With bold and targeted steps, economists say, government can increase opportunity and incomes for many more people in ways that strengthen, not weaken, American capitalism.
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Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/18/google-to-invest-1-billion-in-san-francisco-bay-area-housing.html
My colleague Louis Hansen wrote this week about efforts by some folks in Phoenix to lure, seduce and maybe even hoodwink unsuspecting and vulnerable Bay Area residents into dumping the region’s high-priced real estate and soul-crushing commutes for a new life in the Grand Canyon State.
“A Phoenix-area business group has launched a campaign — complete with shrink-wrapped SUVs and a slightly snarky Twitter account — to lure frustrated Bay Area residents and companies away from Silicon Valley,” Hansen writes.
If you’re seriously considering a move from the Bay Area to Arizona, here’s advice from some who have gone before you:
1. The reader forum at City-Data, an Illinois-based social networking and information website that presents information and data that pertains to U.S. cities:
After a reader sought advice about moving to Chandler — saying “I heard about the heat, we think we can handle it. We are slightly nervous about the scorpion issue at Chandler” — here’s how readers responded:
From “Obadno”
“Yeah tons of people you folks are coming here in droves. If you want something resembling the Cali lifestyle make sure you move to central Phoenix or the east valley. Phoenix is basically like LA but smaller and cheaper. And let me clarify, people that claim there is nothing to do usually moved from a college or urban life and bought a nice big house or apartment out in Gilbert or some such suburbs. That’s like moving to San Jose and asking where the San Francisco culture is. And in recent years downtown and central Phoenix has become just as full of bars restaurants and culture but less of a party zone and more of a yuppie zone. The major difference you’ll find is distances and density. People from Dallas or LA don’t mind because it’s similar to those cities but you might notice it as a Bay Area person.”
From “More Rock”
“I moved from San Francisco to Chandler in 2003. You will experience culture shock and climate shock, but you will adapt if you make the effort. Consider what my Mom says, ‘I can live anywhere. It all depends on the people I befriend.’”
From “goolsbyjazz”
“I was born in the bay area … What I did was I scouted the Phoenix metro twice: The first time was to see if I actually liked what I saw. The second time was an apartment hunt. I got a job very close to the area that I picked out to live in. (I did it backwards). The heat … yea the heat is a different issue. Even though I am still new to the area, the heat can be an issue for some. If you’re coming from a coastal city such as SF, Pacifica, or Daly City, then Lord have mercy. It will be a DRASTIC change for you. If you’re coming from a far out East Bay city like Concord, Brentwood, or Pittsburgh, then the heat here wouldn’t be (that) steep of a change. Also, IT DOES NOT COOL OFF AT NIGHT. I was driving around 10pm and my phone said it was 105 degrees and it felt like it. That’s the one thing about California that I do miss.”
From “roadwarrior101”
(He currently lives in the East Bay but went to grad school at Arizona State University in Tempe)
“So I’m familiar with the differences of the areas:
2. Twitter
I could rent a 4+ bedroom HOUSE in Phoenix for $1500. That’ll maybe get you a nice ROOM the Bay Area????????????
— m (@masennnnn) May 22, 2019
Latest sign the Bay Area’s economics are unsustainable: tech talent commuting from Phoenix — via Southwest — and coming out ahead financially.
— John Pletz (@johnpletz) June 4, 2019
I once did the math that it’s more cost efficient to buy a summer home in Seattle and a winter home in Phoenix and move back and forth every six months, than to buy a similar house in the Bay Area
— Ran Halprin (@RanHalprin) April 15, 2019
It’s crazy to me that the world thinks of the Bay area as some rich place (and it is) but it probably has some of the worst investment in local infrastructure.
Go look at places like Phoenix Arizona. It seems like their local government actually gets stuff done.
