Outrageous housing cost only rises in SF Bay Area

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Barbara
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Re: Outrageous housing cost only rises in SF Bay Area

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Welcome back, Justin ! Great to see you posting again. I am sure your situation will be sorted out to the best possible arrangement. Is that true, that layoffs push up the stock price of a corporation ? I had never thought of such an equation.

I personally deem it far wiser to hire the South Asians present already in the U.S. than to operate offshore call centers. Some customers don't like dealing with someone halfway around the world to solve a problem and would prefer to speak with someone in Silicon Valley area for example.

P.S> I would be curious how much the spindly wonder in the picture above has re-sold for ?! The deck looks like it would collapse if even one plastic chair were put out there, doesn't it ?

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Barbara
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Re: Outrageous housing cost only rises in SF Bay Area

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Several reports appeared in the last months that housing prices have leveled off in San Francisco - and New York City.

Probably not related but of relevance in general is the fact that the Bay Area may be losing its technological edge.
The Guardian [ UK ] reports :

"I kept hearing the same answer from current and former San Franciscans asked to name the best such cities in the world right now: “Not San Francisco.” Yet last year Tech Insider’s ranked the “undeniable epicentre of all things tech, from its gigantic start-up culture to its venture capital scene to its population of designers and programmers,” at the top spot. If San Francisco doesn’t rank among the most hi-tech cities in the world, which city could?

The epicentre of tech lies less in San Francisco proper than in Silicon Valley to the south (Tech Insider’s list conflates the two). It’s the birthplace of the personal computer, now home to Apple, Google, Facebook, Intel and Stanford University, and the cradle of thousands upon thousands of startups. Only in recent years have large numbers of technology companies and their workers based themselves in urban San Francisco instead of the suburban Silicon Valley, and the resulting conflicts between the long-term bohemian population and these wealthy new arrivals have exposed its real, underdeveloped technological state.

“Planners in 1996 had no way of predicting the tech boom,” admitted Taylor Huckaby, a representative of San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) agency in March in response to residents’ complaints about the unreliability of the city’s transport infrastructure. They’d grown especially fed up with its commuter rail network, designed and built at enormous expense in the 1960s and 70s, much of which, Huckaby tweeted through Bart’s official feed, “has reached the end of its useful life”

No matter how much app developing innovation San Francisco attracts – Twitter is headquartered there – the experience it provides San Franciscans remains, for the foreseeable future, decidedly low-tech. Other cities have tried to become startup hubs, offering an environment equally attractive to currently small but potentially huge tech companies.

The very nature of a mature city like San Francisco, with its old buildings and layers of regulation, throws serious obstacles to 21st-century modernization."

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016 ... -francisco


The article surprisingly points to Santiago [ the so-called "Chilecon Valley" ] and a few other less interesting cities as far more promising in the tech future. Perhaps TOC jurisdictions should think about starting parishes in the capital of Chile, particularly since the one TOC parish there was taken away by force a few years ago.

The above article extols the advantages of the South American city thus :

"Before long, Santiago could be a city full of electric vehicles charged by “smart” power grids, many of them driving on highways equipped with traffic-reducing automated variable toll pricing. Perhaps a new arrival to the Chilean capital would go for the chance to found a technology company, incentivised by programmes like the state-backed, foreigner-friendly Start-Up Chile, in “Chilecon Valley”. And perhaps they’ll stay for the capital’s reputation boasting the most advanced public transit system in Latin America."

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Barbara
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Re: Outrageous housing cost only rises in SF Bay Area

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Even the once-sleepy town of Palo Alto has gotten way out of control rent-wise.

By the way, if anyone remembers Mrs Fields Cookies, the first little shop - I recall it as hardly more than a counter in a tiny mall off the street in the downtown - was opened by a housewife named Debbi Fields in 1977. Her chocolate chip cookies were a major local sensation due to their soft texture. Business expanded exponentially, and she relocated the company to Denver in 1982. Mrs Fields finally sold her baked goods empire in the early 1990s.

