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Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

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Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#161

Post by SilasX »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #126
baron816 wrote: post #9

Why are people so adamantly opposed to density? Well, I know the reason is to prop up the value of their homes, but if you think about places like New York, London, and Paris, that argument doesn't exactly hold. Those cities are incredibly dense and expensive, but people love living there enough to pay the high prices. People who can live anywhere choose to live there. I'm willing to bet that SV could triple its popu…

FWIW that is the wrong question. People are opposed to change. So Sunnyvale has been building a number of apartment buildings and condos around. There has been tremendous back pressure for existing residents (not me but I'm a rarity it seems). The root of their concern is that they don't want the neighborhood experience to change from what they know (or knew) to something they don't know. I talked to some folks who h…

What confuses me the most is that, for these "change-hating" residents, this "undesirable neighborhood transition" comes right alongside a standing offer of millions of dollars to move a little further away, due to increased home value.

Maybe I haven't passed that critical milestone, but I can't think of a scenario where I'd complain if my neighborhood decay came with such a surge in net worth? (not trying to be sarcastic, could be an issue of be never having been that attached to a specific neighborhood)

(Naturally, this wouldn't apply to those who are without rent control, and suffer the double-whammy of more outsiders + higher rent.)

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#162

Post by johan_larson »

sokoloff wrote: post #150
hx87 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't live in an RV, but ~0% of my social life takes place at home. I just sleep there.

Suppose you want to bring a date home and have sex. What's been the typical reaction to the "van down by the river"?

"sex van" is sort of mid-range sketchy, and a whole lot better than "sex tarp".

https://xkcd.com/1101/

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#163

Post by mtviewdave »

beachstartup wrote: post #6

i went to school with a lot of wealthy kids from the bay area. they and their families simply do not want to develop the area any further, in order to keep housing as high as possible and the area exclusive as possible. in private conversation they talk about it openly. personally i don't think it's much more complicated than that.

I grew up in the San Jose and live in Mountain View. I have never heard anyone in the Bay Area express this opinion, nor do I hold it myself. Moreover, I am a homeowner, and have voted pro-housing in every election where it was an issue, and expressed a strong pro-housing opinion in every survey the city has offered.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#164

Post by gozur88 »

shostack wrote: post #151
gozur88 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically through Mello-Roos districts. It's pretty common for residents of newer developments to have an additional line item on their property tax bills. This is to service bonds that were taken out for things like new roads, schools, water, and sewage. Mello-Roos districts are pretty popular with existing residents, since they don't have to pay for new infrastructure to accommodate new residents. From the wiki pag…

I think Mello-Roos is awful in some ways. New owners in the area shouldn't have massively disproportionate tax burdens because they moved there a few years later (in some cases that is a very large difference). Especially when you consider things like the fact that people are still using the resources just as equally. Areas change, and increasing taxes on all residents (even if it forces some out) is unfortunately pa…

>New owners in the area shouldn't have massively disproportionate tax burdens because they moved there a few years later (in some cases that is a very large difference).

But they're paying for new infrastructure that didn't need to exist if they didn't move there. How is it fair to ask existing homeowners to pay more because new people moved in nearby?

Mello-Roos is really no different than developer fees included in the price of a new home.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#165

Post by djcapelis »

some-guy wrote: post #157
djcapelis wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) The majority of voters in SF aren't homeowners. 2) ROI isn't the most important thing about a home. 3) Even if you value property values over other values, affordable housing that can support a strong and diverse environment that is vital to maintaining the strength of the region. If you kill that engine, you kill the thing that created the high values to begin with. You can shoot the golden goose if you want, but…

2) ROI isn't the most important thing about a home. I agree, though I imagine the people who can actually afford a home in SF in 2016 feel differently. Edit: clarity

Doubt it. Some friends of mine have bought homes here and none of them cared that much about ROI as a large factor in their purchasing decisions. They were buying a home.

You gotta be at least a little crazy to live in SF. I hope that's still true. It isn't particularly financially responsible, so you have to want to be here. That means the people who live here generally aren't doing it for their ROIs.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#166

Post by phlakaton »

guyzero wrote: post #129
ChuckMcM wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW that is the wrong question. People are opposed to change. So Sunnyvale has been building a number of apartment buildings and condos around. There has been tremendous back pressure for existing residents (not me but I'm a rarity it seems). The root of their concern is that they don't want the neighborhood experience to change from what they know (or knew) to something they don't know. I talked to some folks who h…

Well as an actual Sunnyvale resident the fears are slightly more rational: cars on roads, kids in schools and no increase in infrastructure to go along with the thousands of new residents. Some of the buildings have less than one parking spot per apartment which in theory is supposed to help encourage people to use transit, in practice people fear it will lead to more street parking in adjacent residential neighbourh…

Yes, but do the good people of Sunnyvale vote for infrastructure projects? Do they allocate enough funds for building that infrastructure, and/or do they have rational expectations for where those funds will come from?

