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The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

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Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#161

Post by QuarterReptile »

all2well wrote: post #99
bufordsharkley wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "technically correct" way to fix this would be to remove the investment potential of housing by taxing away land value (the grand old panacea of the Land Value Tax[0]). I think this is a good idea, but it's a disruptive one, and one unlikely to happen soon. But in the meantime, we might as well fix the policy that's in direct contradiction to this ideal: 1) Repeal prop 13. Full stop. 2) Intervene with exclusionar…

The thing about getting rid of prop 13 is you'd price out a lot of residents that bought a long time ago for something they don't have a whole lot of control over. If you thought that gentrification is bad now, churn in residents would got through the roof. Not to mention that you wouldn't solve the issue of shorter-term investments in land, or investments that include new constructions. Honestly, the real issue in t…

One of my biggest issues with Prop 13 is that it suggests that you should have a claim a municipal government in perpetuity. Huge amounts of the value of land in towns and cities comes from the services provided by the city government, and I think Prop 13 pretends this couldn't possibly be true.

I also think it would be an absurd argument to make. If those people had no desire for services, they would have bought/built houses well North of the bay area, or South of San Francisco in some place like moss landing. And I don't think it's worth preserving that delusion at the cost of perverse incentives, waning tax revenue, and a massively illiquid housing market.

Granted, this is not all that's needed to fix the problem (even moreso in CA, which has some really bad barriers), but I don't think moving in the wrong direction will get us where we need to be.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#162

Post by dekhn »

URSpider94 wrote: post #127
dekhn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I've pointed out elsewhere on this post, you've setting up a ton of requirements that can't be met. While I appreciate that you want to live in a "walkable area", that's pretty much the first requirement you should drop. That's a "want to have", not a "must have" in housing. Like I've pointed out elsewhere, you're setting up specious arguments when you insist of a bunch of details, like living directly in PA, livi…

Dude, where do you get off telling her what choices to make about where to live?

Well, she and I share a great deal of things in common in this situation. We're both dual professional marriages with families in the Bay Area who are in the situation where housing in the areas where we want to live is unaffordable. The difference is while I also want to see denser and more affordable housing and shorter commutes, I didn't rage-quit on the internet over not being able to buy a $2.7M home in exactly the place where I want to live. Instead, I was extremely rational, considered a wide range of issues, decided that the problem with housing in California is effectively systemic and unchangeable because existing homeowners are an extremely powerful voting block.

If I wanted to live in Palo Alto the first two things I'd drop are the requirement for "walkable to downtown" and "my kids can bike on my street". Those are great attributes, but that's about half a million of additional house cost, and I think any rational person buying a home would drop those requirements if they truly want to live there. Adding on to that, I'd also suggest buying a fixer-upper, fixing it up, and living there (not flipping it).

Ultimately, if you rage-quit on the internet, you can't complain if people call you on the irrational parts of your rage.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#163

Post by QuarterReptile »

xapata wrote: post #98
jhanschoo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm tired of hearing the ideological position that government interference is absolutely bad. I live in a city-state where government housing and policies and strict zoning at once makes housing affordable for the middle and lower class insulated from fluctuating rents, and protects public spaces from overdevelopment in a land-scarce island.

You're right in one sense -- all government (in)actions should be considered, not an "interference" per se, but a choice made with at least some understanding of the consequences on society. As for the problem of interfering with the market... One issue is that a well-functioning market depends on the idea that price captures all information. This is central to the idea of the "invisible hand" guiding individuals to…

I agree with you on all the theory, but I'd add that if you take the subsidy option, you'll forever have to clamp down harder and harder as the effects of the distortions amplify.

I'm actually open to the idea that the government option could work; I just find it entirely antithetical to the ethos of the US.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#164

Post by whack »

I used to live in Silicon Valley for many years. Devil's advocate: Why should Palo Alto provide affordable housing? People who want affordable housing can find it in Menlo Park, East-PA, Mountain View, all of which are just minutes away from Palo Alto. The reason why people don't want to live there, is because they want to live in a neighborhood that's as exclusive/upscale as Palo Alto. And yet, if Palo Alto gave in to demands for Affordable Housing, it would lose that very upscale/exclusivity that people are seeking in the first place.

