Part I: Housing and Transportation, aka “Should I bring my car?”

These days it seems rare when a week goes by in which I don’t meet a startup founder who has just moved to San Francisco. It’s no accident: the Bay Area is the preeminent locale for tech startups, and moving here is often a rite of passage for new founders and early employees. San Francisco proper seems to be a more and more popular destination. Our city offers beauty, character, cultural richness, immersion in the new tech world, and the once-in-a-lifetime sensation of being cold in August.

Unfortunately SF’s riches come at price that can be surprisingly steep for bootstrapping founders. It’s not just that SF real estate prices lead the nation. Local politics and sensibilities mitigate against the kind of mass-market retail establishment we take for granted in almost every other part of the United States. You’ll have to leave the city to find a Target, Ikea, or Costco. Those chain stores that are allowed into town tend to be located in areas inaccessible to public transportation, so shopping by taxi is sometimes necessary. To add insult to injury, SF’s civic culture strongly discourages car ownership.

Confused yet? I’m here to help! This is the first in a series of posts meant to demystify moving to SF and answer the most pressing financial questions faced by bootstrapping startup founders who move here. If this saves one person a bad call on housing, the car decision, or anything else, I’ll be happy.

Part I will focus on the first two questions most people ask when they think about moving here: 1) Where will I live?, and 2) How will I get around?

Questions: How do I find affordable housing in SF? What neighborhoods offer the best combination of price, location, ease of transit, and safety?

Answers: It depends. Seriously. The answer to this question may well be ‘Craigslist‘ - everyone I know found their place (and everything in it) on CL or through social contacts. A more complete answer depends on what you want out of life here. If rockin’ hipster excitement during your rare coding breaks is your thing, go straight to the Mission, Lower Haight, or Western Addition. If parking, safety, and low housing costs are at the top of your list, you’ll want to check out the Richmond and Sunset districts. Are you a must-live-alone kind of person? Chances are you’ll end up in the TenderNob (aka Lower Knob Hill, in CL-speak). Gotta have a loft? Look in SOMA and Potrero Hill.

But wait! These aren’t the first questions you should ask! The most important decision you will make, when moving to SF, is whether to bring your car. Every other decision hinges on whether you’ll be driving or not.

People tend to split over this question, everyone’s circumstances are different, and there’s no 100% right answer. You could roll like I do and live in the Outer Richmond District without a car, but realistically few people want to do that. What’s important is to understand all the factors in play before you make the decision.

In general, the following statements about having a car in SF are true:

• Neighborhoods with easy street parking are cheaper, further from downtown, and more suburb-like than the central neighborhoods.
• SF is full of weird street people and crazies on the bus. That may sound edgy and/or cute at first, but after a year on the bus you will want to beat the dumbass out of them with a tire iron. If you have a car you won’t have to deal with them nearly as often.
• With a car, you’ll be able to buy stuff based on price rather than physical accessibility, and pick up cheap stuff from CL much more easily. This can offset many car-related costs.
• You will be able to get around town three times as fast, unless you’re crossing the bay. Just make sure there’s a place to park when you get there.
• Other than these substantial benefits, having a car here is an utter pain in the ass. I mean it. Many of us would rather be run over by cement truck full of alligators. Your insurance will go up. Vagrants will break in if you leave so much as a nickel or fast-food wrapper visible inside. There’s a very good chance you’ll get dented. A drunk driver smashed his car into my apartment once, but it could have been my car if I had one. This stuff seems to happen to everyone.

Now that we’ve broken that down, it’s time to organize SF neighborhoods according to whether you’d want to have a car there.

Don’t want a car: Lower Haight, Haight Ashbury, Mission District (?), Nob Hill, Tendernob, North Beach, Russian Hill, Pacific Heights, The Marina District, Tenderloin, Western Addition (?)

Car-friendly: Richmond District, Sunset District, Twin Peaks, Potrero Hill, SOMA (?), parts of the Mission District, West Portal (?)

Now, for the non-car transportation options:

• MUNI. Muni is SF’s intra-city public transit authority. You will have to ride it sometimes, no matter what. Somewhat unreliable by reputation, but I still rely on it. Known for weirdo riders, although they don’t let the homeless ride for free anymore. Some Muni drivers are crazier than the passengers. Make sure there’s a 24-hour bus to your neighborhood or you shall reap it. Muni fare is $1.50, $45 for a monthly pass which also lets you ride BART within SF.
• BART. Bart is an inter-city train system that serves downtown, the Mission District, Glen Park, and Balboa Park. It connects SF to the rest of the Bay Area other than Silicon Valley, San Jose, and Marin County. Whew! BART trains are scheduled at 7-to-20 minute intervals, and you pay by distance traveled. Fares are stored on re-useable magnetic cards. BART is very, very fast considering the distances involved, but it doesn’t run late at night. All things considered, a BART station in your neighborhood is a major plus.
• Caltrain. Caltrain is an inter-city train that serves a very few neighborhoods along SF’s eastern edge, the penninsula, Silicon Valley, and San Jose. Caltrain is very similar to commuter trains in the east and midwestern US. I rarely ride Caltrain but the experience has always been positive.
• Golden Gate Transit. This is a bus system that picks up in SF and goes to Marin County. I’ve never taken it and don’t know much about it, but it looks comfortable, and I like that.
• AC Transit. The East Bay’s version of MUNI. They run a late-night bus down Market St. for times when BART isn’t running. This bus will take you all the way to Berkeley, which is amazing if you ask me.

But wait again! There is a way to split the difference between having and not having a car. SF has two car-sharing services, Zipcar and City CarShare. If you’ve had a driver’s license for over a year and a decent driving record, you probably qualify to participate in one of these programs. You just tell them where and when you want to pick up a car, go there at the appointed time, and the car will be there. Most people pay around $40 a month, and everyone I know who does it raves about the experience.

In Part II of our startup savings spectacular, we’ll ask an even more important question: Where can I get good, cheap food around here?! I’ll talk about groceries, pizza, coffee, and the holy grail of startup food: restaraunts where you can eat for less than $10, with some less than $5.

Thanks to Christian Perry and Chris Smoak for critiquing this post!