San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest ever recorded: data | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco now at 35% office vacancy rate, highest ever recorded: data

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129 pointskumarski186 comments

I love SF but it's as bad as PDX these days. Both cities are falling apart in weird ways. You'll be in a restaurant and a deranged homeless fentanyl addict will walk in and start screaming at a waiter for food. Most of the customers pretend like it's not happening and some act like they're proud of it or snicker. The staff has to bribe junkies with food to get them to leave. Weirdos snatch stuff off of shelves in the grocery stores. The alarms go off and no one does anything. People in self checkout look scared. It's surreal.

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel all over the world and hands down the most dangerous feeling city I’ve been in is SF. I have no idea why people want to visit there, let alone live there.

In fact the only cities I’ve been to where I felt like I needed to really have my guard up and head on a swivel were US cities. Not that I don’t keep my awareness up in other places but something about the US sets off my spidey senses. NY felt fine but SF, Miami, Buffalo all felt iffy.

*clarification: I’m not saying that SF is the most dangerous city in the world, but of the cities I have been to around the world, it has felt the least safe.

Definitely do not come to Brazilian big cities then. It is another order of magnitude more dangerous.

Especially for women, yeah. I grew up in rough neighborhoods but you need to know the area or have a guide and a good rep doesn't hurt.

Yeah, was looking to see if this comment existed. Sao Paolo feels like one of the richest cities in the world surrounded by one of the poorest cities in the world. I've been to more than 50 countries and hundreds of big cities, and Sao Paolo feels like it has the craziest gradient between rich and poor. I'm not even sure San Francisco would make the top 10.

(High up would be: Sao Paolo, Rio, Bangalore, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Riyadh, ...)

SF isn't Haiti but it is in decline. It's sad because it was so cool back in the 1990's and 2000's.

I think the counterintuitive thing about bringing up Brazilian cities here is that central Sao Paolo (where just the central part has about 3x the population of San Francisco) feels richer than San Francisco. And the favelas on the edges, which have a population larger than the whole Bay Area, feel poorer than almost anywhere in the world, with nowhere in the US that can hold a candle to such. And just the favelas of Sao Paolo have a population larger than most US states.

Cities wax and wane. SF boomed from the gold rush, 1880s-1906, 1920s, 1940s, 60s, and as you noted, dot com period. In between it’s varied from stasis (1870s, 50s) to quite grim (30s, 80s — the latter much worse than today).

The swings in Silicon Valley and other parts of the Bay Area have been much less extreme in these regards. Most of the wealth is in the Valley, just more diffuse and harder to see.

Yeah, it still sucks though. The US is going through a slump and it really shows in some of our major cities.

> The US is going through a slump

The US economy is growing gangbusters but 40+ years of "Reagan revolution" have really taken their toll. That ideology has infused many with the belief that if something is broken it should not be fixed; rather that its problems mean that further intervention will simply make things worse.

Even SF, that supposed "liberal" city (whatever that means), suffers from this sickness.

Yeah I guess that's what I mean. The US economy is doing well but not good. I feel like people have less these days. Business is great but the middle class is evaporating. For the average worker it seems pointless to engage with our great economy. Incentives are all out of whack.

What happened to you in Bangalore?

Nothing. To be clear, I wasn't talking about actual danger, as much as the felt gradients in rich and poor between the places, often in a small distance. And the gap between, say, the Infosys campus, and bits of Bangalore only a couple kilometers away is huge. Kind of the GINI of a city...

Lagos is also high up there... Had some friends basically get robbed by the police on their first night in town. :p

Haven't been, but would have expected such from things I've heard. But corruption and inequality to a large extent vary independently. There's some correlation, but not as much as one might expect. Case in point: the Balkans are very corrupt, but inequality isn't especially high.

Maybe the Balkans just didn't have the time to reach those levels yet, because the tendency is there. Case in point, Romania, where more and more pieces of land (city, national parks, whatever) get fenced off and used for the whims of the ruling kleptocracy, while (certain) suburbs are decaying year after year by every indicator.

Romania is actually the least corrupt Balkan country (if one counts them as Balkan). In my experience, former east-block countries tend to have high corruption, but relatively good infrastructure and relatively low inequality. They're fairly unique in where they sit on the development ladder, because it seems like quashing corruption is the major missing piece to reaching prosperity. (Whereas in many / most poor countries, there's a lack of intellectual capital, and solving education and growing the professional sector is at best a multi-generational project.)

Riyadh is dangerous and has a clear gradient between the poor and the rich?

I stayed in the Al Bat'ha district when I was there, where there were virtually no short-term visitors (can't say "tourists" since Saudi Arabia didn't have tourist visas; I was speaking at a conference, but stayed for an extra week). It never felt dangerous, but there was a massive gap between ritzy central Riyadh and the market district. Close to half of the population of Riyad are guest workers with limited rights and low salaries; I can't remember if that seemed to be the reason for the gap. This was also 20 years ago, so I don't have any sense for how it's developed since, but I'd be surprised if it has changed.

20 years ago? Man Riyadh is a completely different city now, even locals from other cities can't believe how much it has changed.

This the first result from a quick search about it https://www.visitsaudi.com/en/see-do/destinations/riyadh

And the 40% of the city that are Desi immigrants also enjoy that improvement? There were very nice things in the city 20 years ago (and all of the cities I listed); they just weren't available to a major chunk of the population. I'm skeptical that that part has changed in Riyadh?

Things did definitely improve for them though the gap remains. Still, the gap does not mean it’s dangerous. I haven’t been to Riadh but if it’s similar to Doha/Dubai, then you can walk into a worker’s neighborhood at anytime with no consequences.

A good friend went with his buddy to São Paulo couple of decades ago, as part of a multi-country holiday trip.