— David Pat (@Patfactorx) March 26, 2019
Championship droughts for cities with all 4 major sports:
Boston: 3 mths
Washington: 7 mths
Bay Area: 7 mths
Philadelphia: 1 yr
Chicago: 2 yrs
Denver: 3 yrs
Los Angeles: 4.5 yrs
Miami: 5.5 yrs
New York: 7 yrs
Dallas: 7.5 yrs
Detroit: 10.5 yrs
Phoenix: 17 yrs
Minneapolis: 27 yrs— Matt Smith (@MattSmithCFB) January 23, 2019
Best part about moving to Phoenix from SF Bay Area? Writing the rent check this morning was much less painful.
— Trudy Rushforth (@trudyrushforth) May 1, 2014
Ok, paperwork is all done. We’re moving from SF Bay area to Phoenix area in a few weeks. There goes the neighborhood…
— Dave Balmer (@balmer) August 14, 2011
3. Reddit
From “cheald”:
“Hi there! I live in the Phoenix area (in the SE Valley) and can heartily recommend it if you can stand a few months of heat. The cost-of-living is substantially lower than SF, housing costs are slightly below the national average. You could easily find a dog-friendly house to rent for around $900-$1200/mo, and you could put the difference in rent into a savings account for a down payment on a mortgage (or whatever else you want to save for). We have a very vibrant housing market — the Phoenix metro area is constantly growing, and the housing market has been historically very healthy, 2008 notwithstanding. Property taxes are comparatively extremely low, which is a huge bonus if you’re interested in buying. Utilities cost less per unit, though you’ll use more electricity in the summers due to the increased heat. Overall, you would be able to comparatively save a lot of money living out here. If you’re only looking at 2ish years, then buying may not be a wise option — renting is usually preferable in the short term. But if you were interested in buying a house and then renting it out when you moved back home, that may be worth doing. You would want to find the approximate rental and purchase prices for the properties you’re interested in and running the numbers.”
From “syncism”
“Phoenix is pretty safe for a big city. As long as you don’t go in certain areas late at night you should be fine. Don’t pay attention to the movies. You should be fine being Asian in Phoenix. You might face a little discrimination in more affluent areas, but overall the people are nice so you kinda just ignore it. How much money you need to live here totally depends on what you need to be comfortable, and where you wanna stay. You mentioned Scottsdale so a 1 bedroom apartment will cost around $1,200 – $1,500 depending on the area and amenities. HOWEVER, the cost of living here is increasing annually by an average of 6-8% so you need to also take that into consideration. The only utility that is pretty pricey is electricity use in the summer because of needing constant A/C. I paid an average of $110 last year per month during the summer, and I live in a small little studio. Having a car is highly recommended if you want to get around here. Car insurance is also high here because of so many accidents, so watch for that.
“Water will only be an issue if it’s mishandled by our representatives. Arizona has underground reserves, we have rivers, and we share two lakes with California and Nevada. MOST of the water we use by far goes to agriculture. Worst case scenario, Arizona won’t be used to farm various crops anymore and will hurt local farmers. I don’t think it will ever come to that point though, we have a lot of contingency plans. I think heat coupled with CO2 emissions will be an issue with Phoenix life long before water will, when you take into consideration how many people are moving here. The air quality can get really bad in the summer.
“Illegal immigration and homelessness is an issue that is heating up here. Apparently ICE is dumping tons of people looking for asylum at random bus stops in Phoenix because they have no where else to put them. Also, last year officials were caught moving kids into buildings in the middle of the day from the border. Just really shady shit. The attitude toward brown people here is really iffy at times. It was shady back in the days of Joe Arpaio but I’ve personally seen and caught some of the brunt of the animosity. I’ve been called racial slurs that are derogatory words for latinos at my place of work and I’m not even latino. Don’t get me wrong, MOST OF THE PEOPLE HERE don’t give a —- what color you are but after talking with people, interacting with other Latinos I work with, and just seeing with my own eyes how others are treated, it’s definitely noteworthy.
“Phoenix is the best city to live in on the west coast in terms of potential, economy, and affordability. I dare anyone to challenge me on that statement. Phoenix is on the rise with so much industry moving into town and with so many investments being made. As long as you keep up with the cost of living, you can definitely thrive here.”
