’t predict that a pandemic would be the culprit.

Bowles writes of the fleeing of digital nomads and tech workers from the notoriously expensive Bay Area as if it’s a permanent state of affairs, this outflow. “They fled to tropical beach towns. They fled to more affordable places like Georgia. They fled to states without income taxes like Texas and Florida.” But then she hints at the reasons that such plans may not be for everyone — Austin can be “(very) hot” in the summer, Miami is still a swamp, and Savannah is full of mosquitoes.  

And as one 35-year-old founder tells her, “I miss San Francisco. I miss the life I had there. But right now it’s just like: What else can God and the world and government come up with to make the place less livable?” (That guy’s been living out of a camper van, so, that might get old at some point soon.)

After all, the media — especially the New York-based media — has been declaring San Francisco “over” for at least two years now. Remember that depressing New Yorker piece from May 2019 about how every tech worker was dying for the chance to leave here because SF had become such a dystopian hell-hole?

These trend stories aren’t meant to have much of a shelf-life I suppose, so when the trend reverses and rents start to rise again in SF and elsewhere in the Bay Area, the Times will probably ignore it for a while and then publish another trend piece that pretends that this was, of course, a foregone inevitability. Because rents in arguably the most beautiful and temperate city in the country never trend downward for long — at least in the last three decades.

The editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Business Times, Douglas Freuhling, just wrote an editorial this week titled “There’s no denying the exodus anymore.” From the perspective of commercial real estate, with companies like Oracle, Tesla, and Pinterest announcing relocations or cancelations of leases, one has to assume that office rents will take a hit for an indefinite period of time — even if this comes after a period in which companies were clamoring for office space in the city and rents were at record levels.

No one has a crystal ball and can say with confidence when the “exodus” ends and the repopulation begins, but it’s not like the city is empty — and it’s not like home prices have come down by much, if at all. And there’s an argument to be made that many of the people leaving — like young couples with kids — were probably going to leave anyway, as non-super-wealthy couples with kids are wont to do when their kids reach school age, because bigger and cheaper houses and better schools abound in other places. A September piece in the Chronicle suggested, at least anecdotally, that more than half the people they spoke to who were seeking greener pastures had hopes or plans to return here when the pandemic is over.

Maybe, when things change, other reporters will be at the New York Times who didn’t witness this latest “end of an era” firsthand, and once again they will publish a piece without much of a long view on the city. The paper’s San Francisco Bureau Chief Thomas Fuller was already sounding pretty exhausted by covering the wildfire season in August, and that was a good four months before it really ended. Will he have moved on once San Francisco — and likely many other cities across the country — enter a giddy post-pandemic party phase? Probably.

Also, another interesting note: The NYT piece finds that the guy behind two large Facebook groups devoted to the exodus, Terry Gilliam, hasn’t actually left the Bay Area himself. Gilliam launched the groups Leaving California (33,500 members) and Life After California (51,400 members), but all the while, he still lives in Fremont.

Previously: More Than Half of People Leaving SF Say They’ll Probably Come Back, In Small Chronicle Sampling

Photo: Will Truettner

Article source: https://sfist.com/2021/01/15/new-york-times-editors-again-take-secret-pleasure-in-bay-area-exodus-headline/

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — The San Francisco man who can’t remember the password to unlock his $220 million Bitcoin fortune says he long ago “made peace” with the reality he may never gain access.

Stefan Thomas went viral this week after a New York Times profile revealed to the world his unsettling dilemma: The password to unlock his Bitcoin fortune is locked in a hard drive that gives users 10 attempts before wiping clean. Thomas has just two more tries.

RELATED: Coinbase customer loses username and couldn’t retrieve it

In an interview with ABC7 News on Wednesday, Thomas said it’s now been nine years since he first realized he was locked out of his account, which means he’s had ample time to process it.

“There were sort of a couple weeks where I was just desperate, I don’t have any other word to describe it,” Thomas said, recalling how he felt when he first learned he couldn’t find his password in 2012. “You sort of question your own self-worth. What kind of person loses something that important?”

But “time heals all wounds,” he added, and over the years he said he has “made peace” with his loss.

“It was actually a really big milestone in my life where, like, I sort of realized how I was going to define my self-worth going forward,” he said. “It wasn’t going to be about how much money I have in my bank account.”

That’s all great and altruistic, but losing $220 million?! That’s sure to stress out even the most genuine of people.

VIDEO: Bitcoin scam: ‘I’ll tell your wife your secret’

Thomas said since the New York Times profile, hundreds of people around the world have reached out to him with advice — some serious and others silly.

“One person suggested, have you tried the word ‘password’?” he joked. “Some people have recommended various mediums, psychics, prophets that I could talk to. Some people are suggesting nootropic memory enhancing drugs.”

So far, he’s not taken anyone up on it.

Ian Sherr, Editor-at-Large at CNET News, explained that Thomas’ situation is not that uncommon. “The way that Bitcoin works, and that this technology works, is that it’s all meant to be anonymous,” Sherr said. “But a lot of this data is actually hidden behind a specific password that you have to get into your account.”

RELATED: Experts warn cryptocurrency has its drawbacks

Sherr said there are many people who bought Bitcoins years ago back when they were worth very little, wrote down their password somewhere, “and just thought it wouldn’t be a thing.”

“And now it’s worth millions,” he said, “And they’re sitting there racking their heads to figure out where that piece of paper is or what their password might have been.”

So, what’s the best advice for storing and remembering passwords?

“We had CNET recommend that you use a password manager,” Sherr said. “This is a single app that sits on your computer or on your phone and it hides behind one password, and it’s a good one.”