As they got out of the taxi in front of the hotel, someone got shot further down that same street. They checked in, and went for some food. When they got back they learned the people in the room next door had just gotten all their stuff stolen.

They left right away after that.

Sure this isn't a unique experience, but coming from Norway it was pretty far from what we're used to.

Coming from the United States this is pretty far from what I'm used to.

You're not crazy, that's the way SF is these days. It's the same with PDX. People on the MAX look scared. If you take a bus heading out to Gresham things get super sketchy. The East Coast is okay. NY is cool but Baltimore is nuts and then D.C. is hella cool.

You’re fear mongering and spewing ignorance. I live in Portland and it’s not even close to what you say. It sounds like you’re scared and pushing it off on everyone else. The only thing to be really scared of is the police here because they by and large don’t help anything or anyone. They’re also rife with white supremacists who can’t be fired because of their union and an absolutely pathetic wormlike mayor. This same dialogue blames “homelessness” for downtown being dead instead of overpriced rents and an absolute lack of culture that never recovered from covid.

My coworker who lives in Vancouver, Washington calls it the Portland war zone. When the riots were going on he would say I’m not sure if I see smoke or tear gas over there but it’s definitely not fog.

They were protests not riots. The police were gassing non-violent protests in residential neighborhoods. This is exactly the fear mongering I’m talking about. Some people who you “know” have second hand information, or just made things up, and you’re peddling it third hand. Once again, there were no riots, and anyone who stated this is lying or being fed bullshit from their TV news.

The protests were protests, the riots were riots. I knew some of the people at both. It was half panic and half LARPing. I had to work because I was put my wife through college at the time.

I’ve been visiting Portland since 2002. I knew all the old school business owners and locals. I was at Occupy Wall Street PDX. I lived there off and on for ten years after 2008. For the first half I worked in Chinatown. For the second half I worked with police, hospitals, social workers, homeless shelters, etc. through Covid and the George Floyd riots. Cops still do stuff but their role has been limited by public opinion and they’re trying to keep crime stats low so the turn break-ins into welfare calls. The transplants after 2014ish turned Portland into a mess.

> In fact the only cities I’ve been to where I felt like I needed to really have my guard up and head on a swivel were US cities.

The US is a big place with a lot of diversity. I've been to many US and European cities and they all seem to have sections that are safe and those that are not safe.

Most Eastern European cities are safe. They don't have big immigration, either.

Most western European cities that I have visited are safe and they have big immigration. I think low immigration might be a factor in some cases, but the big thing is having a working social security net that gives people opportunities when they're down. That improves safety in all cases.

>big thing is having a working social security net that gives people opportunities when they're down.

Bruxelles, Amsterdam, Paris have welfare. And that attracts the wrong people. I wouldn't want to wander in many neighborhoods in those cities. Budapest, Warsaw, Bucharest, Belgrade, Sofia, Prague are much safer.

> Bucharest, Belgrade, Sofia

the problem in eastern europe isn’t violence. it’s cars.

the deaths/injuries in those specific countries from car accidents is greater than general deaths/injuries in western countries from any reason (violence, cars, etc).

Most of car related deaths or accidents are happening outside of cities.

You'll be most probably fine even in the sketchy neighborhoods in Sofia, e.g.

https://youtu.be/2qmpfsW-J34?si=wR7FyFv8ocnVCJLC

The car accidents problem is real, though ... there's the half-serous saying that accidents of this type are our form of mass-shootings.

It's not welfare that attracts people but the better economic prospects. No idea about Bruxelles and Amsterdam, but I work in Paris and it is quite safe.

> The wrong people

TIL I am "the wrong people". Ok then. Have a nice life.

I can't comment about other capitals but there are entire neighborhoods in Bucharest where police just doesn't go in. Same in Brasov - and these are just my two Romanian examples. I know it's common to blame the immigration for the issues, but let's not forget part of Western immigration also comes from the Eastern Europe.

If there are entire neighborhoods in Bucharest and Brasov, then name them. I suspect that this is complete hyperbole, because when I think of the worst and most shunned neighbourhood in Cluj – Pata Rât where the Roma population was gathered to dwell on a rubbish dump – it isn’t a dangerous, no-go area by USA or South American standards at all. I and fellow cyclists have often passed through Pata Rât at night when returning from cycling trips in the surrounding mountains, felt no danger when stopping to chat with some kids in the street curious about the bike, and the real danger is merely the fumes of burning plastic. Quite a few tourists and Erasmus students also go to get a look at that neighbourbood.

Living there, I don't believe you. I went often in Ferentari and never had trouble.

This really isn't true for much of Europe. There aren't 'dangerous areas' in Germany, Ireland or the UK, that compare to the extreme risk profile of skid row in LA or San Francisco, or the projects of many American cities. The degree of ghettoisation in the US, as well as of course the wealth disparity, outstrips anything in most of Western Europe.

One notable exception would be a 100 metre stretch of road near the Frankfurt central station. Berlin is safe, but one or two places are getting sketchy.

A part of the issue, allegedly, is that the Taliban cut Europe’s heroin supplies when it burnt the poppy fields, and addicts have turned to harder drugs. You certainly see a lot more broken people around, even if they don’t seem dangerous.

what is a harder drug than heroin?

Fentanyl is 20-40x more potent.

Krokodil

I’d have to disagree with you on the stretch of road near Frankfurt HBF.

Sure, it’s a tad dicey in comparison to other streets in Frankfurt but it’s in no way comparable to what I’ve experienced in SF.

From my experience (I visit multiple times a year as my dad lives there) the homeless people and drug addicts in Frankfurt largely keep to themselves and just sit outside the subway together, albeit taking drugs.

