2012
"San Francisco Rule Would Encourage Building Student Housing"
To protect rent-controlled units, San Francisco may ban converting apartments for student-only uses and create incentives for developers of student dwellings.
SAN FRANCISCO — Lower Nob Hill, a once stately neighborhood whose shifting fortunes have proved a draw over the years for prostitutes and petty crooks, is buzzing with new activity.
The Academy of Art University has snatched up nine apartment buildings and former hotels in the enclave, converting them into dorms for students who pack the neighborhood’s cafes and linger on the sidewalks to smoke and skateboard.
Private landlords have gotten in on the action, renting to students who, city officials say, pay as much as 20% more for their lodgings than permanent residents do.
...More"NYC Asking Developers to Test Tiny Apartments"
NEW YORK (AP) — Maybe it’s the urban dwelling of the future: studio apartments measuring no more than 300 square feet.
New York City planners believe the tiny units could be the answer to a growing population of singles and two-person households. And in a nation that’s becoming increasingly populous and increasingly urbanized – and where people more frequently are creating a family of one – such downsizing may not stop here.
...More"Making San Francisco Housing More Affordable by Design: Efficiency Units"
It’s no secret that housing is expensive in San Francisco. Only 11 percent of San Franciscans can afford to purchase the average-priced home. Rents, always high, are even higher these days. It seems like we are perpetually at risk of pricing out our young people, working people, seniors, families and our middle class generally. To address this crisis, we need to think broadly and creatively and make our housing policies more flexible.
...More"The Way We Live: Drowning in Stuff"
From 2001 to 2005, a team of social scientists studied 32 middle-class families in Los Angeles, a project documenting every wiggle of life at home. The study was generated by the U.C.L.A. Center on the Everyday Lives of Families to understand how people handled what anthropologists call material culture — what we call stuff. These were dual-earner households in a range of ethnic groups, neighborhoods, incomes and occupations, with at least two children between the ages of 7 and 12 — in other words, households smack in the weeds of family life.
...More"Tech Boom Hits San Francisco Rental Prices"
Prices Soar as Well-Paid Tech Workers Stream Into City After a Long Exodus
SAN FRANCISCO—The latest technology boom is helping to stem a decade long exodus of residents from San Francisco, but the influx of well-paid workers is driving up already-high housing costs and straining public resources.
The promise and perils of the boom are evident in the experience of Genevieve Sheehan and her husband, who are relocating from the Boston area for her new job at social-games maker Zynga Inc. They have endured a grinding hunt for a home.
...More"Dolby Laboratories Moving Head Office to Mid-Market"
Dolby Laboratories says it will move its headquarters to the Mid-Market neighborhood, continuing the tranSFormation of a neighborhood that is becoming a new technology hub.
The audio technology provider said Tuesday that it plans to purchase the building at 1275 Market St. from DivcoWest. The purchase price is $110 million.
The building, which sits a few hundred feet from the new Twitter headquarters near Ninth and Market streets, was formerly occupied by the State Compensation Insurance Fund. DivcoWest and TMG Partnersacquired the 354,000-square-foot building from the fund in October for $44 million, according to the San Francisco BusinessTimes.
Representatives said the new sale price reflects a retrofitting of the building that is under way.
...More"Mid-Market Flooded With New Investment"
Twitter moved into its grand new headquarters in Market Square this month, and other tech companies like Yammer and One King’s Lane are right behind it. Their arrivals herald a turnaround for some of the most deteriorated stretches of Market Street — but others still languish.
The catalyst for much of the new investment in the area was Twitter’s decision to move to Market Square and the city’s creation of a payroll tax exemption to lure other tech tenants as well. Since April 2011, when Shorenstein Properties finalized the 215,000-square-foot lease with Twitter, investors have spent more than $500 million in the neighborhood.
...More"SF Startup Survival Guide: How to Find an Apartment in San Francisco"
Congratulations! You’ve taken the plunge and decided to move to San Francisco for your own startup or to join one of the hundreds (thousands?) here. Making the decision to move may have been difficult, but nothing compared to all the hassles and headaches of moving to this city.
Having just gone through this and spent a significant amount of time asking friends for advice on making the move, I’d like to share the best advice I received and what I learned myself. For reference, most people take months to find a place to live and move in. With the tips below, I found an apartment and moved in within 2 weeks of landing in SF.
...More"Jane Jacobs-Style Density is Best for Cities, Florida Says"
Like a preacher in an urban-revival tent, Richard Florida roused the gathering at last week’s 20th Congress for the New Urbanism in West Palm Beach, Florida. The event took place on the 10th anniversary of publication of The Rise of the Creative Class, the book that made him a star among city admirers.
“Isn’t it interesting that the world has come to us?” he asked the gathering of 1,100 urbanists. “Something has changed to make this part of the great challenges of our time. … I thought I was out in the wilderness, but it’s happening everywhere.”
...More"Selling the Pared-Down Life: The Founder of TreeHugger and His Apartment of the Future"
It may be that the house of the future is an apartment — at 420 square feet, a very small apartment — in a century-old tenement building on Sullivan Street. Shiny and white, it has movable walls that allow it to morph from one room into six, as well as expandable furniture and filtered, or “country,” air, as the owner, Graham Hill, put it recently while showing off the apartment’s convertible tricks like a modern-day Bernadette Castro, dressed neatly in a black merino wool polo shirt, black pants and black Vans.
This laboratory, as Mr. Hill calls it, for small-space, sustainable and — it must be stressed — high-end living is the first tangible product from his fledgling company, LifeEdited.
...More
