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California bill to add more housing in single-family neighborhoods blocked

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Re: California bill to add more housing in single-family neighborhoods blocked

#111

Post by anon1m0us »

chrisdhoover wrote: post #105
anon1m0us wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying something is not a right. It's a privilege. You can't buy drugs. You can't buy lots of things. It's not "life, liberty, and the right to buy stuff." It's "the pursuit of happiness" which clearly is an inalienable right that is being taken from people. It's no different than a bully on the playground taking the ball from a weaker kid. They both have a right to play with that ball, right? The bullying force just…

Property rights are the foundation of the US. Calling it a privilege is a complete misunderstanding of history. We are not serfs subordinate to a lord. We are not comrades subordinate to a politburo. We are citizens. As it was written in its early form, we believe in life, liberty and property.

You're fine then with one person owning all the property?

Re: California bill to add more housing in single-family neighborhoods blocked

#112

Post by anon1m0us »

xvedejas wrote: post #51
anon1m0us wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm suggesting my proposal would solve the problem in your neighborhood. If you reduce the demand for something, the price falls. My suggestion clearly reduces demand for something, thus due to the laws of economics, prices will drop.

The thing is, my observation is true about the broader housing market in the Bay Area. Most homes are not homes owned by individuals with multiple homes. And at worst, they're homes on the rental market, and so still help to meet housing demand. Vacant houses are such a small fraction of the housing stock, that even if all of them were full of resident owners, the price problem would still exist.

The data suggest otherwise: https://www.fastcompany.com/90305242/taxing-empty-apartments...

Re: California bill to add more housing in single-family neighborhoods blocked

#113

Post by anon1m0us »

jonas21 wrote: post #104
anon1m0us wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's to outlaw the purchase of more than 2 pieces of real property. Renting is fine by me.

May I suggest you think this through a bit more carefully?

My ideas are well thought out. What is confusing you?

I personally own many pieces of real property. This law would affect me too. I'm actually one of the wealthy who think what we are allowing to happen is wrong.

Re: California bill to add more housing in single-family neighborhoods blocked

#114

Post by Zombiethrowaway »

manfredo wrote: post #93
Zombiethrowaway wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People currently living there don't see it as a "housing crisis". They see it as "too many people coming here, trying to change our single family house peaceful residential neighborhood into bigger buildings". So "how about limiting influx of new people / new development?" "Sure, let's do that" I understand newcomers may disagree with that approach, out of understandable self interest. But implying people currently l…

So their plan to solve the housing crises essentially involves trying to keep new people out of the SF Bay area? Keep in mind that this is an area that heavily prides itself on being diverse and inclusive. People aren't clueless for defending their interests, but they absolutely are being highly deceptive in the way they are going about it. Many even go so far as to try and claim that increasing housing supply will a…

Again, from the people living there, what's the housing crisis?? Yes, they are trying to limit how many people are coming in, that's obvious. This is different from inclusive and diversity issues. This is about 100 new diverse people rather than 1,000.

Again you can disagree with them, it is fair, but I think their approach is perfectly understandable, and if you want to argue and debate, no one should assume they are hypocritical or morally inferior. I read thosr comments all the time on HN.

The minute you say "housing crisis", you show which situation/point of view you're coming from. It's not a crisis that "needs" to be solved with more housing, it is just your viewpoint.

Re: California bill to add more housing in single-family neighborhoods blocked

#115

Post by xvedejas »

anon1m0us wrote: post #112
xvedejas wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, my observation is true about the broader housing market in the Bay Area. Most homes are not homes owned by individuals with multiple homes. And at worst, they're homes on the rental market, and so still help to meet housing demand. Vacant houses are such a small fraction of the housing stock, that even if all of them were full of resident owners, the price problem would still exist.

The data suggest otherwise: https://www.fastcompany.com/90305242/taxing-empty-apartments...