(Sherr, for example, said he uses a line of poetry.)

The app then creates other passwords for you that are random and meant to be really hard to crack. “It works really well, because you don’t have to remember anything anymore,” he said. “You just have one thing.”

Thomas said he decided to share his story in the hopes it prevents others from making the same mistake he did. He said if you do get a digital wallet make sure you have a plan to secure — and remember — your password.

VIDEO: Expert discusses using cryptocurrency to buy Bay Area real estate

Article source: https://abc7news.com/stefan-thomas-bitcoin-password-san-francisco/9635218

By Derek Barnes–

It’s no big secret that California and many of its major cities make it difficult for businesses to thrive and compete by operating within overly complex bureaucratic systems and legislating progressive tax policies. A raging pandemic has also magnified deep systemic issues of inequality, while businesses and governments (state and local) have had their struggle to keep providing services without tanking their budgets and operations. Many industries and people have been impacted as a result.

One area hit particularly hard is housing, which was already in a state of crisis before the pandemic. By some estimates, California has a 3.5M–4M unit deficit. Housing is the largest expense for most people, consuming up to 40% of household income in some municipalities—even more for some minority groups.

When people lose their jobs or a substantial portion of income, their decisions regarding housing are critical, often devasting: moving, vacating, rent nonpayment, and no shelter at all. These decisions not only impact renters and residents, but also rental housing providers/owners, property management and maintenance services, real estate agents and brokers, mortgage holders, and other financial services. It cascades through the entire housing ecosystem. 

More to the point, housing providers deliver a valuable and essential service vital in Maslow’s hierarchy of need, providing shelter for hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents. The vast majority are small owner/operators or family businesses, not big corporations. They are often forgotten as casualties in this crisis. If people don’t have reliably available, safe, and affordable housing, then a foundational component of these hierarchical needs cannot be met. Invariably, the gap creates instability. The full expression of human potential cannot be realized, and all communities suffer.

We’ve heard of battles between renters and housing providers, and many of us buy into the belief that one side is inherently bad or evil in this relationship. The clashes between “landlords and tenants” are historic and trace back to feudal systems and manorialism. Today, promoting this discord and division supports a narrative that serves those who either make the news or hold/want power—like promulgating fights between Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives, and the haves and have nots. There must be an enemy that shouldn’t have the same access or freedoms. In reality, an intrinsic, insightful, and symbiotic relationship ensures there is balance, as well as fairness. 

Sustaining the ideals of balance and fairness seems to be at the core of good intentions from most legislators and community leaders when combating housing challenges. However, we must be mindful and not fall so easily into the trap of scarcity and zero-sum game mentality in our fixes—for someone else to have more, others have to have less. In the matters of housing, one stakeholder group’s needs shouldn’t come at the expense of others who make up our Bay Area housing ecosystem. There should be a profound understanding that what we contribute together, with great measure and intention, can create harmony, shared benefit, and success for everyone.

We have all learned to adapt through a turbulent year and to a flurry of unimaginable conditions. There are myriad challenges still ahead of us, and none of this can be fixed overnight. Many stakeholders in the housing industry look forward to new legislative changes that support a Biden-Harris vision for America and a mission to restore and sustain an inclusive democracy, as well as our philanthropic values.

As citizens in a shared democracy, we must also be more skeptical and critical of one-sided legislation introduced that potentially places a group(s) at a disadvantage. Knowing whom these policies and laws really help and whom they harm is critically important.

Derek Barnes is CEO of East Bay Rental Housing Association
( www.EBRHA.com ). He currently serves on the boards of Horizons Foundation and Homebridge CA. Follow him on Twitter @DerekBarnesSF or on Instagram at DerekBarnes.SF

Published on January 14, 2021

Article source: http://sfbaytimes.com/cleaning-up-some-housing-myths/

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) – Rents continue to fall and disproportionately impact the San Francisco Bay Area housing market, according to a new study. Analysts at AdvisorSmith found that ten of the top 25 cities in the U.S. where rents are falling the most, are in the Bay Area, as compared year-to-year.

San Francisco is number 4 in the nation, after Odessa, TX (1); Midland, TX (2); and Williston, North Dakota (3).

Other Bay Area communities include Mountain View (5), Sunnyvale (6), Redwood City (8), San Mateo (11), Oakland (15) and San Jose (19).

The range of the drop has varied wildly based on location.

In San Francisco, rents have fallen from $2,650 per month to $2,081 since 2019. That’s a 26 percent drop.

In Walnut Creek (76), the rent drop was much less: only a 3.7 percent drop from $2,574 per month to $2,512.

READ: Cities Where Rents are Rising and Falling the Most

“What we’re seeing is a lot of people are leaving the East Bay. People don’t have to live in the transit-oriented districts anymore. They don’t have to be next to BART,” said Jim Brennan, a realtor with Next Home Landcastle Luxury which specializes in the East Bay suburbs.

Brennan said a lot of people are moving out of densely populated areas as their companies are not requiring them to work at the office. That extra supply makes the rent go down.

“So once they know that they don’t need a lease in a small apartment for a year, then they can go find a less expensive place and maybe with a yard and with an office,” Brennan said.

Rents of single-family homes in Danville and other suburban communities are actually going up, Brennan said, because of a combination of that increased demand and a smaller number of single-family homes available on the market.

Brendan said he is projecting a reversal of these numbers as the pandemic eases, but that could take another year or even more.

Article source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/covid-rents-falling-fast-in-san-francisco-bay-area-cities-due-to-pandemic/ar-BB1cjcsA