San Francisco is insanely expensive, and despite SF having a minimum wage that's $3 higher than the federal minimum, minimum wage isn't meant to pay for a two bedroom apartment in any major city. It never has been, and unfortunately can't ever be.<p>Studio apartments, roommates, spouse, living outside the city limits, living in a smaller apartment, aid (for single/low income parents), etc -- there's a lot of options, and it's disingenuous to frame it like this.<p>Even if we did raise minimum wage to $30 (and for the record, I'm for raising minimum wage to keep pace with inflation.. just not to $30), what does that solve? Techies will just get a raise, too (why be a programmer when you can make the same at a dead end job?), and we'll be back where we started.
Actually San Francisco is building up; they will have thousands of new apartments coming out in the next 5-10 years. There's a ton of high rise development going on in SOMA[0] (the business/metropolitan area) along with less commercial areas like hayes valley.<p>The problem is that those units will probably still be ridiculously expensive. The best solution is fixing public transportation between SF and the cheaper suburbs to the south. Right now commuting to San Francisco is a nightmare just because getting in out of the city by car is a huge bottleneck. Also, the train only goes about half a mile into the most southern part of the city.. [1]<p>0: <a href="http://vimeo.com/70447799" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/70447799</a><p>1: <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/search/san+francisco+cal+train/@37.7671085,-122.3940995,15z/data=!3m1!4b1" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/search/san+francisco+cal+train/@...</a>
The collective delusion on this problem is not only that the rent is expensive, its that the housing you get is of low quality. For all the "High salaries" in tech, it's insane to see people in their 30's sharing apartments like if it were a college dorm.
In Cupertino I have seen the minimum wage which is actually $8/hour for the part time job like a cacher in the store. The the rent average is $2,000 for one bedroom apartment there. It's totally unfair to low income people. They sacrifice the time to stay with their family and have to work even weekend for bills.
Rent seekers are sucking every last spendable dollar out of people. This situation is the same in almost every large IT hub. I wonder what stops companies from allowing distributed working environments and just bypass these guys altogether. I'd rather pay for a couple of days hotel charges for face2face time than pay these extortionate rents.<p>It's time to re-evaluate our work style.
monthly_wage_to_break_even_by_article = $37.62 * work_hours_per_day * weekdays_per_week * weeks_per_month = $37.62 * 9 * 5 * (52 / 12) = $7335.9. Let assume the tax is 35% of wage. monthly_rent_by_article = $7335.9 * (1 - 35%) = $4768.335<p>Wow... that is prohibiting. So you have to earn $7335.9 * 12 / 2 = $88030.8 / 2 = $44015.4 a year to break even if you are sharing a 2br apartment... Are rent price in some less urban area of SF much cheaper (say 20 minutes drive from Pacific Heights)?<p>Could a solution to rising rent price be some brave enough founders migrating tech startups to a new growing area, say rtp? Just like what Eventbrite did when hot startups were all in valley but Eventbrtie chose SF at then.
What's FMR?<p>"Housing wage for two bedroom FMR"<p>Also what does this all mean? What percentage of their income is this representing to afford this house?<p>The article was surprisingly short of this information even though it was 4 pages long.
Two bed rooms for one person down town in a major city else it's an outrage.<p>WTF is wrong with western society.<p>Most of the world lives multiple people to a room.
honestly if you cant afford it, get the fuck on the bart and live farther out. coming from a city with no subway, everyone here should be thankful for the bart and how far it reaches.<p>its a tiny 7x7 grid, this isn't some shelter, you pay to stay. take it as motivation to make more money
> <i>2014, the NLIHC pegged the average two-bedroom rent in Santa Clara County at $1,649</i><p>$1,649 / 4 = $413/wk<p>$413 / 40 = $10.30/hr of your income going to rent.<p>So they're saying you need to make $31.71, which means they're saying you spend $20/hr of your income on things other than rent. Absurd does not cover it.<p>Obviously I'm not accounting for tax, but I'm also not counting that a two bedroom apartment means two people paying rent. If you only have one person, then rent a one bedroom apartment. It's 2014, not 1964.