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I think people are asking the wrong questions. We know that people moving back in with their parents is up about 3 million due to COVID [1]. It would follow tha

I think people are asking the wrong questions. We know that people moving back in with their parents is up about 3 million due to COVID [1]. It would follow that studio apartments are the mostly likely to be rented by those same young people, thus the demand has dried up. The question we aren't asking is, what happens when the economy recovers and these people move out of their parent's homes? Will they go back to the "destination" cities or will newer, smaller cities be the target? Will they crave experiences or space more? [1] https://www.marketplace.org/2020/07/28/millions-of-americans-face-stigma-of-moving-back-in-with-their-parents/ https://www.marketplace.org/2020/07/28/millions-of-americans...

corytheboyd 6y ago
My guess as to what will happen, for the sake of playing along with the hypothetical simply because it’s fun. Destination cities will still be desirable, however there will be a very slow rebuilding of demand. The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. The entire world was forced to work from home for an extended period of time, introducing those from industries that would scoff at the idea to a different lifestyle. Sure some people don’t like it, they will be the ones moving back to cities, but I think enough find it vastly favorable to the grind of commuting too and from a physical office that it will have some stickiness once social distancing can safely be stopped. This general shift in attitude will make it far more realistic to work where you actually in your heart of hearts want to live. I’m excited for this change, I live in downtown San Francisco right now and it’s not BAD— life is fine, we’re making due with the times. But I never wanted to permanently live here, and now there is this perfect chance to move out of the city, you bet your ass I’m taking it when my lease is up :)
- temporalparts 6y ago
  > The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. I don't believe this; very few companies are okay with permanent remote work after the pandemic is over, even though they are very notable exceptions, eg Facebook. This also assumes the population of people interested in living in destination cities is constant, but it's been growing every year the last decade except this one. COVID and the possibilities of remote work and COVID will dampen growth, but when we get through COVID, I expect demand to be higher than ever. It's not like SF will solve their systemic housing problems in the next 20 years, or our lifetimes.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    I work in oil and gas, by no means the epicenter of innovation and many of these companies are talking about a moving to a mostly remote work force to save on real estate expenses.
    - jojo2333 6y ago
      I don't buy the "cost savings" narrative. By a long shot, the largest expense for large companies in employee salaries - rent, by comparison, is a drop in the bucket. What follows is that companies should be most concerned about employee and team productivity rather then office expenses.
      - lhorie 6y ago
        Salaries do get affected by WFH policies, since if you move to a cheaper state/country, a company will often do a pay adjustment. So, from a cost savings perspective, it becomes a question of how much a company thinks being in the Bay Area brings in terms of attracting talent, vs how much they can save by having their employees work from Pennsylvania or Canada or India. I know companies in Canada that are way ahead of the curve on this: they've been consulting for American companies for years, meaning they can afford way more person hours than american counterparts given a US dollar contract size solely because of the salary gap difference.
        whimsicalism 6y ago
        I am skeptical that the labor market for high quality tech talent is as large in the rest of the country or that it is that tied to COL. The US vs not US gap seems much larger than the HCOL vs LCOL for senior IC jobs.
        kelnos 6y ago
        Maybe not 10 months ago, but a lot of people have dispersed to various places in the US, and that may continue as companies relax their in-person work requirements. Talent still has its concentration points, but its less concentrated than it was, and I expect that trend to continue. The US vs. not-US gap is certainly larger, but I expect that US-based companies would much rather hire someone 3 timezones away than 8 or 12. Having to be on conference calls at 7am or 8pm gets old real quick.
- notherthrowaway 6y ago
  ==This general shift in attitude will make it far more realistic to work where you actually in your heart of hearts want to live.== Will young people suddenly not want to live in close proximity to other young people? Will that become another luxury item for the well-connected?
  - corytheboyd 6y ago
    I don’t think it needs to be so absolutely black and white. I just mean, if you lived somewhere for reasons other than “I enjoy living here” you’re likely going to have options that didn’t previously exist.
  - quicklyfrozen 6y ago
    Some will want to stay in proximity to the young people they already know.
    - throwaway4715 6y ago
      The ones that want that already do.
      - onecommentman 6y ago
        All of them? Your response suggests that. I’d counter that many young people permanently leave their “hometown” for financial opportunities that are currently only available away from that “hometown”. For privileged young folks who are “amenity migrants”, your statement would be admittedly true. It might be a bit classist to extend that assumption to all young people.
        kelnos 6y ago
        I'm not convinced that most people will want to move back to their hometown after being away for any non-trivial amount of time. I certainly wouldn't. My old high school friends are different people who I don't know anymore (save for a few who who I'm still close with, who coincidentally also don't live in our hometown and wouldn't move back). My friends are mostly people I've met in my new town, and I wouldn't want to leave them without good reason. Sure, people who grew up in $COOL_PLACE but moved to $OTHER_PLACE for a job might want to (and be able to) move back to $COOL_PLACE now, but I don't think that generalizes to most of America.
- lukeschlather 6y ago
