Is California Really That Bad? (Oakland, Berkeley: home, neighborhood, to buy)

[ttocs99]

Originally Posted by Larry Siegel

40 years ago a lot of rich people wouldn't be caught dead in the City. It was for hippies and longshoremen. How times change.

I rather not be caught dead anywhere.

[smarino]

San Francisco is one of the world's great cities, but just like New York, London, Paris, etc, if you can't afford to live there well, you will live very poorly indeed. There is a huge drop off from the best to the worst, and almost nothing in the middle. Rents drove me out of San Fran for good, and I never was that crazy about the climate there. I was always cold, and it rained a lot in the winters. But it's a unique city, and I had friends there that I would never have found elsewhere. The city has changed so much since I first saw it in 1980. It's a lot faster paced now, a lot more expensive, and there's a lot more people. It is very difficult to afford a place of your own in what I would deem a liveable neighborhood unless you make serious money, but you probably already know that. Just a glance at the current rental prices in the paper will make your eyes bulge. That's why so many people share their living spaces.

Anywhere you live, making more money means proportionally paying more in taxes, so that's a given. I found the taxes actually higher in Oregon, where they don't have a sales tax, but more than make up for it with other taxes. To me, the Mission is a happening place w/ good, affordable restaurants and art and such. But it's definitely dicier there than say North Beach, and those are the only two areas I would be interested in living. You could always get a room in one of the better situated residential hotels like The Gaylord, and I would go that route rather than live w/ strangers. You may have to put up w/ a hall bathroom and a small room w/ no view, but when you close the door it's your place. Then you could live in some of the nicer areas of the city and not pay every penny to rent.

[bentobox34]

Originally Posted by pc2412

1) Taxes/ COL.
5)Crappy economy.

I'd pair these two, and say that first of all 5) varies dramatically by region. So, for example, the Central Valley is still in the dumps but the Bay Area not so much. But more importantly these questions can only be answered by the specifics of your situation as you consider your move. You can pile up all the statistics you want about relative taxes, housing costs and wages relative to other states, but the relevant question for you as a person considering moving here is: does the specific wage, tax situation, and housing costs you will move into here improve or detract from your current situation?

2) Debt.
3)Overall inefficient state gov.

Paired again. Here I would say you should ask yourself how much you see yourself as a user of state-supported facilities. The two biggies would be public education (elementary all the way through university) and health care. If you are going to depend on either of those, yes California will be kind of a downer for you. Otherwise the debt and inefficiency of state gov't are just abstract headlines. If you are young (but past college), in good health, and have no plans to have kids in public schools any time soon, you won't notice it very much.

4)Illegal Immigration.

A political headline moreso than an actual QOL issue. All I will say is that as a resident for my whole life, I have never found my QOL directly affected by this.

[Azmordean]

To echo what others have said here - not really.

COL is insane and taxes are high but that's all part of a comparative calculation. Does your income go up enough to make it worthwhile? In my case the answer was a big yes - my income went up more than $50K per year, so even with the higher COL I am significantly better off here financially. You need to look past sticker shock and look at the numbers.

The politics in general are a real downer for me. Government run amok, making stupid laws and regulations that drive away business. The state has a serious debt problem and the state legislators seem to focus on things like divesting state pension funds from "socially irresponsible companies" such as oil companies (I guess these buffoons never drive), banning plastic bags, and making sure the homeless have a place to shower. Those are strange things for a state government to focus on on a good day but to focus on that nonsense when the state is circling the proverbial toilet bowl is downright criminal in my opinion.

For the most part though, that stuff just pisses me off because I know the state is literally pissing away my tax dollars. I can't say it impacts my day to day life though as a single person. And somewhat ironically, I find certain state services to be reasonably decent. California has very nice state parks (though not all are open all the time due to budgets), the roads are reasonably well taken care of (I guess not having winters helps there), CalFire seems to do a good job, and so forth.

