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‘I lost everything:’ Homelessness surges in Silicon Valley

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Re: ‘I lost everything:’ Homelessness surges in Silicon Valley

#2
Adding to the problem, the NIMBYs everywhere mean that no one builds new RV parks anywhere and the extant RV parks ramp up rents and regulations (your RV has to less than 10 years old) to push out the lower income people. This exact thing happened to me in Austin.

Re: ‘I lost everything:’ Homelessness surges in Silicon Valley

#4
This nightmare has been building for 4 decades and it's finally reaching a breaking point.

Here's my recommendation:

- Work with builders to remove all regulations that prevent building.

- Zone much more residential areas

- Remove all height restrictions

- invite builders to build and offer them legal protection from NIMBYs

- dezone some of non-residential zoning, if needed: In places where there's limited space, we need to move those companies to locations that can handle the influx of workers

- declare certain areas as innovation building zones: Remove all building regulations and let start ups build whatever residential areas in any way they can. Let innovation blossom without hamstringing it with countless regulations.

There are good reasons why this trillion dollar PROBLEM/pain point/industry has been completely ignored by venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. We need to understand those reasons and mitigate those concerns.

Re: ‘I lost everything:’ Homelessness surges in Silicon Valley

#6
This is mostly the result of the severe underdevelopment of new housing in the last 20 or 30 years, due to neighborhoods preventing any sort of development to stymy gentrification. The situation is made worse by the disincentivisaiton of selling any property because of Prop 13. Why would you ever move if your property taxes would increase by an order of magnitude? All the market distortion has led to predictable outcomes, the new tech employees living in the old crappy housing for exorbitant rents, and the poor pushed onto the streets.

Re: ‘I lost everything:’ Homelessness surges in Silicon Valley

#7

This nightmare has been building for 4 decades and it's finally reaching a breaking point. Here's my recommendation: - Work with builders to remove all regulations that prevent building. - Zone much more residential areas - Remove all height restrictions - invite builders to build and offer them legal protection from NIMBYs - dezone some of non-residential zoning, if needed: In places where there's limited space, we…

You don't even need to remove all height restrictions (even though it might be useful).

See http://urbankchoze.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/japanese-zoning.ht... for an overview over the Japanese system. One of the key features is that the different zones allow much more different uses in Japan.

Re: ‘I lost everything:’ Homelessness surges in Silicon Valley

#8

This nightmare has been building for 4 decades and it's finally reaching a breaking point. Here's my recommendation: - Work with builders to remove all regulations that prevent building. - Zone much more residential areas - Remove all height restrictions - invite builders to build and offer them legal protection from NIMBYs - dezone some of non-residential zoning, if needed: In places where there's limited space, we…

"- Work with builders to remove all regulations that prevent building."

This would end disastrously. "All those earthquake safety regulations, those are really preventing me from building." "Those environmental regulations, the ones that stop me from polluting everywhere, those are really preventing me from building."

"- declare certain areas as innovation building zones: Remove all building regulations and let start ups build whatever residential areas in any way they can. Let innovation blossom without hamstringing it with countless regulations."

See above. Most of those regulations were put into place for a reason. Also, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire

Re: ‘I lost everything:’ Homelessness surges in Silicon Valley

#9
The main problem is population growth. Even if housing is built specifically for poorer and lower income individuals, middle class families looking for hosuing will inevitable trickle in causing demand and prices to rise naturally. Once again poor individuals will be on the street. The same cycle keeps occurring in cities across America. Properties designed for the poor end up getting bought by middle and upper class individuals, seen this in Washington D.C. and New york firsthand.

Re: ‘I lost everything:’ Homelessness surges in Silicon Valley

#10
In my town, not Silicon Valley, the biggest complaint about new buildings is the increase in traffic. Traffic in my area is already horrendous.

I do think some NIMBYs would be less NIMBY if improvements in transportation took place at the same time as new buildings.

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