Article source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/18/dumping-the-bay-area-for-phoenix-a-few-things-to-know-before-you-go/
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Three kids ranging in age from 8 to 15 years old are spending their summer break in their van after their parents were duped out of $10,000. That’s everything the Gonzalez family had saved. They thought they were renting a house in South San Francisco. But three days after moving in, they were evicted by the actual landlord.
The family is now showering at the houses of family or friends while trying to figure out how to get back on their feet.
There is a GoFundMe page set up for the family here.
When asked why it’s been so hard, 11-year-old Elizabeth Treminio told ABC7, “Because it’s uncomfortable.”
Parked right outside the house where they lived for a total of three days. Elizabeth remembers waking up to hear someone at the door, telling her mom they had to move out.
Luz: “When that landlord came knocking on your door and said you guys needed to leave what did you think?”
Elizabeth: “That we were gonna live in the streets, I was scared.”
That landlord she describes is the legitimate landlord for the property.
Victor Gonzales had already paid someone else, so they could move in and to change the locks.
“He asked for the first month, the last month and the security deposit,” said Gonzalez. “That was at least, $10,000.”
South San Francisco police confirmed the Gonzales family was duped.
“They found a clone ad online that solicited that property that was for rent,” Corporal Matt O’Connor. “It was legit for rent from a real-estate company however somebody was falsely representing themselves as the property owner.”
Joe Ridout from Consumer Actions says the Gonzalez family is past the time they could get their money back.
“There is a law called the electronic fund transfer act,” he said. “It basically limits your protections after 48 hours have gone by since the fraud.”
Ridout explained paying with cash or transferring money are major red flags along with cost.
“Way below market rent, that’s a red flag,” he said. “Another one is an absentee landlord who can’t meet with you in person.”
We found the same property in a legitimate posting on Zillow and showed it to Victor Gonzales, the monthly rent was more than $1,000 more per month.
In the midst of uncertainty on a summer break she never thought would be spent in her van, Elizabeth is staying positive.
Luz: “What do you tell your brother? You’re the oldest?”
Elizabeth: “I tell him that it’s going to be okay. We’ll get through this.”
Article source: https://abc7news.com/exclusive-family-lives-in-van-after-losing-$10k-to-fake-landlord/5350770/
Health care giant Kaiser Permanente plans to construct a 1.6 million-square-foot headquarters in Oakland, creating one of the largest new buildings in the Bay Area.
Kaiser, already Oakland’s largest private employer, said Monday it will consolidate 7,200 East Bay employees from seven offices into a new tower at 2100 Telegraph Ave. Construction is expected to start next year, and the building is set to open in 2023.
The project, formerly branded as Eastline, is a block from the 19th Street BART Station. The site is currently a parking garage and vacant lots. It will be named the Kaiser Permanente Thrive Center — “Thrive” is Kaiser’s slogan — and includes a health clinic, community meeting spaces, art gallery and retail space.
The company will invest about $900 million to buy the land and complete construction, said Bernard Tyson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente. The consolidation will save Kaiser $60 million annually compared with its current seven-building operations, which total 1.7 million square feet, he said.
Tyson said the offices will be “modern, upbeat, airy” and will have environmental sustainability features.
“For more than seven decades, Kaiser Permanente has been proud to call Oakland our home, and today, we further strengthen our commitment to this incredible city,” Tyson said.
“I’m excited that we’re bringing all of our staff together, along with our physicians who work in both the national office and regional office,” he said.
The Kaiser project has more than quadruple the space of nearby Uptown Station, where tech company Square plans a new office. The building has more square footage than San Francisco’s tallest building, Salesforce Tower, and is comparable in size to the huge suburban buildings occupied by tech giants Facebook and Google in Silicon Valley.
Kaiser was founded in Oakland in 1945. Its home at the Ordway Building is just a few blocks east of its new headquarters. Kaiser also operates its Oakland Medical Center about a mile north of its new headquarters.
“Kaiser and Oakland have always made a great ‘values match.’ We share commitments on social values — on equity, affordability, and healthy communities for all,” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said in a statement. “To know that Kaiser has committed to us and will build their new headquarters in the heart of Oakland’s downtown shows the world that as Oakland grows, our values can scale up with us.”
