71–80 of 328 posts
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You can have good mass transit or affordable housing, but not both. This sucks.
> You can have good mass transit or affordable housing, but not both. Why's that?
Please don't come to Austin. I moved from SF to Austin a little over two years ago, and I want to make it clear that it's terrible. The food is bad, the people are lame, and all the musicians are out of tune. I hear Chicago is where it's at, so please go there. Or New York. Or anywhere else, really. Just don't come to Austin.
Perhaps Austin needs a lot of zoning laws and bureaucracy to prevent more people from moving there. Worked really well for SF.
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> I grew up in Cupertino, and when I visit my parents there, I'm rather shocked at how downhill the neighborhood has gone in parts. It's crazy that these old 70's tract homes go for 1.5 million. Even more insane is that they're bought and then left empty to go downhill. Literally broken windows and paint falling off. I never used to see that. Do you have any idea what's behind this?
I'm inclined to believe many are empty investment properties. A documentary about the housing costs showed a Chinese investment tour of Cupertino for such purpose: https://youtu.be/SBjXUBMkkE8?t=2m35s The other issue is that the high school I went to there, Monta Vista High School, is extremely well-ranked. As such some investors buy houses, then rent them to a single custodian who boards as many students as possible…
This sounds like student housing in any major city.
It looks like they may have been super-concerned about water running out instead?
I may be missing some nuance here, but wouldn't increasing sales tax (as the Silicon Valley Leadership Group is advocating) further disproportionately punish lower-income residents? The article doesn't make clear whether moving towards a "Manhattan-like megalopolis" would be a positive or negative trend, but this would push it further down that road.
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It seems to me the real answer is to leave. This town ain't big enough for everybody. Mass transit isn't going to solve this problem.
Yup, it can just become 50% empty investment properties, and folks can scrounge for what's left. Some solution is going to be needed to prevent that situation, though maybe with all those empty houses, there'll be less people to make traffic so bad.
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But were they? Really? 100+ temps in the summer... landlocked in Texas.
I'm not being facetious, Austin is quite overhyped.
"It's like an oasis of dirty water in the sahara," a former Austinite once told me. I'm sure they were being hyperbolic.