2014September
"S.F.’s dilemma: boom is pushing out those who make it desirable"
Why do people pay so much to live in San Francisco?” a writer for San Francisco Magazine recently asked me. My answer: Because it’s worth it. San Francisco is one of the most innovative and creative places on the planet.
But the very forces that are making San Francisco boom are also dividing it. While techies and knowledge workers make enough extra in salary and income to afford it, the city’s working and middle classes fall further behind, accelerating a dual migration in which the affluent are pouring into the city while longtime residents and lower-paid workers are being pushed out.
...More"This Micro-Housing Developer is Smokin’"
To celebrate the topping off of its 12th floor, the gang behind the Panoramic project threw a party Friday afternoon. We zipped up to the roof with Panoramic Interests’ Patrick Kennedy, the developer behind the micro-housing project delivering at the corner of 9th and Mission next June. The project will contain 120 microstudios and 40 microsuites, or two and three-bedroom apartments.
...More"Strategies for dealing with S.F.’s housing crunch"
For those who can afford to live in San Francisco, it can be a gloriously dense network of professional opportunities, friends and artisanal edibles and goods. For those who are on the outside, it seems ridiculously unattainable – an image not helped by extreme rental listings (case in point: For the privilege of crashing in a Nob Hill living room, the renter was expected to pay a monthly rent of $900 as well as contribute hours of Web programming).
...More"Tour a Totally Livable 242-Square-Foot West Village Apartment"
Jourdan Lawlor bought her tiny apartment on West 12th Street, in a quaintformer dormitory for Hudson River dockworkers, in 2011—three weeks before she met Tobin Ludwig. The director of sales development at The Daily Meal, she was tired of renting and decided to buy, scouring the city for a downtown apartment under $300,000 before settling on this prewar option, a high-ceilinged ground-floor studio that clocks in at a diminutive 242 square feet. That includes closets, cabinets, and a 29-square-foot storage nook above the bathroom door.
...More
