Well eventually it's going to have a real problem if service workers can't afford to live there. What are they going to do, pay maids and janitors $30/hour to entice them to commute 4 hours a day?

There's lots of places where the real estate values are very high, and poorer people are completely priced out of the area. Those places don't have a problem with that, because districts where lower-income people can live aren't all that far away, so it's not that big a deal for service workers to commute so they can work in or near there (as maids, housekeepers etc. for the rich people, or at the local businesses like restaurants located conveniently to those rich people).

The problem in SF is that it's geographically bound, and all the surrounding areas also have very high real estate values, so service workers who don't live in one of the rent-controlled places have to commute from very far away.

I think eventually, this is going to be a self-correcting problem if the NIMBYs prevent any new development. Pretty soon, it's going to suck living in SF because you won't be able to go out to eat there, you won't be able to buy any groceries there, you won't be able to hire a housekeeper there, etc. It'll be like living way out in the country, but you'll be surrounded by neighbors.

Personally, I think they should probably outlaw rent control (it'd probably have to be done at the state level). That's probably enabling SF to maintain itself this way, by giving lower-income people a place to live nearby. Eliminate rent control and those rents will go through the roof, pricing them all out of the city. Then the landowning residents can suffer without any services.

The normal result is people end up living a near homeless lifestyle. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2084971/Hong-Kongs-c...

200$/month * 20people = 4,000$ per room.

Why wouldn't they just move somewhere else if they're not rich enough to stay there? SF isn't the only city in the Bay Area, after all; it's surrounded by many other cities.

My whole idea is to make it so service workers don't want to live in SF or work there either, causing services to either just not be available, or to cost an absolute fortune, seriously degrading the quality-of-life for SF residents. If you make it so service workers just can't live there (without resorting to illegal overcrowded occupation like you mention here), I think they'd just go elsewhere.

Switching costs to move cities is quite high.

Even if you find a new job and an affordable place to live -- not that easy to do -- you're going to have to pay a lot of out of pocket expenses (i.e. rental deposit, moving/packing expenses), which is really tough when 47% of American's are so cash strapped they can't afford to pay for a $400 emergency. [0]

It also has a high social and emotional strain. You'd be leaving all your family, friends, and cultural identify you've built up in a city. Plus if you're in a relationship or have a family, your partner would need to find work too, and your children would have to leave school/their social circles.

It's a really disruptive life change, and though sometimes it can help improve someone's financial situation, it's a tough thing to expect of thousands of people. I can't blame them if choose to keep struggling to get by in their hometown.

[0] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secre...

The surrounding cities are still ridiculously expensive

I think that as bad as it is now, it could get a LOT worse before it gets better.

>Personally, I think they should probably outlaw rent control (it'd probably have to be done at the state level). That's probably enabling SF to maintain itself this way, by giving lower-income people a place to live nearby. Eliminate rent control and those rents will go through the roof, pricing them all out of the city. Then the landowning residents can suffer without any services.

Ah, the FULL ACCELERATIONISM option. Just beat down the working classes until they revolt!

I'm not trying to get the working classes to revolt, I'm trying to get them to abandon that place and go work somewhere else. If SF is so expensive that working classes simply can't live there or live close enough to commute, then what happens to the city? How does the city manage when it can't find anyone willing to clean the streets, take out the trash, etc.? Or what if they have to pay people outrageous wages to do that to entice them to work there? If a local convenience store needs to pay people $60/hour to work there, that's going to result in some high prices. If a local restaurant needs to pay the cooks and waiters $60/hour, a meal there is going to be quite pricey. If the police and teachers need to be paid $200k, taxes are going to have to go way up to pay for that, and those taxes are all paid by the residents. Many people might not want to move there when they find out the property tax has now been set at 300% (because all the existing property owners are grandfathered to a much lower rate). What'll that do to the realty prices and rents?

The problem is that people who make less than dis figures live there too and probably wouldn't like that very much. The people who do make six or seven figures and live there also wouldn't like that too much. Plenty of tech people are involved in the rent control activism stuff.

Yes, it'd cause a lot of short-term pain for the poorer people who are currently benefiting from rent control. However, the way I see it, the rent control is enabling this bad behavior, and eliminating it would force things to change for the better. The 6-7-figure earners living there voting for NIMBYism are the ones causing this problem, and the only way it's going to change is to either convince them to stop voting that way (because they get tired of never eating out because there's no restaurants nearby or having to spend $500 on a meal to eat at a local eatery), or to collapse the real estate market there (because no one wants to live there any more with such lousy services).

I imagine high rises will only make the city more tech-broey, not weird — opposite of what the current residents want.

Chicago and Manhattan have lots of high-rises and are not monocultures. Portland is super weird (they take pride in it) and has some high-rises. Why would none of those models work?

From what I can see, there is an immense demand from software developers to move to SF, and the non-techies I engage with have already expressed frustration and exhaustion with the overpowering startup culture in the city.