Even if you fear putting the cart before the horse, it simply begs the question of why you don't already have the horse. And the answer to that, I think, is back to what was stated above: fear of change, of urbanization, of government, of government spending, of property value declines, of loss of "heritage" – whatever that means to a farming town that replaced its (AFAIK) last orchard with a strip mall called the "Cherry Orchard" in 1999...

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#167

Post by WWKong »

djcapelis wrote: post #139
WWKong wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why will home owners vote for pro-housing which reduces the ROI on their homes?

1) The majority of voters in SF aren't homeowners. 2) ROI isn't the most important thing about a home. 3) Even if you value property values over other values, affordable housing that can support a strong and diverse environment that is vital to maintaining the strength of the region. If you kill that engine, you kill the thing that created the high values to begin with. You can shoot the golden goose if you want, but…

#2 Sure ROI isn't everything. But when you forgo every other saving/investment opportunity to buy a house, then ROI becomes almost everything. Because that is your investment/future. #3 I buy it that adding housing is overall better. I'm pro-housing. But what do you tell the folks who bought million dollar studio this year? That we are going to improve things for everyone (mostly coming in after you) at the expense of your investment? Are you open to building more housing and using tax dollars to reimburse folks who bought at peak?

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#168

Post by DrScump »

Perhaps the subtlety of the sentence is being missed. It says:

San Jose has taken the rare step of publicly opposing the project, saying it would add far too many jobs, exacerbating the region’s housing shortage.

In my opinion, the motivation is that the San Jose City Council is assuming that most of the workers would live in San Jose, exacerbating their housing price pressure while denying them any of the developer-fee benefits or tax base improvement.

And that's true. This has been the pattern throughout the history of the valley: San Jose's traditional business-unfriendliness has resulted in the major Silicon Valley names locating their businesses in Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Cupertino (Apple!), and Mountain View (Google!) over the decades.

San Jose's emphasis was always on grabbing all the land they could (incorporating county lands) without creating a business-friendly environment there. (Look at San Jose city boundaries in, say, 1950 versus now.)

It's another side-effect of one-party rule (for all but one mayoral dynasty) during this period.

Another demonstration of this nimby-ism is that San Jose and surrounding cities tend to dump problematic development on each other's borders. For example, Santana Row and Valley Fair straddle the San Jose - Santa Clara border. Neither felt any incentive to consider traffic effects of dumping all of this retail in less than a square mile. Result: gridlock so bad that it actually backs up onto the neighboring freeways (280 and 880/17) during November and December, at least.

Yay.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#169

Post by Johnny555 »

zippergz wrote: post #105
shostack wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For more recent buyers I'll bet the market value piece is pretty high on the list. If you bought in the last couple of years while things have been increasing, you want to see that trend increase. If suddenly prices drop because there's a ton more dense housing (which also impacts the other desirability factors of the neighborhood), you could easily be underwater on your $1M+ mortgage. Given the amount of money at st…

I’ve owned several houses. The more recently I bought, the LESS I care about the value of the house. It’s just numbers on paper. Money isn’t at stake until I’m trying to sell, which I’m certainly not looking to to do if I just recently bought.

I would expect it to be the other way around -- the more recently you bought (especially in the over-inflated Bay Area market), the more you need to worry about ending up underwater in your home value.

If you bought 20 years ago, even if a fire burnt down your house, it's likely that the land alone would give you a healthy profit. If you bought 2 years ago, a significant downturn in the market could leave you underwater.

Few people plan to sell their home shortly after buying it, but a market downturn could leave you without a job and you can't afford to move elsewhere for a job if you can't afford to take a loss by selling your house for less than your mortgage.

Re: Silicon Valley's housing crisis, in one sentence

#170

Post by mahyarm »

guyzero wrote: post #129
ChuckMcM wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW that is the wrong question. People are opposed to change. So Sunnyvale has been building a number of apartment buildings and condos around. There has been tremendous back pressure for existing residents (not me but I'm a rarity it seems). The root of their concern is that they don't want the neighborhood experience to change from what they know (or knew) to something they don't know. I talked to some folks who h…

Well as an actual Sunnyvale resident the fears are slightly more rational: cars on roads, kids in schools and no increase in infrastructure to go along with the thousands of new residents. Some of the buildings have less than one parking spot per apartment which in theory is supposed to help encourage people to use transit, in practice people fear it will lead to more street parking in adjacent residential neighbourh…

All of those new buildings and people will result in a far higher property tax revenue base since they are new units not starting from a 1980s prop 13 tax base. From that you can build new schools, hire more teachers and police and develop more transit.
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