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A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

nytimes.com

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Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#181

Post by CodeMage »

lisper wrote: post #174
jermaustin1 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a conscious and IMHO defensible choice by the people who already live here... This statement smells really, really bad. As the article stated, she had to leave the SFBA because she was evicted and the housing prices had gone up too much. She lived there, and didn't chose that. As with all gentrification, the population that lived there didn't chose for affluent (typically white) people to move in and raise thei…

Then she and other likeminded people should have organized politically and pressured the government to change the zoning laws before it was too late. Everything going on in the SFBA is the direct result of capitalism and democracy in action. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but I don't see any principled way you could object to it. [UPDATE] Let me clarify: I can see how you could object to various aspects of our polit…

One can have principled objections against capitalism without objecting against democracy.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#182

Post by anarazel »

lisper wrote: post #167
flick wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the thing is that you (Bay Area landowners) are not really bearing the cost of insufficient housing. In fact, you're benefiting through increasing home values (for which you are not taxed due to Prop. 13). It's renters and others like Ms. James who are being hurt. The particularly cruel aspect of this is that once these people have been forced to the edges of the Bay Area, they no longer get to participate in the…

> But the thing is that you (Bay Area landowners) are not really bearing the cost of insufficient housing. That's not true. It makes it hard to find good help. (That was intended to be humorously ironic, but there's a serious point behind it: everything in the SFBA is more expensive than it would be if housing were more plentiful.) > you're benefiting through increasing home values Not really. You only benefit from t…

Are you actually complaining that the higher house price wouldn't be good for you, because you'd have to pay tax when selling? I'm still not sure this isn't all sarcastic.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#183

Post by lisper »

thephyber wrote: post #168
lisper wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never claimed them to be stupid. Your words, not mine. The adjective "self-inflicted" has an undeniable negative connotation. Why didn't you say, "deliberately chosen" instead? > The Bay Area housing situation is a tragedy of the commons. No, it's not. It is neither a tragedy, nor does it have anything to do with commons. Yes, it is a case of the rich making life harder for the poor, but that's only a tragedy for…

> The Bay Area housing situation is a tragedy of the commons. For those who don't appear to know what "Tragedy of the commons" is, it's an economic concept[1] that doesn't necessarily involve a "tragedy" and "the commons" can include private property. A recent example of "tragedy of the commons" was during the recent California extended drought, Wall Street firms were buying up struggling pistachio farms in Californi…

Completely agree. Nonetheless, I stand by my position that the SFBA housing situation is NOT an example. In the case of the pistachio farmers there was a common resource (the aquifer) that was available on a first-come-first-served basis, so deep drillers were rewarded. I don't see any analogous mechanism at work here.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#184

Post by Retric »

lisper wrote: post #174
jermaustin1 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a conscious and IMHO defensible choice by the people who already live here... This statement smells really, really bad. As the article stated, she had to leave the SFBA because she was evicted and the housing prices had gone up too much. She lived there, and didn't chose that. As with all gentrification, the population that lived there didn't chose for affluent (typically white) people to move in and raise thei…

Then she and other likeminded people should have organized politically and pressured the government to change the zoning laws before it was too late. Everything going on in the SFBA is the direct result of capitalism and democracy in action. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but I don't see any principled way you could object to it. [UPDATE] Let me clarify: I can see how you could object to various aspects of our polit…

The constitution allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce because local interests don't line up with national interests. Saying, group X voted for it thus it's OK stops working when group X impacts group Y.

Because of this, I don't think local governments should have control over zoning. The impacts are at least state wide so they should be regulated at the state or national level.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#185

Post by wbl »

lisper wrote: post #81
ucaetano wrote: post #52

San Francisco has more than twice the area of Manhattan, with half the population. The San Francisco Bay Area CSA has about the same population as Switzerland, with 2/3 of the area of Switzerland. Both have similar GDPs. If someone wanted to live in Germany, and commute to work in Zurich, with Swiss salaries and German cost-of-living, their commute would be about 1h15min. The housing and infrastructure problems in th…

> The housing and infrastructure problems in the SFBA are purely political, and self-inflicted. That's true, but the implication that these decisions are inarguably stupid ("self-inflicted") is unfair. It's a conscious and IMHO defensible choice by the people who already live here: we would prefer to deal with the problems caused by insufficient housing than by the problems caused by overly dense population.