It was for me. The main difference was that it was a small stretch of a side street at 11PM versus a whole city block in the middle of the day. SF was bad!

That’s fair, everyone’s experience is unique to them I guess. Maybe you had a unlucky encounter. I generally feel pretty safe around the area at any time of day/night. SF on the other hand, I definitely felt a bit like I had to be on guard most of the time.

I’ll never forget the fact that the lady in the Thai restaurant I visited literally locked the door and you had to knock in order to enter. Craziest thing I’ve ever seen. I feel safer wandering the streets of Delhi and Meerut in the early hours than SF at noon.

+1 for weirdest vibe city being SF. The wealth disparity there is enormous, and evident to see in the faces of the people who walk the streets there: people adorned in designer hoodies and expensive sneakers, exuding an air of smugness as they sip their artisanal lattes, pretending the rest of world doesn't exist, as they walk past an alleyway where homeless people stare out at them hungrily. It was surreal. I've never been in a city where your average pedestrian is supremely pleased with themselves for existing in it.

I saw more humanity in an LA bus station, where random strangers traded USB battery packs whilst waiting for the bus, and the bus driver himself breaking his back to haul in and strap down a disabled person to their seat, and waving on the others in who didn't have the right change.

While I was in SF this wealth disparity feeling was present, but it was an order of magnitude less than what I saw in Mumbai. There you have 30+ story building acting as the personal residence for a multi bilionare (complete with 2 helipads) and across the street a family of 3 living on a "tent", cooking food on a makeshift fire made from trash and a baby drinking milk out of a transparent plastic bag - all of this under the nauseating smell of human feces. This wasnt a one off thing, its all over the place.

And yet, our tv stations and metro editions of newspapers go on and on about the spirit of Mumbai.

Still, there’s no city like Mumbai in the whole of India. It’s literally got something for everyone.

On the positive side it's a whole lot better than 20 years ago where there was virtually no middle class in India at all.

It comes down to the part of the city you visit. LA, Sac, Sf all have similar areas to what you saw in SF.

They have other nice areas too, where the residents can ignore the problems that concentrated in certain neighborhoods. And they continue opposing building up single family home areas.

All major west coast cities have massive disparities and homeless problems.

And even other cities like Phoenix have big homeless problems. But building cities super spread out does serve to make the homeless problem go elsewhere, I.e a downtownish area.

I felt thee same. 50+ countries, and the only place where I was genuinely scared? San Francisco. It looked like the intro of a dystopian scifi movie.

While we're sharing anecdotes, I've visited 30+ cities. I've been SF twice, for 10 days total.

SF the only one I've been attacked and had car broken into. Two separate occasions!

The contrast with the wealth had a dystopic feel.

If you write, “In fact the only cities I’ve been to where I felt like I needed to really have my guard up and head on a swivel were US cities”, I wonder if you have ever been to, say, Argentina (Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario), South Africa (Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town), Peru (Lima), or Kenya (Nairobi). There it is one’s local contacts who encourage one to be vigilant and plan routes across the city carefully. The US has wacky urban safety issues, but it is just one member of a whole set of countries with urban safety issues.

It’s likely that none of these other countries suffer from American exceptionalism.

I assume it was intentional, but the irony of this comment is fantastic.

You're correct, I don't have any experience in those cities. I would expect those places to be sketchy (maybe not Lima but today I learned I guess) - I think what made my SF experience worse is that its a well known city in the richest country in the world and it's awful.

I've been to and grown up in a bunch of those African cities. As long as you don't go to dodgy areas you're perfectly fine, even dirt-poor areas are fine. Sure your houses are little mini fortifications and security is everywhere in "rich" neighborhoods. .. but it's a nothing burger for the most part.

I have cycled Africa extensively and I would agree for most cities on the continent. Africa is very safe in spite of dumb stereotypes, even when one is entering cities through the sprawling impoverished neighborhoods, and locals don't warn a visitor against anything. But Nairobi and South African cities have a mugging problem that all local people showed great concern about, and sometimes "dodgy area" is a central district of the city.

I guess it depends a bit on what you compare it to but the murder rate in Cape Town is about 10x that in SF and both seem quite bad to me as a Brit.

How's Monrovia?

It has been a few years, but I don’t remember it as any different from the previous West African capitals (Dakar, Bissau, Conakry, Freetown) that I had cycled into.

Well that's what happens when you let a country run without social security, and with more focus on building "an AI to change your hairdo" rather than working at improving society...

They are living the new American dream.

> I love SF but it's as bad as PDX these days.

For those like me who hate abbreviations used out of context, PDX here refers to the Portland International Airport, Oregon. I presume that the commenter really meant the city of Portland, Oregon. Why it is so hard to type extra 5 characters is beyond me.

Using airport codes as shorthand for their parent cities is an incredibly incredibly common convention. Well and truly established.

> Using airport codes as shorthand for their parent cities is an incredibly incredibly common convention. Well and truly established.

Not many HN people, especially from outside of the US, can immediately recognize PDX. Besides, the commenter I was responding to used SF for San Francisco. For consistency sake they should had used SFO then. :-)

It’s one of those weird things we do in America. San Francisco is SF, Los Angeles is LA, San Diego is SD, San Antonio is SA, and Dallas is DFW. You might hear those said in conversation. Austin is ATX, Houston is HOU, and Portland is PDX. Those are more likely to be referenced in written text rather than said out loud.

Not all of those are airport codes. I suppose it’s due to the fact that Portland is just one word, and it doesn’t contract as nicely as the other cities.

Oddly, though, you never see ORD used for Chicago. It means the airport, and only the airport.

And somewhat the same with LA. LA is the city, LAX is the airport. You don't really see LAX used for the city.

> you never see ORD used for Chicago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33277163

> I wouldn't say we always call Chicago ORD, but it definitely happens.