I've always argued that San Francisco needs more affordable housing, because it's not just a neighborhood, it's a city. Anyone who lives outside of SF has to expend considerable effort in getting to SF, hence why the city has a duty to provide affordable housing within the city. However, this argument doesn't apply to Palo Alto. It might be a city, logistically speaking, but given its small size and extremely close proximity to other "cities" around it, it's really more of a neighborhood than a city. And I don't see the evil in having some neighborhoods within a metro area that are more upscale/exclusive than others.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#165

Post by khuey »

mchaver wrote: post #102
hkmurakami wrote: post #3

It seems that we made a pact with the devil by positioning housing as an investment asset. By doing so, we've encouraged people to commit a very large fraction of their net worth into a rather illiquid asset, tying their financial fates to the future assessment of that asset. As a result, protecting the price and appreciation of this asset has come to overshadow the other crucial roles that housing plays in our socie…

Which countries do you think handle housing well? Any references would be appreciated.

Japan.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#166

Post by khuey »

whack wrote: post #164

I used to live in Silicon Valley for many years. Devil's advocate: Why should Palo Alto provide affordable housing? People who want affordable housing can find it in Menlo Park, East-PA, Mountain View, all of which are just minutes away from Palo Alto. The reason why people don't want to live there, is because they want to live in a neighborhood that's as exclusive/upscale as Palo Alto. And yet, if Palo Alto gave in…

None of those places are affordable anymore, with the possible exception of parts of East Palo Alto (and even that pool is drying up fast).

The problem with your logic is that just about every city on the peninsula has decided it can be the "exclusive/upscale" neighborhood in the region. And the ones that aren't on board with that can't possibly make enough of a dent in the regional jobs/housing imbalance on their own to matter. Thus people commuting to Palo Alto from Gilroy and Tracey.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#167

Post by davidw »

lisper wrote: post #143
jurassic wrote: post #121

I get depressed every time I think about the Bay Area housing situation. As half of an early-30s professional couple looking at our baby clock and anxious to start a family, I don't see how I can possibly provide a middle-class lifestyle for children while staying here. The choices are to join the bleeding edge of gentrification by moving into a slum like East Palo Alto or commit to severely degraded quality of life…

Wanting to live where you work is not "unreasonable millennial self-entitlement", but wanting to live in PA is. PA is one of the best places on earth. That makes it a scarce commodity. A lot more people want to live there than can possibly live there without fundamentally changing what makes it a nice place to live in the first place. If everyone who wanted to live in PA did it wouldn't be PA any more, it would be We…

If some of the area were more like this:

https://goo.gl/maps/h6VUZB7hVZs

Wouldn't it still be a pretty desirable place to live because of access to so many things, high paying jobs, a great climate, etc....?

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#168

Post by sangnoir »

lisper wrote: post #141
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. When there isn't a market for $AAPL shares at $100, but the government steps in to offer $100 to prop up the price of $AAPL stock, there is a problem. That is the issue with housing prices, stocks, bonds, debt, and everything else on the world stage. This central bank interference destroys price discovery and disrupts prices everywhere, including Palo Alto, even if they aren't directing bidd…

That, and also no one needs AAPL stock in order to live, but everyone needs housing. So the price distortions in housing affect society more severely than price distortions in AAPL stock.

> That, and also no one needs AAPL stock in order to live, but everyone needs housing

If housing should be protected from 'distortions', please explain how foreclosures help? I'm not being snide - my economics knowledge is basic, kindly explain it like you would to a high-school graduate.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#169

Post by superuser2 »

vadym909 wrote: post #29

I'm surprised that none of the YCs startups have tried to solve this problem. People really want 'affordable housing' and YC's motto to its startups is to 'make something people want'- so what gives?

Startups solve problems where a small but clever resource commitment (some programmer-hours) can have an outsized impact.

There is no elite team of 10 or 1,000 that can press the right buttons on their Macbook Pros to bring more land into existence in desirable areas.

Being a landlord is pretty much the opposite of being a startup.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#170

Post by sctb »

youngButEager wrote: post #39

The east coast of the USA was settled first, recall. What did they do back east to 'solve' this problem of "we're running out of space"? They increased the density of occupants per unit of land -- they built UPWARD. That will have to happen here too. It's already happened in LA. There will always be crybabies like this attorney during the growing pains of a popular 'destination city.' For now, think of turning the Pe…

> crybabies

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