It is uncommon for non-tech giants to own and develop their own buildings, but large health care providers are sometimes an exception. Kaiser, UCSF and Sutter Health have previously constructed medical centers with offices.
Kaiser will buy the headquarters site from Lane Partners and Strategic Urban Development Alliance LLC, which won approval last year for the project at Oakland’s Planning Commission. The new headquarters will generate an estimated $23 million in one-time taxes and fees for the city and create $15 million in annual taxes.
Kaiser plans to sell the three Oakland office buildings it owns — 1950 Franklin, 1800 Harrison St. and 2000 Broadway — to Lane Partners, and will move out.
Leases at the Ordway Building, 2101 Webster St. and 300 Lakeside Drive in Oakland, and 1451 Harbor Bay Parkway in Alameda won’t be renewed.
Kaiser’s consolidation will free up a significant amount of space for other growing companies, according to Colin Yasukochi, research director at real estate brokerage CBRE.
“It opens up additional office space for tenants seeking a lower-cost alternative” to San Francisco,” he said. “There’s a stronger likelihood that more jobs will be located in Oakland.”
Last year, Kaiser committed $200 million to fund affordable housing and mitigate homelessness, including preserving 41 units of affordable housing in East Oakland.
Kaiser also partners with the Golden State Warriors on health and youth sports programs and is sponsoring the plaza around the basketball team’s new arena in Mission Bay.
Roland Li is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf
Article source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Kaiser-Permanente-to-build-new-900-million-13999307.php
This spring, Bay Area housing prices flattened out for two months in a row. After years of heady, month-over-month price appreciations and rental spikes, this rare break created an opportunity for price-exhausted communities to take a closer look at the trends of our local housing crisis.
Sadly, those trends are as grim as they ever were.
On Thursday, Curbed SF released the results of its compilation of five years’ worth of reported median rents in San Francisco from five rental platforms. It found that San Francisco’s median rent on all of them reached its highest-ever height at some point in 2019.
On Zumper, a platform that also tracks national rents, the most recent median rent in San Francisco — $3,700 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in June — is the highest it’s ever recorded for any city in the country.
The results varied for each site, and no single source represents a full picture of San Francisco’s market rental prices.
Still, the overall trend was both clear and stark: Rent has never been higher in San Francisco, and it’s going to take a lot more than a couple of months of flat prices for the Bay Area to dig out of this historic housing crisis.
It’s going to take courage, vision and a keen understanding of how the region reconfigures its balance between housing and jobs.
On the latter, there are deep concerns brewing in San Jose after a new economic analysis this week showed that Google’s proposed expansion in downtown San Jose could cost that city’s renters an additional $235 million in higher rents every year without a significant increase in both affordable and market-rate housing production.
The analysis, conducted by Beacon Economics on behalf of a San Jose nonprofit, Working Partnerships USA, found that Google and San Jose would need to subsidize 5,284 affordable housing units and help produce 12,450 market-rate units to prevent these dramatic rent hikes.
What adds to the depressing nature of this report is the fact that San Jose voters recently rejected a $450 million affordable-housing bond.
City officials have said that San Jose provided housing for the rest of the region while other cities, particularly on the Peninsula, attracted corporate campuses without building their fair share of homes. This claim has merit.
Unfortunately, we now need every city in the region to focus on home-building, and there are still too few that are willing to do so.
For this week’s example, we need look no further than Berkeley.
UC Berkeley has been trying to build two new buildings for classrooms and housing on its campus. In exchange for this perfectly sensible and badly needed project, it was sued by a neighborhood group on Wednesday.
The group’s contentions read like a “Greatest Hits” NIMBY compilation: neighborhood character, supposed California Environmental Quality Act violations, the terror of increased trash and noise.
But the unoriginality of their gripes shouldn’t detract from the very real problems this behavior has brought to the Bay Area — this crisis affects us all, and no local governments are fighting hard enough to make a difference for their increasingly stressed residents.
Small wonder the last two months of “flat prices” haven’t felt like a reprieve.
This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.
Article source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-A-week-in-the-Bay-Area-s-housing-13999250.php