Yeah, agreed.

CHI, yes, sometimes.

But never ORD - or MDW or GYY. Although CGX would be hilarious. :)

> Using airport codes as shorthand for their parent cities is an incredibly incredibly common convention. Well and truly established.

I've lived in San Diego, the Bay Area, and NYC for extended periods of time, but I don't think I've ever heard someone referring to those cities by their airport codes. Maybe you've lived in different parts of the country?

It's an incredibly common well established convention within a group of pilots, controllers, airline workers, hostesses, etc.

They're a country without borders that span the globe .. and unless you're part of "the group" (be that C programmers, Ham radio operators, pilots, Code Talkers, et al.) you'll rarely hear their jargon.

> It's an incredibly common well established convention within a group of pilots, controllers, airline workers, hostesses, etc.

In other words, it's _not_ an incredibly common well established convention. Thanks for clarifying my confusion.

Within a group, it is.

Ditto, for example, 'klick' for kilomtre in certain military and gaming circles.

You might argue against "incredibly common" wrt general global population, the counter is that it's incredibly common within a globe spanning subgroup.

You'd fail to make the case against "well established" unless you'd care to argue that jargon of some five+ decades isn't well established.

I dare say there are conventions that you would argue are common that have near zero reach outside of the USofA .. handegg for example.

Is this site made up of commenters from the "global spanning subgroup" you're referring to? No? Then how is that relevant? Mathematics researchers also span the globe. Would you say that "algebraic variety" is some incredibly common terminology just because it's common within a globe spanning subgroup?

Anyway I think I'll bow out at this point. I'm not finding this discussion especially enlightening.

> Would you say that "algebraic variety" is some incredibly common terminology just because it's common within a globe spanning subgroup?

Leaving aside that it came up often enough back in the early 1980s when I was working on the first draft of Magma (known then as Cayley) and having discussions with John Cannon, Charles Leedham-Green and George Havas, I would not say that it's as common among mathematicians to use the term as it is among air travellers and pilots to use city codes.

All air travel workers deal with destination codes, generally on a daily basis.

Not all mathematicians work with Abstract Algebras.

> I'm not finding this discussion especially enlightening.

Agreed. Your example certainly struggled for relevance.

It's funny you take issue with my example because it's apparently not as common amongst "mathematicians" as the other terminology is amongst air travel workers. Of course, the terminology "algebraic variety" _is_ common amongst the subgroup of mathematicians who work in abstract algebras (basically by definition). In fact, it's common amongst students studying abstract algebra as well. However you define it, it's certainly a group of people that spans the globe. So it _does_ fit your definition of "incredibly common". I find this funny because I wouldn't consider it common terminology. I guess you've shown me that it really is.

Anyway I think most people mean "common" to say "you have some reasonable expectation that it will be understood". That's what I certainly mean. So yeah I think I'll stick with my original point here:

> In other words, it's _not_ an incredibly common well established convention. Thanks for clarifying my confusion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38530035

Anyway I'll have to log out after this comment since I feel myself getting dumber. Apparently I don't have enough self-control here to extract myself from this discussion in any other way.

Correct. He's ignoring context.

It's not immediately obvious to a non US resident what that would be so a common courtesy would be to describe what the initialism was on its first use.

I wouldn't expect anyone to know what BNE (Brisbane) or DAR (Darwin) meant at first value.

Common courtesy? Proper etiquette is to ask instead of assume and complain.

I and most disagree:

https://www.mcc.gov/resources/story/section-writing-guide-go...

You can disagree all you like, you're still being pedantic. This is an informal conversation. You can pickup on context clues or ask.

Correct. Locals in Portland call it PDX.

You’re in tech and you hate abbreviations? That must be rough.

I assumed it was to rapidly clarify that it was Portland, Oregon and not Portland, Maine

Of course Portland, OR would be quick enough to type too

You get what you vote for.

coldtake

Well, SF did make a bunch of offenses practically legal.You can steal almost whatever you want and do serious property damage and only get a citation. You can do this over and over and still not get prosecuted.

They’re trying to weather the storm and keep their crime stats low. It’s a political game.

Remote work is only part of the story. Having lived there for close to a decade, my take is that there is an accountability vacuum and rampant corruption among city leadership.

For example, the 10-B program has turned the SFPD into a legalized quasi-mafia. The only way to protect your business in SF is to hire off-duty cops at their overtime wage plus a 15% admin fee. The city has no hope of recovery while things like this continue to be tolerated.

San Francisco overbuilt in high-rise office buildings. There's no good reason to concentrate workers that much. Work from home works in tech.

AI, reasonably enough, doesn't need that many people. That's kind of the point.

Are residential prices, both buy and rent, dropping yet?

Eh. The world will partially go back to office. Offices in SF will be filled again one day.

What will fill offices is a string of big bankruptcies that allow new owners to lower their cost basis and offer cheaper rent.

Preferably offices get mass converted into housing, property prices fall and cities can become thriving, beautiful social hubs with better infrastructure and lower pollution.

> Preferably offices get mass converted into housing

in some places it’s cheaper to tear down the building than convert. that’s how unrealistic/expensive that idea is.

Then that.

People say this but it so rarely happens (tearing down skyscrapers) that I really question the veracity of it

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_voluntarily_...

> Work from home works in tech.

Could you please let big tech know, they seem to be ignorant or intellectually dishonest on this point.

Yeah, has to be "intellectual dishonesty".

God forbid there might be, maybe, a small option of admitting that WFH might not have so much benefits as HNers claim. ;)

It's not like engineers would ever be... intelectually dishonest.

Every study of productivity during WFH of tech workers that I can find suggests it is, on average, higher.

