I was discussing with some friends how expensive rents are in certain markets. We pretty much nailed the most expensive cities (DC, NY, Miami, Seattle, Boston), but when I looked for the info to backup the points, I was surprised to find that in San Francisco, the median rent is $3400 for a 1 Bedroom apartment!!! A 2BR costs $4600. That's insane.
In some of the websites, they had a calculation of the after-rent income and SF was still ahead, but also it's a very very expensive city, so you should take that nominal advantage with a lot of caution..
It's completely ridiculous there. It's not quite as bad as the city-wide averages make it out to be from the perspective of a working professional (but it's even worse for people outside that group). A significant contributor to the high average is the fact that less expensive areas no longer exist anywhere in the city. The cheap part of SF is 4.8x the cost of the cheap part of Chicago--not that you'd want to live in the cheap part of Chicago. The nicer parts of the SF are "only" about 60% more expensive than the nicer parts of Chicago though.
When we were looking to relocate a couple of years ago, I was shocked at how bad Vancouver was. It was comparable to NYC in costs and even worse in wages.
There was an ad agency based out of Minnesota that recruited top class talent out of NY. What they did was run an ad showing their employee's homes and listing the prices. When i saw this I thought it was clever.
The sad thing about this is the box boy isn't a symptom of the problem. He IS the problem. Background: honors grad from U of Chicago with policy and history degrees. Takes his 200K education to SF and becomes...a freelance illustrator (primarly East Coast clients) and a line cook at Gramercy Tavern so he can dabble in the culinary arts and live out his Anthony Bourdain 2.0 dream. Realizing that his screw the man attitude doesn't pay the bills, he commissions a box bedroom and publicizes it, fully knowing that the city is going to bring it down...presumably because he wants the pub for his industrial design side gig. He messages it as "SF is expensive and I want to live by a beach" while taking trips to Greece and the like. As much as I appreciate the "creatives", I have zero sympathy for people with socioeconomic resources and skills moving to SF with no tangible need to be there and complaining about housing prices that people like them are driving up. Cities as high-status lifestyle brands. If people want to make SF less expensive: a) don't move there or b) leave if you are lucky enough to be mobile. The city won't be as expensive for people who need to be there and it will soon suck for the tech types in the absence of all of that culture. Box boy could move back to Chicago, where he could live in a 1 BR in a nabe comparable to the Tenderloin in terms of location/safety like Noble Square for 30% less. Or if he's willing to sacrifice location, some place like Uptown for half price. Philly, Jersey, Pittsburgh, a yurt in Northern California, wherever. The guy is mobile.
This looks interesting: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/w...strings-attached-2019-05-07?mod=mw_quote_news Mothers in four U.S. cities are being paid $4,000 a year as part of a national study on how regular infusions of cash affect the well-being of children, including how well their brains work and their behavior. Some 1,000 low-income mothers in New York City, New Orleans, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Omaha, Nebraska will eventually be part of the study, which seeks to examine the role of money in families’ financial stress levels. Called Baby’s First Years, the study will finish recruiting mothers next month. Researchers recruit the moms from maternity wards. They agree to be part of the study before they know that it will involve getting free money. To participate, a mother must be at least 18 years old and have a household income below the federal poverty line, which is $25,750 for a family of four. A control group of 600 moms will receive $20 monthly payments; 400 mothers will receive the full $333.
Interesting SAT development: SAT to add 'adversity score' that will factor student hardships into college admissions The adversity score will take into consideration a student's neighborhood, family and school environments and then generate a number based on those factors. May 16, 2019, 3:47 PM EDT / Updated May 16, 2019, 6:56 PM EDT By Safia Samee Ali The SAT exam, used by a majority of colleges to grant entrance, will be adding an “adversity score” to the test that will take into account a student’s socioeconomic background in an effort to help colleges take a more rounded approach in the admissions process. The new measure, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is aimed at factoring in student hardships that are not reflected in test scores. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...student-hardships-college-admissions-n1006571
I actually think that's pretty ********ed up. There's literally no point in having a standardized test if there is no standard.
It would be really interesting to see the methodology, but they'll never be able to do that because it would be too easy for wealthy folks to game things. Daddy could divorce his third wife and buy a house in Watts that serves as nothing more than a post office box. All while you continue to attend Harvard Westlake.
The standard now is kinda skewed since wealth is such a big factor in testing success. And it's obviously a reaction to the cheating scandal.
After the war, my father served as Asst Registrar and then Registrar at a well known Design School. His predecessor had individually evolved exactly such a bonus score to step up the chances of disadvantaged applicants, and like the good Roosevelt Republican that he was, my father believed in it, and retained it for several years. Until it became painfully clear that something approaching 100% of those it got in were actually unable to do the work and bounced back out. Can't say as I know what the racial makeup involved was, so I'm not absolutely sure it wasn't just getting them into classrooms that wanted them back out for that reason-- but I'm sure he would have seen that possibility and done what he could about it. Instead he developed a little speech to the effect that there really is "no point in having a standardized test if there is no standard." I heard it often enough to remember it quite clearly.
The SAT adversity score was in process long before the cheating scandal was public. The wealthier universities have been seeking greater diversity for a while now, while hoping to retain standardized tests as part of the admissions process.
There are are a good number of colleges now where providing an SAT score is optional. Applicants can choose to show other strengths and not just a #. https://blog.prepscholar.com/the-complete-guide-to-sat-optional-colleges
The "adversity score" should not be in the SAT test, but adversity should be taken into account by the University as part of the admissions process. I think having an "adversity score" negatively impacts the people it is intended to assist. It devalues the actual score, by adding in the "diversity" component. It does not take into consideration the extraordinary efforts and abilities of students. From Jeremy Singer, president of the College Board: “The goal of this is to be used by admissions officers at higher-ed institutions to evaluate the context from which a student is coming from—so the community, the school, et cetera,” Singer said. “An SAT score of 1400 in East L.A. is not the same as a 1400 in Greenwich, Connecticut. And so, if we can get environmental factors that the student could have overcome or thrived on, and take into context,” that will help them. Yes it is. An SAT score of 1400 mean the student did very, very well on the SAT. There are factors that may contribute to the learning environment, but artificially "boosting" an SAT score does not really help the student. I should point out that, as I read it, the "adversity score" does not "boost" the SAT score directly, but offers additional information about the test taker's environment. This should be part of the admission's process, but not part of the SAT. In a statement today, the College Board said that the dashboard data is drawn from sources like the U.S. Census and includes “contextual information on students attending a particular high school including SAT performance, AP performance, average number of AP courses taken, percentage of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, etc. and neighborhood information including average family income, familial structure and stability, educational attainment, housing stability, and crime.” So, it has nothing to do with the individual student's performance, but merely the surrounding environmental issues. That is just wrong and, once again, devalues the individual performance. The schools in the pilot freely admit this: Trinity University, in Texas, is among the institutions that has been piloting the dashboard. “It’s really important to understand that the data in the dashboard does not necessarily represent the student’s personal experience,” said Eric Maloof, vice president for enrollment management at Trinity. “Rather, it suggests the environment to which they were likely exposed.” Promoting diversity is important. Considering individual factors in making college admissions decisions is important. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-0...-score-to-sat-in-hopes-of-promoting-diversity
Sure, also buy a house in a poor neighborhood, rent it out but have your mail go there. See Chicago knows what is up.