Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton
Isn't the Bay Area one of the few places - outside of college towns - where you actually see adults who are not in a relationship with one another regularly co-renting a house, because there's just so few purpose-built rental units to go around?
That would certainly suggest to me there is a shortage of apartment units overall.
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In San Francisco, yes. Lots of people have roommates they are NOT in any romantic relationship with. These people are mostly young(ish), single and want to live in the city for the excitement, night life etc. Nothing unusual there.
But they don't share living spaces because they couldn't find a place of their own. I see "for rent" signs all the time (although certainly the vacancy rates are quite low). It's because of the cost, as in an average rent of $3600/month for a 1 bedroom, $4700 for a 2 bedroom (just divide $4700 by two and you've saved $1250/month).
Even somebody newly arrived out of school for a tech industry job (average starting salary $91,700) would be stretching a budget to be paying over $43,000 out of that $91K (before taxes and CA has high taxes) for just rent. Got to leave room for the $5 cups of coffee (at Philz; at tech fave Blue Bottle it's more), $25 Mexican lunches (unless your employer has a great cafeteria), $12 Uber rides and so much more.
I'm not really arguing there's no shortage of apartments--rather that building more apartments (or allowing them to be built, whether or not it then happens) wouldn't solve the problem for a lot of people. And it is true that nearly all the apartments that ARE getting built are at the top of the cost spectrum. That $3600 average includes a lot of older buildings and subdivided homes made into flats and so on. The average for new construction, especially highrise construction, would be much more.