Every study on worker happiness suggests that it is, on average, higher.

Formal studies on open plan all suggest, for different reasons, that it makes people less productive, yet that is what management prefer. They're just dishonest about their motivation.

Being a monopoly and minting monopoly-level profits allows you to ignore otherwise rational market signals.

Google has 92% marketshare in search, Apple has 82% of global smartphone profits, etc.So they can ignore the rational pull of a cheaper distributed talent market.

Until public market investors get upset they’re paying $300k/yr for state school grads to do banal project management jobs inside the most expensive real estate on earth, nothing will change.

> no good reason to concentrate workers that much

It doesn't and then it dominates.

"Metropolitan areas with a human capital stock one standard deviation below the mean realize no productivity gain, while doubling density in metropolitan areas with a human capital stock one standard deviation above the mean yields productivity benefits that are about twice the average. These patterns are particularly pronounced in industries where the exchange of information and sharing of ideas are important parts of the production process" [1].

[1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...

"Human capital stock". Every time someone says "human capital" some HR drone loses what's left of their soul.

Should they prefer the term stock of human resources?

Data is from 2001-2005. Zoom didn't come out until 2012.

Nobody ever wanted the techies to be seen. Offices are for sales, marketing and finance and those people were in SF in droves, fully looking the part.

I'm on the hunt for office space in the city, scoping out deals and such. The real numbers, according to folks I've spoken with on the ground, are much higher. Many units simply aren't listed or are in a "limbo" state.

In a number of buildings vacancy rate is 70%+.

I've been asking shop and restaurant owners how their business is doing during lunch - down 70%-80%.

Buildings that were originally built at 70/sqft are now selling at 40 or less. For real estate investors, this can be realized to a loss of 30-40%.

From what I can tell, many companies that remain in SF aren't renting in FiDi but are choosing to rent out entire buildings in Hayes and the Mission.

It's bleak, and FWIW, having just gone through YC, there aren't going to be too many AI companies to "save the day."

On the flip side, the city does seem cleaner and occasionally more vibrant. Market street is cleaner now than it was during the summer (might just be the rainy weather). The open air drug market has seemingly moved onto a side street and the "we robbed a walgreens" shops near the bart stations in the mission have also been cleaned out, for the most part.

FiDi?

"Financial District"

Much of the most profitable activity in San Francisco has historically happened in a small part of downtown.

Financial District

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_District,_San_Fran...

The improvements you describe in your last paragraph can be attributed to APEC, which was a few weeks ago. There is no reason to believe that they will persist.

It is all back now. Imagine walking your kids to school around this.

https://twitter.com/war24182236/status/1732091670479634695

I don’t think anything changed in the Mission on account of APEC.

The mission improvements have been ongoing for several months at this point. Supposedly crime is getting better.

Reading these comments is absolutely wild. I am living the exact opposite experience in Fort Worth, the fastest growing big city in the US. More than 60% of our net increase per year is from California. My son tells me more than half of some of his classes are people recently relocated from CA. Office space remains well filled even with remote work and they cannot seem to improve the roads or build new schools fast enough. About every 3-4 years it seems like they are constructing a new enormous high school here. Residential real estate was soaring here until they started building the dozens and dozens of giant apartment complexes.

I encourage anyone with the means to visit San Francisco. It has some nice parts, for sure, but unfortunately the social problems are just as bad as you read about. It is a little shocking, honestly.

Sounds like a good opportunity to rezone and modify some buildings to residential.

Precisely, but instead city councils will provide incentives to businesses to push their staff back to the office sigh

But... why? Why not incentivize foot traffic via new interesting small businesses and vibrant culture? Why must it be offices always.

Rossmann had some rant recently about NYC, talking about how the loans developers get when building out buildings tend to demand a certain minimum rent (or, if you don't meet that, you gotta basically show up with more capital). This leads to the whole "empty spaces but rent not dropping much" thing.

I get there are costs with having people in the building but at one point it would be nice for society to just be like "let's not leave stuff entirely empty"

Bc us society is relying on dependency: ppl will depend on cars to move/buy groceries, ppl will depend on jobs bc they neeed health insurance, ppl will depend on office working bc they should depend on cars and businesses will depend on office bc govt will get money.

They'll try and fail. Probably repeatedly. This is much bigger then them. There's a new reality where successful companies no longer cling to the past of overpriced office real estate that is populated by overpriced staff that commutes to town for hours every day.

That was stupid before covid and there are now plenty of companies that grew past that and no longer need that. The next logical step here is that investors get the hint that their investments spending most of their money on SFO real estate (housing and offices) is not great from an ROI point of view. That too was true before covid but now much more obviously so as there are now a lot of companies with a lot less expenses on that front and a lot more runway. Paying people extra just to show up in an office isn't going to be the smart move here.

A friend is constantly bugging me about moving to SF. I understand it is tech central but the PR of the city is just really not great currently.

> A friend is constantly bugging me about moving to SF. I understand it is tech central but the PR of the city is just really not great currently.

Currently? The place is unrecognizable to us Californians since the late 90s; it's been a cesspool created by a long series of events, which at it's core has to do with wealth inequality, and overt NIMBY-ism and gentrification coupled with mental health issues and ends with substance abuse and crime: and it's been like this for some time, but it's only now that the monied interests are having to deal with the very real prospect of having land/building depreciate they call foul and are using the media to leverage the undoing of WFH.

This is big tech's blight, and I want nothing more for them to finally own up to this and do something about it, instead of enabling the squalor that they have created: even as a person in tech it's hard not to give credence to the techno-feudalism arguments many of it's detractors point out as the inevitable outcome from constant wealth and power consolidation given this reality.

>which at it's core has to do with wealth inequality, and overt NIMBY-ism and gentrification

Doesn't SF have the highest concentration of leftists and progresives in the whole US?