  WFH is fine. Bothers me not at all. I hate not being able to breathe the same air as my friends. It makes so many things impossible - things that are also impossible unless my friends mostly live within 30 minutes travel of me.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - juniper_strong 6y ago
    Have you made your last friend or could you make different ones if you moved somewhere else?
    - lukeschlather 6y ago
      Moving to a rural area is even worse. In principle I can maintain friendships with people separated by any distance from me, but there's no substitute for being in a highly populated area in terms of making new friends. And the more highly populated the better.
      - juniper_strong 6y ago
        I think the last friend I made by first meeting them in person was in the early 90's - people I knew from my home town. Every one since then was someone I knew online for many years first.
- rgbrenner 6y ago
  The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. The US is expected to add 80m people in the next 30 years. So that seems very unlikely, even if there is a shift in behavior. Edit: reduced the population estimate with newer numbers from the census bureau.
  - irrational 6y ago
    But those 100m are going to grow up in a world where remote working is the norm.
    - rgbrenner 6y ago
      Even during the lockdowns only 40% of the US workforce worked from home. Here’s another stat: only 33% of the us population has a bachelors degree or higher. Step out of your bubble and think about all of the people making the goods you order, maintaining your roads, construction workers that fix your home, the workers at the grocery store, the person that delivers your packages, the warehouse workers, etc etc etc. The world runs on people being physically present working jobs that can’t be done from home... that must continue so that you CAN work from home. Until robots can do those jobs, it'll always be the minority that works from home.
      - iso947 6y ago
        Vast majority of those jobs don’t rely on the network effects of major SF/NY/Seatle hubs. There’s little difference To prospects to someone working as a plumber in a town of 30k people vs a city of 3m people.
        kelnos 6y ago
        Sure, but you need a lot more plumbers in a city of 3M people than you do in a town of 30k. And those plumbers create demand for housing.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Vast majority of those jobs don’t rely on the network effects of major SF/NY/Seatle hubs. If you reduce the need to maintain both a worksite for people and a home, while you will increase the need for labor to maintain/service the home and supporting infrastructure somewwhat, it will probably be less than the reduced demand for labor to maintain and service the worksite. The initial effects of a large scale shift to telecommuting is going to include a lot of net physical service/maintenance/support jobs lost.
- georgeecollins 6y ago
  >> The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. Growth of cities and the increase of wealth of cities is 5,000 year trend, that includes in its history pandemics and plagues.
  - throwaway1777 6y ago
    People really do need to zoom out a little bit. Yes, we may see negative or slow growth in some cities over the next couple years, but in 50 years? I would bet NYC, SF, and other big cities will be stronger than ever.
    - hal9000-tng 6y ago
      .. except there will probably be more pandemics within the next 50 years. Given that we've had multiple localized epidemics or global pandemics in the last two decades alone (SARS, Ebola, Swine Flu/H1N1, etc), the likelihood of more seems increasingly high. Perhaps it doesn't even matter whether the next one will have a higher CFR; whether large cities prosper depends not only on whether people believe it will, but also on how well the cities do in many other respects, such as crime, taxes, pollution, trash, homelessness, etc. SF is not only suffering because of the pandemic: the pandemic just put an extra sense of urgency on the snowball effect that was already happening. When cities are safe, healthy, clean and beautiful, they're great and everyone is happy to live there, but now? Not so much.
      - Zanneth 6y ago
        Are suburbs any different? I’ve visited at least a dozen suburban areas during the current pandemic and they are all as equally affected by the pandemic as cities are. It’s important to note also that sanitation, preparedness, and scientific knowledge will all continue to improve over time. Pandemics may become more common but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be as deadly or effective as the current one.
  - _4570 6y ago
    How much of that history includes jobs that can be done remotely? I'd say that's a significant change for certain cities that have a significant such workforce.
watwut 6y ago
They will go where the biggest salaries are, as they always did.
- marssaxman 6y ago
  Not everyone follows that strategy! I certainly never have.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Not every single individual all the time, but mass of people generally moves that way. I dont mean it in derogatory "they are all shallow consumerist" way. 1.) There are too many people who dont have strong preference and thus go for salary because why not. Or follow friends. The higher salaries also go with bigger social status, often better negotiating position. There are people who do need money. And yes, there are many people who measure worth in salary too. 2.) Historically, people move that way. When programming turned out to be good job, students started to be way more interested in that. When you look at which majors students pick, they generally go for the ones that sound practical and earn money. Yes, some people go for antropology or history of art, but not nearly as many of them. People moved to San Francisco in the first place because they followed opportunities. People moved out of Detroit because they followed opportunities.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Those factors are real, but they apply to dozens of big cities. They don't explain why rents in SF are falling more than anywhere else. To be fair, the article only says 31% is the most. If other cities are around 29-30%, forget what I said.
- compiler-guy 6y ago
  Bay area rents rose far higher and far faster than most other places. So they had the furthest to fall.
  - rgbrenner 6y ago
    Also being Silicon Valley, they have more companies than average that were well positioned to wfh. And with high rents, people are more likely to live in a smaller apartment, making wfh even more uncomfortable... making them even more likely to want to leave.
