71–80 of 187 posts
> ...to fight against the skyrocketing rents and to open up the space for something better. They lost me right there. If they want to fight skyrocketing rents they should push for more housing. If they wanted the space to be used for something else they should have bought or rented it themselves. Protesting Google does nothing to change these.
> New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher. The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must have been a halfway livable city. This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high payin…
> This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists I don't think you quite grasp the effects of a massive influx of hundreds to thousands of new individuals making $150k-250k. It increases rent across the board, which impacts all the people in an area. Sure, it might create a few new jobs for baristas and shopkeepers, a few bartenders and waitresses. But ultimately it just leads to gentrification and pri…
I'm from the bay area and pay close attention to land use/zoning issues, so yeah, I think I do. The bay area has had particularly extreme series of decades of rent increases precisely because of anti-housing policies. If the market was allowed to respond, rents would still rise, to be sure, but not nearly as much.
> Sure, it might create a few new jobs for baristas and shopkeepers, a few bartenders and waitresses. But ultimately it just leads to gentrification and prices people out of the market.
Anchor industries succeeding in a metro also raises wages for others in that metro. But, the catch is that the wage rise may not necessarily be enough to match the increase in cost of living. The bay area (and really all coastal California) is a good example of this. Wages for a lot of random job types are higher than normal, but housing is still too expensive.
> You wonder why people are angry? It's because of tonedeaf responses from big companies pushing their agendas.
Companies have a basic duty to run themselves ethically and obey laws and regulations. "You created too many high-paying jobs" is a silly thing to get upset at them for, when the problem is clearly a governmental failure. Liberal US cities are neither permitting the market to create new housing, nor are they creating large amounts of public housing themselves. Their attitude amounts to, "We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas!"
You want a solution? Look at Singapore or Vienna.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no space in that area to build more housing. Pretty much all the space is being used to build offices for tech companies. There's also the question of how people that do not work for one of those high paying tech companies are supposed to pay for their housing.
Always in Berlin the knee jerk response to what is going on "We have to keep the rents down!" in response to housing crisis....never "We have to raise pays!" Pay situation for many jobs in Berlin and to some extent most of Germany is just abysmal, even in tech in many cases. If people here put half the energy in fighting for fairer remuneration for their work rather than whining about the raising rent and property pr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The occupiers are not anarchists. It's a diverse group of people that carry the protests, some even with ties to the established political parties. Some of them certainly have ties with anarchist movements, but placing them all in the same bucket is willfully ignoring the diversity. While I'm not certain that the methods they are using will help their cause or whether the problem is actually even solvable, I understa…
"many people that had been living there for decades and sometimes were quite involved in the improvement of the area are now forced to move" Please slow down with fake news. No eminent domain ever happened in that area since 50 years ago, hence literally NOBODY was forced to move out.
1) Renting: the protestors rent instead of own the homes they're living in, so their costs go up with the housing prices. The government could have reduced this problem by promoting home ownership in the past.
2) Income inequality: the protestors are not techies, so they won't be employed by Google, and will earn far less than Google's employees. The government can reduce this problem by increasing income leveling.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once had a co-worker (in IT) from Uganda. I was having lunch with her and another co-worker, sort of a generic American conservative. He said something ignorant about working harder or something with regards to Africa, she just went off on him. She asked him if he'd ever had to step over the bodies of his neighbors as a child. Of course, she went on to get a western education and move to the US, but she never forgo…
Yeah, it was quite a reality check to hear our host talk very nonchalantly about how Amin took his father away and had him killed - it was just so common that men of his age had their fathers murdered by Amin, that it didn't even seem to register to him as unusual (of course, that's just my interpretation). Definitely put my own problems in perspective.
Idi Amin, awful as he was, is the past now. What's the present like? That's what matters for countries that have yet to modernize. And it looks to be not good yet. Every nation in Europe was ruled by an Idi Amin at some point. They got better. African nations will too, someday. But I really want to see more African nations on that rapid-modernization cycle that we see in places like Iran, China, and Vietnam.
> New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher. The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must have been a halfway livable city. This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high payin…
> This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists I don't think you quite grasp the effects of a massive influx of hundreds to thousands of new individuals making $150k-250k. It increases rent across the board, which impacts all the people in an area. Sure, it might create a few new jobs for baristas and shopkeepers, a few bartenders and waitresses. But ultimately it just leads to gentrification and pri…
> New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher. The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must have been a halfway livable city. This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high payin…
> This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists I don't think you quite grasp the effects of a massive influx of hundreds to thousands of new individuals making $150k-250k. It increases rent across the board, which impacts all the people in an area. Sure, it might create a few new jobs for baristas and shopkeepers, a few bartenders and waitresses. But ultimately it just leads to gentrification and pri…
It also drives up demand for new housing and thus urban renewal projects become viable, which contribute to create higher-quality housing suitable to modern needs, not to mention contributions to ancillary services like public transportation.
> It increases rent across the board, which impacts all the people in an area.
No it doesn't. It impacts those who don't live there but want to, and due to increased demand need to compete with more people for that privilege.
> Sure, it might create a few new jobs for baristas and shopkeepers, a few bartenders and waitresses.
Ah yes, because those who didn't had opportunities to enroll in an engineering degree deserve to have their occupations ridiculed, and shouldn't even have the right to a respectable job.
> New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher. The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must have been a halfway livable city. This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high payin…
Lack of highrise developments is what makes those areas attractive in the first place. Berlin has plenty highrise residential, yet Google and the like are decidedly avoiding those areas. Converting more of the cityscape into the kind of area where neither Google nor the protestors would want to be would make the situation worse, not better. Also, it's quite possible that you widely underestimate the existing density,…
Why? Aesthetics? Google-type people don't want to live in high-rises?
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they aren't willing even to live near high-rises. That's a new one to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no space in that area to build more housing. Pretty much all the space is being used to build offices for tech companies. There's also the question of how people that do not work for one of those high paying tech companies are supposed to pay for their housing.
Always in Berlin the knee jerk response to what is going on "We have to keep the rents down!" in response to housing crisis....never "We have to raise pays!" Pay situation for many jobs in Berlin and to some extent most of Germany is just abysmal, even in tech in many cases. If people here put half the energy in fighting for fairer remuneration for their work rather than whining about the raising rent and property pr…
If salaries go up without housing being addressed directly, you get what's happened in SF: everyone middle-class and down being pushed out by high rent prices, because they're all competing for the same limited amount of space.