In Facebook’s Hometown, the First Responders Aren’t Local | Hacker News Reader

In Facebook’s Hometown, the First Responders Aren’t Local

wsj.com

36 pointsnichodges53 comments

From the comments section:

Richard Rider 8 hours ago

Before you get all mushy about the Menlo Park firefighters with their pittance of a salary, go to this link to see how much these typical CA "public servants" are paid (and these are old figures that have since risen):

http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/menlo-park-fire-pr...

Scroll through the 8 pages of employees. With benefits, the top guys make over $300K a year. Scores of these firefighters receive well over $100K in cash annually -- plus benefits, which includes a pension for 30 years' service that is usually HIGHER than their regular salary.

And remember this: 72% of America's firefighters are VOLUNTEERS. In CA, we've all but outlawed volunteer fire departments in all but a few rural enclaves.

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In global perspective these salaries are very high and it is probably also contributing to high house prices.

I don't live in the US so I don't really have any opinions on this but I suspect those getting the short end of the stick more likely are the people working in Starbucks than these guys.

At the end of the day, if there are a certain number of jobs in an area, and fewer housing units, then something has to give. What you pay people doesn't even matter. You're just playing musical chairs, and if you pay one group enough to live nearby, you've automatically priced some other group out of the market.

The obvious solution for the firefighters is to pay them well enough to live in the community they protect. Maybe that's a very high salary, but it only seems reasonable that a community that's very expensive to live in will have very expensive firefighters.

But this just pushes the problem elsewhere, since some other set of local workers will now have to live far away. The only real solution is to either build more housing or shed some local jobs.

This tends to invite geographical arbitrage (not necessarily a bad outcome). As indicated in the article, some firefighters enjoy the high salaries coupled with a (likely) very low COL 2+ hours away. You end up with smart, clever workers commuting in, sleeping in chairs and vans, etc, but not necessarily moving there. Even if you made a rule that said the workers had to live within 20 miles, my sense is they would game the system. I'd do the same in their situation. Lots of places experience this same dynamic because similar to SV they are undesirable for certain groups. Saudi Arabia pays a fortune to import the majority of its surgeons, from the US, UK, and elsewhere, and those professionals tend to treat it as a temporary post in exchange for twice or three times what they would make elsewhere.

A third option to building more housing or shedding local jobs is to create fewer new jobs. For example, by taxing tech companies until they slow their growth.

Imagine that Facebook or Google announces that the rent is too damn high, it impedes growth, and they are moving to a place with lower taxes and some housing available to employees, like Seattle, WA or Austin, TX or maybe Boulder, CO. And the City councils of Mountain View or Menlo Park or whatever are like: good riddance, we don't need you, your buses and your tax dollars!

It's a bit tricky because the issue here is absolute vs. relative.

The comment you link wants us to think: $100k/year? That's a lot of money! How could anyone be in trouble with that much money? Let's not do anything else for those greedy bastards, they've already got enough! And in absolute terms, it is a lot of money.

But then you consider the relative value: $100k in Menlo Park is not actually very much money at all, given how expensive it is to live in or near Menlo Park in the first place.

And while it's true that there are other people who have it worse, the idea is not to say "how dare you focus on this person, that person over there has it worse", because that leads to never doing anything for anyone (there will always be someone, somewhere who has it worse at any given moment, and thus it'll always be possible to distract effort by shaming anyone who looks at anyone else).

The idea is to ask why it is that such a large amount of money (absolute) terms has such low (relative) value, and whether that's something we should fix, and how to fix it.

100K a year I could certainly find a place to live in Santa Clara County if I'm single. Many, many people make do with less, and being single and making high five figures should not be a problem to finding housing (and it doesn't have to be out in fucking Gilroy either). Its not as if San Jose to Menlo Park is the worst commute in the world either.

Especially true if you're going to be living there for 30 years; it's hard to find a vaguely affordable place if you have to move quickly, but with 3 months to wait, you've got a good chance of finding something merely very expensive vs. completely unaffordable on $100k/person income.

Housing is still a huge problem, though.

Oh yes, definitely-its a massive part of why I left. But high five/low six figure salaries are more than adequate to live as a single person in a decent apartment in most parts of Santa Clara County. No need to commute in from Tracy or Merced (unless you assume firefighters are all rural Good Ole Boys at heart who must, must have their own house).

Who needs a family anyway, amirite?

Oh absolutely. Ra ra ra. On the other side: Let's pay people based on how many dependents they have. Why does a single programmer with no children need any money? Or any time off from work? Clearly people who have children should get first preference about using paid time off? /s

No, equality means everyone gets treated equally regardless of how much or how little family obligation they have. If someone has 12 children, that was their choice.

Equal pay for equal work cuts both ways.

Edit: This is another reason where a universal basic income could help. Sure, it won't be enough for an apartment in West Village in Manhattan but at least now we can tell anyone who lives there but can't afford to live there to simply get out and go a little further or better just move. Why is it wrong for people to be priced out of a neighborhood? I don't see anything wrong with it. I am so mad at cheap populism with slogans like "family first" or "children first". Say no to that.

