Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 380 posts

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#151

Post by Tempest1981 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #148
salimmadjd wrote: post #50

SV is becoming a real estate business instead of tech. When you have 50% or more of salaries spent on rent or mortgage then so much of the revenue generated is just lost into real estate instead of innovation growth, investment and R&D. I don't understand why FB, Apple, Google, etc. do not lobby hard the local cities and push to build 100,000 new units. It'll bring the rent or house prices down and it will allow many…

They do lobby as hard as they can. The result shows that you actually can not buy legislation that easy.

Well, and cities need to balance housing/job growth with other things, like schools and traffic growth. I.e. higher level strategic planning.

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#152

Post by rconti »

skewart wrote: post #150
rconti wrote: post #140

The Times selected as an "NYTimes Pick" a comment from someone in Berlin who absolutely makes my blood boil. (S)he starts off by stating privilege as a 5th-generation San Franciscan (obviously, the kind who DESERVE to live in the city), and who fled in the tech boom of the 90s. The usual rant about whitewashing and yuppies and artists being pushed out ensues. Of course they don't want more housing built, because then…

Yeah, the comment section on that article is pretty sad. The number of people whose argument against building more housing is a fear that it will make the city "ugly" is astounding. It's mind-numbingly selfish and greedy to think that a family should barely be able to make ends meet, and children should spend less time with their long-commuting parents, just so that SF can meet your personal aesthetic sensibilities.…

Well absolutely. And one commenter there (or here) mentioned the negative externalities of someone else's development driving down your property values or making your schools overcrowded or whatever.

All of these things are deserving of sympathy and consideration, but.. well, currently they're getting too much of it.

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#153

Post by Tempest1981 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #147
narrator wrote: post #123

Serious question: why does everyone have to live in San Francisco? There are lots and lots of cheaper places to live and work, but it seems there is something that only San Francisco can do that everywhere else can't. Why aren't city planners working on creating that special "whateveritis" in their city as fast as possible? I don't want any pat answers like "the people are there" or "the jobs are there" because that'…

They don't. There are over 7 billion people not trying to move to SF. About 100.000 new housing units would probably fix the current crisis.

And worsen the traffic/transit "crisis". Or begin a crisis of overcrowded schools. It's a balancing act.

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#154

Post by superuser2 »

narrator wrote: post #123

Serious question: why does everyone have to live in San Francisco? There are lots and lots of cheaper places to live and work, but it seems there is something that only San Francisco can do that everywhere else can't. Why aren't city planners working on creating that special "whateveritis" in their city as fast as possible? I don't want any pat answers like "the people are there" or "the jobs are there" because that'…

It's not a tautology. As an employee, taking a job somewhere that is not a tech hub means that when it's time for the next job, you probably have to move. Moving cross country with the frequency that SV engineers hop between startups is a horrible way to live.

If, as an employer, you move somewhere that is not a tech hub, people who can get what they need from San Francisco won't follow you.

You could in principle have a tech hub somewhere else, but there's a major synchronization problem there, and more pressingly anywhere you put a large number of high income earners is going to see rents rise sharply, at least in the short term, and people who live there don't want that. So it's not necessarily going to be any better than SF.

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#157

Post by pkaye »

protomyth wrote: post #110
ktRolster wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to fix the country then remove all limits, let developers develop whatever and whereever they deem there is demand. That's a bad idea, too. For example, in Fremont right now, there's a development that was built without being placed in a school district. So the students who will live there have no real school. Also, there are serious environmental impacts that need to be considered every time you build a…

> That's a bad idea, too. For example, in Fremont right now, there's a development that was built without being placed in a school district. So the students who will live there have no real school. Perhaps abolishing the whole idea of school districts and assigning kids to schools via address as opposed to parental decision. The whole pay for schools via property tax and local levies has a pretty big negative impact…

Actually in Fremont, there is one school district with 5 high schools. The city is carved out into districts and generally based on proximity of home address, students assigned to the appropriate high school. The thing though is there is a huge ranking difference between the high schools. The top one is maybe in the 99% percentile in the state while the lower one is maybe 60% percentile. This makes for a huge pricing difference between houses maybe a few blocks apart to the degree of a 2x price difference. So the ones in the expensive houses will pay more property taxes but I believe the funding is equally divided among the high schools based on student population. In the end, probably the big difference is racial difference among different parts of the city and the affluence and education background of the parents that drive the difference in the school rankings.

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#158

Post by mtviewdave »

mrep wrote: post #62
salimmadjd wrote: post #50

SV is becoming a real estate business instead of tech. When you have 50% or more of salaries spent on rent or mortgage then so much of the revenue generated is just lost into real estate instead of innovation growth, investment and R&D. I don't understand why FB, Apple, Google, etc. do not lobby hard the local cities and push to build 100,000 new units. It'll bring the rent or house prices down and it will allow many…

They've tried before and it hardly ever works. I remember reading an article a few years ago about google trying to build 1000+ housing units in mountain view and the town shut them down as they didn't want the town to become controlled by Googlers. Edit: @joe_the_user posted a link about facebook trying to

There are currently plans to build over 10,000 units in North Bayshore (the area around Google's campus):

http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2016/03/03/council-oks-plans-fo...

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#159

Post by makomk »

hodwik wrote: post #121
skewart wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Building limits are systemically classist and racist. They maintain a geographical segregation system. This. Outlawing dense, urban growth does real harm to people's lives, and to the environment. It's one of the clearest examples of xenophobia and greed coallescing to extract wealth and concentrate it in the hands of the privileged few. Just because it's, say, a crowd of mostly Bernie Sanders supporters pushing to…

>"and to the environment" That's a great point, and one that has been largely missed here. I used to live in a city with aggressive green-space initiatives. (85% of the city had to be green space.) Locals would tell me that it was "good for the environment". I'm sorry, but no. Green space initiatives force sprawl. They're bad for the environment, full stop.

Suppose there were no green space initiatives. Then the only green space you could be sure of having would be your own garden. How would this discourage sprawl?

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#160

Post by davidf18 »

tamana wrote: post #93
davidf18 wrote: post #77

What has happened in SF, NYC, London, is that the high cost of housing is caused by market inefficiencies as pointed out by a number of economists (eg, Edward Glaeser, Paul Krugman, Tim Harford) called “rent seeking” where politics is used to artificially limit supply (in this case through zoning restrictions) to create artificial scarcity. This is true of NYCs 13,000 limit on Taxi medallions which caused them to hav…

The construction bit seems silly. Everyone lives somewhere, so construction industry is just more active in exurbs and building more roads. Skyscrapers are very expensive per unit, they are only a bargain where land is expensive

Many people are living with roommates because of the high cost of housing or they are living in smaller apartments than they otherwise would. Removing the politically caused scarcity in land use would ensure more construction as these people would move into new apartments.
Post reply on HN