- hardtke 6y ago
  Rent surveys are usually heavily biased towards large buildings. SF has a ton of new development in currently moribund neighborhoods, so I suspect some of the massive drop is due to that being oversampled (Mission Bay, for instance). In the more desirable neighborhoods with lots of rent controlled places the price drops likely aren't as steep. My friend is trying to rent a condo in a desirable location and most people looking at it are moving within San Francisco, trying to get into the more established neighborhoods at a better price.
almost_usual 6y ago
Who are you talking about? Tech workers or people who don’t work in tech? Everyone I know in the service industry left. I doubt they ever come back. COVID was the nail in the coffin for most bars, restaurants, and clubs in SF that were already struggling. The city isn’t going to be the same after this.
- xvilka 6y ago
  Even if all of them go bust this year, there will be new ones once population return and will need entertainment. The nature of entertainment might change a bit, but it will be still there.
  - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
    Yeah, I’ll add that demand hasn’t gone anywhere, in fact, it’s higher than ever. When things fully reopen there’s gonna be a sort of boom in entertainment/restaurant/travel industry
    - thu2111 6y ago
      I think there's an implicit assumption here that there will be a definite end date to this. I really hope there is, but there's another possibility that looks more likely as time goes on: lockdown has permanently broken the brains of some types of political leader and they will in fact never fully release the restrictions. Places like SF and NY will have long term restrictions lasting years, justified in the name of public health, the "new normal" and epidemic curves that never flatten (given current testing levels the curve can never drop to zero just due to FPs alone). Many parts of the US will definitely go back to normal, but maybe not everywhere. It may be a permanent structural change in laws and government approaches.
      - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
        Yeah sometimes I think that too. I just don't think people will put up with it. They'll vote in anti lockdown politicians. I hope so anyway. If trump wins, then who knows.
delaynomore 6y ago
Everyone is on the remote work bandwagon right now because there's no adjustment in pay at the moment. For people with little or no ties in the area, it makes sense to move back home and save on rent. As far as I know, no company, other than GitLab, has published any clear numbers on COL adjustment, I suspect many will come back once COL adjustment is known (not necessarily back to SF, but to the Bay Area).
- onecommentman 6y ago
  Wonder if 80+ US Senators would be willing to extend employment discrimination law to include place of residency? It would be in the economic interest of 40 US States (just a guess), and the long-term political interest of companies with National presence or aspirations, to do so...
asdff 6y ago
I think the answer to that question depends entirely on the employer. While some are making waves becoming remote companies, the vast majority are chomping at the bit to get butts in seats. I know several people who have been called back in, to sit in an enclosed office in their cubicle for 8 hours a day with their mask on doing the same exact task that could be accomplished on their laptop at home. Why? No reason at all beyond managers wanting to see people physically in the office working. The management class rarely takes a page from science and reason when making decisions, gut feelings are king, and the gut feeling in many boardrooms right now is that people are slacking off working from home. Whether that is true or not in real world productivity isn't considered. That's why I think not much will change ultimately once things do eventually return to normal, whenever that may be. People will go right back to living conveniently to work.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  Care to share the actual names of who these several companies are, requiring workers to take on the additional COVID risk with no actual business requirement? The companies, not the people. Not to be skeptical, but I will be. Government, small business, big corporations?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
01100011 6y ago
IMO, there is a certain younger generation with an affinity for urban life. As they age, they will, to some degree, lose that affinity for urban life. I think there's a chance that cities will lose their appeal for a while. Combine that with companies pushing more remote work, or setting up satellite offices, and you may see a slight decline in urban areas for a few years until it is in fashion again.
kelnos 6y ago
After reading a lot of replies in this thread, I think people are thinking way too small. As another commenter points out, we need to zoom out quite a bit more. SF, for example, was a popular place to live before it was a tech hub. Even if all the companies go away (they won't), there will still be plenty of demand. Maybe it will be a healthier sort of demand that doesn't push lower-income residents out of their homes. But there will still be demand, and it will grow as COVID becomes further behind us. For a lot of the people who moved back in with their parents, I think social circles will be an important factor. I know if I'd moved away, I'd be anxious to see my friends again, and live close to them. That doesn't mean everyone will end up back where they started, but some will. Others might band together and pick a new, smaller city or town to live in. Some social circles won't get back together, and some will split into new combinations. Some might see it as an opportunity to move to a new city where some old friends have lived for years. Still others might decide to stay with their parents, especially if they're older and may not be around much longer. Also consider that only something like 30% or 40% of the workforce has been working from home during COVID. Everyone else works in restaurants, bars, state and local government agencies, retail and grocery stores, hospitals, universities, and a host of other things that require a physical presence everywhere. There's no "grocery hub" like there's a "tech hub" or "entertainment hub". Every city and town needs a hospital or clinic and people to staff it, telemedicine notwithstanding. Those professions will continue to grow with the US's population, which will drive more demand everywhere, including cities.