Another thing this brings me to is we should absolutely bring an end to elected representatives by district in our legislature. If there are enough people who benefit from rent collection in an area, they will continue to support legislation that allows them to continue collecting such rent (in this case it'd be suppressing new property development if you're a property owner or rent control if you are lucky enough to have a rent control apartment). Elected representatives who only need to answer to a particular district is a horrible idea and we should do everything we can to bring it to an end.

By all means, pay people equally. But if a professional in their 30s isn't making enough to raise a family, they're not paid well. If you pay your firefighters like that, they're going to leave for other cities which do pay enough to raise a family.

It's not that people with families should be paid more, it's just that making enough to live by yourself isn't a good benchmark for pay. People without families will make way more than they need, but that's just how things go; there's a reason DINK means "lots of disposable income."

Thank you. I wish more people thought like you do.

As far as firefighters leaving for other towns, I'm not so worried. I'm more worried about others who make even less like others have also commented. If a 100k firefighter can't make things work, how is the elementary school teacher making ends meet?

I know raising salaries sounds easy but we need to cut costs. That's the real answer. And cutting costs means getting rid of inefficiencies. It will be hard because a part of every dollar wasted good to someones pocket and they'll fight to keep it that way.

You must be a fan of wives staying home and not working.

Look at how much overtime some of those people are bringing in, and then please think about how many hours they would have had to work to earn it.

You are talking about a profession, at least in urban environments, there is serious personal safety risk. I have a close friend who is "retired due to injury" from one bay area municipal service. Not only did he work at Cal Fire and other dangerous places, but this particular bay area city as well.

I think California f'd up by continually raising pension obligations in the good times (signing contracts to such) without thinking about the lean years -- this happened a lot pre-dotcom bubble in 2000.

I don't think first responders shouldn't get their earned pension.

I do, however, take issue with, say an administrator (say fire chief) retiring from one jurisdiction and then taking up a job in a second and getting a paycheck and a pension, or ultimately two pensions. This scenario is an issue.

> You are talking about a profession... there are serious personal safety risks.

This is sort of a myth. Firefighting is far less risky than many jobs out there, for instance it is four times less deadly than being a garbage collector [1].

[1]http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-dangerous-jobs/

Said friend dealt with falling through a fire grate in one case and witnessed the remains of a deceased across a fire grate which was the ultimate cause of said structure fire.

I'm just going off of stories from multiple first responders I've known or talked with over the years.

I don't begrudge them a cent of their pensions. The managers, a whole different manner.

So should the dozens of riskier professions also get a 30 year pension at an equal or higher rate then their pay too? I'm not saying they shouldn't, but it would bankrupt many institutions.

The structure of the job makes it very unlikely firefighters will want to live on the peninsula. They spend the night at the station with multi-day shifts on and long stretches off so long commutes don't grind them down the way they do daily commuters. It just makes sense to live out where you can afford a much more comfortable life.

A friend of mine did the opposite - living in SF and firefighting somewhere near Sacramento. He bunked at the station during his shift, and would come back to SF for his days off. I've also known people who have a similar arrangement at the Forest Service (living in nearby cities during their days off).

Public workers are the last in the list of "low income people who commute to Sillicon Valley for work". There are many many more people who earn much less than $140k working in Menlo Park. There is that sweet lady in Starbucks near Facebook that told me she has two sons or people who work in cleaning services. Those are the ones who deserve media attention first.

While you are right in raw numerical terms, there is a rich tradition in America of public servants (police, fire, teachers) living where they work. People are generally ok with baristas commuting to work, but are much more likely to be concerned when their firemen live halfway across the state.

EDIT -- just looked it up to confirm, NYC fire and police must live in the city or one of 6 surrounding NY State counties.

Despite the fact that people like baristas make much, much less money than a lot of public servants.

Being a barista tends to be much more transient of a job than being a teacher or other public servant - which have traditionally spanned one's entire working career. Seniority is rewarded, and career switching is often limited.

From the article: "Menlo Park fire district workers will earn an average $147,000 this year."

... Which is nowhere near enough money to buy a family home there. Maybe if your spouse is earning a similar wage, you could get your foot in the door.

Not limited to firefighters, Palo Alto is considering housing subsidies for families making between 150-250K: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/03/22/250k-per-year-sa...

And if you're below 150k? Well, obviously paupers need not apply.

just. build. more. housing. units.

Building more units is the only true, long-term solution. But even if it ever happens, it will take many years.

Meanwhile, the following should happen:

* Firefighters, teachers, etc., who receive a salary from the local government should be paid enough to live within a reasonable distance. It's fair to them and it's necessary for them to do their (crucial) jobs properly.

* Their salaries must rise until they are high enough.

* Taxes must be raised until the local government can pay those higher salaries.

