The Bay Area’s tech boom in historical and social context • Hacker News Board

Re: The Bay Area’s tech boom in historical and social context

#31

Post by slg » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #12

The principal issue, full stop, in the Bay Area and most of California is housing. There are two solutions to this: 1) Build more. But this is outrageously difficult due to a well-meaning political view of safety / fairness / etc. These restrictions employ an awful lot of bureaucrats for enforcement but add $10s of thousands in fees and delays for builders, that are IRR driven and would rather concentrate their effor…

Prob 13 is meant to address the first issue. Repealing prob 13 would cause the existing housing to be redistributed in a new way, but it wouldn't address the underlying need for more housing. All it would do is speed up gentrification.

Re: The Bay Area’s tech boom in historical and social context

#32

Post by nerfhammer » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:46 PM UTC

segmondy wrote: post #27

aresant wrote: post #12

The principal issue, full stop, in the Bay Area and most of California is housing. There are two solutions to this: 1) Build more. But this is outrageously difficult due to a well-meaning political view of safety / fairness / etc. These restrictions employ an awful lot of bureaucrats for enforcement but add $10s of thousands in fees and delays for builders, that are IRR driven and would rather concentrate their effor…

It's not just SV that has similiar stuff to Prop 13, most places do so. If not, the locals will simply have to pack up and move just because their property value went up which can be quite disruptive. I personally think it's fair. You shouldn't be forced to move out of a city you are rooted in where you have family and friends. Imagine getting old and deciding you wish to downsize to a smaller house because all the k…

But this also means that without prop 13 or something like it local homeowners would have every reason to try to keep housing prices at sane levels rather than trying to get them as high as possible, would it not?

Re: The Bay Area’s tech boom in historical and social context

#33

Post by johnmyleswhite » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:47 PM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #20

bigdubs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some extra color on Prop 13; a more sinister view is that it was a time bomb designed to "starve the beast" and limit tax revenues in the future.

California doesn't seem very interested in starving the beast overall. So it seems unlikely the motivation of this prop was that.

Prop 13 passed when California was a red state: http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-pol-ca-california-voting-...

Re: The Bay Area’s tech boom in historical and social context

#34

Post by vertexFarm » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:47 PM UTC

ythn wrote: post #4

justboxing wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that might give rise to a (technologically)ultra-capable fascist Here in America, this facist has already arrived.

*for very loose and liberal definitions of "facism"

If you reduce your definition of fascism only to actual, original Italians and Germans in the 1930s and 40s, you completely disregard lessons that we should never forget, to remain always vigilant against the causes of that era. It doesn't somehow show respect for those who fought it then to shout down anyone who thinks comparable things might come to pass in our present time.

I understand you think it seems childish to accuse certain practices today of being fascist, but you must also understand that by the time it's clicking its boots and saluting a dictator in front of columns of tanks, it's a little too late to make the comparison in a useful way. Unfortunately it requires a bit of imagination to work with an uncertain future, as is always the case.

Re: The Bay Area’s tech boom in historical and social context

#35

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

pascalxus wrote: post #19

aresant wrote: post #12

The principal issue, full stop, in the Bay Area and most of California is housing. There are two solutions to this: 1) Build more. But this is outrageously difficult due to a well-meaning political view of safety / fairness / etc. These restrictions employ an awful lot of bureaucrats for enforcement but add $10s of thousands in fees and delays for builders, that are IRR driven and would rather concentrate their effor…

And, to add insult to injury: the ones paying 3000 a year in taxes rather than 30k, are the ones who made millions of dollars in equity off the gain. That's extremely Regressive and completely the opposite of what CA supposedly stands for: Progressive income taxes.

I think the problem is that you're thinking of it in purely economic terms. Ending Prop 13 will increase home turnover because it prices people out of their homes but I don't think that's really what we want in our housing market.

Telling people to think of their homes as a commodity upon which market forces should be brought to bear in order to ensure production of housing services at competitive prices is obtuse. People purchase property, rather than renting, largely to gain security and control, to escape the vicissitudes of the market.

https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6287.html

(It's actually a really good article, I would encourage others to read it for a contrarian view on housing deregulation.)

People want to be able to buy a home and raise their kids or grow old in it. If your ideal market structure doesn't allow for that then you're missing the point.

