-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
6 figures considered low income for family of 4 in some Bay Area counties [ABC7]
- Thread starter wenis
- Start date
- Status
old manatee
Banned
Low income in the Bay Area is actually East Oakland, where 60 teenagers will flash rob a train. I really don't like this trend of people wringing their hands about the poor middle class in the Bay Area. There are actual fucking poor people there. Parts of Oakland look like bombed out Baghdad. We should be rubbing silicon valley's face in the third world hellhole they live next to.
Stabby McSter
Member
i'm low income :<
Violence Jack
Member
How long can this sustain before bursting? Or is this just a way to make sure it's rich folks only?
Skellig Gra
Member
I don't think its that sinister. 100k is on the lower end of the spectrum for the income distribution. All this means is that there are a shit ton of upper class people (by national standards) there and that their housing market is totally and utterly fucked.
Salaries are supporting it though.
Every time we have one of these threads, I always ask what about the service people. How long can they afford to stay in the area or even commute?
Sectorseven
Member
So is a haircut like $150 in San Francisco?
So happy my wife and I moved away. That said, we still work at our jobs, just from home, and pay about 1/6 of the rent(3k to $500). Eat it Silicon Valley, and your absurd, sickening standard for living.
They're really not, though. Sure, you can make enough to have a place(probably with roommates), eat out, maybe a do a few side activities, but saving money? Good luck with that.
They're really not, though. Sure, you can make enough to have a place(probably with roommates), eat out, maybe a do a few side activities, but saving money? Good luck with that.
Yoda
Member
Here, (Manhattan) it's pretty similar, eventually people who aren't in a career with the chance of a higher salary (over the seemingly high salary they're already making) move elsewhere.
Zoe
Member
Here's the entire dataset: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il.html
Manmademan
Member
Nationally there is no housing bubble. Prices are stable and not reliant on flipping properties to people with subprime loans.
The bay area specifically has an issue where there is a lot of high paid industry concentrated in the area that has distorted housing prices. New York and DC have the same issue, with Finance and Government Contracting.
Those two places remain expensive but not as ludicrous as the bay area because unlike San Francisco NY and DC have more room to expand, and aren't completely opposed to building new multifamily high rise housing when necessary.
I knew the housing market was messed up in the Bay Area, but never realised that it was this bad.
Manmademan
Member
What? That's completely false. 100k household income is well above the median in just about every metro area.
Edit: not "just about". It's higher than median household income in all areas. DC is the most expensive metro at 93K. New York is only 68k.
TarpitCarnivore
Member
There are, thankfully, still some rent controlled options in the city. Unfortunately the Ellis Act is destroying that as well.
I must be low, low class then. Damn.
Pagusas
Elden Member
Not in mine. Not in any I've ever lived at. Our city's media income (Frisco, TX) is $112,155
http://www.bestplaces.net/economy/city/texas/frisco
1st Course
Member
100 grand divided on a family of four is indeed not that much.
Add rent, school expenses, groceries etc and you're not left with much.
Add rent, school expenses, groceries etc and you're not left with much.
Manmademan
Member
You do understand the difference between your particular city and a metropolitan statistical area, right
Schattenjäger
Gabriel Knight
Surprised telecommuting has not had a positive effect on the market
You'd think with the tech industry you could live anywhere in the world and be a valuable asset to a company
You'd think with the tech industry you could live anywhere in the world and be a valuable asset to a company
Pagusas
Elden Member
Your right, I used the incorrect terms.
radios shipping overview
Member
So Frisco is a high-income area compared to DFW, Texas, and the US. Got it.
Zoe
Member
this.
I don't understand it. You can get nice, high paying jobs in pretty much any sector in lots of places other than San Fran. Hell even Google, MS and a bunch of other companies have offices all over the world. There's 3 Microsoft office locations here in Houston alone.
Are you looking at data for all household incomes, or specifically for families of 4?
Frisco is very affluent, not sure if it is a good example to use.
San Antonio for example has a median household income of 46,000
http://www.bestplaces.net/economy/city/texas/san_antonio
They can't on both ends. My girlfriend works in the service industry in back of house cooking/management roles for five years now. It's a struggle to find people that can take these jobs both logistically (the commute to and from a $15 an hour job ain't worth it) or because they believe the work is beneath them.
Until they don't...
These big companies need talent to succeed. Talent will eventually be driven away if housing prices start to outpace salaries (already starting). Salaries can only get so high before companies realize a change needs to be made.
While San Francisco is an extreme example, housing prices across the United States are (once again) way over inflated.
The problem is that if there is any sort of pullback, whether in income, job growth, companies moving for tax or regulation reasons, inflation, etc. There would be a major downturn, with cities being hurt the hardest.
Skellig Gra
Member
Big difference between "isn't a lot" and now you qualify for subsidized housing.
Manmademan
Member
Just quick Google searching for median household income by metro statistical area. No need to specify whether they're families of four or fifteen, when we're just looking to establish income for an area. Half of households will be above that point, half below, which gives us a good idea of where middle class would be.
100K for a family of 4 let alone 2 is well above the median literally everywhere. In no way is that income "lower middle class in most metro areas" without a highly unusual number of kids or elderly parents.
The Albatross
Member
Yeah, I wonder about this too. This, teachers, construction workers, firefighters, etc. In California the median teacher salary for a mid-sized school is $68,000. Nothing to scoff at anywhere else in the country, but $68,000 does not go very far in San Francisco, and it's a tough ask for a teacher to have to commute 1+ hours every day to get to their school.
Like, I'm sure your average coffee shop, restaurant, hotel, etc., pays higher salaries in San Fran than it does elsewhere, but it still can't be appreciably more, and I can't imagine commuting hours to a low paying service job (though I'm sure many do)
Thank you for your irrelavant ~8 year old shitpost that will derail the thread into ~8 year old Tax Policy Center/WSJ article.
Zoe
Member
They appear to use 4 as the baseline for the other income levels.
Edit: though looking into it more closely, they have a formula to estimate the limits per household size based on the ACS family median income (> 1 related persons in a household).
gutter_trash
Banned
how do low wage service workers even manage?
all live beyound Oakland?
all live beyound Oakland?
Manmademan
Member
Ask the average American what low income is and it would be really high compared to how AMERICANS actually live. Hell, it just happened in this thread.
TV has given people a really unrealistic idea of how wealthy the US actually is.
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
- Locked