Like having black people in Marin county?

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#186

Post by kevinburke »

jakelarkin wrote: post #117

Reporters keep trying to find profiles of the housing crisis but this seems disingenuous. A lot of what this woman is doing is a choice; waking up hours before the train, huge house in Stockton vs condo/apartment closer. She makes $80k/year meaning post-tax $4600/month. She could easily afford a nice 1 or 2 bedroom in Pittsburg or Pleasanton for ~$2k a month, and her door-to-door commute would be well under 80 minute…

That's $12000 extra on rent per year, which is a lot to someone making $80k a year.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#187

Post by peterjlee »

ghomrassen wrote: post #62

What's to stop San Francisco from creating a lot more high-density housing? Doesn't that solve many issues with housing supply? Looking at wikipedia, the density is crazy low even compared to other major cities in the US.

Mostly existing homeowners. More houses mean decrease in their rent income. Also the influential people in city politics probably already own homes.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#188

Post by soft_serve »

flick wrote: post #145
lisper wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The housing and infrastructure problems in the SFBA are purely political, and self-inflicted. That's true, but the implication that these decisions are inarguably stupid ("self-inflicted") is unfair. It's a conscious and IMHO defensible choice by the people who already live here: we would prefer to deal with the problems caused by insufficient housing than by the problems caused by overly dense population.

But the thing is that you (Bay Area landowners) are not really bearing the cost of insufficient housing. In fact, you're benefiting through increasing home values (for which you are not taxed due to Prop. 13). It's renters and others like Ms. James who are being hurt. The particularly cruel aspect of this is that once these people have been forced to the edges of the Bay Area, they no longer get to participate in the…

> In fact, you're benefiting through increasing home values (for which you are not taxed due to Prop. 13)

This is completely untrue. I have a house in 94087 where I live about 7 months/year (the other 5 months are in Tel Aviv, where it's also very expensive!) I own the house, bought in in 1989. I don't benefit at all from increased house prices. It just makes everything more expensive.

And even under Prop 13, my property tax goes up 2% a year. That's more than inflation.

I don't benefit at all from the "increased value" in my house. If I could, I'd tear down the house and build a 2-family house on the property. But even if zoning laws allowed it, the house would be reassessed at current market value, and it wouldn't be worth it to pay $32,000/year in property taxes alone. (I've looked into this to the extent of hiring a real-estate lawyer to see if it's feasible).

If there were no prop 13, people would be forced out of their homes because specu-vesters would drive the prices up making just the taxes affordable.

The solution is to BUILD MORE HOUSES. Build apartment buildings. Close by so people can walk or take existing mass transit to work. And allow people with single family homes to tear them down and build 2-family homes without being reassessed.

Re: A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M

#190

Post by wbl »

lisper wrote: post #161
ucaetano wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never claimed them to be stupid. Your words, not mine. But the Stanford professor writing about the plight of the poor workers commuting for 2 hours lives in a multi-million dollar home in Atherton and votes for anti-poor-people zoning laws. The young, billionaire, startup CEO who wants to cause a positive impact in the world lives in Los Altos Hills, where zoning laws forbid lot sizes smaller than 1 acre, and bans…

> I never claimed them to be stupid. Your words, not mine. The adjective "self-inflicted" has an undeniable negative connotation. Why didn't you say, "deliberately chosen" instead? > The Bay Area housing situation is a tragedy of the commons. No, it's not. It is neither a tragedy, nor does it have anything to do with commons. Yes, it is a case of the rich making life harder for the poor, but that's only a tragedy for…

They already paved it over with subdivisions. That's why the Greenbelt alliance supports more housing.
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