Do you mean progressives?

But even so, those are loosely held ideals as the last few decades have shown that such trivial things will not get in the way of protecting their wealth. Idealism is set aside when it comes to ensuring inexplicable perpetual growth in one's most valuable asset.

>Do you mean progressives

That's what I meant. My English is a bit broken.

As I understand it, SF has enough progressives that, when other cities bus their homeless drug addicts to SF, SF doesn't bus them back.

But not enough progressives to get those homeless drug addicts homes and rehab, so they stop stealing things and shitting in the street.

Don't forget: needles and feces

I have a hard time saying that this is big tech's fault, or that tech should try to come to the rescue. Especially when San Francisco has been so overtly anti-tech.

Examples: https://missionlocal.org/2017/06/queers-hate-techies-gay-sha... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_tech_bus_protest...

> The place is unrecognizable to us Californians since the late 90s

That frightens me, because the last time I was in San Francisco was in the late 90s for an event at the Moscone Center. It was so shockingly bad then that I've avoided going back. The poverty, filth and drugs were a nightmare. I got followed down the street by a very angry man yelling at me, seemingly for the crime of smiling and nodding at him as I walked past. If those were the good old days, it must be bad.

Its still a good place to build your career and connections. Im older now and am remote (go onsite in SF 4 weeks a year), but regret not doing it when i was younger. It still has a lot of tech folks, a lot of tech money, networking opportunities, and tons of vibrant pockets. It's definitely grimy. But i walk to work and back each day Im here and see hundreds of others doing the same. There are literally always groups of workers or friends at bars and restaurants as i walk around in the evening. You can tell the city is partially hollowed out but it feels quite a long way from dead to me.

I have kids now, and affordance aside the family opportunities here are sparse. So for me the time has passed. But I think anyone building their career in tech should at least consider a temporary stint in SF, or perhaps somewhere similarly tech dense (NY? Seattle?).

News like this remind me of the song "Why" by Chat Pile[1], which is almost always gives me a frisson. It's a damn shame how slow the bureaucratic cogs turn, all the while real people are suffering.

---

[1]: https://genius.com/Chat-pile-why-lyrics

It’s a scary place unlike Mumbai and Lima. SF is in the US a developed country Unlike Mumbai and other cities mentioned. For another, I was peeing my pants when I Witnessed the brutality of some homeless junkies In the streets. I recommend everyone to visit SF, trip advisor Does not have sections about what really happens in Restaurants. Imagine going to eat breakfast at a place Highly recommended by trip advisor. Entering Sitting and ordering breakfast, then realising The place is filled with homeless people Who occupy seats. This is fine had it not been For the stench of urine smell and the fear that Someone might have a gun and simply spray his Bullets

There is also fairly steady migration out of the city [0]. Looks to be related to COVID policy although there is a longer term trend.

If 10% of the population has left, there is a bias towards office workers leaving because they'd probably tend to have more money, WFH policies and people were building based on population increases ... 35% vacancy rate sounds pretty reasonable.

[0] https://sf.gov/data/san-francisco-population-and-migration

Well crime and homelessness also probably has a lot to do with it...

That's exactly what it is. That coupled with high rent. You can pay an arm and a leg just subletting a single room in the Sunset district.

"Looks to be related to COVID policy"

COVID policy? Isn't that history now?

It is historic data. We might expect to see history reflected in it.

Rookie numbers; we need those rates higher.

It has been years since I looked at their data. The blame is not entirely San Frans. It is in majority the California government's policies which are crushing the city. though don't think san fran municipal politicians are angels, they have some serious things to resolve as well.

I look at the politics and California fell into a Coleman Young trap. You as a politician see a problem like homelessness and you want to help but you don't see the big picture of the consequences of certain policies. Which often are counter intuitive, but politicians never actually build 'tests' to verify their decisions are actually helping as opposed to harming.

San Fran is 100% going to end up like Detroit.

To prevent this decline is basically impossible. Looking at California, their next election is in 2026, Gavin Newsom is out but he will be replaced by someone who will never in a million years make the decisions which must be made. They are ideologically opposed to them and therefore the collapse is certain.

Nor does anyone of that ideology want to ever hear what the fixes are, so how do you enact positive improvement? you don't. You watch the city collapse and maybe decades later someone will be able to solve the problems.

What a terrible situation to watch the collapse happen and the humanity consequences. These homeless are your fellow human beings but you just step over them.

"San Fran is 100% going to end up like Detroit."

While Michigan and California both have had historicals booms and busts, I'm not sure the economic comparison is apt.

Detroit lost much of its manufacturing base, particularly automotive. The Bay Area is still doing reasonably well with software and biotech among other industries. It's also a gateway to Asia. Maybe if Google, Apple, the Chinese economy etc. all collapse, SF will collapse as well, and who is the mayor probably won't matter.

>Detroit lost much of its manufacturing base, particularly automotive.

Detroit the city lost it's manufacturing base to the suburbs. People blame the interstate system here. But when you consider metro detroit, there was never a decline like you imagine.

>The Bay Area is still doing reasonably well with software and biotech among other industries.

Remote work and people fleeing the bay area is identical to the 'white flight' to the suburbs of detroit. The bay area is basically in 1964 detroit post 'i have a dream' speech.

Now, I don't think there will be race riots in San Fran, I still haven't figured out who it will be. I have an expectation the autistic/LGBT riots will be. But you never know BLM type stuff might spark a race riot.

>It's also a gateway to Asia. Maybe if Google, Apple, the Chinese economy etc. all collapse, SF will collapse as well, and who is the mayor probably won't matter.

What you're looking for here is the capital flight restrictions by China. The move out of China by companies especially Apple.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbulloch/2016/11/29/why-i...