Surely one of the very few examples of a non tech-centered business success originating from here !

I had been wondering how quiet, balmy Palo Alto was faring in the midst of the high-tech hoopla going on everywhere around it.
Here is the answer in a CBS News report today :


"With the median house price in Palo Alto now $2.5 million, nearly doubling in just the last four years, even the reasonably well-off feel shut out. Kate Downing is a Silicon Valley corporate attorney and her husband is a software engineer. Together, they are in the top 2 percent.

But they can’t afford a house in Palo Alto.

Downing resigned from Palo Alto’s Planning Commission, with a letter in which she lamented the city becoming a place where “young families have no hope of ever putting down roots.” She and her husband are moving 40 miles away, to buy a house.

But Downing said people shouldn’t feel sorry for her.

“I think the people we should be sorry for are the people who can’t do that. What are you going to tell the people who are cooks, are cops, are teachers, are nurses, those are people you don’t want to move,” she said. “You can lose a lawyer, you can’t lose the people who are the backbone of your city.”

[ A Palo Alto mother ] worries that her hometown is becoming so wealthy that soon only the extremely wealthy will call it home."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-heart-of ... riced-out/


A commenter added some insights :

Jayjaybe
28 minutes ago
"This Palo Alto housing cost escalation has been ongoing since the Sixties. The key factor in the syndrome...Stanford University, the heart of the spawning ground of Silicon Valley.

"Ironically, the nature of this elite private university is that its students generally aren't locals; they're from around the nation, and as alumni, they rarely stay local. Many of the folks who've clustered in Palo Alto aren't Stanford grads but the attraction to the imagined aura of that big-name academic institution has had its socio-economic repercussions...in this general area, not only Palo Alto.

"I've just recently moved from that area for retirement, after 45 years in the immediate Palo Alto vicinity. The coup de gras [ the author of his comment seems not to be a scholar himself, as he should have written 'grace' - ] in this choking-out of all affordability has been the recent clustering of Google and Facebook campuses in adjacent towns.

"Stanford University has been contending with this obvious escalation for decades; its faculity [sic], support staff, and students have been getting priced out of off-campus housing for decades. So, for the past 20 or so years, the University has been steadily increasing its on-campus housing--in all categories...often despite conflicting views from neighboring municipalities. Stanford is on private, unincorporated land that has allowed this workaround. Silicon Valley's trade-offs have been a very mixed bag."

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Barbara
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Re: Outrageous housing cost only rises in SF Bay Area

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The Palo Alto resident of recent years with the most dazzling resume could be well named as Archimandrite Spyridon [ Efimov ].

This monastic had a brilliant, far-flung career. But he was not a rising star in a computer firm ; instead he experienced the life of Old Russia and brought it to America. Fr Spyridon did not fly by Lear jet to meetings in London or Zurich with new start-up tech firms or venture capitalist magnates. However, he traveled to fascinating locations of great importance for the anti-Communist Russian emigration, where he associated with Russian Orthodox Wonderworkers and other notable Orthodox hierarchs.

This meek monk did not contribute a new recipe for spongy chocolate chip cookies to the Peninsula. But his quiet prayers surely outshone almost all other activities in the Palo Alto - Menlo Park vicinity for 20 key years, attracting God's blessing on the area like a beacon of light.

Let's take a look at the highlights of the life of Archimandrite Spyridon, the teacher to children of The Law of God and History at the Holy Protection Church [ Rocor ] for about 2 decades up til his repose in 1984. The date was Sept 1, Feast Day of the Donskoy Icon of the Mother of God.

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Barbara
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Re: Outrageous housing cost only rises in SF Bay Area

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I have to start a separate thread in the Orthodox Synaxarion forum for Archimandrite Spiridon [Efimov].

Meanwhile, 3 years later, Bay Area housing prices have dropped outside San Francisco itself. But not so much in the City ; though certain areas are experiencing a decline.

This trend is hard to imagine when one views this article showcasing the most costly house EVER advertised in S.F., on Russian Hill.

