Yep. I think most recent Bay Area transplants got used to how clean and shiny SF was in the 2010-17 period, which was inherently an anomaly in SF's history.
It's always had a transient issue, and the high availability of support resource, the conversions of RSOs into hotels and airbnbs made visible, and the increased gentrification of SF (upper middle class white collar families didn't live in Mission, much of the SoMA-Potrero flatlands, much of Castro, etc until the 2010s) made these extremely visible.
Now that hybrid work has been normalized, I expect to see housing in the inner city (Tenderloin, Union Square) portion of SF to become significantly affordable, as those boutique hotels are returning to their RSO roots. And it already has based on the lack of rent increases with my former landlord's management company (all the 1-2 bdrms their renting out have stabilized in the $1500-2000/mo range in the inner city areas)
The city still has a lot of value in the tech ecosystem, but there's a reason the tech industry is called "Silicon Valley", not San Francisco. The gravity has always been in Santa Clara County, and always will be, but now San Francisco County has a decent bigtech scene as well (which didn't really exist there before the 2000s).
I’m not sure I’d describe San Francisco as a whole as being clean and shiny at any point in probably in living memory if you take cities like Singapore as benchmarks. But in 1990s- maybe 2000s say it was probably not advised to walk on Howard especially after dark and generally south of Market was often viewed as sketchy.
I’m not sure it’s just about hybrid either. To the degree that at least certain cities are increasingly seen as having more cons than pro I expect a lot more people will pass especially to the degree they’re not more convenient for working. Of course this can become a cycle as it has in the past.
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Yep. I think most recent Bay Area transplants got used to how clean and shiny SF was in the 2010-17 period, which was inherently an anomaly in SF's history.
It's always had a transient issue, and the high availability of support resource, the conversions of RSOs into hotels and airbnbs made visible, and the increased gentrification of SF (upper middle class white collar families didn't live in Mission, much of the SoMA-Potrero flatlands, much of Castro, etc until the 2010s) made these extremely visible.
Now that hybrid work has been normalized, I expect to see housing in the inner city (Tenderloin, Union Square) portion of SF to become significantly affordable, as those boutique hotels are returning to their RSO roots. And it already has based on the lack of rent increases with my former landlord's management company (all the 1-2 bdrms their renting out have stabilized in the $1500-2000/mo range in the inner city areas)
The city still has a lot of value in the tech ecosystem, but there's a reason the tech industry is called "Silicon Valley", not San Francisco. The gravity has always been in Santa Clara County, and always will be, but now San Francisco County has a decent bigtech scene as well (which didn't really exist there before the 2000s).
I’m not sure I’d describe San Francisco as a whole as being clean and shiny at any point in probably in living memory if you take cities like Singapore as benchmarks. But in 1990s- maybe 2000s say it was probably not advised to walk on Howard especially after dark and generally south of Market was often viewed as sketchy.
I’m not sure it’s just about hybrid either. To the degree that at least certain cities are increasingly seen as having more cons than pro I expect a lot more people will pass especially to the degree they’re not more convenient for working. Of course this can become a cycle as it has in the past.