I ought to provide a better link but this was happening BEFORE covid, trump's embargos like against SMIC, biden's embargos. China's ongoing collapse.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-06/china-s-e...

Mind you, San Fran will always exist. Just as Detroit still exists.

And this right here is why you keep hearing RTO pushes from C-Levels and corporate boards.

Those folks all have investments in commercial real estate that they would like to not become worthless. What's wasting your employee's life time on a commute compared to that?

We've (workers, non-CRE owners) collectively known this all along. What I don't understand is how the green/net-zero lobby is relatively quiet about fewer people using transport to go to work. It makes far more sense for WFH to have been the default long before the covid lockdowns, frankly I'm sad that that's what it took to get us here. It shows how much hypocrisy there is about all the climate efforts if those same people aren't clamoring for WFH

The calculation is not entirely straightforward because of the efficiency of heating or cooling private homes during the day vs doing the same for offices.

Is WFH automatically greener than an office?

It means heating/cooling many buildings rather than a few, many individuals cooking alone etc.

It seems it is better in the USA [1] and the UK [2] though there is considerable variance when comparing several European countries [3].

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/working-remotely-...

[2] https://circularecology.com/news/the-carbon-emissions-of-hom...

[3] https://www.vodafone-institut.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/...

Are you forgetting the enormous amount of carbon emissions from commuting?

> Are you forgetting the enormous amount of carbon emissions from commuting?

Or the large scale logistics to service, maintain, supply, and feed these metropolis': it's a centralized relic of a bygone era, and the sooner we accelerate WFH and actually frame it as way to counter-act climate change this will never gain traction. Succumbing to the landed gentry's will has been a story as old as feudalism itself, but this has to be something that must be collectively fought for.

I've lived in commercial buildings in a city cental, and at night or on Sundays when I was there entirely on my own all the heaters/ac heat pumps would still be going all day/night: and all the lighting and electronic devices plugged in were still whirring away. I got really drunk one night and lost my keys walking up the stairs (the elevator was still on just not accessible from my side of the building at night) and while trying to retrace my steps I realized how deafening how the sound of so many devices can be if you actually pay attention to it with no other ambient/background noise is there to mute it.

You could read the first part of any of the three links I provided to answer that.

Even if an office is more energy efficient to get overall energy saving an office worker should switch power at home off going to the office. Which not always happening for couple reasons: a family member staying at home, lack of remote controlled thermostat which allows to start cooling/heating one hour before coming back home, in wet climate one have to run heating 24x7 to avoid mold growth (because of water condensed on cold surfaces). AFIK it is common to have AC or heating running at home even if all occupants are at the office.

In much of Europe higher energy prices mean timer-controlled heating/cooling has been normal for over 50 years. Something like this [1], combined with a thermostat.

A newer system can have different temperatures. I'm in a cold climate, but when my heating is "off" it's actually set to heat if the temperature falls below 8°C. (Probably it should be higher, but it's an apartment surrounded by others, so the temperature will never fall that low anyway.)

These factors are probably why there's significant variation within European countries.

[1] https://www.wolseley.co.uk/product/danfoss-randall-3020p-24-...

I think crucial over the medium-term is the comparative difficulty of decarbonising building heating and home-to-work transport at scale, through what technologies that is achieved, and the energy intensity of those technologies. It also depends on house size and grid design.

My understanding is that the annual kWh energy consumption of a heat pump will be slightly greater that an electric vehicle. But most two-adult families each have their own car, doubling the energy demand. It also require a lot more energy to build an electric vehicle than a heat pump, and requires more scarce minerals - with their own security and environmental problems. But then if people commute by walking, cycling or train, that's a very different calculation.

I heat and cool my home whether I am there or not. Being in an office isn’t going to change the fact that I want my home comfortable all of the time unless I’m in vacation.

I think most people do not operate this way. All you have to do is look at electricity usage charts to see that ac goes of during the day and turns back on when people get home.

Why not significantly reduce your electricity use and carbon footprint by not doing that?

I work from home so this is all hypothetical and am not particularly concerned with my own carbon footprint overall. I live in Phoenix and am on a time of use plan that encourages (cheaper) high energy usage during most of the day and discourages (expensive) high energy from 3-8 I believe. This basically means that I would be heavily using energy until 3 which would be the majority of my shift (I leave at 4). Combining this with gas for commute (approximately 20-25 miles each way) and I just don't see any scenario where not cooling my house during the day is economically beneficial to me.

The same people are clamouring for WFH, but their efforts aren't reported.

Green politics are still considered fringe by the media, so the only net zero announcements you see are from Big Dog politicians - who probably aren't particularly committed, but are saying the words because they know it's going to be someone else's problem 25 years from now.

Also, a real estate crash would nuke the economy. This is fine if you think a property-first economy - which is pretty much what we have - is insane and unsustainable. But it would still come with huge collateral damage.

A soft landing/winding down/repurposing would make more sense, but the people who make the big decisions don't have the motivation or the insight to make that likely.

I suspect most of the people here have investments in commercial real estate, in the form of various diversified funds.

Local government, small business owner are have a tendency to against WFH too:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/13/amazon-tax-incentives-in-new...

> This includes up to $1.2 billion worth of refundable tax credits through New York State’s Excelsior Program based on a percentage of salaries Amazon expects to pay employees there for the next 10 years.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/25/facebook-...

> Tech firms are known for their lavish meals, but city says it damages local businesses

I keep hearing this explanation (executives want to keep commercial real estate values up) but it has yet to make sense to me. Can someone lay out an example scenario?