corytheboyd 6y ago

My guess as to what will happen, for the sake of playing along with the hypothetical simply because it’s fun. Destination cities will still be desirable, however there will be a very slow rebuilding of demand. The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. The entire world was forced to work from home for an extended period of time, introducing those from industries that would scoff at the idea to a different lifestyle. Sure some people don’t like it, they will be the ones moving back to cities, but I think enough find it vastly favorable to the grind of commuting too and from a physical office that it will have some stickiness once social distancing can safely be stopped. This general shift in attitude will make it far more realistic to work where you actually in your heart of hearts want to live. I’m excited for this change, I live in downtown San Francisco right now and it’s not BAD— life is fine, we’re making due with the times. But I never wanted to permanently live here, and now there is this perfect chance to move out of the city, you bet your ass I’m taking it when my lease is up :)

temporalparts 6y ago
> The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. I don't believe this; very few companies are okay with permanent remote work after the pandemic is over, even though they are very notable exceptions, eg Facebook. This also assumes the population of people interested in living in destination cities is constant, but it's been growing every year the last decade except this one. COVID and the possibilities of remote work and COVID will dampen growth, but when we get through COVID, I expect demand to be higher than ever. It's not like SF will solve their systemic housing problems in the next 20 years, or our lifetimes.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  I work in oil and gas, by no means the epicenter of innovation and many of these companies are talking about a moving to a mostly remote work force to save on real estate expenses.
  - jojo2333 6y ago
    I don't buy the "cost savings" narrative. By a long shot, the largest expense for large companies in employee salaries - rent, by comparison, is a drop in the bucket. What follows is that companies should be most concerned about employee and team productivity rather then office expenses.
    - lhorie 6y ago
      Salaries do get affected by WFH policies, since if you move to a cheaper state/country, a company will often do a pay adjustment. So, from a cost savings perspective, it becomes a question of how much a company thinks being in the Bay Area brings in terms of attracting talent, vs how much they can save by having their employees work from Pennsylvania or Canada or India. I know companies in Canada that are way ahead of the curve on this: they've been consulting for American companies for years, meaning they can afford way more person hours than american counterparts given a US dollar contract size solely because of the salary gap difference.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        I am skeptical that the labor market for high quality tech talent is as large in the rest of the country or that it is that tied to COL. The US vs not US gap seems much larger than the HCOL vs LCOL for senior IC jobs.
        kelnos 6y ago
        Maybe not 10 months ago, but a lot of people have dispersed to various places in the US, and that may continue as companies relax their in-person work requirements. Talent still has its concentration points, but its less concentrated than it was, and I expect that trend to continue. The US vs. not-US gap is certainly larger, but I expect that US-based companies would much rather hire someone 3 timezones away than 8 or 12. Having to be on conference calls at 7am or 8pm gets old real quick.
notherthrowaway 6y ago
==This general shift in attitude will make it far more realistic to work where you actually in your heart of hearts want to live.== Will young people suddenly not want to live in close proximity to other young people? Will that become another luxury item for the well-connected?
- corytheboyd 6y ago
  I don’t think it needs to be so absolutely black and white. I just mean, if you lived somewhere for reasons other than “I enjoy living here” you’re likely going to have options that didn’t previously exist.
- quicklyfrozen 6y ago
  Some will want to stay in proximity to the young people they already know.
  - throwaway4715 6y ago
    The ones that want that already do.
    - onecommentman 6y ago
      All of them? Your response suggests that. I’d counter that many young people permanently leave their “hometown” for financial opportunities that are currently only available away from that “hometown”. For privileged young folks who are “amenity migrants”, your statement would be admittedly true. It might be a bit classist to extend that assumption to all young people.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        I'm not convinced that most people will want to move back to their hometown after being away for any non-trivial amount of time. I certainly wouldn't. My old high school friends are different people who I don't know anymore (save for a few who who I'm still close with, who coincidentally also don't live in our hometown and wouldn't move back). My friends are mostly people I've met in my new town, and I wouldn't want to leave them without good reason. Sure, people who grew up in $COOL_PLACE but moved to $OTHER_PLACE for a job might want to (and be able to) move back to $COOL_PLACE now, but I don't think that generalizes to most of America.