"When the towering ... six-bed, seven-and-a-half-bath, 9,500-square-foot contemporary abode at 950 Lombard first listed in October 2018, it looked like the stuff records are made of. The original $45 million asking price had the potential to bust SF’s milestone for most expensive home ever sold, which currently sits at $38 million.

While that price is still a possibility, the target is a lot further away after 950 Lombard chopped $4.5 million off its asking price this week, listing again for a still-breathtaking but not quite as ambitious $40.5 million....

The original $45 million price was exactly ten times what the developer paid for the place (that is to say, the old place) in 2014."

https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/27/2083513 ... -francisco

More details here, along with a photo gallery if anyone is interested. If nothing else, a possible good escape to get away from nagging problems !

"The four-car garage with a granite floor is reached through a tunnel from the street. [ photo of this tunnel is one included in the gallery ]

The architectural wonder sits amid a vast park-like setting that only seems possible at a country estate. A spacious lawn and garden of roses, lavender and 100-year-old olive trees are all irrigated with rainwater collected from the rooftops and decks and stored in a 12,000 gallon tank.

A 40-foot-long infinity pool is cantilevered over the hillside and its water seems to pour into the bay. An outdoor kitchen and dining area with a fireplace and glass chandelier can accommodate up to 24 people. There's a separate "wellness center" with massage, steam and sauna rooms..." --- https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/artic ... o-16602822
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Barbara
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Re: Outrageous housing cost only rises in SF Bay Area

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I had no idea what an 'infinity pool' is. So I watched this video to catch up on mystifying contemporary language, and mainly to see what amenities the house really boasts for its 40.5 million dollar price tag.

If interested, take a quick look at the clip below.

To my eyes, most of the decor looks tasteless and cold. >>> Icons need to cover the empty wallspaces and replacing ugly modern 'art'.

In fact, seeing that this is at the very crest of Russian Hill, wouldn't it be great to tear down this soulless mansion and build an Orthodox Church with the classic 5 onion dome style at the prime scenic and tourist location ? I already have a model in mind: the Church of the Korsun Mother of God in Uglich.

It seems no photo available on the internet captures the delicate work on the drums of the domes and elsewhere. Here is the best approximation. If I find a better view, I will post that.

Image

Think of the stunning views from the Bay, too, of such an incredible Church.
Every panoramic postcard view of San Francisco would be revised to include it !

Interested tycoons should make an offer right away with current listing agent Val Steele of Pacific Union International. Due to the widespread coverage in the Bay Area media, this 950 Lombard Street property may sell quickly...

https://abc7news.com/realestate/sticker ... e/5499534/
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Barbara
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Re: Outrageous housing cost only rises in SF Bay Area

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Imagine being able to attend a Divine Liturgy and see a vista like these at the bottom of the post. The backdrop and the exquisite Yaroslavl area architecture -- hopefully closely ressembling the above picture with ornate detailing [ note the artistic bell tower ], but compact like the original picture forthcoming Tuesday < not all spread out like the color photo here, except for the required rooms for trapezas, reception of guests and visitors, etc. -- would be so dramatic that world leaders could easily meet here for informal conversations without media invasion.

After all, this is the city the great Saint, Archbishop John [Maximovitch] visited many times. The Archbishop of Shanghai transited San Francisco en route to Washington DC to speak with American officials to secure the release of the emigres stranded painfully for 2 years on the Philippine island of Tubabao. Then as Archbishop of San Francisco, St. John spent his last years here completing the building of the majestic Holy Virgin Cathedral. Surely this Saint would be helpful with all aspects of creating a NEW jewel of a Russian Orthodox Church !

It seems that the soon-to-be prettiest building on the famous San Francisco skyline should be dedicated to St John Chrysostom for his pithy words about a certain vice so prevalent in this urban area.

However, one feels the Church's Patroness must be the Mother of God as depicted in one of Her special Icons. The anti-Addiction Icon of the Inexhaustible Chalice might be an ideal choice.

This representation of the Heavenly Queen is often prayed to in hopes of resolving
"the loss or distortion of moral priorities"....

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