Tommy Collison: San Francisco housing crisis means city elections are the ones to watch over here

By now, San Francisco’s wider problems are well-known, and perhaps familiar to Dubliners: concerns about crime, affordable housing, and an anxiety about a tech sector monoculture abound. But there’s hope: as the wider US votes for a new president in November, Bay Area denizens will also be going to the polls in local elections.

Six seats on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the 11-person council that effectively runs the city, will be on the ballot. Despite having a reputation for questionable governance, its inhabitants are optimistic about turning things around. “San Francisco,” a friend of mine likes to say, “is only about three elected officials away from being the best city in the world.”

The common pattern is for young founders and programmers to move to the city for an intensive bout of startup education. As others attend college, these techies will attend incubators like Y Combinator, or work on projects with a grant from the likes of the Thiel Fellowship. Any given cafe will have rows and rows of headphone-wearing tech folks wired into their laptops, and you can hardly enjoy your drink without hearing someone pitch an investor. “It’s Uber, but for…”

The top problem for these newly-minted San Franciscans is finding a place to live within their budgets, which is a wider problem, as well. It’s not uncommon to hear of teachers, police officers, and construction workers commuting two hours each way, as they have to go far out from San Francisco to find affordable housing options.

Young startup founders, unlike their counterparts working for large established tech companies, tend to be flat broke. Or, to put it another way, they own large fractions of companies which may be worth millions in the future, but that fact doesn’t help them pay the rent now.

Their solution, like so much of tech nowadays, is to copy and improve upon something that already exists: the humble college dorm. Companies now maintain long private housing directories to help people in the tech industry find roommates or establish new co-living communities.

I should know, I lived in one.

I moved to San Francisco in 2018, not knowing many people. Before I’d found a permanent place to rent, a friend’s girlfriend invited me to a house party. When I got chatting to one of her housemates, I thought the music was too loud and I wasn’t hearing him correctly. He repeated that there were 21 people all living in the house.

As it turned out, they’d rented three units in a townhouse, and converted almost all the rooms to bedrooms. Four floors’ worth of techies shared five bathrooms, two kitchens, and a surprisingly spacious backyard. The total rent, which made my eyes water, was much more reasonable when split 20 or so ways.

Despite what you might’ve heard about San Francisco startup folks, the party was a lot of fun, with good food and heaters to take the edge off the SF chill.

A few weeks later, one of the residents moved out and I took his room. Now on the inside, as it were, I found the house as well-run as it appeared. Disputes about rent were nonexistent, as the house used software to divide and charge each resident in proportion to how big their room was.

Staples like eggs and toilet paper were taken care of by a monthly surcharge shared by all the inhabitants.

You could easily contact and get to know each of the housemates, as they maintained a private Slack channel for chatting and planning events.

The entire experience reminded me of college: if I had no plans for an evening, I could make my way down to the living room, where some combination of people would be hanging out, maybe watching a movie. That serendipity, which I had enjoyed in college and had found missing from much of adult life, is one of my abiding memories of the house.

San Francisco has always had a transient population alongside its stalwart my-family-came-here-during-the-gold-rush families. Both factions largely agree that the need for more housing is one of the top issues in this year’s elections.

If the description of my co-op made you shiver with dislike, you’ll understand why. If, though, it sounds like a bit of fun, you might understand the underdog, idealistic spirit that so many in San Francisco have.

For my part, I’m an old fogey married and living in the suburbs now: living with 20-odd people was a lot of fun, but I can’t say it did much for my dating game. As everyone wonders whether it’ll be Biden or Trump getting a second term this November, I’ll be looking locally, as the city by the bay decides what sort of future it wants. It’s never just about housing itself: the question is what sorts of communities – teachers or techies – can afford to call San Francisco home.