Re: The Bay Area’s tech boom in historical and social context

#36

Post by sulam » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:53 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #12

The principal issue, full stop, in the Bay Area and most of California is housing. There are two solutions to this: 1) Build more. But this is outrageously difficult due to a well-meaning political view of safety / fairness / etc. These restrictions employ an awful lot of bureaucrats for enforcement but add $10s of thousands in fees and delays for builders, that are IRR driven and would rather concentrate their effor…

Forget older Californians, you can get priced out of your house just from property value increases in the last decade! Also keep in mind that there's no great system for appraising houses. As someone who has bought two houses and sold one, the appraisal system comes down to "can I find a few houses in this neighborhood that have roughly equivalent room count and square footage that have sold in the last 6 months." So now you hate your neighbors for moving out, you hate the new neighbors for paying whatever market rate is, and you start having to figure out how to move to Sacramento and whether or not you'll be able to get a teaching, policing, fire, nursing, etc job there -- all this despite the fact that you may not actually be able to sell your house for even 80% of what the appraised value is.

What Prop 13 did was to say "the best indicator of the value of your property is the amount the market settled on at the last transaction". It also tries to cover some edge cases (the biggest of which is the McMansion remodel -- look at Palo Alto where $2M gets you a teardown and then you build a $6M house on the lot). Still seems reasonable to me, although of course it's not perfect.

Re: The Bay Area’s tech boom in historical and social context

#37

Post by VirtualAirwaves » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #12

The principal issue, full stop, in the Bay Area and most of California is housing. There are two solutions to this: 1) Build more. But this is outrageously difficult due to a well-meaning political view of safety / fairness / etc. These restrictions employ an awful lot of bureaucrats for enforcement but add $10s of thousands in fees and delays for builders, that are IRR driven and would rather concentrate their effor…

I'm all for building more housing. Lots more housing!

But Prop 13 is not to blame! Inflation hasn't been at 2%/year, yet property taxes rise 2%/year every year.

California already has the highest income tax and the highest sales tax in the Nation. Do we need the highest property tax, too? Right now it's right at about the median. That's fine.

Just because someone was stupid enough to pay $3,000,000 for a 1800 sq/ft home in Sunnyvale doesn't mean the people living next door need to have their property taxes raised from $3000 to $30,000/year. Anyone who thinks so is pure evil.

Re: The Bay Area’s tech boom in historical and social context

#38

Post by sulam » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:56 PM UTC

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #8

Very interesting read. When we discuss inequality, I think there are a lot of assumptions made that make it hard to really judge. For example, TFA trots out the high number of people on minimum wage, and the high percentage of people below the poverty line. This is misleading, because it misses out on some key ways that "capitalism raises all boats," which are tricky to measure. Off the top of my head... The first is…

Poor people would be very surprised to hear that they all have washing machines. So would Laundromat owners. They may have TVs, but they can't afford cable so it's OTA only. And while they have a fridge, they can't afford food to put in it. Most importantly the cost for a place to put all these things is completely out of reach to anyone under the poverty line in the SF Bay Area.

Re: The Bay Area’s tech boom in historical and social context

#39

Post by ThrustVectoring » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:58 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #31

aresant wrote: post #12

The principal issue, full stop, in the Bay Area and most of California is housing. There are two solutions to this: 1) Build more. But this is outrageously difficult due to a well-meaning political view of safety / fairness / etc. These restrictions employ an awful lot of bureaucrats for enforcement but add $10s of thousands in fees and delays for builders, that are IRR driven and would rather concentrate their effor…

Prob 13 is meant to address the first issue. Repealing prob 13 would cause the existing housing to be redistributed in a new way, but it wouldn't address the underlying need for more housing. All it would do is speed up gentrification.

Barriers to movement causes an inefficient use of housing with respect to commutes and job sites. Someone locked in to a house in Mountain View with a job in SF cannot trade houses with someone locked in to a house in SF with a job in Mountain View - not without a huge increase in property taxes.

The redistribution gets rid of a deadweight loss in commuting, easing traffic and transit congestion and allowing more housing to be within commuting distance of jobs.

Re: The Bay Area’s tech boom in historical and social context

#40

Post by andy-x » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 8:02 PM UTC

nerfhammer wrote: post #32

segmondy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just SV that has similiar stuff to Prop 13, most places do so. If not, the locals will simply have to pack up and move just because their property value went up which can be quite disruptive. I personally think it's fair. You shouldn't be forced to move out of a city you are rooted in where you have family and friends. Imagine getting old and deciding you wish to downsize to a smaller house because all the k…

But this also means that without prop 13 or something like it local homeowners would have every reason to try to keep housing prices at sane levels rather than trying to get them as high as possible, would it not?

Short answer: no.