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$1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

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Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#461

Post by baddox »

reaperducer wrote: post #374
avocado4 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the weather sucks everywhere else.

The problem is the weather sucks everywhere else. Only if you've never been anywhere else. San Diego is the paragon of lovely weather in California, not the Bay Area. SF is enshrined in a song made famous by Sinatra with the line, "She hates California/It's cold and it's damp."

San Diego is about 5-10 degrees warmer year-round than San Francisco. I’m sure many people prefer that (particularly the beach/pool crowd), but not me. 60-65 is perfect for me, and 75 is too hot. Especially San Diego’s muggy 75.

And as a side point, I don’t think people need to travel the world to have a good idea whether they prefer humid 75 degree summers or non-humid 70 degree summers.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#462

Post by baddox »

clairity wrote: post #409
reaperducer wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the weather sucks everywhere else. Only if you've never been anywhere else. San Diego is the paragon of lovely weather in California, not the Bay Area. SF is enshrined in a song made famous by Sinatra with the line, "She hates California/It's cold and it's damp."

yup, LA beats SF and the bay area by a mile on weather, but san diego edges out LA in both weather and lush greenery.

LA summers are ridiculously hot, but by all means live wherever you enjoy the weather.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#463

Post by bprasanna »

Sorry, off the topic. Firefox and Opera browsers report this page as Insecure Connection!

"The owner of blog.google has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website."!!

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#464

Post by orangecat »

enraged_camel wrote: post #166
jofer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we start a new town or city and put a major employer in the middle, people will move there. Welcome to Houston! Seriously, the typical model for growth here has been for a major employer to make a new campus out in the middle of nowhere away from town, then things spring up around it. As a result, we have lots of urban clusters with skyscrapers a long way from downtown. The energy corridor and the med center sta…

Houston also famously has no zoning laws, which massively exacerbates problems associated with sprawl.

Houston also famously has no zoning laws, which massively exacerbates problems associated with sprawl.

In my experience the opposite is true. With relaxed zoning it's easier to live closer to work, and more likely that common destinations like grocery stores will be conveniently nearby.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#465

Post by what_ever »

bprasanna wrote: post #463

Sorry, off the topic. Firefox and Opera browsers report this page as Insecure Connection! "The owner of blog.google has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website."!!

Looks okay here on FF.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#466

Post by wyclif »

michaelt wrote: post #281
rubicon33 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. 20,000 homes isn't going to budge the needle even 1% when it comes to housing affordability in the state, let alone in the bay area. Not sure why they feel like this is a good billion well spent...

So that next time someone says "down with tech bros gentrifying the bay area" or they get hauled up in front of the local government who sat the same thing, Google can say "we invested a billion dollars and built more homes than San Francisco added in the last seven years, we're doing our part." And it sounds like they're 'investing' rather than 'spending' the $1 billion - if you take $750m of land and build flats an…

Indeed, it's at least partially a "Checkmate, SJW's!" move.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#467

Post by dgzl »

closeparen wrote: post #453
dgzl wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you don't realize this but there's a homelessness crisis happening right now, partially due to massive gentrification brought on by successful tech companies. You shouldn't pretend that there aren't negative side-effects from the collection of success and wealth in Seattle, Portland and the Bay Area. Decentralizing the workforce would help decentralize the problem.

The resources needed to solve homeless & poverty are also collecting there. Tax them. Either the tax rates drive people away and you achieve decentralization, or they solve the problem and decentralization isn’t needed.

Are you really advocating that we raise taxes with the intention of driving people away?

I find that mentality vehemently disgusting. The government is expensive and wasteful, acts in bad faith, disrespects our rights, and steals from us every day. Why people idolize that, I have no idea.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#468

Post by bprasanna »

what_ever wrote: post #465
bprasanna wrote: post #463

Sorry, off the topic. Firefox and Opera browsers report this page as Insecure Connection! "The owner of blog.google has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website."!!

Looks okay here on FF.

Well looks like being in VPN makes the difference! Same error observed in Chrome as well. https://imgur.com/a/cpe12US

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#469

Post by shrimpx »

This looping discussion, the same observations raised over and over, with similar responses, threatens to completely kill people's drive to get to the actual issues. Oh it's that same thread about nimbyism and the general hopelessness surrounding bay area politics.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#470

Post by abeppu »

hunter23 wrote: post #175
ChuckMcM wrote: post #123

Personally this class of things really highlights an imbalance for me. Consider that Google runs its own own bus service for employees, and now is building housing for the same. Traditionally, successful businesses in a region paid taxes, and those taxes were used by the local governments to invest in infrastructure like public transport and urban development. So in this regard Google usurps the mandate of the commun…

The problem is that the local governments are not doing their jobs so private industry is stepping in to address the gap (with obviously a biased interest towards their customers, shareholders, and employees). Literally every Bay area government has regulations (zoning, community review, etc.) that prevent housing to be put in place. On the transit side, we have multiple transit organizations (Muni, BART, Caltrain, e…

Property owners have no interest in creating housing; scarcity keeps their property values high. However, I don't get why it is that renters seem ineffective as a block in advocating for more construction. There are lots of renters, many with more roommates than they'd like, and they're all vaguely aware that their landlords could decide to evict everyone and sell, so they should be motivated to try to build the stock of alternatives.
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