[Ruth4Truth]

What I don't understand is: what happened to all the people who were renting apartments in the Bay Area, when the rents suddenly (over the 4 years or so that I've been checking rents there) skyrocketed? Was there a lot of displacement? Did a bunch of people have to move into smaller places, or to cheaper communities? Those ordinary office jobs, not to mention people on a fixed retirement income, don't keep up with the sudden surge in rent rates.

[Azmordean]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

What I don't understand is: what happened to all the people who were renting apartments in the Bay Area, when the rents suddenly (over the 4 years or so that I've been checking rents there) skyrocketed? Was there a lot of displacement? Did a bunch of people have to move into smaller places, or to cheaper communities? Those ordinary office jobs, not to mention people on a fixed retirement income, don't keep up with the sudden surge in rent rates.

In SF proper, rent control can help for many (not stating if it is a good policy or not overall).

In surrounding areas I'm sure it's a mix of things. Many folks landlords will not "jack up" the rent - they tend to raise it more slowly over time. This can help existing residents though some corporate landlords could care less if you move out. I'm sure some people fled, and some had to move to smaller or less desirable places. I'm sure some just eat the costs and tighten the belt somewhere else.

[Ruth4Truth]

Berkeley has more radical rent control than SF, but rents have gone up about 50% or more in the last 4 years or so.

[mayorhaggar]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

What I don't understand is: what happened to all the people who were renting apartments in the Bay Area, when the rents suddenly (over the 4 years or so that I've been checking rents there) skyrocketed? Was there a lot of displacement? Did a bunch of people have to move into smaller places, or to cheaper communities? Those ordinary office jobs, not to mention people on a fixed retirement income, don't keep up with the sudden surge in rent rates.

Pretty much everyone I know who lived in SF moved to the East Bay, either that or they were squeezed west into some chilly foggy area like the Richmond or Sunset and got a cheapish and rent-controlled place right before prices started getting really crazy. I ended up moving to work here in South Korea because I was tired of how rents kept going up while everyone was gushing over how awesome the IT sector was...but MY career was going nowhere, making me feel like I was in a rut. I'd get raises of like 3% if I was lucky, but it was nowhere enough to keep up with the rising cost of rent and BART, even in Oakland.

Meanwhile everything in the Bay Area seemed to get worse...crime going up in a lot of areas, public transit getting cut, streets falling into further disrepair...when you went out, all the cool old restaurants and bars were closing down due to rising rents (RIP Ti Couz!) and if anything replaced them it was almost always some shiny place with high prices and zero character. You'd go out in SF and everywhere would be packed with techies staring at their smartphones...kinda made me miss the hipsters they replaced, who could be douchey but were at least shaggy and eccentric and bohemian. Oakland by 2012 still had a lot of the funk and eccentricity that SF had totally lost by around 2010, and I could have stayed there for quite a while if my career hadn't been so dead-end.

The Bay Area is leaving a lot of people behind, you see a lot of new stuff getting built, and the techies and their high salaries get all the attention, but not everyone is a techie or married to one. There's no commonly held-attitude that all the wealth in the Bay Area should be spread around more, you see lots of non-tech companies that spend millions on moving to a shiny new building or on building a state of the art conference center, but give tiny raises to their employees (while the CEO's give themselves huge raises). This is pretty common all around the US (and in Europe I'd imagine) but the Bay Area has a TON of character that is slowly leeching out as all the old artists and musicians and non-tech workers are replaced by techies who stay a couple years before going back to India or Seattle or whatever.

[MediaArtist]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

the Bay Area has a TON of character that is slowly leeching out as all the old artists and musicians and non-tech workers are replaced by techies who stay a couple years before going back to India or Seattle or whatever.

This is my perception of the Bay Area as well. It's become dominated by one single industry, and everyone else is getting priced out into places like Concord and Vallejo just to survive.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by MediaArtist

This is my perception of the Bay Area as well. It's become dominated by one single industry, and everyone else is getting priced out into places like Concord and Vallejo just to survive.

So UC-B employees won't be able to afford to live there anymore? What an irony! Cal was Berkeley's main employer since its founding!