141–150 of 329 posts
Some of us just wanted a 3 bedroom house on a 5000 sq ft lot -- so we could have a small yard with room for a dog and BBQ. Maybe a kid playing outside. Now we're being told we're greedy, and our neighborhoods should be replaced with 3 story townhouses on 1200 sq ft lots. No room for Fido. Makes me wonder what we're working insane hours for -- to settle for permanent apartment style living. At least we don't have cage…
Unlikely to happen, in my opinion. Locals, who have lived in the Bay Area for a long time, have all the voting rights and they either own homes and want to see their property value increase or are considered poor and get cheap housing and plenty of handouts. Only those who move here actually suffer and pay all the taxes to support the locals and end up renting forever.
More renters than owners. Renters need to get out and vote.
Those of us who are or feel priced out of those areas, however, have no voting rights, but are stuck with the outcomes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> which is 99% developed. Not really. There's plenty of room to build a ton more in San Francisco. Just because there's already, say, a parking lot or a Burger King with a drive-through on a block in the city doesn't mean that it wouldn't be possible to build apartments there instead. Geography and existing land use do not prevent building more housing in SF. Anti-building regulations are the only meaningful reason w…
"Not really. There's plenty of room to build a ton more in San Francisco." "Anti-building regulations are the only meaningful reason why the housing supply is so restricted." Prove your claim. The GP is right that there is essentially no undeveloped land in SF; a huge part of the housing moratorium debate centered on the fact that there are only a half-dozen or so vacant parcels in the Mission. This is true across th…
Cost of land goes up with density, but that's the point. You build more and spread that cost among more units. Up to a point, it is economical to build higher in that situation (then for skyscrapers you start to see cost per unit going up again). Look at all the 3 or 4 stories apartment buildings sprouting in the city right now. Most of them could be double the height without increasing construction costs per unit.
If your artificially reduce the number of units that can be built on a plot of land, you're forcing to spread the price of land among fewer units and you increase their cost.
Maybe the answer is to stop growing and let other parts of the country grow. The brain drain to SV has been disastrous for other communities. It's contributed to inequality and deep geographic/political polarization. Yes, you can downvote me but consider formulating a counter-argument.
The main thing capitalism is meant to do is prioritize where resources should be focused. And they get focused where they get the most value.
Oh my: 'During the recession, many market-rate projects that had been OK’d were abandoned by cash-strapped developers and converted into affordable housing projects because the government was the only entity doing any building. The community’s reception of a market-rate project compared with the same project when it became an affordable housing project was noticeably different, says Gloria, who was a San Diego city c…
While you have the general idea right, it really could be more accurately described as "poor people of a variety of backgrounds". I mean, there's plenty of poor latino (especially in San Diego), black, and white folks who need housing.
It's particularly galling when it happens in a charming neighborhood that used to be run-down and redlined but now that people are discovering trees and walkability are a nice thing has mostly $750k+ houses and residents who oppose any new construction of any sort. I mean, reading the nextdoor feed these are people who wanted to fight a discount grocer opening on an empty lot because it wasn't classy enough for them. They also oppose bike lanes and street calming, which is one of the reasons I left. (I refer of course to Golden Hill)
For a bit of micro NIMBYism: my street in Palo Alto just instituted resident-only parking (I was the only one to object). Thus the people who cut our hair, serve our meals etc will have to walk even farther to work (my house is about 1.25 miles from downtown) while the wealthy shoppers park downtown for free. Yes it was a pain having a lot of cars on the street but I didn't feel it was a hardship that I couldn't park…
Maybe the answer is to stop growing and let other parts of the country grow. The brain drain to SV has been disastrous for other communities. It's contributed to inequality and deep geographic/political polarization. Yes, you can downvote me but consider formulating a counter-argument.
Please don't break the HN guidelines by downvote-baiting. Also, please don't unsubstantive, provocative comments; that's a trollish combination. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304869 and marked it off-topic.
For a bit of micro NIMBYism: my street in Palo Alto just instituted resident-only parking (I was the only one to object). Thus the people who cut our hair, serve our meals etc will have to walk even farther to work (my house is about 1.25 miles from downtown) while the wealthy shoppers park downtown for free. Yes it was a pain having a lot of cars on the street but I didn't feel it was a hardship that I couldn't park…
is it 100 a year? that seems quite affordable to me even if someone is making 8 dollars an hour.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They really are. At least in California. One of many ways in which local government here is fucked up.
Common misconception- usually what happens is we are promised that funds from a new tax will be earmarked for something, then it winds up going in to the general fund, or spent somewhere else. Taxpayers have a real blind spot to the whole 'money is fungible' concept.
> A fund is hereby established in the State Treasury, to be known as the 2016 State School Facilities Fund
> no disbursement shall be made from any funds required by law to be transferred to the General Fund.
> Bonds in the total amount of nine billion dollars ($9,000,000,000) […] may be issued and sold for the purposes set forth…
(This proposition was approved by the voters.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>i fear that any sufficiently strong measures to restrict empty homes or foreign investment (see: empty home taxes in British Columbia) will be met with strong resistance from Democrats. Uh, I'm not sure why Democrats would be against this, especially considering Prop 13 was passed by Reagan.
I know people like to blame Reagan for lots of things, but Prop 13 was passed by voter initiative in 1978, Reagan was Governor from 1967 to 1975. He probably voted for it though.
My father was madder. He would watch those property taxes go up every year, cringe, and gulp his Mickey's Big Mouth Beer. (My father died of liver cancer years later. My father drank for many reasons, but all adults were furious over what politicians were doing with all that money. It wasen't pretty.)
Politicians used the money on pet projects. I was a kid, but I knew something was very wrong. Everyone knew--Republicans, and Democrats, even the hippies were furious. The waste/borderline fraud was on the front pages of newspapers monthly.
The Bay Area is a disaster. Rents are atrocious. Traffic is worse than ever. Sewer systems were built, but their was just never enough to enlarge them? They always had money to hire a new relative though?
But--your Founders just have to live here, and set up shop in the high rise, with the hand finished wood tables.
I don't quite get it. Yes--I do get it. It's they can buy the nice house in the nice neighborhood, and "Oh well?". But they always blame it on the Investors. "Investors need to be close to their money?" It's getting old.
But blaming prop 13 in any way is just projecting.
Take away prop 13. Within weeks REIT's, your Founders, Every DINK with money will be chasing those units.
I give it a year, and the widows would be gone, and the 1 percenter's will be Landlords. Get ready for New York City rents.