Hacker News Reader

Comment by zootam | Hacker News Reader

> to turn into dorm rooms for the middle class.

let's be real here, the middle class in the bay area/SF makes $250k+ per household.

there's nothing wrong with living in dorms, but there is something disturbing about calling this the 'middle class' in SF.

View on HN

Agreed. Middle class shouldn't be defined by what sounds like a lot of money. It should be defined by what sort of spending power you have in the area where you actually live.

Perhaps it shouldn't be defined at all, we can see here everybody has a different definition depending on the point they are trying to make.

Great point. I'm using it to compare the standard of living in one area against another. But there are lots of other valid questions to ask, like what constitutes the middle band of wealth in the microcosm that is the Bay Area.

Median household income in SF is $78k.

i'm seeing some different information.

on wikipedia- it says $78k, but that data is apparently from 2010-2014.

https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_...

newer data suggests it is at least $87k, with some sources suggesting $92k+

>California Association of Realtors also estimates that the minimum qualifying income to buy in San Francisco is $254,000 annually.

i think being in the 'middle class' should mean you have some hope of escaping rent and actually own something reasonable.

Should, but sadly doesn’t at the moment.

We need more housing.

This is a useless semantic game: do you define middle-class as however median-income earners live locally, or do you define middle-class as an objective standard of living (based on national norms) and then check what income is necessary to obtain it?

Housing is also sticky. Many (not all) $78k earners locked in mortgages or rent control back when that was a lot of money, and live much better than any newcomer could on 2x that today.

Lower/middle/upper class is not equally populated, so a median income is useless when trying to define a "middle class" income; going by that would put folks in poverty in the "middle class" in a lot of the world.

According to Pew, 67% to 200% of the median income defines middle class. For a $78k median income, middle class is $52k to $156k. For a family with both parents working for identical salaries, middle class starts at $104k.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com