March 20, 2020: Shelter in Place; Real Estate Developments & Community
Good morning,
If you tried to comment on yesterday’s article, please try again. Comments were disabled but are now fixed. Sorry for the trouble, and thank you to those of you who notified me!
On to the update.
Shelter in Place
Today is day 4 of the SF Bay Area’s shelter in place order. I have to say, things seem pretty surreal. Traffic is minimal, downtown is empty, and yet there are plenty of people out walking, biking, and buying groceries.
Politicians are still trying to figure out just what counts as essential. There is a very public kerfuffle with Tesla, but I’ve also seen a steady increase in the businesses deemed “essential”. First, weed, and now, bicycle repair:
It will be very interesting to compare the effectiveness of the spectrum of quarantines, from very strict in China to very lax in NYC, along with the hit to the local economy. There is an unenviable balancing act at play here.
Meanwhile, hospitals continue to prep for a possible shortage of healthcare workers:
SF health director says nurses being hired to help combat outbreak: San Francisco’s Department of Public Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax said that 70 new public health nurses have been hired, and they can begin working once they get the necessary clearances.
And industry (in China) seems to be responding to mask demand with 10x increased production according to people.cn. But the masks don’t seem to be making their way to the US yet…
Speaking of which, although China seems to be past the worst of the pandemic, they are now taking precautions against imported cases. From CNN:
Authorities in Beijing will now require all passengers arriving in the capital from overseas to self-quarantine, either at home or in a designated facility, for two complete weeks.
Thought exercise: If COVID-19 ping-pongs around the world over the next year with some regions declining and at risk for rebounding as other regions become hotspots, what does this do to international travel and globalization?
Long story short, you might want to create contingency plans in case you need to WFH all summer or even all year.
Real Estate Developments & Community
Building on yesterday’s loneliness angle, consider that the latest wave of real estate developments are really pushing the “community” framing.
From Avalon:
Every detail that goes into bringing the community alive counts, not just the finishing touches. We get that. Which is why we put so much into every aspect of Avalon, AVA and eaves by Avalon living - from the culture of our company to the sense of community we create on and off our properties.
And from Holland Residental:
When you live in a Holland community, you are not just a resident you are part of the Holland Family. We are dedicated to making every Holland experience memorable.
And yet, the London School of Economics Density Project finds that people don’t really seem to care so much about the community:
A number of respondents in the new schemes (mostly childless, younger people) said emphatically that they had no interest in being part of a community based on where they lived—their social networks were located elsewhere in London (or indeed elsewhere in the world) and one of the benefits of living where they did was that they could easily travel to meet them. This view was surprisingly widespread, and challenges accepted notions of the desirability of community.
I wonder if “community” is one of those words that signs leases/sells units, but afterward doesn’t really matter.
So, who do we turn to for in-person human connection if we are WFH, don’t go to church, don’t care about the apartment community, live far from our family, and get meals & shopping delivered?
Maybe friends from college who happen to live near us? Maybe nobody, and instead we simply have video chat and see family during our vacations?
Like I mentioned yesterday, I don’t have the answers, but the questions are fascinating.
WFH Setup of the day
From a reader in NYC:
+1 for not working in bed, +1 for creative use of board games & books, +1 for two desk modes “sitting” and “flat on one’s stomach”
That’s all for today.
Take care this weekend, and thanks for reading!
Andrew