* Most of those taxes should be on the various multi-billion corporations, because no one else can bear them. Those corporations are also the main cause of the rise in rent, so this is logical in that sense as well: taxes can keep rising until they slow down in bringing people here and raising rents. In other words, raise taxes until growth slows down to the rate at which we are building units.

just. move. out. of. there.

That totally works for me, but it doesn't solve the city of Palo Alto's problem, which is that their public servants, like firefighters, can only afford to live hours away.

Restricted development is one of the reasons the peninsula is such a desirable place to live. There's a lot of open space, and expensive housing helps keep out the riff-raff. (Note to downvoters: the reference to riff-raff was intended to be ironically humorous in the context of a story about how the people being kept out are firefighters and teachers.)

Wait, if the bad influence of riff raff is kept out, what's to explain the staggering teen suicide rate in Palo Alto? It's the best place in the world! Our high cost of living dictates it!

I was being a little bit ironic about the riff-raff. (I was hoping this would be obvious in the context of a discussion of how firefighters and teachers can't afford to live here, but HN tends to be a little humor-impaired.)

But I don't see why you would think that the teen suicide rate would have anything to do with how desirable it is to live in Palo Alto. People get depressed for all kinds of reasons, but how nice your neighborhood is is very rarely one of them. The high suicide rate in PA is tragic. But it doesn't change the fact that PA is a nice place to live if you can afford it, and one of the things that makes it a nice place to live is that the density is low but the wealth concentration is high.

And all the money in the world can't buy you happiness, so stop turning communities into country clubs.

Money is neither necessary nor sufficient for happiness, but that doesn't mean that it can't help tilt the odds heavily in your favor. Money is a tool. If you use it right you can get a lot of leverage out of it, and if you use it wrong you can do a lot of damage. But it's very rarely a no-op.

And what's wrong with turning communities into country clubs? Country clubs are very pleasant places to be. Why not make your community like one if you can?

> Wait, if the bad influence of riff raff is kept out, what's to explain the staggering teen suicide rate in Palo Alto?

Natural selection?

So let's ignore the troubling implications of your use of 'riff-raff' for the moment and assume that your basic premise is true: restricting development keeps out certain people.

The more more development restrictions there are, the more people will be kept out. At a certain point, the people who are kept out are will include people who you wouldn't otherwise want to keep out, however, you define that. And this doesn't have to be a result of increasing the restrictions on development. For example if there are more 'desirable' people who want to move to the area than there are available houses/new developments, then some of the desirable people will be forced out.

Of course, there's also the major untrue assumption that you make that the only way to maintain open space and desirability is to restrict development. Higher density infill housing doesn't intrude on the existing open space, sicne by definition it's slotting in between buildings in already developed areas. And of course, places like Singapore, Hong Kong, Paris, and New York City are proofs by existence that desirability and less restrictive development are not mutually exclusive.

But let's get back to 'riff-raff' and keeping that out. That's just racist and classist.

> some of the desirable people will be forced out

Yes, that's kind of the whole point of the original article.

> Singapore, Hong Kong, Paris, and New York City

I have been to all of those places, and while they are all wonderful to visit I would not want to live in any of them in large part because of how dense they are. Building more housing is not a no-brainer. You're just trading one set of problems for a different set of problems.

> But let's get back to 'riff-raff' and keeping that out. That's just racist and classist.

It was intended as ironic humor. But I apologize if you were offended.

As someone who owns a house in PA/Menlo, no. I will lobby, make calls, and write checks to government to make sure it doesn't happen. Is it fair? No. Ethical? No. Doesn't matter to me.

Lol is this satire or are you a troll? Because I can't tell.

Account created 3 days ago, 4 posts, -7 karma. I'm thinking troll.

It's refreshing to see the rentier class admitting their political goals so directly.

Thanks for your honesty!!

I think the described situation can be resolved in an elegant, Ankh-Morporkian style: Let's just start by burning down your house.

Just sell him some inn-sewer-ants first. ;)

This isn't unique to Menlo Park either, oddly enough. I remember reading about some San Jose guys that lived in Idaho. But they managed to trade schedules around to where they were on duty for enough consecutive days that it worked out just fine.

We see that here in north Texas, although the salaries aren't near as high. Often times we (I'm a firefighter/paramedic, but work as a paramedic only for a 911 contract) will have some long commutes. And often times it's because our family members work closer to home. I drive 150 miles each way to my job where we work 2 days on and 4 days off. it's just over 2 hours each way. My other half is a high school teacher with a daughter in elementary school, so they're close to home and I commute. It's common in this line of work.

paywall

Use the 'Web' link at the top of the page

Oh! Look at that! Thanks :) I've never noticed that before.

Public servants have a union to protect them.

Hold your pity until Facebook's own programmers can't afford to live in the area.

Meanwhile, Zuck buys up the surrounding houses for a "buffer zone." How tone-deaf can you get?

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