lukeschlather 6y ago
WFH is fine. Bothers me not at all. I hate not being able to breathe the same air as my friends. It makes so many things impossible - things that are also impossible unless my friends mostly live within 30 minutes travel of me.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- juniper_strong 6y ago
  Have you made your last friend or could you make different ones if you moved somewhere else?
  - lukeschlather 6y ago
    Moving to a rural area is even worse. In principle I can maintain friendships with people separated by any distance from me, but there's no substitute for being in a highly populated area in terms of making new friends. And the more highly populated the better.
    - juniper_strong 6y ago
      I think the last friend I made by first meeting them in person was in the early 90's - people I knew from my home town. Every one since then was someone I knew online for many years first.
rgbrenner 6y ago
The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. The US is expected to add 80m people in the next 30 years. So that seems very unlikely, even if there is a shift in behavior. Edit: reduced the population estimate with newer numbers from the census bureau.
- irrational 6y ago
  But those 100m are going to grow up in a world where remote working is the norm.
  - rgbrenner 6y ago
    Even during the lockdowns only 40% of the US workforce worked from home. Here’s another stat: only 33% of the us population has a bachelors degree or higher. Step out of your bubble and think about all of the people making the goods you order, maintaining your roads, construction workers that fix your home, the workers at the grocery store, the person that delivers your packages, the warehouse workers, etc etc etc. The world runs on people being physically present working jobs that can’t be done from home... that must continue so that you CAN work from home. Until robots can do those jobs, it'll always be the minority that works from home.
    - iso947 6y ago
      Vast majority of those jobs don’t rely on the network effects of major SF/NY/Seatle hubs. There’s little difference To prospects to someone working as a plumber in a town of 30k people vs a city of 3m people.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        Sure, but you need a lot more plumbers in a city of 3M people than you do in a town of 30k. And those plumbers create demand for housing.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Vast majority of those jobs don’t rely on the network effects of major SF/NY/Seatle hubs. If you reduce the need to maintain both a worksite for people and a home, while you will increase the need for labor to maintain/service the home and supporting infrastructure somewwhat, it will probably be less than the reduced demand for labor to maintain and service the worksite. The initial effects of a large scale shift to telecommuting is going to include a lot of net physical service/maintenance/support jobs lost.
georgeecollins 6y ago
>> The magnitude of that demand will never reach the same height. Growth of cities and the increase of wealth of cities is 5,000 year trend, that includes in its history pandemics and plagues.
- throwaway1777 6y ago
  People really do need to zoom out a little bit. Yes, we may see negative or slow growth in some cities over the next couple years, but in 50 years? I would bet NYC, SF, and other big cities will be stronger than ever.
  - hal9000-tng 6y ago
    .. except there will probably be more pandemics within the next 50 years. Given that we've had multiple localized epidemics or global pandemics in the last two decades alone (SARS, Ebola, Swine Flu/H1N1, etc), the likelihood of more seems increasingly high. Perhaps it doesn't even matter whether the next one will have a higher CFR; whether large cities prosper depends not only on whether people believe it will, but also on how well the cities do in many other respects, such as crime, taxes, pollution, trash, homelessness, etc. SF is not only suffering because of the pandemic: the pandemic just put an extra sense of urgency on the snowball effect that was already happening. When cities are safe, healthy, clean and beautiful, they're great and everyone is happy to live there, but now? Not so much.
    - Zanneth 6y ago
      Are suburbs any different? I’ve visited at least a dozen suburban areas during the current pandemic and they are all as equally affected by the pandemic as cities are. It’s important to note also that sanitation, preparedness, and scientific knowledge will all continue to improve over time. Pandemics may become more common but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be as deadly or effective as the current one.
- _4570 6y ago
  How much of that history includes jobs that can be done remotely? I'd say that's a significant change for certain cities that have a significant such workforce.

