421–430 of 547 posts
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"The people living there don't want that, though, so the laws prohibit it." ... which is the definition of democracy.
In this case, a representative demos would need to include the people who’d like to live there as well.
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I also believe another option, where we can throw massive amounts of money at the problem, is to completely fix our transportation system. If you have been to any major city in Asia, they have WAYYY more people and are able to commute from much further distances because the public transportation is clean, safe, fast, reliable. We have tons of land under utilized in the bay area, especially in the east bay, if we were…
You need much more density around the train stations than currently exists for it to be sustainable to operate those trains on a frequent schedule. So yes, you're correct that better transportation is needed, but greater density is needed to make that transportation system possible.
CalTrain during rush hour is operating many trains at 120+% capacity. As a ride, that number feels way too low given how many people are often without a seat. I type this on a ride where I didn't get a seat for the front half of the ride. Riderships what growing by 5k daily riders YoY, though I think it's finally topped out due to train capacity. Bikers get bumped on a regular basis due to space, and riders on rare occasion. My understanding is that CalTrain is also running essentially as many trains as they can during rush hours. (They have to allow a certain following distance between trains, and that's the constraining factor. Electrification will have locomotives that have better acceleration, and thus stopping distances, and thus will allow packing more trains — and thus capacity onto the tracks. I worry however that this will be too little too late.)
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"Poll: Two-thirds of California voters back SB 50 housing bill" https://sf.curbed.com/2019/5/17/18629809/sb-50-housing-trans...
SB-50 would have just led to displacement and more homeless people, exacerbating how much it sucks to live in the city. We need better quality bills than Weiner's.
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I live in a concrete/glass/steel luxury high-rise in downtown San Diego. My neighbors can have raging parties into the early morning and I can't hear a thing unless I wander into the hallway. The construction quality of multi-family homes in SV pretty poor.
I've lived in apartment buildings in at least four cities (mostly in the midwest) where I could hear my neighbors doing normal things (i.e., not throwing ragers). It seems be a widespread problem not confined to SV.
I moved out after my first lease expired.
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The problem is it's scary to live in a city that only has one employer offering jobs in your field. My wife and I moved to a new city last year, and while we considered a lot of smaller cities, it ultimately wasn't worth the risk to live someplace that only had a couple prospective employers.
That sounds more like a rural town, what kind of city only has a single employer? I grew up and lived in one of ~400,000 (there are 47 US cities over this size) people which is small for a city and there were many potential employers. Not as many as larger cities of course and many were on the more boutique side of the spectrum, but there were enough opportunities and the lower pay was a better deal when adjusted for…
It's great that Google wants to increase housing, but is this really going to work? The housing shortage in the Bay Area is not a money problem. If it were possible to build 20,000 houses in the next 20 years, it would absolutely happen without Google's help. The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism. SF doesn't want to allow taller buildings and denser housing complexes. It's vastly worse in the…
The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism ... The only solution In the real world, nothing has one simple cause or one "only" solution. The housing problem in California, and elsewhere is complex. This is akin to people who say, "The problem with homelessness there has one simple cause..." and then insert their favorite boogeyman. There are many factors involved, other than NIMBYs, and BANANAs (Bu…
It's great that Google wants to increase housing, but is this really going to work? The housing shortage in the Bay Area is not a money problem. If it were possible to build 20,000 houses in the next 20 years, it would absolutely happen without Google's help. The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism. SF doesn't want to allow taller buildings and denser housing complexes. It's vastly worse in the…
They're pitching this as being a benevolent gesture, but (a) It sounds like they're just becoming a larger real-estate developer? They didn't say "we're donating all this land plus some capital to a housing non-profit"; they're going to receive revenue from their investments. Are we supposed to say thanks? (b) How does 20k units compare to their impact on Bay Area housing to date? This is not my area, and I'm not awa…
Local governments love adding corporations. They pay taxes while using few resources. So corporate campuses get approved super easily - sometimes even with tax breaks!
New housing on the other hand is fought against tooth and nail because it brings new residents that require roads, services, and schools. Worse, if all the land has been used up, it requires larger buildings to be built where there used to be smaller houses and commercial strips which upsets local residents with voting power. Local governments sometimes even make residential developers pay extra taxes or make mandatory donations to the community.
It's these local city governments like Palo Alto and Mountain View that allowed Google to massively expand without also allowing developers to build housing to support the employees for that expansion. Hence, why Google is spending its own capital just to get some units built.
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> $12000 doesn't mean the same thing when you consider the cost of living difference between the urban and rural areas. We actually agree here. I think we're speaking past each other. I'm arguing that "only $12,000" is dismissive of how impactful a difference that makes to the lives of people who don't live in a big city.
> I'm arguing that "only $12,000" is dismissive of how impactful a difference that makes to the lives of people who don't live in a big city. But the $12k in question isn't a fungible $12k. It's specifically the difference in housing costs between urban and rural in the example given earlier. If the point is that many people in rural areas are economically struggling, then yes we agree, just as many poorer urban dwel…
> If the point is that many people in rural areas are economically struggling, then yes we agree, just as many poorer urban dwellers are (and to whom a random $12k received would also be hugely impactful), but that has nothing to do with example proposed.
My point was that the OP's use of the phrase "only $12,000" is offensive, classist language in the context it was written in. That point is unrelated to the rest of the discussion.
I don't get why anyone would want to double down on defending this language, especially since you weren't the person who used it. But here we are.
But hey, if $12,000/year is peanuts to anyone reading this thread: https://www.patreon.com/ciphpercoder