No, the data does not suggest otherwise. I won't be surprised if Vancouver is very different from San Francisco, which has extremely low vacancy rates.

https://sf.curbed.com/2019/3/21/18276227/vacancy-rate-san-jo...

Re: California bill to add more housing in single-family neighborhoods blocked

#116

Post by throwaway2048 »

baggy_trough wrote: post #86
clairity wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's wrong with fourplexes? i live in a neighborhood full of them and think they're great. they add a lot of character without additional massing, and the additional density unlocks commercial areas that are a walk away.

That's great that you like your neighborhood. Presumably you thought it was the best choice for you. I don't want to live in a high density area, so that's why I chose to live somewhere else.

I'm sure you wouldn't have appreciated somebody saying you cant live where you do now, before you moved there.

However you are completely onboard with doing the same to others.

Re: California bill to add more housing in single-family neighborhoods blocked

#117

Post by anon1m0us »

yholio wrote: post #58
anon1m0us wrote: post #26

The simplest solution to all this is limiting the number of houses a person can own. You only NEED one. Two is more than enough. Three is excessive. It's not gold or silver or stocks and bonds. People need houses to live in. Other investments don't have practical value. If people want to protect their assets, do it outside real estate.

> People need houses to live in I'm sure very few owners of multiples houses let them empty and not rent them out so that people can live in them. Houses are expensive, even outside their speculative value, in terms of raw materials, workmanship etc. So expensive that few people can afford to buy houses with cash. If someone is paying that cash to build a house, then offering it for an affordable rent so that other p…

as I posted somewhere else as well: https://www.fastcompany.com/90305242/taxing-empty-apartments...

There are lots of vacant homes. Foreign buyers are pushing their wealth to the west to protect it from their own governments.

So yes, another strategy to lower housing costs is to reign in foreign ownership.

Re: California bill to add more housing in single-family neighborhoods blocked

#118

Post by anon1m0us »

magduf wrote: post #57
brianpgordon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's drastic. I'm not taking a position either way because I don't know enough about the tradeoffs. But it's really bad out there, particularly here in SF; maybe worse than you realize. When mobs of zombies start shuffling out of the Pacific and swarming coastal cities, you call the National Guard and impose martial law, "government overreach" be damned. And when things reach this level of dysfunction in the housing…

I don't see why it's the government's job (at state/federal levels) to fix a local problem like this. If anything, I think if the state government is going to do anything, it should help service workers relocate to more affordable places and find good work there. Let the Bay Area real estate market collapse.

It's a chicken/egg problem. The jobs are in the cities. The population density in other areas makes it even harder. People move to the cities for jobs because there aren't any where they are from.f

Re: California bill to add more housing in single-family neighborhoods blocked

#119

Post by anon1m0us »

xvedejas wrote: post #115
anon1m0us wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data suggest otherwise: https://www.fastcompany.com/90305242/taxing-empty-apartments...

No, the data does not suggest otherwise. I won't be surprised if Vancouver is very different from San Francisco, which has extremely low vacancy rates. https://sf.curbed.com/2019/3/21/18276227/vacancy-rate-san-jo...

The subtitle of that article is "But that still leaves more than 100,000 Bay Area homes empty"

So, yes -- it does.

Re: California bill to add more housing in single-family neighborhoods blocked

#120

Post by anon1m0us »

dgzl wrote: post #92
brianpgordon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really want to get drawn into this because – again – I don't have an opinion one way or the other, but I have to point out that just because you're able to do something today doesn't mean it's automatically a "right" that needs to be "stripped" from you. We adopt reasonable legislation all of the time which restricts legal activity in various ways. When the SEC issues guidance on some little-known regulation…

Yes I've noticed that many times people don't feel the need to defend other people's rights because it wouldn't also affect them directly.

I would be forced to sell many pieces of property I do not want to sell if my ideas were implemented.

I don't think it's my right to own all that. I don't need it. Someone else does. Unfortunately, they can't afford it and I can. Doesn't make it right.

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