watwut 6y ago

They will go where the biggest salaries are, as they always did.

marssaxman 6y ago
Not everyone follows that strategy! I certainly never have.
- watwut 6y ago
  Not every single individual all the time, but mass of people generally moves that way. I dont mean it in derogatory "they are all shallow consumerist" way. 1.) There are too many people who dont have strong preference and thus go for salary because why not. Or follow friends. The higher salaries also go with bigger social status, often better negotiating position. There are people who do need money. And yes, there are many people who measure worth in salary too. 2.) Historically, people move that way. When programming turned out to be good job, students started to be way more interested in that. When you look at which majors students pick, they generally go for the ones that sound practical and earn money. Yes, some people go for antropology or history of art, but not nearly as many of them. People moved to San Francisco in the first place because they followed opportunities. People moved out of Detroit because they followed opportunities.

BurningFrog 6y ago

Those factors are real, but they apply to dozens of big cities. They don't explain why rents in SF are falling more than anywhere else. To be fair, the article only says 31% is the most. If other cities are around 29-30%, forget what I said.

compiler-guy 6y ago
Bay area rents rose far higher and far faster than most other places. So they had the furthest to fall.
- rgbrenner 6y ago
  Also being Silicon Valley, they have more companies than average that were well positioned to wfh. And with high rents, people are more likely to live in a smaller apartment, making wfh even more uncomfortable... making them even more likely to want to leave.
hardtke 6y ago
Rent surveys are usually heavily biased towards large buildings. SF has a ton of new development in currently moribund neighborhoods, so I suspect some of the massive drop is due to that being oversampled (Mission Bay, for instance). In the more desirable neighborhoods with lots of rent controlled places the price drops likely aren't as steep. My friend is trying to rent a condo in a desirable location and most people looking at it are moving within San Francisco, trying to get into the more established neighborhoods at a better price.

almost_usual 6y ago

Who are you talking about? Tech workers or people who don’t work in tech? Everyone I know in the service industry left. I doubt they ever come back. COVID was the nail in the coffin for most bars, restaurants, and clubs in SF that were already struggling. The city isn’t going to be the same after this.