"Having investments in commercial real estate" isn't sufficient explanation on its own, IMO. It's certainly true that a lot of executives have commercial real estate investments. It would be weird if they didn't, because real estate is a pretty common thing to have in an investment portfolio. But those investments are going to be diversified across a bunch of commercial real estate, little or none of which has any relationship to the executive's company (because otherwise it wouldn't be very well diversified).

It's not about their company and the building they reside in. Wealthy people operate as a hive mind. A network. A dive in commercial real estate is a hive problem. They're all panicking for each other because they affect each other.

I like this line of reasoning. It's crazy that so many still try to explain human behaviour as if it's rigidly rational. Have we learned nothing? There are an awful lot of social and political factors at play especially when it's about power and group identification.

Something I note from interviews from RTO advocates is that the managerial class has an emotional reaction to WFH. I believe it wounds their sense of status and hierarchy - they resent the "unearned" freedom and comfort of people they have power over. They are not acting for business advantage but from a compulsion for their inferiors to know their place. It's very human sadly.

> Something I note from interviews from RTO advocates is that the managerial class has an emotional reaction to WFH. I believe it wounds their sense of status and hierarchy - they resent the "unearned" freedom and comfort of people they have power over. They are not acting for business advantage but from a compulsion for their inferiors to know their place. It's very human sadly.

I don't know if this is actually true or not, but it is exactly how I feel (about the mangerial class).

Carlin explained this eons ago. They don't have secret meetings where they try to find the next way to screw us

They have the same interests, hang out at the same places, etc. They need not conspire, it's automatic

One don’t have to be invested in the exact building office workers pushed to. Just in the same city - lower vacancy rate (across the city) keeps office buildings valuation afloat.

but that's a bit of a stretch isn't it? Like why go through all of these hoops instead of changing up your portfolio. It's not like the CEO of UberForDogs doesn't have other things to do than plot this out.

Every executive I've seen pushing for RTO, it seems prima facie explainable by "executive is lonely and wants to see people". Legit, and I get it! And all the other WFH debates are there, but especially if you've been an exec for a long time and really don't do anything apart from talk to people all day.... RTO sounds nice compared to the alternative

It's a conspiracy theory, to be brutally frank.

Like, what seems much more likely is a combination of a bunch of things.

1. Lots of people don't work effectively remotely 2. Lots of companies aren't set up to work remotely (which is a big deal) 3. Lots of management are socialised to prefer working in offices 4. RTO is a way to do a soft layoff 5. (way down the list) Some companies have financial arrangements with cities that require them to get people back in the office.

Additionally, it's worth noting that this argument is much more prevalent in the Anglosphere (broadly constructed), as I believe that levels of office occupancy are much higher on continental Europe (Western) at least.

The worker side is presumably being driven by poorer public transportation and housing policies, which means that workers gain more from WFH.

> 3. Lots of management are socialised to prefer working in offices

I would rank this as 1 on the list.

Yeah, depends on the management.

Honestly though, lots and lots of people/companies can't work remotely.

It probably works for a higher proportion of tech people, but even I, who's been full time remote for four years, and basically remote for the majority of my career, still prefer in-person for bandwidth purposes.

My current team are all scattered across different countries, but when we had an offsite and a problem, it was so incredibly nice to be able to simply pop my head up and ask someone a quick question.

Is the main problem non-overlapping work schedules?

That's an issue, of course, but the tradeoff is that the company's potential talent pool is severely limited if all hires are forced to relocate internationally.

Nah, it's just so much quicker to speak across a desk relative to sending a slack message.

Let's be honest, I love my current team and company, and we have enough overlap (5 hours difference in the worst case) that it's relatively straightforward.

Like, in-person is substantially higher bandwidth. Remote has lots of things that make up for it, but let's not pretend there's no difference.

never bought that line either, though its often repeated as gospel. Sure, some big employers own the buildings and care about the value, but many are just leasing their space - and a typical profit-driven corporation, if they could just dump their leases when its over, and felt they could save a ton of money by letting all their employees work from home, would all be doing it.

I suspect this 'having big investments in CRE is the reason' is just blowing smoke.

For 11 years, I worked for a successful Silicon Valley company that had a philosophy of renting rather than buying. Their rationale was to focus on their business rather than in something outside their core expertise, commercial real estate.

As a side benefit, twice in that time, we moved to newly constructed campuses, which was nice.

I also don't buy that reasoning. For me, the more obvious reason is control. WFH gives workers more mobility. Everyone says it lets the company hire from anywhere, but it also lets the worker apply anywhere. A companies best people can now more easily go work for the cool new startup on either coast without disrupting their family.

They themselves can't save their real estate portfolio. CEOs as a collective can. A marxist would call this acting in their class interest.

  And this right here is why you keep hearing RTO pushes from C-Levels and corporate boards.

Perhaps the office environment is genuinely more productive for many companies. I'm going to guess that most management, Director or C-level does not own any commercial real-estate and that the well being of their company is far more important to their wealth than whatever indirect investment they have in commercial real estate.

The suits probably want the social control that comes with physical presence. Like they want cogs that don't see themself as cogs. If all you have to do change employer is to login to a different Teams account in the morning they lose alot of their power.

I.e. they want you to leave a notice in person which might end in you being humiliated by some "security" parade to the door. A higher threshold to quit.

The biggest difference I noticed with WFH is that "soft intimidation" and nagging more or less is ineffective without physical presence.

Can you point me to an RTO that was board driven? Or by some group of people whose wealth was so concentrated in commercial real estate that it would make a greater dent than their knowledge work investments taking a massive efficiency hit from RTO?

If not investment, I know for certain there are "deals" on number of asses in seats

They get cheap rent because the business "guarantees" foot traffic by having people come in

No foot traffic, no discount

Poop coverage is good, though.

https://www.openthebooks.com/daily-mail-online-interactive-m...

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