xvilka 6y ago
Even if all of them go bust this year, there will be new ones once population return and will need entertainment. The nature of entertainment might change a bit, but it will be still there.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
  Yeah, I’ll add that demand hasn’t gone anywhere, in fact, it’s higher than ever. When things fully reopen there’s gonna be a sort of boom in entertainment/restaurant/travel industry
  - thu2111 6y ago
    I think there's an implicit assumption here that there will be a definite end date to this. I really hope there is, but there's another possibility that looks more likely as time goes on: lockdown has permanently broken the brains of some types of political leader and they will in fact never fully release the restrictions. Places like SF and NY will have long term restrictions lasting years, justified in the name of public health, the "new normal" and epidemic curves that never flatten (given current testing levels the curve can never drop to zero just due to FPs alone). Many parts of the US will definitely go back to normal, but maybe not everywhere. It may be a permanent structural change in laws and government approaches.
    - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
      Yeah sometimes I think that too. I just don't think people will put up with it. They'll vote in anti lockdown politicians. I hope so anyway. If trump wins, then who knows.

delaynomore 6y ago

Everyone is on the remote work bandwagon right now because there's no adjustment in pay at the moment. For people with little or no ties in the area, it makes sense to move back home and save on rent. As far as I know, no company, other than GitLab, has published any clear numbers on COL adjustment, I suspect many will come back once COL adjustment is known (not necessarily back to SF, but to the Bay Area).

onecommentman 6y ago
Wonder if 80+ US Senators would be willing to extend employment discrimination law to include place of residency? It would be in the economic interest of 40 US States (just a guess), and the long-term political interest of companies with National presence or aspirations, to do so...

asdff 6y ago

I think the answer to that question depends entirely on the employer. While some are making waves becoming remote companies, the vast majority are chomping at the bit to get butts in seats. I know several people who have been called back in, to sit in an enclosed office in their cubicle for 8 hours a day with their mask on doing the same exact task that could be accomplished on their laptop at home. Why? No reason at all beyond managers wanting to see people physically in the office working. The management class rarely takes a page from science and reason when making decisions, gut feelings are king, and the gut feeling in many boardrooms right now is that people are slacking off working from home. Whether that is true or not in real world productivity isn't considered. That's why I think not much will change ultimately once things do eventually return to normal, whenever that may be. People will go right back to living conveniently to work.

onecommentman 6y ago
Care to share the actual names of who these several companies are, requiring workers to take on the additional COVID risk with no actual business requirement? The companies, not the people. Not to be skeptical, but I will be. Government, small business, big corporations?
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01100011 6y ago

IMO, there is a certain younger generation with an affinity for urban life. As they age, they will, to some degree, lose that affinity for urban life. I think there's a chance that cities will lose their appeal for a while. Combine that with companies pushing more remote work, or setting up satellite offices, and you may see a slight decline in urban areas for a few years until it is in fashion again.

kelnos 6y ago

After reading a lot of replies in this thread, I think people are thinking way too small. As another commenter points out, we need to zoom out quite a bit more. SF, for example, was a popular place to live before it was a tech hub. Even if all the companies go away (they won't), there will still be plenty of demand. Maybe it will be a healthier sort of demand that doesn't push lower-income residents out of their homes. But there will still be demand, and it will grow as COVID becomes further behind us. For a lot of the people who moved back in with their parents, I think social circles will be an important factor. I know if I'd moved away, I'd be anxious to see my friends again, and live close to them. That doesn't mean everyone will end up back where they started, but some will. Others might band together and pick a new, smaller city or town to live in. Some social circles won't get back together, and some will split into new combinations. Some might see it as an opportunity to move to a new city where some old friends have lived for years. Still others might decide to stay with their parents, especially if they're older and may not be around much longer. Also consider that only something like 30% or 40% of the workforce has been working from home during COVID. Everyone else works in restaurants, bars, state and local government agencies, retail and grocery stores, hospitals, universities, and a host of other things that require a physical presence everywhere. There's no "grocery hub" like there's a "tech hub" or "entertainment hub". Every city and town needs a hospital or clinic and people to staff it, telemedicine notwithstanding. Those professions will continue to grow with the US's population, which will drive more demand everywhere, including cities.